Jimmy Akin – Page 599

World’s Strongest Dad

Last week a co-worker sent around an email with an evil .pdf file attachment of an amazing article from Sports Illustrated. Happily, I was able to find the article reproduced on the Internet. The world’s strongest dad, in case you were wondering, is not a muscle-bound Mr. Olympian who happens to have a couple of kids. He’s a 65-year-old Massachusetts man named Dick Hoyt who has spent the last quarter-century competing with his wheelchair-bound son in marathons, climbing mountains with his son on his back, and towing his son in a dinghy in swimming competitions:

"[A]fter a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out [on his computer], ‘Dad, I want to do that.’

"Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ‘porker’ who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ‘Then it was me who was handicapped,’ Dick says. ‘I was sore for two weeks.’

"That day changed Rick’s life. ‘Dad,’ he typed, ‘when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!’"

And so Hoyt kept giving his son that physically-liberating experience by continuing to take his son on sporting adventures. Rick Hoyt has given back to his father by keeping his dad in such great shape that the senior Hoyt survived a heart attack doctors told him he might not have survived without the strength he’d gained from exercising. Rick does have one wish though:

"’The thing I’d most like,’ Rick types, ‘is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.’"

GET THE (LIFE-AFFIRMING) STORY.

There are those who would say that Rick Hoyt’s severe physical disabilities meant that his life wasn’t worth living. Dick and Rick Hoyt have proved them wrong. And that’s how we’ll rebuild the Culture of Life:

One family at a time.

Born On The 5th Of July

You were born, and so you’re free.

So happy birthday.

Thus says the lyrics to the song "Born, Never Asked" by Laurie Anderson (left), who was born today–July 5–in 1947 (in the midst of the Roswell Incident, which might explain a good number of things about her).

Anderson is a performance artist and musician who was born in Illinois but these days hangs out in NYC (from what I can tell).

I first became aware of her back in the early 1980s when her album Big Science made it big–or as big as an avant garde album can make it, I suppose.

I recently discovered that several of Laurie’s albums could be downloaded from iTunes, and so I’ve been revisiting and enjoying the stuff she did back in the ’80s.

Here music is . . . hard to describe. You know what they say: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

Basically, her music alternates between several different styles. Some of it is just strange and atmospheric. Then there are toe-tapping numbers, alternately instrumental or vocal, that incorporate elements of Rock and Pop.

The most unusual aspect of her music isn’t the sound, though. It’s the lyrics. Laurie has realized something that many Rock and Roll artists have: The lyrics of a song don’t really have to mean anything. They can just evoke an image, a mood, or a feeling. She also has realized something that many Rock and Roll artists have not: It’s okay to sing your lyrics intelligibly.

As a result, her music reminds me of a line that Woody Allen delivers in Zelig, describing baseball: "You know it doesn’t have to mean anything, it’s just beautiful to watch."

That’s exactly the way I feel about Laurie Anderson’s music: It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just pretty to listen to.

What she’s trying to do (so far as I can tell) is not get at any Deep Meanings but simply evoke certain moods and feelings that have qualities of mystery and beauty and humor and even warmth.

At times Laurie piles up interesting poetic images, as in this passage from her song "Let X=X" (flashback to math class!) in which she describes getting a postcard from a person who has betrayed one and is now twisting the knife and who then (apparently) gets his comeuppance. Notice the way the individual lines build up these impressions, even though nobody would really write a postcard like this in real life:

I got this postcard, and it read. . . . It said . . .

"Dear Amigo, Dear Partner,

"Listen, uh, I just wanna say thanks, so . . . thanks.
Thanks for all the presents.
Thanks for introducing me to the chief.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag.
Thanks for going all out.
Thanks for showing me your Swiss army knife.
Oh, and uh, thanks for letting me autograph your cast.

"Hug and kisses, XXXX OOOO

"Oh, yeah. P.S.: I feel like I’m in a burning building . . . and I gotta go."

