A New Year's wish

May Rush Limbaugh and those on the Left who are so loudly wishing for his death both get well soon.

Get well, Rush. Get well, Rush-haters.

Rush Limbaugh is resting in a Honolulu hospital after suffering an apparent heart attack yesterday.

The Left Wing blogosphere and Twittersphere have been deluged with gleeful death wishes. I wish that I could say that I am surprised.

I am not a big fan of Rush, who can sometimes be enough of a boor that even his status as a favorite target of the Left and his proclivity for pulling their collective corks (they still haven't caught on to the fact that doing so is the purpose behind ninety percent of what he says) don't compensate for sheer bad manners. But I have to say that at his worst I have never heard him root for a liberal to die.

I would say "Shame on you, moonbats-" if they had any shame. Which, unfortunately, they do not. But I will continue to pray for Rush, and I hope you will, too.

HT: Drudge

Yes, it does matter

Have a happy last year of the decade in 2010.

Yes, that's what I said. I know we went through this ten years ago, when the Western world erroneously celebrated the arrival of a new millennium in 2000, but it's s a point worth insisting upon because it still matters: there was no year zero. The year in which Christ was theoretically (though not actually) born was 1 A.D. The year before was 1 B.C.

Another way of looking at the matter is that we are talking here about a calendar, not an odometer. The first day of each month is not the "zeroth." It's the first. Why, then, count our years from a date which not only never occurred, but from the very logic of calendars couldn't occur?

Ok. So now you're asking the obvious question: who cares? Why does it matter? The answer is that the dumbing down of our society matters. It matters that we know from newspapers and other records that nobody celebrated the coming of a new millenium in 1900, or a new decade in 1910. They knew how to read a calendar back then. They knew how to do basic math. And in case there was anyone inclined to fall into the error into which our whole society seems to have fallen into these days, the popular media explained the whole thing. Whereas in 2000 the media bought into the whole premature celebration of the millennium (TIME, to be fair, did point out the mistake in the editorial which began its special edition issued in commemoration of an event which in reality was still twelve months in the future, and ran an article commemorating the event when the real millennium dawned in 2001), at parallel moments in the past the media went out of their way to point out that the last millennium began in 1901, not in 1900, and that its second decade began in 1911, not in 1910.

To be sure, some of us protested back in 2000. But nobody in particular paid attention. And sure enough, the airwaves and casual conversation are filled with references to the decade ending tonight. But yes-TIME's patronizing tone nine years ago to the contrary- it does matter that 2010 is in fact the last year of the decade, and not the first.

It matters for the same reason that we teach children to read a calendar and to do simple math in the elementary grades. For an entire culture to have lost these skills matters a lot. And it matters, too, as a symptom of a time in which, despite an amount of information unparalleled in human history being more easily accessible than it's ever been before, the people of the United States are more poorly read and more poorly informed and less equipped to think critically than they were a century ago.

It matters that we think the millennium began in 2000 and that a new decade will begin tonight for the same reason that it matters that so many Christians today are biblically illiterate, and that so many professional journalists have such trouble these days with spelling and basic English grammar.

A tardy- but decent- review for 2004's The Alamo

I got a DVD player for Christmas, and was finally able to see the 2004 version of The Alamo. While my ears are rather plugged up by a cold, I didn't really catch that political correctness which some claimed plagued the movie. Historically it was far superior to the 1960 film- though neither musically nor as entertainment does it come close to measuring up to John Wayne's effort. But being a history buff, I'm not sure I don't like it better anyway simply because it told the story more truthfully.

As anticipated, Billy Bob Thornton made a marvelous Crockett. I was surprised by how well the casting worked generally; if Dennis Quaid wouldn't have been my first choice as Sam Houston, I have seen much worse casting in historical films (I still shudder at the thought of Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg). That tri-cornered hat Quaid wore did strike a jarring note, even if in 1836 it wouldn't have been exactly an anachronism. And the ten year old in me was finally satisfied by this film: it concludes with a brief but reasonably accurate depiction of Houston's decisive victory over Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto (in actual fact, it was a rout that was over in eighteen minutes), with Quaid addressing his troops before his surprise attack thus: "You will remember this battle until the day you die- every minute of it, and every second of it. But that is for tomorrow. For today- remember the Alamo!"


A trifle cheesy, perhaps- but satisfying, like a good, sharp cheddar.

One good thing about tonight's game

At least tomorrow morning the Bears will be out of their misery for another several months.

ABOVE: A black hole. I will leave it to the reader to deduce what it has in common with this year's Bears.

ADDENDUM: Oh no! My nephew Tim tells me that I forgot about next week's game with Detroit! My mind must have been blocking it out in order to defend the remnants of my sanity....

ADDENDUM II: The perversity this edition of the Ursine Warriors is even more complete than I would have imagined. After writing the above, I must now acknowledge that- somehow- they beat Minnesota. And they will probably  beat Detroit, too.

Not enough to salvage a non-playoff season in which they lost twice to the hated Packers, of course. Just enough to frustrate their fans with questions about where the team that showed up Monday night has been all season.

Bear down- I guess.

Krauthammer's prophesy on the Health Care Bill

HT: Race42008

Barack Obama: from superstar to supernova?

Obamaniac Bruce Springstein once compared POTUS to a supernova. Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal reminds us that while supernovae flare brilliantly in the heavens, they disappear almost as quickly.

HT: Real Clear Politics

Iran's Islamofascist regime may be in trouble

Ulrike Putz of Der Spiegel thinks that the nutballs who run Iran may be in serious trouble. The tipoff: the use of deadly force during an Islamic holiday during which even the Shah avoided confrontation with demonstrators.

HT: Real Clear Politics

The game is afoot

I saw Sherlock Holmes yesterday. Despite my initial reservations about Robert Downey, Jr. in the role, the movie was superb. See it! You won't regret the two hours plus you'll invest in the experience.

Needless to say, Downey's Holmes is a bit of a departure from the norm- as is Jude Law's wise-guy interpretation of Dr. Watson. The banter between the two is a bit more of what one would expect from equals than discourse between a genius and his chronicler, and the great detective's physical (and especially pugilistic) skills are more prominent than in most portrayals. But fans of the canonical Holmes will absolutely recognize their hero in Downey's surprisingly convincing portrayal, which includes an homage to the flies-and-violin scene from the second Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce film.

I understand that Holmes, rather than Avatar, came out on top in boxoffice over Christmas. While I haven't seen Avatar yet, by all accounts this says a great deal for Holmes- and what it says is true. Again, by all means see it! I myself am looking forward to the sequel whose eventual coming the film telegraphs, pitting the great detective against.... well, wait and see.

Unto you is born this day a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord

Luke 2:1-23 (ESV)


The Birth of Jesus Christ 
¹In those day a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³And all went to be registered, each to his own town. ⁴And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem,because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. ⁶And  while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels
 ⁸And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. ¹⁰And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

¹⁴ "Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"


¹⁵When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." ¹⁶And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. ¹⁷And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. ¹⁸And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. ²⁰And the shepherds returned  glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
 ²¹And⁽ at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.


(Christmas Eve services at Saint Mary were cancelled due to ice. But there's no use in wasting a perfectly good sermon!)

Getting the Message Right

Luke 2:14

The Vigil of Christmas

December 24, 2009

There was a poem we learned in seminary during Summer Greek. It started like this:

Greek is a dead language,

Dead as it can be.

