Archive for July, 2008

I’m SO glad I’m not the only Tom Lehrer nerd out there…

Kasia July 17th, 2008

I saw this over at Chez Shea, and rejoiced greatly. I honestly didn’t even know there was existing footage of Tom Lehrer performing.

Let’s see if that works or if I have to link instead…I’ve never learned how to embed Link it is…
If nothing else, it may give you an idea of why, prior to meeting The Canuck, I used to say that I would gladly marry Tom Lehrer if I had the opportunity. Even though he’s pushing 80 by now… ;-)

In which the Clam engages in a moment of self-loathing

Kasia July 16th, 2008

I often eat lunch at my desk. Which isn’t a big deal in and of itself. Sometimes I leave the door open, and other times I close it, because I do occasionally get tired of people poking their heads in to ask me to do X, Y or Z when I’ve got my mouth full of turkey sandwich or baby carrots.

However, my habit of eating at my desk creates some uncertainty with respect to when, exactly, I am working and not working. As a rule, I try to flex with the system as much as I can - I appreciate that it flexes with me. I mean, I like being shut in my office to recharge, not have to socialize with my co-workers (not that I don’t like them, but I do like some down time), and catch up on my personal Internet use. So if I get a work-related e-mail, I usually skim it and see if it’s pressing. If my boss really needs me, he can always knock.

Phones, however, present more of a challenge in that for all intents and purposes, I do not have caller ID. So it’s always a gamble when I pick up the phone on my lunch: is this pressing? Can I resolve it reasonably quickly? Or is this going to be the effective end of my lunch? I have the same problem to a lesser degree at home, but since 99% of my calls come from either immediate family, the Canuck, or telemarketers, I have no qualms about continuing to eat if the conversation is lasting longer than the heat of my food.

Anyway, today I’d had several interruptions already: someone insistently ringing the front doorbell of the office building, despite the sign announcing that the office is closed from 12 to 1 for lunch, a phone call from a telemarketer, and at least one other phone call. So when the phone rang AGAIN, I glared at it, said “NO!”, and continued eating.

So then I check my voicemail, and it’s one of our students. His mother just died and he wanted me to get an e-mail out to the group about it.

Hand, meet forehead. Clam, you’re a jerk.

(Not really - it’s not like I *knew* that that’s who was calling, or why. I just am having one of those irrational “stupid me” moments. It’ll pass.)

Music selections

Kasia July 13th, 2008

The mothers will be seated to Bach’s Aria from Goldberg Variations. (The piano sounds a little tinny on my computer…hope it doesn’t on yours.)
The bridesmaids will process in to Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.

Canuck and I will process in to Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus from K.618.

The hymn for the Presentation of the Gifts will be Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Communion hymn will be Joyful, Joyful.

The recessional will be the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

I will try to find links to recordings of all of these later today so y’all can enjoy and envision… :-)

Music is settled! (Well, almost…)

Kasia July 12th, 2008

Canuck and I met with the parish music minister today. She’s really quite a lovely young woman; and while I definitely don’t agree with the amount of Haugen and Haas she plays…well, for one thing, between the two of them they wrote half the Gather hymnal (which, sadly, is what we use at our parish). For another thing, she is quite versatile and does some really lovely classical and choral pieces as well, especially for special occasions.

After an initial rocky start, it was quite a good and productive meeting. It was rocky because…well, Canuck and I had decided we wanted to do what the GIRM suggests, and walk up the aisle together instead of him waiting at the altar for me while my dad or parents walk me up. I saw a post quite a while ago at Fr. Martin Fox’s blog that talked about how that’s what’s actually recommended; and I mentioned it to the Canuck, who thought it was a nice idea.

