FINEST KIND CLINIC AND FISHMARKET.... Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit.
Both Tolkien and Lewis, specifically as Christians, become the greatest story-tellers of the 20th century.
And this brings me back to the heart of my own thoughts. The mythic character of reality is another way to speak of a one-storey universe. In Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s terms, the world is sacrament – pointing to and participating in something beyond itself.
It is possible to simply speak on the most literal level – to speak of events (such as Christ’s crucifixion) – and relate them to ideas (such as atonement) which inhabit the world of the mind. But such literalism renders the greatest event in the universe into the merest incident of which our later doctrine is the greater reality.
The intuition of Lewis is the same as the intuition and teaching of the fathers. The Cross is both event in history and also the truest event of the Great Myth. Its power is such that it draws other things to itself. It is the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, Isaac on Mt. Moriah, the staff of Moses with the snake, the outstretched arms of Moses at the battle with the Amalekites, the Tree that Moses cast into the bitter water, the Footstool of God. At the Feast of the Holy Cross the Church declares: “Let all the trees of the wood, planted from the beginning of time, rejoice; for their nature hath been sanctified by the stretching of Christ on the Tree” (Magnification of the Feast).
Catholics live in an enchanted world: a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are merely hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility that inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. The world of the Catholic is haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of Grace .
The Justice Department has announced it had agreed to pay 41 tribes — many in the western U.S. — about $1.023 billion because the Interior and Treasury departments had failed to adequately oversee concessions on Indian lands from companies that exploit a wide variety of resources, including minerals, timber, oil and gas, dating back more than 100 years in some cases....The Osage tribe of Oklahoma, for example because of its extensive oil and gas reserves will get $380 million. The tribe has about 16,000 members.... President Barack Obama signed legislation in December 2010 authorising payment for a similar, though far larger, settlement for Indians. That money, totalling $3.4 billion, has not been distributed because of several pending lawsuitsHopefully the tribes can now kick the government out of their health care system and get decent care for their folks. Which is why no one in the press bothered to examine either the VA or the IHS to see how government health care (with rationing) would work in the real world.
and from the NakedScientist:
The problem of wound infection is exemplified nowhere better than on the battlefield where, throughout history, soil- and shrapnel-contaminated injuries have rendered soldiers much more likely to die from an infection than a bullet.
Of course, not all victims of such wound infections suffered a death sentence. There were survivors. But in the First World War, those that did survive frequently had a feature in common: wounds that glowed in the dark. Not only that, but their fluorescing tissues appeared to heal more cleanly and more quickly than the unilluminated wounds of their counterparts. And because it offered better survival prospects to the victims, this mysterious phenomenon became known as the "Angel’s Glow".
Today, it is thought that the effect is most likely to have been caused by a naturally-luminescent bacterium called Photorhabdus luminescens. This soil-dwelling microbe produces a number of deadly products that can kill off competing potential pathogens, but is itself harmless to humans. Naturally, the afflicted soldiers had no idea that the glow was caused by a beneficial bacterial infection and instead interpreted it as the gift of survival from God, handed to them by by angels, hence the name.
as Wise puts it in a paper that presents a classification scheme for the various falsetto effects he’s studied in popular music:---------------------
“The precise moment when the break from modal voice into loft, or vice versa, occurs is the distinguishing feature of the yodel. In fact, it is the only distinguishing feature. This break in register is the sonic event within the flow of the musical line that startles and delights the ear. I call this ‘yodel moment’ in the musical flow a yodeleme, a coinage analogous to similar concepts such as phoneme and museme and intended to indicate a primary unit of meaning.”
If a patient is conscious during surgery but doesn’t remember any of it, is that good enough? It’s a bit like the tree falling in the forest with nobody to hear it. An anesthesiologist’s koan. If even the patient has no recollection of surgery, was he aware?-----------------------
For Lewis, as for Tolkien, such stories of derring-do, daunting quests, vistas populated by fantastic yet credible characters accomplished what mere philosophical argument could not. Their narratives proffered central themes that simultaneously uplifted the spirit while challenging the conventional wisdom, our “disenchantment,” of the present age, pushing readers toward the true reality now made visible.---------------------------------
The design is very unique, and I have not found an exact real-world match for it yet, but it shares elements of European falchions, and Chinese dao, both of which are single-edged and broad bladed.
Thomas Kinkade was for me at his very young age already a brilliant painter. That's why, with no prior professional training, I gave him the job of painting backgrounds for my movie with Frank Frazetta, "Fire and Ice". He nailed it, which really was impossible for anyone else with no experience - but not for him. ..