It killed off all the ancient Greeks,

And now it’s killing me.

Greek isn’t really a dead language, of course. They speak it in Greece even today, although in a simpler and slightly less lethal form. Latin is a dead language. Hebrew was a dead language- at least until the State of Israel was founded back in 1948.  But living or dead, Greek is a language that can drive you crazy, especially if you grew up speaking English. The grammar and the structure and the whole mind-set of the Greek language is very different, and it’s no surprise that sometimes even professional linguists make mistakes in translating it.

Modern translations sometimes say that Mary was Joseph’s fiancée. Well, that’s a mistake.  Engagement is a modern American invention. Betrothal is a very different animal. A betrothed couple hadn’t promised to marry each other some time in the future. Betrothed couples were already considered married. Mary wasn’t an unwed mother. But until the angel visited Joseph to let him in on what was going on, it would have appeared to him that she was an adulteress. Being willing to be the mother of the Messiah meant being willing to risk a great deal.

But we’re all used to hearing the Christmas story in the words of the King James Version, and those words include a much bigger mistake. It’s in the words the angels sang to the shepherds. All of us grew up hearing those words as, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

 That’s a pleasant warm fuzzy for a cold winter’s night. But it’s not what the best manuscripts say. What we have here is not a wish for people to be nice to one another. True enough, there has been all too little peace in the sad and sorry story of the human race, and human beings have shown each other not nearly enough good will. But what we have here is not merely a wish that it were otherwise. Nor is it merely a statement that the angels are well disposed toward our species. And still less is it a statement of vague good wishes on God’s part toward our species. It was not merely a Christmas card that God sent the human race on that first Christmas. It was not merely a cheap and easy wish that we should be well and be happy.

In order to come to terms with the meaning of the angel’s song, it’s necessary to confront a reality we’d just as soon avoid. The fact of the matter is that we human beings don’t live at peace with one another, and never really have. Good will has always been a commodity that’s been in short supply on this planet. Whether it’s been nations, between strangers, or between members of the same family, that lack of peace and good will has implications also for our relationship with God. In failing to live in peace and good will toward one another, we’ve lived in alienation from God as well. And we’ve taken that alienation still farther. We’ve insisted on our right to live as we see fit, and to define right and wrong as we ourselves prefer. We have become our own little tin gods.

Not only have we lived in alienation from God and from each other, but also we’ve lived in alienation from our very selves. We know better, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. One of the reasons why we’re so defensive where our relationships with God with and our fellow human beings are concerned is because we know that the content of our hearts and our consciences is often indefensible. All of us have things of which we are ashamed, and about which our consciences are uneasy. We live at odds with ourselves, as well as with God and with our fellow human beings.

We push God away- and other human beings, too. We separate ourselves from the source of love, and peace- and of life itself. And then, we die.

That is the dilemma that made the first Christmas necessary. That was the reason why God took human form. This night is not about cute babies lying in the straw, and still less is it about vague good wishes from God toward the human race.

This night is about life and death. It is about humanity at war with itself, and with its God. It’s about  all those things we’re so defensive about, and all those things we have to answer for, whether we’re willing to admit it or not.

It’s about a human race under divine judgment, and no less conscious that it lives under the condemnation of God’s justice for all that it lives in deep denial.

And the Baby in the manger is the peace between God on one hand, and between you and me, on the other. He’s the peace between us human beings, as well. And that’s where the mistake in the King James translation of our text comes in. The Greek doesn’t say “good will toward men.” It says “peace among those with whom God is pleased.”

But that’s not good news, is it? After all, we’re the ones who can’t get along with God, with each other, or even with ourselves. As vehemently as the Pharisee in us may deny it, we are the ones who know deep down that we don’t deserve God’s approval, or His friendship, or His love.

But those things are precisely what God gives us in the Person of that Baby in the manger. He is the Righteousness of those who have no righteousness. He is the source of healing for the broken, and freedom for those in bondage. He is the forgiveness for the guilty, and the Pardon for the condemned. He is the Gift of life to those who deserve only death. He is the Peace for those at war with others, with God, and with themselves.

In Him God is pleased with precisely those who least deserve His pleasure, and in Him God declares Himself at peace with all those who are at war with Him.

Tragically, most will continue to wage war against Him regardless of that peace, and will insist on living outside of his healing and His freedom and His forgiveness. Most will insist that they have no need of such things, and if they take note of this night at all will see in it a charming story full of angels and shepherds and cute little babies and other warm fuzzies- and nothing more.

Most will insist on going their own way, and continue to live at odds with God and with others and with their very selves. Most will insist on living- and dying- in denial. That is their privilege.  God will not force His gift of peace upon them.

But the angels sing to the shepherds, and to us this night- and to all the human race- that whether or not we insist on living and dying at war with God, in the Person of that Baby God has declared peace with us. Most will spend eternity separated from Him. But that will be their choice, not His. If they insist on an eternity at war with God, that will not change the fact that in the Person of the Baby in that manger God, for His part, has declared hostilities ended, judgment set aside, and all of those who least deserve His pleasure to be precisely those with whom, for that Child’s sake, He is pleased.

It is no cheap, empty sentiment of which the angels sing. It is no easy pleasantry from God which they pass on the shepherds. It is the gift of His peace, and His pardon, and His good will to those who have no claim upon them.

It is not merely that God wishes us well, or even that He would like it if we got along each other. It is that He Himself has come among us in the Person of that Child to pay the price and bear the burden for our ill will, and to buy peace between us at the price of His own life.

It is that for His sake, and no matter how little we deserve it or what we have done or what may weigh upon our consciences, for His sake we are those with whom He is well pleased.

May the peace of God, which He gives us in the person of that Child, be your life and your hope through all eternity. Amen.

Our clueless President

President Obama claims that the trial of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is "uncharacteristic of a great country."

Damned characteristic, though, of China- and of the bloodiest regime in history, which has murdered more than one hundred million of its own people in less than a century.

It seems at times like this guy tumbled right from the turnip truck into the Oval Office. Even Jimmy Carter at his most naive wasn't this feckless.

There goes the neighborhood!

Wouldn't you say that this is, like, kind of an indication that it might be a good idea to leave?

Weather watch

Looks like freezing rain, rather than snow, will be the obstacle to Christmas Eve services tomorrow night. I've got my sermon done, but I think I'll hold off running the bulletin until I get the go ahead from POTC (President of the Congregation) about four tomorrow afternoon.

I'm hoping things aren't too icy. It won't seem like Christmas unless we do Of the Father's Love Begotten and Silent Night by candlelight.

Niemi!!

Blackhawks backup goalie Antti Niemi has just registered his third shutout in his last five starts, and his fourth shutout in ten starts overall. He's 8-1-1, and although he hasn't started enough games to officially lead the league, he has the lowest GAA of any NHL goalie.

Blackhawks 3, Red Wings 0. We enter the Christmas break with the best record in the Western Conference.

How Iowa Republicans can win again

From TheBeanWalker.com

Of ends and means

Michael Gerson on the tactics used to pass the Senate version of the health care bill.

HT: Real Clear Politics

Looks like somebody else noticed

Argue with a Democrat long enough about anything, and you'll inevitably come up against the one talking point to which those who follow the Way of the Donkey inevitably resort.

It does not speak well of the quality of their other arguments.