We both wanted to get away from the “bride as princess” idea, as the Sacrament really involves both of us, and the groom tends to end up a bit like an accessory at a lot of weddings. (And frankly, I was quite glad at the prospect of having someone else share the spotlight during that nervewracking walk up the aisle! With your dad, it’s not quite the same…) And my dad is very glad that we’re not having him walk me up the aisle; I’m sure he would do it if I asked, but he’s more or less of the opinion that it’s an outdated custom. Funny aside: I mentioned that to the priest who’s the main celebrant of our wedding. He said, in his Slovak accent “I think your family thinks, perhaps, too much about politics.” ROFL! Talk about your understatements…

Anyway. So we tell the music minister what we’re planning to do, and it turns out she’s never heard of this. So at first she says, “This is how we do it here…” and lays out the traditional bride-comes-last-with-Dad. When I explain that I was pretty sure it was what the GIRM recommends (blinking back tears because, well, I overreact to things sometimes), she says I’ll have to take it up with the pastor of the parish. And guess who walked into the music room not a minute later? Yup, Father himself, who says “Oh yeah, that’s allowed. In fact, we’re going to be having a meeting in August sometime with all the people who work on weddings - I’d like to bring the liturgy completely in line with what’s correct - so we’ll be working on moving to that as the norm.” Her response? “Oh! Okay, then!”

So - we got down to talking music. I confessed my dislike of Haugen/Haas, so apart from the Mass setting (there’s not much to be done to avoid them for actual Mass settings, I’m afraid, but I think it’s one of the better ones from what I’ve seen) and the Psalm (same thing with respect to not being able to avoid H/H, but it’s really not an overly Haugen-esque melody) , we are Haugen/Haas-free! Hooray!!! :-)

I will post on the actual selections tomorrow, as the list is in the living room and my next stop is B-E-D. But I was just so excited that we’ve got this settled!

Well, almost settled. We still need to pick a piece for the “Flowers for Mary” portion. Ave Maria is so overplayed, especially the Schubert version; and my idea of some sort of solo or response of the Canticle of Mary elicited only the Gather hymnal’s option, which was…um, very Haugen/Haas. You know: the lyrics are changed to neatly fit rhyme and meter, and the tune is bouncy and a little trite. It reminded me of what a professor had said to me in a creative writing course in college, about a short story I wrote: “It wraps up too neatly - you can see too much of the ‘hand of the author’ in it.”

So - we’ll see. How many of you have been to a wedding where the recessional was the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition?

Whoo - THAT was a spine-building exercise!

Kasia July 10th, 2008

I’ve posted before about the Lord sending me “spine-building exercises”. Well, I just had another one.

I’ve had a bunch of missed calls that my caller ID identifies as “Levin for…” and I had idly wondered which Levin was trying to get money from me - Carl (Senator) or Sander (Representative). I live in Sander’s district, but I’ve written to Carl before; and with political lists being the tetchy things they are, anything is possible. I have gotten mail from the Republican Jewish Coalition before, even though I am neither Republican nor Jewish. So you never know.

Well, the phone just rang and it was “Levin for” again. I decided to pick up to satisfy my curiosity, Google searches having already failed to resolve the issue.

It was neither Levin. It was the Obama campaign.

Now, I have a high school friend who is working the Obama campaign. He gets sent around the country “trying to win hearts and minds”, as he puts it. If anyone might persuade me to soften my stance on Obama, it would be him - he’s smart, articulate, knew me pretty well in high school, and (I think) is smart enough and open-minded enough to actually hear my critiques and concerns and respond to them. I don’t think even he’d be able to persuade me, but if anyone could, it would be him.

Instead of my suave, smart high school friend, I had a clearly nervous kid who sounded like he might have been early in college, at the oldest, stumbling over his basic talking points.

I was courteous, and I was honest. I told him, upon being asked, that I was NOT an Obama supporter; that I was not registered with a party; that one of my biggest objections to Obama is his extreme position on abortion, which seemed to surprise him. So I asked if he was aware that Obama had opposed the Infants Born Alive Protection Act. He suggested that what Obama maybe thought was that the federal government had no business stepping in; that the decision should be left to the woman.