This is a poetic abstraction of a phenomena we are all acquainted with. In our lives virtually everyone has the experience of being kind to someone ("thanks for all the presents, thanks for introducing me to the chief"), only to have that person take advantage of our kindness ("thanks for putting on the feedbag. thanks for going all out") and betray and even injure us ("thanks for letting me autograph your cast").

When that happens, we don’t want to see the person simply get away with it. We want to see them find out that the sweet things they stole have turned sour, and Laurie covers that as well ("I feel like I’m in a burning building"). Laurie thus evokes in poetic form an aspect of human experience that will resonate with the audience (or at least those who have lived long enough to experience betrayal).

Not all of Laurie’s lyrics have this serious dimension to them. Some are aimed at getting a laugh, as in this passage from the song "Talk Normal":

I came home today, and both our cars were gone.
And there were all these new pink flamingoes arranged in star patterns, all over the lawn.
And then I went into the kitchen. . . . And it looked like a tornado had hit.
And then I realized . . . I was in the wrong house.

Laurie occasionally comes up with a sentence that she is probably the first person in the history of the human race ever to utter. My favorite is this:

I dreamed I had to take a test in a Dairy Queen on another planet.

There can even be an apologetic dimension to her lyrics. Recently I was writing an article on heaven for This Rock and was tempted to quote one of her lines (from the song "Language Is A Virus"):

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much . . . much . . . better.

If you’d like to check out some of her material, I’d recommend her albums Home Of The Brave and Mr. Heartbreak as good, accessible starting points. The music on these is more up-tempo and has a feel-good aspect to it. It still doesn’t mean much, but then it doesn’t have to. It’s just pretty to listen to.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURIE!

BUY LAURIE MUSIC

Or download Laurie music:

Happy 4th Of July!

Happy Roswell Incident Day!

Today, July 3 in 1947, Rancher Mack Brazel of New Mexico (left) was out riding with a neighbor kid and ran across a large amount of debris littering one of the fields on the Foster Ranch, where he was foreman.

A couple of days later, Brazel was in the little, nearby town of Corona where he reported his find to the sheriff.

Thus began a series of events that are now known as the "Roswell Incident."

The name Roswell got involved because Roswell is the nearest "big" town near Corona. It was also the location of an important Army Air Field that became important to the story. And there was a second debris field found near Roswell itself.

Strange things happened during this incident, including the detention of Mac Brazel for several days, following which he changed elements of his story.

He wasn’t the only one.

The Army initially put out a press release saying that they’d found the wreckage of a "flying saucer." Yes! That’s right! The Army really did claim to have found a flying saucer.

Of course, this was only two weeks after pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting that gave us the term "flying saucer." It wasn’t yet a fixed part of saucer mythology that they were from other worlds. At the time, many might reasonably have thought they were classified aircraft we or the Germans or someone had come up with in or immediately after WWII.

On the right is the front page of the Roswell Daily Record for July 8, 1947, with the lead story based on the Army press release. HERE’S A LINK TO THE TEXT.

The story was also carried by numerous papers around the world, including THE TIMES OF LONDON.

The saucer story was the government’s first account of what happened at Roswell.

But they immediately changed their story.

The government’s second story was that it was a weather balloon that had crashed. In Ft. Worth, Texas Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey (left) displayed alleged wreckage from the weather balloon.

The third story came out in 1994, when the government conceded that what crashed wasn’t a weather balloon. They still claimed it was a balloon, though–part of PROJECT MOGUL–a covert Cold War project using high-altitude balloons in an attempt to monitor distant nuclear tests being done by Russia.

GET THAT VERSION OF THE STORY.

That didn’t explain the "alien bodies" people reported seeing at Roswell, though.

Enter the fourth story: In 1997 the government issued a report, which claimed that the alleged alien bodies were really crash test dummies like the one pictured on the right, which was donated to and is on display at the Roswell UFO Museum.