HT: Real Clear Politics

Harkin: Health care pork 'small stuff'

Oh, yes. Our beloved Senator Harkin once again displays the values which so epitomize Iowa.

Not.

The face of Saint Nicholas

Gene Veith has a post over at Cranach on a forensic reconstruction of the face of St. Nicholas.

If you ever wondered what Santa looks like...

HT also to Rev. Paul McCain.

Oh, yuck.

This is disgusting even for Hollywood.

This is Bart stuff. Maybe Homer. Not Marge, or Lisa, or even Maggie- and certainly not Jessica.

Copenhagen, Health Care, and the insubstantial presidency of Barack Obama

George Will ponders what passes for presidential triumphs these days.

HT: Real Clear Politics

How the mighty have fallen!

Even TIME is admitting that President Obama has something to worry about in his plunging poll numbers.

HT: Real Clear Politics

All that counts, it seems, is the will to power

Welcome to the Left's Post-Modern America, where words mean exactly what you want them to mean, and rules mean nothing at all-if you have the votes necessary to ignore them...

... and neither do Americans

According to Rasmussen, 56% of Americans disapprove of the job President Obama is doing in office.

HT: Drudge

The Cubans don't love Obama anymore...

They say that he lied in Copenhagen, and is "imperial and arrogant."

It's such a sad thing when true love goes awry....

HT: Drudge

At least we'll have a white Christmas

That fifteen inches of snow a couple of weeks ago ended up being eighteen. Now we're expecting another blizzard of a foot or more on Christmas Eve. Looks like no candlelight service this year, which will make for an odd Christmas. But I'm spending Christmas Day with some friends from the parish eating lasagna and seeing the new Sherlock Holmes movie (weather permitting). And hopefully the pastor will let us sing some Christmas carols Sunday morning...

ADDENDUM: They now say that at least the first half of the precip will be in liquid form. They're only calling for six inches of snow, though with a nice sheet of ice under that. Still not convinced that we'll have Christmas Eve services- or should. But we'll have to wait and see. In Iowa, the forecast can change in less time than it takes to change channels.

Cubs trade Bradley for bad pitcher

The Cubs have traded Milton Bradley to Seattle for pitcher Carlos Silva.

At least Bradley is gone, and so is his salary. Maybe now Hendry will take a few steps forward.

The snow is falling! The snow is falling!

As a native Chicagoan and a lifelong resident of the Upper Middle West, I was amused at the way folks in Northern Virginia reacted to snow during the time when I lived there. Just let the slightest bit of white show up along the side of the road, and traffic on the Beltway slowed to a crawl. I used to think of DC area motorists as the "Virginia Creepers."

It seems that a major snowstorm of roughly the magnitude we in Des Moines experienced a few days ago is about to hit the capital area. It's reached Charlottesville now, and is relentlessly heading toward Washington and NOVA. As much as eighteen inches of the white stuff may descend in the next forty-eight hours or so.

Stay calm, folks. Life will return to normal before you know it.

Here, it wouldn't be that big a deal. There, it will probably be a major crisis. At least they have the permanent cloud of hot air over the Capitol to ameliorate the catastrophe.

No comment

Unexpected honesty at Democratic Underground

The Democratic Underground is kind of an internet sewer, where all sorts of left wing effluent tends to collect. This is one of the places, for example, where the denizens cheered Ronald Reagan's death.

I try to avoid this place. But from what little contact I've been unable to avoid (sometimes the smell isn't sufficient warning), I am not at all surprised by this.

What does surprise me is that the extremists who hang out there don't follow the normal Democrat procedure, and indignantly (though implausibly) claim to be moderates, perfectly in step with the American people. But it's good to see them honestly confronting what they really are.

Meanwhile, notice the reaction to Sen. Al Franken (Civic Embarassment- Minn.) playing totalitarian and shutting down Joe Lieberman's attempts to discuss possible amendments to the health care bill.

Scratch a Leftie, get a storm trooper.

ADDENDUM:

Here's the incident in question. Note John McCain's quite proper reaction.

Goal was supposed to be the Blackhawks' Achilles heel

But they continue to allow fewer goals than anybody else in the NHL- and have now racked up two shutouts in a row.

100 reasons why Copenhagen is a joke

The British Daily Express has published 100 reasons to believe that global warming is a natural phenomenon.

Check them out.

HT: Drudge

"Allah" isn't just "the Islamic name for God"

An Indiana school has quite properly removed the words "Allah is God" from an "inclusive" program designed to acknowledge all the major religions.

Muslims are not happy.

Contrary to their complaint, however, it is simply not true that Allah is merely "the Islamic word for God." It's the Islamic word for the Islamic god- and that's the point. The Holy Trinity is an entirely different Deity- and anybody with doubts about that should ask a Muslim when the last time was when he or she prayed to Jesus.

HT: Drudge

Mr. President, please take note

Here's an intelligent article (from the Washington Post!) on why it's simply not possible to contain a nuclear Iran.

All such ambitions on the part of the current administration overlook one critical fact: these guys are crazy.

HT: Real Clear Politics

No, Virginia.

Iran is NOT merely interested in the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

It wants the IslamoBomb.


HT: Drudge

Wow.

Mark Hemingway- Mollie's husband, who writes for the National Review- is now officially a pop culture icon:



HT: Cranach

219 minutes and 18 seconds

That's how long it's been since Blackhawks backup goalie Antti Niemi has allowed a goal.

Somebody got paid to think of this question?

One of the members of the Des Moines Astronomical Society used to bring Pirouettes- those rolled wafers filled with chocolate or whatever- to meetings and observing sessions for us to munch on. I grew fond of them, but they are terribly expensive.

So today when I was at the Dollar Store I saw a less expensive version, and figured it was worth a buck to check them out. They aren't terrible. But around the top of the can is inscribed the following: "Twisted Trivia: Which significant event in history occurred before the telephone, lightbulb, gas powered car and even the airplane was invented?" It then gave a website to go to for the answer.

Well, let's see. The Big Bang? The Flood? The building of the pyramids? The rise and fall of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Roman Empires? The birth of Christ? The Crucifixion? The Resurrection?  The conversion of Constantine? The birth of Muhammad? The career of Charlemagne? The Crusades? The plague? The Norman Conquest? The Reformation? The Thirty Years' War? The Enlightenment? The American and French Revolutions? The career of Napoleon? The Civil War? The Emancipation Proclamation? The assassination of Lincoln?

Nowhere on the site do I find the answer. Perhaps it's the extinction of the dinosaurs- despite the fact that they would doubtless have been smart enough not to ask somebody to identify one single historical event on the sole basis of it having occurred during a period encompassing practically the entire history of the human race.

The football season is now officially a total loss

A year in which the Bears win the Super Bowl but lose twice to the Packers is a failure.

A year in which the Bears finish out of the playoffs and lose twice to the Packers is a travesty.

This year is a travesty.

Dueling poetry recitals: William Shatner vs. Sarah Palin

Please excuse the commercial at the beginning of this. After all, Sarah Palin is a Republican. Think of it as an endorsement of free enterprise.



HT: HuffPo

Rumor says that Bradley is about to be traded

Word is that Cubs' GM Jim Hendry is close to deal that would send Milton Bradley  to an American League team- not any of those most often mentioned- in exchange for another high price tag player, who would then immediately be traded in turn.