I said “I think if you look at the record, you’ll find that you’re mistaken about Obama’s thoughts on the federal government stepping in; because he’s already said that his first priority as President would be to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which essentially strips states of any ability to regulate abortion at all. Now, if you were to say that the Feds shouldn’t be involved in abortion but it should be left to the states, I think you’d have an argument to make - and a Constitutional one at that -” here he interjected and said, “Yeah, that’s what Roe says” - and I said “- and that’s fine, but apparently Obama agrees with some lobbyists who don’t think Roe goes far enough.” His response to that?

“Well, but if you think of the alternative, McCain, he’s more likely to appoint justices…” and something about “women’s rights”.
At that point I almost laughed out loud. I told him that I was pro-life, and that he and I had very different ideas of what women’s rights were and whether abortion was good for women.
He was obviously keen to get off the phone, but dutifully stuck to his script and thanked me for my time, said he hoped I’d still consider Obama and “sticking with the Democrats” - I told him I’d love to consider “sticking with the Democrats” if they’d have nominated a less extreme candidate. He said something about a “lot of other issues”, and we ended the conversation.

I did tell him that I respected his enthusiasm and what he was trying to do. And I concluded the conversation with “God bless you.”  (I’m sure his receiver was already halfway to the cradle by then.)

He’s right. There are a lot of other issues. And those matter.

But everything I’ve seen about Obama so far, even putting life issues aside for the moment, makes me mistrust him. I’m sure he’s a genial, likable guy in his personal life, but he’s just shown himself to be too “any way the wind blows” for me. I guess the only thing I can say for him is that, in spite of some of the things she’s said that have damaged his campaign thus far, he hasn’t thrown his wife under the bus, so to speak. And I’ll trust that that’s because he loves her, not because he knows that throwing her under the bus would poll badly.

With respect to the kid on the phone, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell him some of the other things that bother me about Obama - though frankly, maybe from a tactical standpoint it’s better that I not have. You know, so he can’t be prepared to answer them from the next person?  :-p  OK, that was mean - I’m sorry, Kid From the Obama Campaign.

Since the kid wasn’t terribly confident, I don’t think I really gained a whole vertebra…but it was definitely good practice for me to speak up for life.

Forgot two things…

Kasia July 9th, 2008

First, related to the subject of cars, I saw one of the most annoying bumper stickers yet on my way home today.

It read: “When Bush took office, gas was $1.49 a gallon.”

O-kay. Now, I’m not a big fan of President Bush, and the sentence as stated may be factually accurate, but there’s an unstated but obvious conclusion that the person displaying the sticker wants you to draw.

Let’s look at the unstated argument:

(Stated) Premise 1: When Bush took office, gas was $1.49 a gallon.
(Unstated) Premise 2: Gas is now over $4 a gallon.
(Unstated) Conclusion: It is Bush’s fault that gas is over $4 a gallon.

Or, alternately, Unstated Conclusion: If Bush had not taken office, gas would not be over $4 a gallon now.

Like I said, I’m not a fan of President Bush on…well, really quite a wide variety of issues. In fact, I think the only things he and I agree on are life issues, and some specific points about the “War on Terror”.  And those are important, I’ll grant you.

But no matter how much I disagree with him, and don’t especially care for him or his policies, I think that’s a ridiculously unfair critique. Gee - do you think anything ELSE could have contributed to higher gas prices? Like, say, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina smashing up the refineries, OPEC wanting to increase their profits and/or stick it to the West, broken pipelines from outdated infrastructure, increased demand for petroleum products, crazy speculators…

Now, I will be the first to say that some of President Bush’s policies probably haven’t helped matters. In fairness, the same can be said of some of the Democratic Congress’ policies, like not drilling in ANWR.

There are too many variables here to blame it all on Bush. Give the flagellating a rest. Your arms have got to be tired by now.

