New font: wed dings
Month: July 2012
Marriage talks too much
I am translating a snippet from a medieval commentary on 1Corinthians. At the part where St. Paul advises the Corinthians not to marry because of the many difficulties involved, my commentator notes that Paul says
that marriage should be avoided because there are many pressing difficulties. Hence they are said to be in a millstone, Mt. 24:41. Hence in common speech it is said that marriage has a big mouth.
Excuse me? Odd proverbs making the rounds in the late middle ages. But I love the creative interpretation of Mt. 24:41!
Test your Joachim and Anne knowledge
Sts. Joachim and Anne are marvelously fascinating. What kind of parents raised the Virgin Mary, who was fit to raise God himself? While St. Anne has historically received more attention, for me Joachim’s title as “God’s grandpa” has an awesome ring.
So go ahead: take the feastday quiz, test your knowledge, and feel your devotion to these saints growing with each click! (Answers will be displayed when you are done: responses that would be correct will be printed in green.)
[wpsqt name="Joachim and Anne Feastday Quiz" type="quiz"]
CYOA experiment
I am experimenting with the possibility of creating Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) stories for the blog. Click here for a CYOA story that I wrote based on a Wilderness First Aid course I took last year.
When I wrote this, I thought that CYOA might be a good format for reviewing or quizzing first aid knowledge.
Air conditioner victory
The hot season has lasted much longer than usual this summer, so we decided to install the old air conditioner we have lugged around unused for the past six or seven years. The challenge was that our windows open side to side instead of up and down. To make it work, I built a figure-eight shaped frame that slides into the window sill; the bottom half of the frame houses the AC unit while the top half has plexiglass.
The plexiglass is 1/8 inch thick, which just so happens to be the width of the groove cut by my table saw. Worked out well.
I covered the screws on the side with wooden plugs that I cut with a special drill bit. They always cut a bit too small for the hole, but I dropped them in water for a minute or so and now they are swollen to fit the hole:
Paul’s favorite ism.
I found a neat instance of how punctuation or the lector’s reading can change the meaning of a biblical text. The Nova Vulgata of 1Tim 5:21 can say:
Testificor…ut haec custodias sine praeiudicio, nihil faciens in aliquam partem declinando. (“I adjure you that you keep these things without prejudice, doing nothing by favoring one side.”)
Or it could say:
Testificor…ut haec custiodias, sine praeiudicio nihil faciens, in aliquam partem declinando. (“I adjure you that you keep these things, doing nothing without prejudice, by favoring one side.”)
So you get to pick which one Paul said! But you should probably read Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana first….
What’s that smell?
The first in a projected line of papally themed perfumes, this Catholic niche market idea never gained momentum.
Casey in the Classroom
matthew served the point up which no one had seen before but once served once served it was not his but ours and we batted it back to the net for tim to slam down while we cheered and watched so ran the plan but tim slipped and tessa leapt to keep the point in the air while we all took positions then the teacher through our midst came to hammer home the point over the net with his hand like a giant and his face like a thunder cloud and in the wake of his resounding whack we stood with mouths like mackeral to see the point on the ground still on our side of the net and not over the net at all.
Having a ball
I recently picked up a copy of BXVI’s Caritas in Veritate in Latin. Paragraph 5 states that “societas” today “universaliter conglobatur”. Literally, that means that society today is everywhere turned into a ball—it’s all balled up. But I take it as a way of referring to the phenomon of “globalization”.
Speaking of which, I’d be happy to publically honor and applaud the reader who can define “globalization” succinctly and intelligibly.