Hopefully the Cubs will end up with some value. At the very least, this would mean unloading Bradley's contract and freeing the Cubs to go out and get Marlon Byrd or another center fielder, enabling Fukadome to move back to right.

Just another alienated country

It's not just foreigners Barack Obama has managed to alienate. The president who came to office a year ago amid universal adulation that almost amounted to worship now has the lowest approval rating of any president in history at this point in his administration.

My conviction that the 2008 election was going to be one of those "poison pill" contests (1928, 1976 and 1988 also come to mind) in which a predictable combination of circumstances would doom the winner, regardless of his identity or party, to be a one-term president seems to be panning out. People are no longer willing to listen when Obama and the Democrats trash George W. Bush as a way of avoiding responsibility for the events that take place on Mr. Obama's watch. It had to happen: at long last, Barack Obama is being held accountable by the American people for his own record.

Obama offends those fawning Norwegians

Add the Norwegians and his fans on the Nobel Committee to the numerous foreigners President Obama has alienated.

HT: Drudge

Fifteen inches of 'welcome to winter'

Usually winter is polite enough to ease its way in on us, with a light dusting or two of snow, a few moderate snowfalls- and then, if at all, the Big Stuff.

Not this year in Des Moines (pictured at the left). Just a few weeks ago we were worrying that it wouldn't seem like Christmas because the weather was too warm.  Now we've gotten 15 inches of snow in the last 48 hours. Welcome to winter!

I fought my way through the blizzard home on foot last night. It wasn't easy, to say the least. Church has been cancelled for tonight (though with a little shoveling I really think we could have gone ahead. Well, to be honest, a lot of shoveling.).  Maybe if I time my midnight stop at the local grocery right, the nice folks there will give me a ride tonight.

If I'd had any supplies laid by at home, it probably would have been a good idea to have stayed there today. It takes a couple of days for a city the size of Des Moines to recover from a storm like this, and even then many sidewalks will remain unshoveled and walking conditions will be less than ideal. Makes me wonder why I don't live in Arizona.

Bad news and good news (maybe) for POTUS

According to Gallup, Barack Obama's approval ratings are the lowest of any president in history at this point in his first term.

But supporters of the President shouldn't despair.The second lowest ratings (only two percentage points higher) belonged to Ronald Reagan- who was re-elected with 58.8% of the vote, and carried 49 of the 50 states.

HT: Drudge

Chi Cubs promote Ryno to manage I-Cubs

Ryne Sandberg will manage the Cubs' Triple-A team here in Iowa next year.

And my guess is that he'll take over for Lou Pinella in 2011. Ryno is a talented skipper who is understandably on the fast track to take over the big club. I have a hunch that once he gets his next promotion, he'll be managing the Cubs for a very long time.

May his vacation never start until late October. In the meantime... welcome to Des Moines, Ryno!

More on Davy Crockett's death

Since publishing this post on the Battle of the Alamo and its several portrayals in movies and on TV, I've done a little more research especially into one of the battle's more controversial aspects- one which, to somebody who was once a coonskin hat-wearing five year old fan of Fess Parker's Davy Crockett, is one of the more interesting ones. How, precisely, did Davy Crockett die? As I mentioned, it's a matter of some controversy, and debates on the subject tend to be heated.

The history books I read in school took it for granted that Crockett died in battle. Susannah Dickinson (the widow of Capt. Almarond Dickinson, one of the fallen members of the Alamo garrison), San Antono Alcalde (mayor) Francisco Ruiz, sixteen year-old Mexican fifter Apolinario Saldigua, Col. Travis's slave Joe and Ben, a former slave who served as Santa Anna's cook and had once met Crockett in Washington when the latter was a member of Congress, all later reported seeing Crockett's body near the main entrance to the mission. Mrs. Dickinson even reported seeing Crockett's trademark coon skin hat lying nearby.

Mrs. Dickinson frequently changed her account of the details of her experience in later years, and may not be the most reliable of witnesses. In fact- as is usually the case in such matters- problems exist to various degrees with the testimony of many the witnesses. But Ruiz- who knew the man- not only identified Crockett, but specified that his corpse was "lifeless." Saldigua reported that Crockett's face was "florid, like that of a living man; and he looked like a healthy man asleep. Santa Anna viewed him for a few moments," Saldigua continued, and then "thrust his sword through him, and turned away."

Ben's account is the most detailed, and the most conclusive: The former slave stated that Crockett's body was surrounded by "no less than 16 Mexican corpses," Crockett's "huge knife," Ben said, was thrust into the bosom of a Mexican lying on top of him "up to the hilt." The testimony of Travis's slave Joe collaborates that of Ben. But the most conclusive evidence that Crockett died in battle was the fact that Santa Anna himself later specified that he had been shown Crockett's "cadaver-" by Ben and Ruiz, both of whom positively identified it as that of Crockett.

Kent Biffle, author of A Month of Sundays, finds it curious that none of these accounts are mentioned by revisionist historians who argue that Crockett was captured and later executed.

The revisionist theory has its roots in the account of a Mexican officer present at the battle, José Enrique de la Peña- a critic of Santa Anna and- at least later in life- a man somewhat sympathetic to the cause of the Alamo's defenders. Jesus Sánchez Garza, a Mexican antiquarian and book-dealer, self-published de la Peña's memoirs and certain other material he attributed to de la Peña in 1955- precisely at the height of the Disney-inspired Crockett-mania in the United States- and called his book La Rebelión de Texas.

Although Garza never explained how the material came into his possession, at least the first part of it- de la Peña's actual diary from the Alamo campaign, written as events unfolded- is universally acknowledged to be geniune because it is written in a hand easily identifiable by comparison with the former officer's other writings. The critical second part, however, is written in several different hands, a fact explained by assuming that de la Peña had dictated it while recuperating from an illness in a Mexico City prison where he had been confined for opposing Santa Anna. It is from this controversial second section of de la Peña's alleged memoirs that the critical paragraph- which not only denies that Crockett had been killed in the battle, but that he had really been among the Alamo's defenders in the first place- was taken:

Some seven men had survived the general carnage and, under the protection of General Castrillon, they were brought before Santa Anna. Among them was one of great stature, well proportioned, with regular features, in whose face there was the imprint of adversity, but in whom one also noticed a degree of resignation and nobility that did him honor. He was the naturalist David Crockett, well known in North America for his unusual adventures, who had undertaken to explore the country and who, finding himself in Bejar at the very moment of surprise, had taken refuge in the Alamo, fearing that his status as a foreigner might not be respected. Santa Anna answered Castrillon's intervention in Crockett's behalf with a gesture of indignation and, addressing himself to the sappers, the troops closest to him, ordered his execution. The commanders and officers were outraged at this action and did not support the order, hoping that once the fury of the moment had blown over these men would be spared; but several officers who were around the president and who, perhaps, had not been present during the moment of danger, became noteworthy by an infamous deed, surpassing the soldiers in cruelty. They thrust themselves forward, in order to flatter their commander, and with swords in hand, fell upon these unfortunate, defenseless men just as a tiger leaps upon his prey. Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers. It was rumored that General Santa Anna was one of them; I will not bear witness to this, for, though present, I turned away horrified in order not to witness such a barbarous scene

If such a provocative document had been in existence since the late 1830's, it is hard to understand how it could have remained a secret for a century and a quarter, only to come to light at the very moment when interest in Crockett was at its all-time highest. But timing was to play a further role in the credence given the claim that Crockett had survived the battle and had been executed at Santa Anna's orders afterward. It was not until 1975- in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, when popular paranoia about cover-ups and conspiracies to falsify history was at its height- that Texas A&M Press published an English translation of de la Peña's supposed account as With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution.