My other item of interest to report: telemarketers and cold solicitations are getting ever more creative. A few months ago I received a mail solicitation that I opened out of confusion and curiosity, because they had printed my name and address in such a convincing color and font that I really thought it was handwritten. It wasn’t.

Well, today I received another “new one”. Another handwritten or handwritten-looking envelope, which I opened out of curiosity. Guess what was inside?

One of those pink “Important Message” slips that receptionists use to take a message in an office. My name, the date, a first name and number of the person to call, “Please Call” checked, and “Great News!” in the message area. And I’m 99% sure this is handwritten, not printed.

I’m half tempted to call, just to see what they’re trying to sell me; but I think I’ll just leave it alone. Creativity aside, whatever they’re selling, I don’t want them to get the idea that this is an effective way to get my business.

Recent Events Roundup

Kasia July 9th, 2008

Mmm, where to begin…

I never told you how the sangria turned out. It was actually pretty good, and for a first effort I think it was outstanding - we used a recipe we found on the ‘net and modified it slightly to suit our tastes and what was on sale.

We used white wine - I didn’t even know you could use white wine for sangria, but there you have it - a big bottle, with a shot or two of Bombay Sapphire (Canuck’s gin of choice), some sugar, and a whole mess of fruit: strawberries, raspberries, lemons and limes. We’d bought oranges, but there wasn’t room in the pitcher for anything more. We let that marinate overnight, and by the next day, it was a yummy fruity treat!

One note - I strongly do NOT recommend adding club soda or tonic to the sangria for fizz. It was revolting. By the way, what IS the difference between the two? If I want fizzy sangria, I’ll add ginger ale or Seven-Up, thanks.

We went to see Wall-E, and it lived up admirably to all the positive reviews I’d heard about it. I highly recommend it.

The parishes in Chatham just had a massive personnel turnover - the Diocese of London is clustering, merging and closing parishes just like Detroit has had to do, and this July was the big change-over. The small Czech/Slovak parish we’d visited so many times, St. Anthony, is finally being closed; and of the five remaining parishes in town, there are now two clusters of two plus an ethnic (Polish) not-quite-a-parish.

Much as I’m sad to see restructuring, because of what it means more broadly, so far I’m pretty happy with the changes. We’ve only visited one parish so far since the changeover (obviously), but the priest seemed OK - didn’t set off any warning flags - which is especially nice because he’s the pastor of the closer cluster to Chez Mère de Canuque. I was dismayed to see that the parish was using GLASSWARE (ok, maybe it was crystal, but it’s still NOT acceptable as far as I know!) to distribute the Precious Blood, so I only received the Host and walked past the Blood. However, it was this pastor’s first week, so I can understand even if he sees the issue he probably hasn’t had a chance to take care of it yet; I am hoping that he will address it on his own. If it’s still going on by the end of the summer, I will write him a letter asking about it. The other cluster is now being pastored by a priest who worked with Mother Teresa at some point, so I do want to check them out…

In other news, my car turned over 260,000 miles today. Forty thousand more before my pride will allow me to replace the car. Hopefully both the car and my budget cooperate.  :-)

He’s BA-ACK!

Kasia July 8th, 2008

When I updated my blogroll a couple of months ago, one of the links I removed was to the Waffling Anglican’s site. I was sorry to do it, as I really missed Mike the Geek’s posts, but he hadn’t posted since October, and…well…yeah. I decided I had to be fair about pruning the blogroll, so I chopped him against my better judgment.

Well, guess who’s back? YAY!!! Go take a look-see and give him some traffic…he’s always worth a read. (When he posts, that is. ;-) )

Now this is just stupid

Kasia July 8th, 2008

Stupid. And plain wrong.

So the G8 summit is going on, and while these poor overworked world leaders are discussing critical food shortages and rising food prices, this is what they’re eating.

“Questionable public relations move” doesn’t even begin to say it. That must be that British gift for understatement shining through.

