College Scam

I knew there was a reason that I love John Stossel. He has a great article on Fox News contemplating the value of a college education. It seems totally unnatural to me, now, to have a society where the best years of a person's life are spent mostly on vacation with some time spent sitting in classrooms to take exams.

NFP Awareness Week

This week is NFP Awareness Week. A week I typically do not remember until after it is over. Looks like I'm catching the wave this time. Natural Family Planning blog's author Jessica Smith is featured at Fathers for Good. Check it out.

Habemus Archbishopem!

If I ever had to move, there are two dioceses that I would have picked: Arlington or Denver. Now it seems that the Good Lord is bringing Denver to me! Welcome Archbishop Chaput! May your time serving this flock be as blessed as your time serving Denver.

High Culture

We had the privilege of attending a great art show and gourmet buffet for an amazingly talented friend. It was simply marvelous. Good food. Spectacular location. A grand mingling of people from all different walks of life. And fireworks on the waterfront! Visit her page, buy something!

Matches made in Heaven

A book review of: Come My Beloved by Ellen Gable Hrkach and Kathy Cassanto

I often think that everyone is just like me, similar inside if not on the outside. I thought all Catholics who married would meet in college and get married after graduation like myself and most of my friends. I assumed they would follow a similar path of coming to better love God by learning to love another. Come My Beloved shows that Catholic marriages are not all the same and have as much beautiful variation as the glorious art which has decorated cathedrals over the life of the Church.

The true love stories in this anthology are each unique and inspiring. God’s ways are truly amazing and refreshing to my faith. There are the college stories, like mine. There are stories of widows and widowers finding each other. There are stories of conversion. There are stories of long time friendships blossoming. Each story shows the hand of God in a special way, working to create a new married life by bringing together those who will help each other grow.

King of Prussia Car Show

I might even become a car guy, once I learn how to change my own oil, thanks to this great event:

The King of Prussia Car Show

There is still time to enter if you have a car to show off. I promise to come by and stare as if I know a distributor cap from a manifold valve.

Too pertinent

Our Holy Father could be speaking directly to me with this item. Doing the math, either my wife or I was out of the house every night this week. It's terrible but hard to stop with our many and sundry activities and it keeps us from our deepest mission which we believe is to be social and have families over for dinners and parties and random hanging out. There is a huge dearth of social capital that has been brought about through TV and Entertainment destroying social bonds and through the home becoming a place to stop and refuel and sleep before running to meetings and games and events. We feel it is critical to be home-bodies and build ties of affection but that is a daunting task in this day of constant connection.

Metre Traitor

Never, thought I, will I betray
the rhyme and rhythm of my day.
Learned in my first class of grammar
I would smash poetic traitors with a mighty hammer
and crush all in a manner of Thor
‘til they would rhyme forevermore.
And lo’ upon this aged time
I picked up a classic book of rhyme
a slim tome of Canterbury Tales
at the close of winter, to warm my entrails.
written long ago by wizened Chaucer,
who may have drunk his tea from a saucer,
I discovered that rhyme, though classically executed,
can still be a horror worse than a sky polluted.
English being a poor language to rhyme in
with phrases adjusted, as if the time in
English grammar was for naught, since
all the words seem to do is mince
across the page and carry
onward and do tarry
taking an inordinate amount of space and time
to complete what should be a shortened rhyme
slave to a meter and a rhyming pattern which
I though older and modern, am unable to ditch.

Cognitive Dissonance

I thought that the scandal had already come as close as it could to my life. With this announcement, it comes even closer. I am familiar with at least one of the accused. I am saddened and confused and somewhat ambivalent depending on the current train of my thought.

I pray for the victims and the accused and any who are wrongly accused. I pray for the cases, that the truth may come out and just resolution accorded.

Open and Shut

I love being on the various e-mail lists of good organizations. Just received this gem which was written by Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

Look at Me!

The March for Life made it to the WaPo and there I am in the background!

Fix It

A great post over on There I Fixed It. Part of the Natural Life I crave to live is a self-reliance for basic repairs of basic appliances. This struck a chord with me after I finally repaired the dryer. It has been serving us well for 8 years now and its scratch-and-dent price tag was very favorable. I hope to work my way up to basic automotive repairs like oil changes but for now I am satisfied to tinker with appliances, carpentry, and electrical. I feel like I'm finally starting to own this new house because I don't believe that sweat equity simply improves the bottom line. I believe that everything that I claim stewardship for on this Earth deserves my sweat.

You had me at cheapest

A great article by Ellen Gable for anyone who is trying to convince people that NFP is what their marriage needs.

Via Media

Sad, depressed, think you need more to be happy? Thanks to Get Rich Slowly, I saw this great article tying financial measures to happiness. Read it and celebrate!

A More Beautiful World

I have just discovered a hidden reserve of beauty in the world, thanks to one of my blogroll. These Girls with Glasses give me hope that children can grow up instead of just growing old. I pray that my girls will know of them and emulate them.

Hood Robbin'

Get Rich Slowly has a post on how credit cards help the rich get richer, mainly through rewards programs and the stores having to boost prices to cover the fees for using the credit card machine. And here I thought that they just crush small businesses.

Opportunity

This recovery summer may have created some great opportunities. Glad that I have been studying real estate investing for some time now.

Shout out to Suzy Jo

Today I bought Suzy Jo donuts, the best donuts in the known universe and the closest four parallel dimensions, in order to celebrate all my co-workers who actually came to work instead of taking a four-day weekend. On the way, my turn signal burn out. I was irritated at having another thing to do today before an increasingly busy weekend. I took the car to Phoenixville Tire & Service and asked them to replace the bulb and check a slow leak in the tire and they discovered a nail! So donuts saved me from getting a flat on Labor Day weekend.

"Donuts, is there anything they can't do?" - Homer Simpson

Die Hard Catholic

I just watched Die Hard again; it was a great movie purchase. Like a good book read and re-read, I saw and learned more this time than any time before. Firstly, John McClane prays at least once explicitly and once implicitly, thanks to the sisters who taught him in elementary school no doubt. Secondly, as a recent issue of First Freedoms compared the guns used by John and Hans as a way to reveal their characters, I kept comparing the two of them. The scene which struck me most was the close-up of Hans polished shoe stepping on the cigarette that John gave him while John's filthy bare feet are walking away from him. John is the rough, tumble guy who is just trying to get by in this life while Hans has all the answers, all the goods, and all the power. This is a great Christian lesson, I believe. Humility will triumph, the meek will inherit the earth. And pride goeth before the fall from the 30th story of Nakatomi Plaza.

NFP Awareness History

As always, being among the few NFP teachers in the state, I was way behind the NFP Awareness Week curve. Here is a great post on the subject.