That (contrary to legend) there were indeed survivors of the final assault who were indeed executed on Santa Anna's orders is generally accepted by contemporary historians, and is verified by the testmony of no less a witness than Ramon Martinez Caro, Santa Anna's own secretary, writing only a year after the battle:

Among the 183 killed there were five who were discovered by General Castrillon hiding after the assault. He took them immediately to the presence of His Excellency who had come up by this time. When he presented the prisoners he was severely reprimanded for not having killed them on the spot, after which he turned his back upon Castrillon while the soldiers stepped out of their ranks and set upon the prisoners until they were all killed. . . . We all witnessed this outrage which humanity condemns but which was committed as described. This is a cruel truth, but I cannot omit it.

Caro, however, does not identify Crockett as among them.

Several accounts in American newspapers do contain reports of Crockett's execution. The best-documented of any of these is a tale from George M. Dolson, an officer in Houston's army, who passed along a report from a high-ranking Mexican officer that he had had Crockett identified to him as one of the prisoners taken at the Alamo, and had personally heard Santa Anna order their execution. The report, of course, is hearsay, and the credentials of the person who allegedly identified Crockett to the officer with whom Dolson spoke remain unclear. Numerous other accounts in American newspapers of Crockett's survival and subsequent execution represent even more remote cases of hearsay, and are often contradicted by accounts in the same issue from alleged eyewitnesses describing Crockett's death in battle. Contemporary sources report that Mexican prisoners were often pressured into confirming such stories by Texans who had heard them as gossip. Francisco Becerra, another Mexican Alamo veteran noted for his eagerness to please American tale-seekers, reported 39 years after the fall of the Alamo that Santa Anna had executed not only Crockett, but Travis!

On balance, it seems to me that the evidence favors the traditional view that Crockett was killed during the final assault, not far from the Alamo's main gate. The only eye-witnesses whom we know for certain could have identified Crockett by sight either verify that it was his body that Santa Anna was shown, or independently place Crockett's dead body in that very location at the end of the fighting. And Santa Anna's own report of the incident clearly identifies him as a "cadaver." Not one but two of those who was able to personally identify Crockett- Santa Anna's sometime cook, Ben, and San Antonio's Alcalde Ruiz - were present when Santa Anna viewed the body. So was fifer Saldigua. Saldigua even reported seeing Santa Anna run his saber through Crockett's lifeless corpse.

Could Crockett have perhaps been inadvertently included among the anonymous prisoners Santa Anna had executed after the battle? If so, one would think that Santa Anna would have remembered so recent an incident when shown the location where Crockett lay dead!. And it's difficult to reconcile Crockett's execution with Ben's description of his body lying in the midst of his dead enemies, one lying on top of him, impaled by Crockett's knife, or with Joe's similar account.

Granted that Davy Crockett had lived a life full of "unusual adventures," it is hard to credit de la Peña's dismissal of even a backwoodsman whom the Whig Party had at one point considered as a candidate for the White House as a harmless academic caught in the wrong place at the wrong time while studying the flora and fauna of Texas! That Crockett was present at the Alamo as a combatant is accepted without question by everybody, it seems- except de la Peña!

In fact, it is by no means clear that the portion of the manuscript alleged to have been authored by de la Peña was even written by him. Unlike the earlier, and undoubtedly genuine, portion of the narrative published by Jesus Garza in 1955, it is not in his handwriting. It describes as an eye-witness account not only Crockett's execution, but the death of Col. Travis- an event de la Peña could not have witnessed, since it occurred high on the wall of the Alamo long before the Mexicans were inside the mission, and which in any case appears to be inaccurate when compared with the accounts of those who were actually present when Travis died. Most tellingly, it provides absolutely no information as to how either de la Peña knew that the man he so inaccurately described as a naturalist and a non-combatant who had merely taken refuge among his fellow countrymen was, in fact, Crockett. We have no reason to believe that either he nor any of the other Mexicans present had ever met the Tennessean. Did somebody claim to be Crockett? Did others of the captured Texians, perhaps, identify one of their number as Crockett? De la Peña (or whoever authored that second portion of the Garza document) doesn't tell us. But even if such were the case, it would hardly constitute proof that one or more prisoners facing summary execution might not have told a tall tale about his own or a companion's identity in the hope of staying Santa Anna's hand. And Santa Anna, of course, reported seeing Crockett's dead body upon entering the mission, not having him executed after the battle. Not a man to pass up an opportunity for vainglorious boasting over a defeated enemy, it seems to me to say a great deal that he engaged in no such boasting where Crockett was concerned.

What it all comes down to, I think, is that the evidence for Crockett surviving the battle, while plentiful, is of such poor quality that it pales before the fact of the positive identification of his body among the fallen in battle by four people who knew him personally. Unsupported hearsay accounts of claims by unidentified individuals who wouldn't have known Davy Crockett from Fess Parker seem to me to be no match for the testimony of four people whose identities we know, and whom we know knew Crockett, to say nothing of that of Santa Anna himself. To me, the decisive point is that we do not have a single report of Crockett's survival and execution which is collaborated by anyone who would have reason to have been able to actually identify him. In the face of the positive identification of his lifeless corpse by Ben, by Joe, by Alcalde Ruiz, and by Susannah Dickinson, all of whom were in a position to know Crockett by sight, the probability that the traditional account is true and that Crockett died in battle seems strong. Combine that consideration with the dubious character of the claims allegedly made by de la Peña in somebody else's handwriting, interspersed with details about the battle which no Mexican soldier could have known and which in any case differ from the facts as reported by those whom we know were actual eye-witnesses to them, and it's difficult for me to see how "de la Peña's" claim that Crockett survived the battle and was among those executed by order of Santa Anna in its aftermath has been able to gain any traction at all.

Of course, Ben had only met Crockett once, and that was years before. And Susannah Dickinson was a notoriously unreliable witness. The possibility that Crockett did survive the battle and was subsequently executed- perhaps without Santa Anna actually realizing who he was- cannot be absolutely excluded.

But it's a theory that's hard for me to accept in the absence of a single eye-witness to the event whom we have any particular reason to believe could have positively identified Crockett. And the critical point, in any case, is that- as has been said by historians time and time again- even if Crockett was captured or voluntarily surrendered once the battle was clearly lost and no further reason to fight remained, he is no less a hero. Even de la Peña's account of Crockett's death paints it as no less than heroic.

The legend of Davy Crockett is in no way diminished no matter what view one takes of how he died.

The Bears finally win

Huzzah.

Where my sermons will be from now on

Since I've put the blog Saint Mary links to and where I keep my sermons on Networked Blogs, and my sermons will now be published to Facebook from there, at least for now I'm going to stop publishing them here.

If anybody wants the URL, it's http://lutheransermons.wordpress.com

The real meaning of the Blessed Virgin's apparitions on the wall of a Chicago underpass, on a California griddle, and in an Arizona pancake

TASHA YAR: Humans often imagine pictures in clouds, Data. Like the ship in that one over there.