Boom Today

The other day we noted the anniversary of the mysterious explosion that was the Tunguska Event of 1908.

Tonight, July 2 is the anniversary of another mysterious crash or explosion that was heard by witnesses and led, the next day, to events that are still widely discussed.

Story tomorrow.

No story today. Story tomorrow.

Friday Photo Caption

SOURCE.

Starting captions:

This year’s summa cum laude of the University of Clown.

Send out the clowns!

Do you think I need just a touch more mascara?

Freakonomic Friday

I wasn’t able to do a post on Freakonomics yesterday because of time and because one of the stories I’m researching on it took an unexpected (and very interesting!) turn and I haven’t been able to pin down all the details yet, so it’ll probably have to wait until at least next week.

But here’s a Freakonomics post that originally appeared over on the Freakonomics blog (CHT to the reader who e-mailed!) under the intriguing headline "Pat Robertson For President?":

Author Steven Levitt writes:

I appeared on the 700 Club this morning with Pat Robertson, in an interview that a blogger anticipated would be the "must-Tivo event of the summer." Conventional wisdom suggested this would be a bloodbath – that the Freakonomics perspective on the abortion question would enrage Robertson and a shouting match would ensue. (Indeed, my publicist was planning on turning down the 700 Club’s invitation to appear without even asking me, but decided she should at least ask.)

As so often is the case, conventional wisdom turned out to be wrong. The folks from the 700 Club could not have been kinder or more gracious, believe it or not. Pat Robertson knew the book quite well, asked all the right questions, and heaped enough praise on me to make me blush. We even talked about the abortion issue without incident. And the time and effort that the crew had taken in assembling footage and clips for a lead-in surpassed any other TV show I’ve done.

After I went on the Daily Show, I plugged Jon Stewart, suggesting he would make a great president. So what about Pat Robertson? I didn’t actually get to meet Robertson in person or interact with him off-air (like I did with Jon Stewart) since I wasn’t in studio for the 700 Club interview, but rather shot remotely in a TV studio in Chicago. So, honestly, I don’t have any special insights on Robertson (making the title of this blog post a bit misleading, sorry). I will say this, though. The large segment of our society that wants to demonize Robertson will get no fodder from my interview with him, and the large segment of folks who like him won’t find anything in the interview to change their mind, either.

We’ll post a transcript of the full interview segment when it comes available so you can see for yourself [SOURCE].

Kudos to Levitt!–And Robertson!

Like I said, pro-lifers and non-pro-lifers can discuss the abortion-crime issue in a reasonable way. Levitt sought to do so in his book, and I’m glad that Robertson did on his show!

If you’ve missed what all this is about, SEE MY PRIOR POST or

READ THE BOOK.

Erring Pastor Followup

Down yonder (keep scrolling), a reader writes:

Do you really believe that you are sufficiently informed on the specifics of this matter to make such an unequivocal determination of the priests guilt?

Have you communicated with the Pastor to determine what exactly he has done? Or with the parents of the children?

I’m just wondering, because I didn’t realize that "Canon Law" provided for such judgements as you have made.

If you go back and read the original post, you’ll see that I quite carefully noted that I’m relying on a press report and that the press may have gotten it wrong. Consequently, I’m not making unequivocal determinations regarding anybody’s guilt. I’m speaking to whether the pastor’s actions were lawful if the press report is accurate.

The reader continues:

Regarding some of your points specifically.

Canon 213: The spiritual goods of the church to which they are entitled are all available to them at mass. It does not say they are entitled to spiritual goods in the form of regular religious education classes.

This interpetation of the canon is not accurate. It is patently untrue that "all" the spiritual goods referred to in the canon are available at Mass since the canon expressly refers to "the sacraments" (plural). This means all the sacraments, and you can’t get all the sacraments at Mass. Such a reductionistic reading of the canon is simply wrong.