As far as the art world, the CRITICAL ones shrugging Tom off, as they sell l shark in oil, and polka dots, in, 12, count them, 12 galleries at once in one opening -and all the other mindless hype... They miss the true brilliance that is Kinkade.
Kinkade painted the brilliant landscapes of the religious right... This is the most homespun vision of the distorted right, and nostalgia looking Americans reaching for purity without knowing what it really is - all through his landscapes. ITS BRILLIANT, and goes by every art critic and major museum in the world. I love it. And its just that that I made my movies about - the blind, pretentious and ugly. Tom Kinkade was a great, a good friend of mine and I will miss him. As an artist he nailed it - and that's rare.
it was Halifax that sent out ships to pick up the bodies, turned an ice rink into a morgue and interred the dead in three cemeteries.
"They built it in Belfast, sank it in the Atlantic and we buried it. In that sense, one very final part of the Titanic story is right here in Halifax," said local author Alan Ruffman.
Crafted by London's Machine Shop, this likeness of Pegasus consists of 3,500 Huawei handsets and many supporting rods. Creating the sculpture involved much cutting and soldering of iron rods (more than 650 yards), unpacking of phones, and sticky pads. It took 720 man-hours to make Pegasus, which is nearly 19 feet tall with a 16-foot wingspan.cnet via notcot this film shows how they made it:
Art of the Western World - Episode 5 from Open College of the Arts on Vimeo.
an older tv show on the history of art, with bbc historial Michael Woods is on line at Vimeo for your viewing pleasure.
The ritual recreates the imagined first meeting of Jesus and Mary after the resurrection.
As per tradition, it begins with two separate processions, where images of the Mater Dolorosa and the Resurrected Christ are carried from opposite ends.
“The womenfolk bring the statue of the Blessed Mother, covered in a black veil [called a lambong, a veil of mourning]. The menfolk carry the statue of the Resurrected Christ,” said Ronald Subida, an organizer of the Salubong in Poblacion, Makati.
Eventually, the two processions will meet at a middle point, during which an angel will lift the black veil from the face of the image of the Blessed Mother. The angel is played by a young girl from the community, and is typically suspended mid-air from inside a giant paper flower.
At the precise moment that the veil is lifted, the Hallelujah Chorus is played, and celebration ensues. In some places, such as in Poblacion, there are even fireworks. Usually, the event continues to an Easter morning mass.
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The National Theater had been damaged and closed for two decades, but since al Shabaab had been driven out of Mogadishu last year, the economy has revived and construction, and reconstruction can be seen all over the city
KISSIMMEE, Fla., June 8 (UPI) -- Mating Florida alligators respond to the note of B flat -- at least when played on a tuba through the wood of a boardwalk. At least that's what a Tampa Tribune reporter discovered in an attempt to replicate a 1944 experiment, "Response of Captive Alligators to Auditory Stimulation," conducted at the Museum of Natural History in New York.------------------------
For the past decade, Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign has helped toss out two-thirds of 249 new coal plant proposals, avoiding more than 654 million metric tons of carbon that would have seeped into the atmosphere each year....Beyond Coal hopes to close a third of them by 2020 and all of them by 2030, and has employed a full-time staff "working on nothing but figuring out how to shut down these plants and replace them with clean energy," says Sierra Club's executive director Michael Brune.
No, I have no opinion.
: My message was that NG prices will stay low long-term but rise somewhat as LNG exports naturally unfold. US coal, thus displaced, will go to Asia in export for its higher caloric value and lower impurities. Some in industry predict doubling of coal exports by 2020, with India and China as main demanders.
We are temporal beings, and so each moment’s beauty slips into the past almost before we realize it; but God is eternal. Could it be that all good things, all beauty, all moments of joy are never lost? I think so. Whatever I make that has any value (however flawed) will be redeemed. All those broken lines and half-grasped images: perhaps I will be able, one day, to make them into the poems they ought to be. Be sure they still will make, not being dead, and poets shall have flames upon their head, and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall: there each shall choose for ever from the All.
Iranians flock out of homes to take refuge in nature. It is considered now, as the Day of Nature. Iran harbors a very diverse and beautiful natural environment... As I began work in 1997, we had 4.75 percent of the land devoted to protected areas, by 2005 when I left this figure had rose to 7.5%. This amounts to 16 National Parks, over 93 Protected areas, 24 Natural Monuments and several Wildlife Refuges.
More than 600 anglers stranded on an ice floe in the Russian far east have been rescued.The operation to airlift them off the ice involved 48 people, two helicopters and 11 ships, the emergencies ministry said.
The 675 fishing enthusiasts were carried out to sea when the floe, off the island of Sakhalin, broke free.