DATA: That behavior seems quite irrational. And besides- that particular cloud is clearly a bunny rabbit.

--Star Trek: The Next Generation

The Blessed Virgin- last seen on a  griddle in a Mexican restaurant in California after a holdover appearance at the Fullerton Avenue underpass in Chicago- has made yet another appearance: on an pancake in Arizona.

She certainly is well-traveled.

Meanwhile, Galle Crater in Agyre Planitia on Mars wants you to have a happy day. But beware of  dead Communists inhabiting your shower curtain.!

I've blogged on Mary's travels before.  The inappropriate places where her image is thought to appear are often quite humorous, and a little gentle fun probably should be poked at those who take such "miracles" too seriously. But what is in fact going on here is a phenomenon called pareidolia, from two Greek words translatable roughly as "false" and "image." 

Pareidolia are generally dismissed as people's imaginations getting the better of them, or as purely subjective and utterly psychological phenomena. Obviously this is often the case, and I am not suggesting that there is necessarily much, if any, significance to the exceptions. While one person I showed it to thinks that the Virgin of the Underpass actually looks more like Edvard Munch's The Scream than like the Mother of God (and I have to admit that it's easier for me to see the former in it than the latter), the fact is that it takes quite a bit of imagination to see either one in that particular salt stain on the wall of an underpass where salt stains are far more common than either impressionist paintings or miraculous apparitions.

Hey, guys. It's a salt stain- and although it has a vaguely anthropomorphic shape, it really doesn't look like anything else.

However, I would suggest that the Galle Crater really falls into a completely different category. No imagination is required here. In fact, it's hard not to see the joke:

Or consider another actual feature  the surface of the Red Planet. Is it even remotely possible not to see something here other than your average, run-of-the-mill graben in this?

The above are not your imagination. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily significant in any way other than being coincidences of form. But they are real. They are physical phenomena, not psychological ones, and the resemblance they bear to, respectively, a smiley face and a valentine heart exist are perfectly objective.

You might even say the same thing about an interesting feature of the asetroid Eros (of all the asteroids in the Solar System!), discovered (the feature, that is) by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker probe three days before Valentine's Day in 2000: The arrow points to the feature in question. And no, before anybody even suggests it, none of these pictures are faked or altered in any way. They are just as they came from NASA.

If you have either a sense of wonder or a sense of humor, such phenomena bring a smile to your face. Coincidences? Fine. They need be nothing more. In fact, the incongruity of the coincidence is funny. If this were merely a subjective, psychological phenomenon, we wouldn't be nearly so amused. But such coincidences are funny because they combine incongruity with the very objectivity of their resemblance to other- and wholly unrelated- things.

There is a nebula which seems rather clearly to resemble a naked man with a somewhat elongated waist, his back turned to us, making an... er, defiant gesture with his very oversized right hand lifted high above his head. It is actually known among astronomers as the "Rude Gesture Nebula." and I always dreaded having my junior high students from the astronomy course I used to teach for the Des Moines Public Schools Talented and Gifted Program find  a picture of it while we were working on line. It obviously has no cosmic meaning. But when so many people see the same incongruous thing in such an unlikely place, how can it be dismissed as a purely subjective, psychological phenomenon?

Not everybody smiles, however. There are people of a materialistic bent who- not so much because they are of a materialistic bent as because they lack both a sense of humor and a sense of wonder- cannot bear for the incongruity to be real. Some years ago, the European Space Agency (ESA) undertook a determined assault on the Smiley Face aspect of the Galle creater, determined to prove that, like the better-known "Face on Mars" in Cydonia, it is nothing more than a trick of lighting or perspective.

So great was their determination to prove their point (in a manner just about diametrically opposed to anything that could reasonably be called scientific) that- perhaps without intending or even realizing it- they cooked the evidence. I did a lengthly post on the subject here. To summarize my point, this picture of the Galle crater- from so close and so shallow an angle that its features cannot be made out- proves that the "Smiley Face" isn't real about as much as taking a closeup of a man's nose and then pointing out that no mouth is seen proves that what was photographed was not part of a human face!

Lighten up, ESA. Coincidences can be both amusing and delightful. And whether you are comfortable with the idea or not, sometimes pareidolia are coincidences of objective resemblance rather than mere subjective perceptions or figments of the imagination. In fact, the more incongruously objective the resemblance- the more incongruously anything, really- the more amusing a pareidolion is.

So you can be an absolute materialist- a convinced atheist, even- and still both perceive and enjoy the incongruity of an objective  resemblance between a natural phenomenon and something which is obviously unrelated to it. Moreover, the greater the incongruity, the more fun even a mere coincidence ends up being.. Not only is such a thing possible for a materialist and skeptic, but  I would guess that when this increasingly lengthly post started, you may well have thought that I myself was treading on the border of disrespect for those who look for revelations of the divine in the created order.

But in fact, I am more than respectful of such people. I am one myself. I am- in case you don't realize it, or have lost sight of the fact in the course of reading this entry- a conservative Christian clergyman. But I don't look for Jesus on the walls of underpasses, or on griddles, or in pancakes. I recognize the fact that some of the pictures in the slide show linked to early in this post really do look like Jesus, or Mary, or Michael Jackson, or Lenin, and I enjoy the incongruity.

I see plenty of support for my religious beliefs in the phenomenal world. In fact, the very presence of life on this planet requires such an amazing number of happy coincidences that I find atheism implausible and even agnosticism eccentric. The presence of a planet the mass of Jupiter at a distance from Earth sufficient to allow it to so efficiently "play goalie" for us when comets come whizzing in from the Oort Cloud, for example, and the presence of a moon exactly the size of ours at the exact distance necessary to stabilize Earth's precession on  its axis and keep us from temperature extremes which would make life impossible here, and our presence in the Solar System between Venus and Mars, exactly at the distance from the sun necessary for life, all speak to me of a Mind behind the universe. That it should all be an accident seems to me to be pretty much a matter of the classic monkey banging away on a typewriter and just happening to produce Shakespeare's Hamlet by accident. Except it seems to me to be a tad less likely.

I concede that, from a strictly scientific point of view, given the vastness of the universe it is not quite as implausible as one might think at first to suggest that some monkey somewhere might produce a fair copy of the play about the melancholy Dane- and why not here? I don't find this counter-argument especially convincing, but as an old debater I know the difference between something seeming unlikely and something being actually disproven.While it proves absolutely nothing, I see the Smiley Face on Mars as suggesting (not proving) the possibility (not the scientific certainty) that there is  not only a Creator, but that He has a sense of humor.

No, pareidolia are not always a matter of mere, subjective imagination. But sometimes they are. Subjectively, they may, to a greater or lesser extent, be highly suggestive of many things. But they are not proof of anything. On the other hand, so powerful is the human imagination that people of faith, no less than people of science, need to insist on that distinction.

As a Christian, I base my faith on the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, whom I take for reliable guides as to the nature of God and of my relationship to Him. And being a Christian, I look for- and, I believe, find-God in His definitive revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. But my imagination is both too active and too seductive for me to waste time reading meaning into incongruous resemblances between physical phenomena and my Lord and Savior- or any of His relations. If the resemblance is striking enough, I'll smile. But I won't regard as proving very much, whatever it may suggest. Nor will I describe it as a miracle without considerable collaborating evidence; God's sense of humor is too acute, pareidolia are too common, my imagination is too active, and the stakes are too high.