Neither can the faithful’s right to receiving goods "from the word of God" limited to what happens in Mass. It also includes, as later canons spell out–the duty of pastors to assist with the catechetical preparation of children to receive the sacraments.

Canon 843: You conveniently ignore the "proper disposition" which would include regular mass attendance.

I in no way ignore this. I don’t mention it because this clause is not germane to the legal issue being discussed. Some have tried to make it relevant by arguing that you have to fulfill your Sunday obligation to be properly disposed to receive Communion but this fails because the mechanism by which failure to fulfill Sunday obligation results in lack of proper disposition is because it results in folks being in mortal sin.

Only that doesn’t happen in this case because any child whose parents refuse to take him to Mass has a valid excuse for missing Mass and thus is not in mortal sin. (At least not on that ground alone.)

Further, as I have pointed out elsewhere, frequent attendance at a Mass is simply not required for one to be properly disposed to receive Communion. If you have people who live up in the hills, with only one parish within driving distance, and the diocese only sends around a priest every two months to say Mass for them then they do not thereby lose the proper dispositions needed to receive Communion when it is offered at a Mass. Same goes for shut-ins who are too physicaly infirm to go to Mass. And same thing goes for those who can’t get to Mass on their own (e.g., kids) and who don’t have someone who is willing to take them (as in this case).

Canon 912: There is no evidence that anyone is being denied Holy Communion.

Please go read the news article in question. It makes it quite clear that the pastor is preventing the kids from attending the catechetical classes needed for the children to make their First Holy Communion. They are thereby being denied Communion by denying them the prerequisites for Communion.

Canon 913: The fact that they do not attend regular mass is proof that they do not have careful preparation.

No it is not. Canon 18 expressly states that laws restricting the exercise of a right must be given a strict interpretation.

Applying this to the requirements for the exercise of the right to receive Communion requires one to take a strict understanding of the preparation that is necessary: It is that catechetical preparation needed for initiation into the Eucharist, not attending Mass each week–or even attending Mass frequently.Otherwise the people living up in the hills who don’t have regular access to Mass would never be able to get any of their children initiated into the Eucharist.

Canon 18 requires one to give these canons a strict interpreatation favoring the right of the child to both the catechesis and the reception of the Eucharist.

Since you seem to lean heavily on the assumption that much of the detriment here is sacramental preparation, which I don’t believe it is all about, what would you have him do?

I would have him encourage the parents to engage in regular Mass attendance in ways that do not involve obstructing the child’s right to catechesis or the Eucharist. For example: Making personal calls on them to urge them to attend Mass more frequently and explaining how important it is, both for themselves and for their children. If there are too many such parents, he should enlist others to aid in the effort.

Should he acknowledge their right to attend the classes and ignore that their mass attendence is insufficient to qualify them for receiving the sacrament due to proper disposition, and careful preparation?

No, because that’s not what’s going on here. The children’s Mass attendance is not insufficient to qualify them from receiving the sacrament, either on grounds of proper disposition or careful preparation. He therefore does not need to ignore this fact because it is not a fact.

What is a fact is that the child has a right to both catechesis and, following that, the Eucharist, in a timely manner that cannot be obstructed because of the delinquency of his parents.

Saddle Up!

VACANCY ON THE SUPREME COURT: O’CONNOR RETIRES.

Here we go, folks! The balloon’s going up!

Shelby Foote: RIP

I’m a few days late with this, but famed American writer and historian Shelby Foote has gone to meet his Maker.

He was 88 years old.

Following an early career as a novelist, Foote turned to history, writing extensively about the Civil War, which he described as America’s equivalent to the Illiad.

He was a keystone interviewee in Ken Burns’ 11-hour documentary The Civil War, which made him nationally famous.

Foote was the best friend of fellow-novelist Walker Percy, and once the two went to visit William Faulkner. Percy was too shy to enter Faulkner’s dwelling. Foote knocked on the door, entered, and spent several hours there while Percy waited in the car.

REQUIESCAT IN PACEM.