And Gordon Brown is lecturing Britons not to waste food. That’s rich.

I admit I’ve wasted plenty of food in my life. It’s a terrible habit, and I’m working on curbing it.

That said, admonishments from world leaders would carry a lot more weight if there were even a shred of evidence that they’re making similar efforts. Kind of like environmental causes: the sincere efforts of people like Mr. and Mrs. DJ to use less toxic cleaners and otherwise try to live green ring louder than a hundred rich yahoos who go around shouting at me to hang out my washing and eat less meat, as they get back into their Land Rover or Hummer or three tour buses (which they’ve left idling) to go on to their next stop. (Include in that latter category Al Gore, who wants me to purchase carbon offsets which are conveniently sold by a company he owns.)

Hey G8! Have you ever heard of “teleconferencing”? You’d knock the carbon footprint of the summit down to about a size 0.5 with that.

At the very least, don’t shovel eight courses of gourmet food into your mouths and then try to talk about food shortages. It’s rude to talk with your mouth full.

The Earnest Pentecostal

Kasia July 7th, 2008

As my beloved mentioned in his blog post, we went to check out Chatham’s first effort at a “Taste Fest” on Saturday.

Now, when you call something a “Taste Fest”, call me crazy, but I expect there to be, you know, food for sale.

Chatham’s no Detroit (for better and for worse), but they do have, you know, restaurants. They also have at least a small variety of ethnic groups that could have been tapped to serve food. I’m thinking of the Italians, the Portuguese, the Poles, and the Slovaks, at the very least, plus of course your garden-variety Scotch-Irish and French-Canadian folk. I mean, I know poutine is gross, but I’m quite sure the French legacy has left more to French-Canadian culinary palette than that…

Anyway, it wasn’t so much of a “taste fest” as a combination block party and sidewalk sale along the main drag of town, King Street. They’d rented some of those inflatable kids’ romper rooms (think Moon Walk) and had those set up in the street, as well as some musicians stuck at various intervals playing Nirvana, some light jazz, and what sounded like a so-so Janis Joplin cover. Some of the restaurants had extended their tables out into the sidewalk/street area, and a lot of the shops had either put out tables of wares or were inviting people in to check things out.

Canuck and I did, however, see a sign advertising Breyer’s ice cream, which is my absolute favorite brand; and it was quite hot, so we went in to buy me a cone.

Well. That shop is owned by an earnest Pentecostal man, who was dead set on trying to save us from the Big Bad Catholic Church.

I should mention he was raised Catholic.

A lengthy discussion ensued, which included his following us out to the sidewalk as the shop got busier and we tried to let him get back to, you know, his livelihood.

Next time I have some money, I’m picking up a copy of Deacon Alex Jones’ No Price Too High and an extra copy of the Common Ground DVD Father John made with Kensington Community Church and dropping them off as gifts for him. Canuck joked that the Pentecostal churches probably all have “Wanted” posters in the back with Deacon Alex’s picture on them, warning people against talking to him or reading anything he writes. I hope not - it would be a shame to completely waste my money…

What drove me the most bonkers about the whole encounter…well, two things. First was how he clearly misunderstood Catholic doctrine in several areas, including that pesky little question of salvation. He obviously thought it was “works salvation”, no matter how many times and different ways I tried to tell him it wasn’t.

Second, he was all over the map with his apologetics. I’m a very linear thinker, and I tend to proceed from A to B to C with bridges in between. Throw me six different trains of thought in as many minutes, and I’m apt to get dizzy and not be able to respond effectively. It wasn’t quite the “buckshot” approach that the Jehovah’s Witnesses use, but it wasn’t entirely dissimilar from that either. Drives me up a wall…give me a point and let me counter it, then counter my point. Don’t go skipping from one topic to another to another and another!

You know. Kind of like this somewhat scattered post. Don’t do that.  ;-)

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