 I do not look for the divine in subjective feelings, subjective "signs" that are susceptible to interpretation and manipulation, the vagaries of my own imagination- or on the walls of underpasses, on grills, or in pancakes.

In bread and wine, yes. But not in pancakes.

Texas chutzpah Kinky Friedman would be proud of

Well, Tennessee chutzpah, actually. In Texas.

One of the TV movie networks has been showing the 1960 movie The Alamo, staring John Wayne as Davy Crockett (horrible casting, but hey- John Wayne!) quite a bit lately. I first saw it as a ten year old with my older cousin, Patsy, in the theater shortly after it was released, and complained to her  that it ended with the bad guys winning- that there was no reference to the fact that the Battle of San Jacinto was coming. Of course, it would have ruined a wonderful and poigniant ending to a fabuluous movie. But hey- I was ten.

Since then I've come to appreciate what a truly fine movie it was (even though it was mostly fiction; as history it's atrocious). The haunting score by Dimitri Tiomkin is among the most beautiful I can recall. Here's the Main Title (borrowed by Quentin Tarantino for his 2009 Inglourious Basterds), and here's the closing music- the latter played as the only survivors (Capt. Dickinson's widow, their two small children, and a burro) filed through the ranks of Santa Anna's victorious army at the beginning of their long trek toward the Texan lines. It didn't leave a dry eye in the house.

(ADDENDUM: I recently came across the clip below on You Tube. It includes most of that final scene, although in place of the closing music it has superimposed on it another Tiomkin song from the film- Tennessee Babe, a tribute to three-year old "Lisa" Dickinson, shown filing through the Mexican lines with her mother, her brother and that burro.



Whatever music accompanies the final scene of the film, it's a tear-jerker, especially in light of  "Lisa's" line at 0:26 of the above clip: "Where's Daddy?" Kind of a shame, though, that  the clip doesn't include the dirty look Susannah Dickinson gives Santa Anna as they pass him.

"Lisa" was played in the film by John Wayne's own daughter, Aissa. The Dickinson girl's actual name was Angelina, and there was no son. In fact, Susannah and Angelina were accompanied on their trip by Ben, the cook for one of Santa Anna's officers, Colonel Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, and sometimes for Santa Anna himself. They were later joined by Travis's slave, Joe, who had escaped from Santa Anna.

Contrary to what is generally believed, there were in fact 42 survivors of the Alamo.  Some were children. But Santa Anna seems to have taken a special liking to little Angelina, and offered to adopt her-an offer which Susannah refused. Ben seems to have been sent along to watch over the girl and her mother as they traveled toward Gonzales and the Texian lines. After they reached Gonzales, Santa Anna's sometime cook became the personal cook of General Sam Houston! More information on Susannah and Angelina Dickinson's guardians on the trip between the Alamo and Gonzales can be found here).

Some might argue whether or not those who died at the Alamo really "fought to give us freedom." Several of the heroes of the Alamo were slaveholders, and an insistance on the right to own slaves was at least a subtext to the rebellion. The thought of Texas entering the Union as a slave state (or several of them) surely was in the back of some of the rebel leaders' minds.  And viewed from that perspective, the evolution of Texas from Mexican province to independent nation to American state might be seen as a form of gradual American imperialism. But what cannot be denied is that Santa Anna, in abrogating the Mexican Constitution and seizing power as a dictator, not only gave the Texans a plausible and palatable excuse for their revolt, but cast it in the light of a war of liberation for Tejanos (ethnic Mexicans living in Texas) and American settlers alike. And seven of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence were in fact Tejanos, rather than American immigrants. Furthermore, lest the point be missed, Santa Anna's banning of slavery was somewhat hypocritical; Mexico retained a form of legal serfdom virtually indistinguishable from slavery, and it wasn't abolished until the 1880's.

Anyway, Disney made a new version of the story in 2004. I have yet to see the entire movie, though I badly want to. By reputation, it's historically a great deal more accurate than the Wayne version. Billy Bob Thornton- who looks a great deal more like the real Crockett (pictured at the left) than either John Wayne or Fess Parker- played the role. And of course, he got the accent right. The 2004 movie flopped at the box office,  and received bad reviews in some quarters. But it contains several scenes which are absolutely priceless.

The two scenes below featuring Thornton as Crockett are cases in point. In the first, Santa Anna's band  has been playing the Deguello ("Slit Throat")- a tune which means "no quarter." It was, in other words,  a musical message that the enemy would not be allowed to surrender and that any survivors would be put to the sword. Crockett's (Thornton's) response is a piece of chutzpah for the ages:



How Crockett died is a matter of historical controversy. Mrs. Dickinson, Travis's slave, Joe, Santa Anna's sometime cook Ben- who had met Crockett when the latter was a member of Congress and Santa Anna was visiting Washington- and San Antonio Alcalde Ruiz all knew Crockett, and all reported seeing Crockett's body near the main gate of the mission. The 1960 film follows their lead in assuming that he died during the fighting, but takes liberties with the details:



But several members of Santa Anna's army claimed that Crockett was recognized in battle, physically overcome, captured, and then first tortured and then executed. The 2004 movie chose to accept that version of Crockett's death. Again, we have Thornton's cheeky and very courageous Crockett, exhibiting the same kind of chutzpah as he did in the scene with the violin:



And then, there's always the option the classic Disney TV version of Davy Crockett, starring Fess Parker, took. Here, the question of how Crockett died was simply begged; in fact, when I first saw it (I was a big Crockett fan, and had a genuine coon skin cap that was the envy of every other five year-old in the neighborhood) I completely missed the point that Crockett had died- although I thought it was really too bad about his fictional side-kick, Georgie Russell (Buddy Ebsen). My mother had to break the news to me! It should be said, however, that what it implies about the circumstances of Crockett's death more closely accord with the testimony of Mrs. Dickinson, Alcalde Ruiz, Ben the cook and Travis's slave, Joe, than either of the subsequent versions:



One of the points which the 2004 version got right which both the John Wayne and the Fess Parker versions got wrong was the fact that the final assault took place at night. By dawn, the battle was all but over.

Historians say that Lawrence Harvey pretty much nailed the character of Col. Travis in the 1960 version. In actual fact, however, Travis did not die killing Mexicans right and left with his sword after heroically casting away his scabbard, as the 1960 film has it; he was rather anticlimactically shot in the forehead while standing on the wall early in the final assault. And while Jim Bowie, played in the 1960 version by Richard Widmark, was indeed an invalid confined to the bed in which he died, he was not confined there by wounds, as was Widmark's Bowie. He was deathly ill with an infectious disease, perhaps typhus and perhaps pneumonia. The Mexicans who killed him unjustly believed at the time that he was a coward who was simply hiding in his bed.

I've been thinking a lot about the Alamo (both the battle and the movies) lately, and may well  have more to say on the subject in the near future.

Teaching a lizard to say 'please'

There is a certain puppylike quality to a uromastyx that led me to seriously consider calling Atvar "Rover" and Muad'dib "Fido" when I first got them. Either would be an appropriate name for this dwarf maliensus:

A day in the life of an Ornate uromastyx

Again, the color isn't what it should be, but I like this video- especially the very appropriate soundtrack. Although Atvar was much more colorful (he resembled Fountain Blue on this page, although more of a sky blue and with orange/brown and gray streaks and dots amid more prominent yellow ones), there was a moment in watching this video when a tear came to my eye.

