Eat your heart out, Jackie Chan! You only wish you could do stunts like this!
I wonder if the cat in this video will develop the ability to fly.
God’s Stuff: Salamanders
Hi, Mr. Nature here–with some fond memories of salamanders.
Take a look at that Red Salamander (P. ruber ruber)–isn’t he gorgeous? When my friends and I used to go out catching salamanders, this was the grand prize. They were never very common–but just look at that color.
The video shows the Red Salamander entering water, but none of the ones I ever caught were in the water, although they were never very far away from it.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen one of these. As a rule, salamanders are pretty good at adapting to humans in their environment; but we’ve reached a point beyond which salamanders cannot go. Even the little redbacks, who used to be ubiquitous (gee, I don’t get to use that word too often!) around here are getting hard to find.
It would be a poorer world without them: and it doesn’t strike me as wise to squander even the smallest of God’s blessings.
The Ultimate Safe Space
Walking to the Y this morning, a new sign enticed me up the steps and into the ancient graveyard on the hill. All I could read from street level was “Breathe Easy,” and I wondered what more it had to say.
Well, the old graveyard is now a “No Smoking” zone. No smoking in the cemetery. I wonder who complained.
And then I thought, hey, this is just what we need–a place where no one ever says anything controversial (or anything at all, for that matter), no one has an opinion that might contradict yours, no one will demand you pay for anything: the safe space America’s been looking for. It’s even better than collidge. Here in the graveyard, no one is smarter, better-looking, or more athletic than you.
Unless somebody else comes up the steps; and then you might as well leave.
Remember Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941: “a day that will live in infamy”: the surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor–I haven’t yet heard anyone else mention it today, so I will.
One Pearl Harbor Day, not many years ago, found me teaching in a public high school, where I soon discovered that the students had never heard of Pearl Harbor. So I told them about it, and told them how my father and his friends all flocked to the recruiting office, where they were turned away because they were still too young. The students looked at me quizzically, and one of them asked, “Well, what did they do that for?” Why did these young men volunteer to defend their country after it had been attacked?
That question, and whatever prompted it, is part of the Day of Infamy that lives on.
But that’s what public education, and our downfallen culture, will do to our young people.
By Request, ‘Silent Night’
I don’t know who’s singing this, but the video has more than 20 million views on youtube, so a lot of people like it. And there’s the usual sprinkling of atheists, loving the music but seeing no connection between it and God–like kids peering wistfully into a bakery and ignoring the sign that says “Come right on in, everything’s already paid for.” I wish I could tell them that the feeling they get when they listen to this music is one of the ways God has of communicating with us. But you do have to listen.
Requested by Laura: and I’m all ready and willing to post Christmas hymns as requested by the rest of you. So come on, now! Let’s see if we can’t get some of those kids to venture into the bakery.
Video Treat: Cuddly Cats
When He was creating the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, what ever made God think to include cat-cuddles? I mean, we wouldn’t have thought of that, would we?
Things have to be very bad indeed, for a cuddly cat not to do you any good.
One More Christmas Carol!
I’m trying to stir up your Christmas spirit, folks! Let me fall back on this old, old Burgundian carol, Pat-a-Pan, one of my all-time favorites. This is an instrumental version, played medieval-style. If this one doesn’t work, I’ll just have to try again tomorrow.
Loving a Fictional Character
King Theoden, from the Lord of the Rings movie (which I didn’t see, but never mind)
There are hundreds of characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but only one that stirs me to the point of tears: old Theoden, King of Rohan. I love this guy! And I do mean love–as if he were my grandfather. How in the world did Tolkien do that?
When we meet him, Theoden is a broken-down old crock who has been skillfully manipulated to sap his morale and make him feeble before his time. But he comes back from that. The hero inside him, once he has been healed by Gandalf, bursts out like a fireworks display. At the same time, he is gentle, kind, and even humble: and everything he does, everything, is motivated by just one thing–by love. Love for his family and friends, love for his allies in the war, love for his country and its traditions. And love for every little thing with which he has been blessed. Love that is willing and able to sacrifice himself for what is right, for what is true.
Tolkien doesn’t tell us so. That never works. He shows it in what Theoden says and does, in his every word and action. Easy to say, but hard to do. If great art was easy, everyone would do it. It really is an amazing feat of art to create a character that a reader can actually love. Lots of authors can create characters that amuse us, or annoy us; but to inspire love is something special.
Hard to do: but for any writer, well worth trying.
They Want a ‘Sanctuary Campus’
What is going to happen when the rest of us get too old to do it anymore, and we have to hand America over to today’s college students, tomorrow’s simpletons?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Campus Reform asked students at George Washington University–is there anyone in history who has more embarrassing stuff named after him?–if they thought it would be a good thing to protect illegal aliens by allowing the university to be a “sanctuary campus,” where America’s immigration laws are routinely disobeyed ( http://www.thelibertyeagle.com/students-want-sanctuary-from-student-loans-final-exams/ ).
Oh, yes, they thought that was a swell idea! But they would also like their campus to be a sanctuary from… final exams, repayment of student loans, and laws against underage drinking. A place where you can just do anything you want and never experience any pressure, any disapproval: as one airhead put it, “a safe space for everybody.” Unless you voted for Trump.
Wow, no exams. Everybody just hangs out at college for a while, without having to pay for it, and then when you finally feel like leaving, they hand you a degree.
It’s come to this: college eats your brain. America needs to be saved from its university system. I hope it’s not too late.
The New York Times’ Favorite Oathbreaker
Well, we must congratulate the New York Times: they’ve finally dug up a presidential elector who says he will break his pledge to vote for Donald Trump.( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html ) He does not say that he will vote for Hillary Clinton instead, but who else would it be?
I think I can detect a smell of bribery.
The reasons given by this guy, Chris Whatsisname, are pure rubbish. He says Trump is too divisive. Clinton isn’t? He says Trump lacks foreign policy experience. I guess he’s satisfied with the hash Hillary made of it while she was secretary of state. He thinks Trump doesn’t have the “demeanor” to be president. And Hillary does? Is this man quite all there? He thinks Trump might take money from foreign governments. Can you say “Clinton Foundation”? Finally, he thinks Trump can’t be president because he dashed off an angry tweet about Saturday Night Live. Apparently you have to like Saturday Night Live or you can’t be president.
This clown has had all this time to think of some excuse for breaking his pledge, and this is the best he can do? You gotta be nice to Saturday Night Live or you can’t be president? Texas is a big state with a lot of people in it–and they had to settle for this guy as one of their electors?
If we want to have any hope for our country at all, never, never, never let Democrats take power ever again.