Note the aborted "glass dance" as this guy attempts to escape into the cage's background. It's much funnier from the other side, and when they are actually standing on their back legs.

The uromastyx version of a diet

The uromastyx is the clown of the reptile world. This characteristic (along with their resemblance to minature dinosaurs and their being, as I've heard several human females remark, "so ugly they're cute") is among the things which endear this particular lizard to those of us who share our lives with them. The "glass dance," for example, is standard uro behavior, and it's hilarious. They are simply unclear on the concept "glass," and their attempts to deal with the walls of their cages resemble people "getting down."

The uros in this video are Moroccans, not Rainbows like Muad'dib or Ornates like the late Atvar, and the color in the video is pretty bad (uros are much more attractive critters in true color). But this video is a hoot. In order to fully appreciate it, you should know that dandelions (carefully picked from places which for sure have not been sprayed) are considered delicacies by members of genus uromastyx, and that they like certain other flowers, too.

Bert is lucky the dog didn't turn that uro into lunch. And I hope neither Bert nor his dog got salmonella. Oral contact with reptiles is not recommended.

Once again, the clown of the reptile world does his act. Enjoy.

Advent I Midweek Lenten Sermon

Three Ancestors Jesus Chose: Eve
Genesis 3:1-24
Midweek Advent Service
Wednesday, December 2, 2009


What part of “Don’t eat the fruit of that particular tree” did Eve not understand? She had God’s will laid out quite clearly before her. Eat from the fruit of any other tree you want. Just not that particular tree.

You’d think that with only one explicit commandment to worry about, Eve could have managed. But no. You would have thought that a reptile striking up a conversation with her out of a clear blue sky might have been enough to put Eve on guard. But all it took was the suggestion that God had been holding out on her and Adam, and all of a sudden the fruit of that one tree started looking really, really delicious. From there, it was a short step to picking one, and taking a bite-and all of Eve’s children have been paying for it ever since.

I have a friend who suffers from a rare form of MS that is slowly causing the muscles of her body to waste away. Every time she finds herself unable to do something she’s been able to do all her life, she has a standard response: “Thanks a lot, Adam!” Now, being a man myself, I have to stick up for Adam a little bit. True, he let Eve talk him into taking a bite of the fruit, too. But wives tend to be more believable than talking snakes. And besides, Eve bit first.

Luther used to imagine the fights Adam and Eve had during all those nine centuries or so their marriage lasted: “You bit the apple!” “Yeah, but you gave it to me!” I have to admit, though, that in some ways Eve comes off a little better than her husband. True enough, neither Adam nor Eve was willing to take responsibility for his or her own actions. But while Eve blamed the snake, Adam not only blamed Eve, but God Himself: “The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

And so began the oldest of human games: the blame game. And not even God Himself was immune from being blamed because His creatures couldn’t seem to resist listening to that snake.

“On the day you eat of it,” God had said of the fruit of that tree, “you will surely die.” And die they did. Not physically, of course- though that might have been a blessing. No, they had to live out nearly a millennium of mutual blame for the fact that they were getting old and that they often fell ill and that life was nothing like the good old days in the Garden.

I was born by Caesarian section, - which my mother highly recommended to anybody interested in having a baby. But the woman whose bed was next to hers didn’t. As she went through a long and difficult labor, Mom told us, that lady called her husband names that Mom had never heard before, and rarely heard thereafter- and greatly enhanced Mom’s vocabulary, even though she didn’t ever use them herself.

Just think what names Eve must have called Adam. Childbirth wasn’t supposed to be that way. And as Adam spent those long days out in the hot sun, his muscles aching and his back breaking with seemingly so little to show for his efforts, I imagine Adam had some colorful thoughts about Eve, too.

And all for a piece of fruit.

Sneezes, coughs, and stomach cramps. The common cold. And the one thing God had never intended for His human creatures: death itself. Each of them would die one day. And the stomach flu, that was enough to make them wish for death. The broken hearts of parents who not only lost their own son to murder, but whose sorrow was compounded by the knowledge that his murderer was also their son.

There is no sorrow, no loss, no pain and no suffering that does not come even today from the invasion of God’s creation and the human soul of the debilitating disease of sin. The virus of rebellion had entered the body of creation, and the cancer of sin had entered the human soul.

That last was the worst of all. No, Adam and Eve did not die physically that day in the Garden. They died spiritually. They lost their ability to choose the good when they opted to sample the fruit of the tree which opened their souls to the knowledge of evil, too.

But one of my theology professors in college used to say that he didn’t think that the Fall really happened when Eve bit into the fruit. No, Professor Schaibley thought it happened when Eve listened to the snake, and entertained the thought that there might be another, better way than God’s.

Many, many years later, Saint Athanasius would say of human nature, “What has not been assumed has not been redeemed.” He wasn’t talking about sin, of course. As deeply as sin infects our humanity, it is not a part of human nature. God didn’t create it; man chose it back in the garden- and has been choosing it ever since.

But the capacity to choose, and with it the possibility of being tempted, is very much a part of what it is to be a human being. Any being created in the image of God would have to have the theoretical possibility of forfeiting that image. Whatever the exact moment was when the Fall took place, it involved a misuse of something essential to any creature made with a spiritual resemblance to its eternal Creator. And that’s why Eve- and for that matter, Adam- are such good examples of the kind of people Jesus chose to be His own ancestors. He came, after all, to redeem people who had misused and thus lost the free will which He Himself had given to His creatures.

Yes, Jesus came to die for our sin- to pay the price God’s justice demanded for Adam and Eve’s sin, and for all the sins that followed, including yours and mine. But that was only part of His mission. He came not only to die for us, but also to live for us- to be the Second Adam, the One Who was tempted as Adam and Eve were tempted, but who got it right.

And it is through the righteousness Jesus won by His perfectly righteous life that we, who are baptized and who believe, are declared by the Father to be righteous through justification, and actually made righteous in sanctification. Jesus’ righteousness is our righteousness, too. More than that, in living as well as dying on our behalf, Jesus Himself became our righteousness- the only righteousness any child of Adam can ever claim, and the only righteousness any child of Eve will ever need.

Yes, as we consider the human beings Jesus chose to be His own ancestors, Eve- the Mother of All Living- is a fitting place to begin. The One Whose coming we await, after all, fully satisfied the demands of God’s justice for every descendant of Eve. And to do that, He needed to be a descendant of Eve Himself. And because that Son of Eve came to die for our sin and to live for our justification, the spiritual death Adam and Eve brought upon themselves in the Fall can rise from spiritual death in Holy Baptism and live before God forever, just as God had in mind for Adam and Eve when He made them. Many and dire are the consequences of the Fall. There is no human pain or sorrow that does not flow from it. But the One Whose coming we await this Advent comes to share our every sorrow, or every sickness, our every pain and our every loss.

He comes as one of us, so that He might share our sorrow, suffer our pain, and die our death. He comes to take everything Adam and Eve got so wrong, and to make it right.

God comes to Earth and becomes one of His own creatures, so that we who are His creatures by birth may be reborn of water and the Spirit to be His children, and to live with Him in Paradise just as He intended Adam and Eve to do before Eve decided so blithely to have that fatal chat with a talking reptile, and to crush Satan’s head under His heal so that the work of that snake in the grass might be undone.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.