Status on Swan Song by McGammon

The small paperback version is out of print nation-wide. It is only available new as a trade paperback. That makes the price about $18.00 a copy. I looked for a used copy at the local used bookstore to no avail. I did, hoever, find and order a copy considerably cheaper from Alibris, even after paying for the shipping. It should be arriving around the 25th of January.

On “The Road” Again, With Apologies to Willie and Cormac

One of the responses to my post on Gone South concerned its similiarity to The Road, if any. I guess I introduced the confusion by lumping Gone South and apocalyptic iterature in the same post. I hadn’t thought about any similiarities between the two novels. Both could be considered “picaresque novels,” where characters are on a journey and respond to situations on that journey in various ways, sometimes heroic, sometimes not. The main attribute of the picaresque novel is that there is no change in the characters as the of this journey. They don’t really learn or discover anything new about themselves or the world around them. The whole point of the story is the journey itself.

However, The Road is even darker than Gone South, and is truly apocalyptic while Gone South is not. I really love first lines of novels-that is one of the things that attracted me to to Gone South. The Road, however, has one of the greatest closing paragraphs I have ever read:

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were the maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not to be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

Gone South, a novel by Robert McCammon

I had just finished finally reading The Stand all the way through for the first time when I decided that I was definitely in the mood for some post-apocalyptic literature. So I went to the Amazon site and found one of those reading lists they have there and located an interesting book by Robert McCammon named Swan Song. Several additional reviewers had given it a thumbs-up, so I headed out to Barnes and Noble to buy Swan Song. As seems to be the case lately, the book was not available in the store. However, there was a section of Robert McCammon’s books, and so I purchased Gone South. I read a few pages in the store while drinking our traditional Sunday afternoon Bookstore Coffee. Then, I came home and placed it on the book shelf as I returned to the more important thing of the day, my Fantasy Football Team and the NFL on television. However, recently, I retrieved it from its place on the bookshelf and read it. From its first sentence, “It was hell’s season, and the air smelled of burning children…” until its end, I was intrigued by the plot, the writing, and the macabre look at the world that I found both disconcerting and interesting. Gone South is a dark book with a protagonist who is a murderer with a terminal disease, a damsel in distress who has a birthmark that scars half her face, and a bounty hunter who has three arms. I must admit that the three-armed bounty hunter was a little hard to take since it almost failed the “way past probable test,” but in a really weird way he and it meshed into the story . I enjoyed Gone South.” I really don’t know why except that the writing is tight, and the word picture really vivid, with few wasted words. That makes a book enjoyable to me, even though I wasn’t looking to buy it when I did.

Organic Egg Versus Inorganic Egg

Ever since I saw the labels in Publix, I have wondered about the difference between between “organic” and “inorganic” eggs.  I have since discovered that all organic eggs are produced by “free-ranging” chickens.  I have not been able to find that eggs laid by chickens who wander are nutritionally better than eggs laid by hens in pens.  There seems to be purely subjective observation from people wearing strange hats that these eggs taste better.  My question concerns whether the difference in price is worth the “better” taste.

Local Environmental Chic

We all make resolutions in one form or another  (with apologies to those who accuse me of making sweeping generalizations).  This year one of my resolutions was to endeavor to buy my food locally or to grow more for my own consumption.  I increased the size of my garden last year.  The result was a really mixed bag as the tomatoes did not do as well as previous years, the cucumbers did better, the squash died before producing like it always does, and I grew sweet potatoes for the first time.  The sweetest success (pun intended) was the potatoes.  We ended up with about 30 pounds from 8 plants.  That was accomplished without fertilization of any kind and in the old soil from the last four years where the tomatoes were previously.  I am planning to add another raised planter this year.  The type of vegetable and its or their distribution are still up to debate and decision.

Over the  holidays, I began to look at the concept of buying local produce.  Kathy had originally heard about the concept at her garden club.  I went to their website and enrolled so that I could receive a list of the products available.  Of course, at this time of year, the availability of fresh vegetables is really limited.  I was surprised by the cost of the items that were listed.  For example, the cost of “organic ” eggs was more than double the cost of the eggs I bought at the grocery store.  When that cost is combined with the membership fee ($25), the necessity of computer ownership and Internet access, the cost per egg is prohibitive, unless you consciously decide that you want to pay more for these products.  I have been told that this cost is just one more cost that you have to pay to support the  ”small farm” movement (if that interests you) and protect the environment.  These sites and others involved in environmental chic are not concerned with those who are on a budget.

New Stuff That Just Doesn’t Make Sense.

Maternity Battle Dress Uniforms.

New Modern Problem: Wedding, Baby..Baby, Wedding. Which Order?

“Jessica Simpson wedding delayed due to pregnancy . ”  Headline from People Magazine.   I now know the world is flipped–isn’t this supposed to be the other way around, and the media acts like it’s normal.  And we wonder why the kids are confused.

Quo Vadis, Modern Church?

Adviser resigns following column linking same-sex attraction with
devil

By Catholic News
Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A policy adviser to the U.S.
bishops has resigned following a controversy over an opinion piece he wrote
suggesting that same-sex attraction could be the work of the
devil.

Daniel Avila, policy adviser for marriage and family to the U.S.
bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage since June 20,
offered his resignation Nov. 4 and it was accepted, effective
immediately.

Avila’s opinion piece was published in the Oct. 28 edition
of The Pilot, Boston’s archdiocesan newspaper. It also was posted online before
being removed Nov. 2 and replaced with an apology by Avila who previously worked
as associate director for policy and research at the Massachusetts Catholic
Conference in Boston.

Terrence Donilon, spokesman for the Boston
Archdiocese, told Catholic News Service the column was
pulled because Avila “retracted it and apologized and because it simply should
not have been printed/published in The Pilot.”

“It is not the position of
the archdiocese or the church and is simply wrong,” he said in a Nov. 3
email.

Avila has written several columns for The Pilot during the past
year and has been a contributor to the newspaper for at least seven years,
according to Donilon. The most recent column, which generated reaction in the
blogosphere was titled: “Some fundamental questions on same-sex
attraction.”

In the column, Avila attempted to answer the question about
what causes same-sex attraction. He pointed to possible explanations such as
“random imbalances in maternal hormone levels” which he said could have
“disruptive prenatal effects on fetal development.”

But he said Catholics
need to look for spiritual answers to this question. And as he sees it, “the
ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the
evil one, not God,” he said. “Applying this aspect of Catholic belief to
interpret the scientific data makes more sense because it does not place God in
the awkward position of blessing two mutually incompatible realities — sexual
difference and same-sex attraction.”

In Avila’s retraction and apology
statement he said his column did not represent the position of the USCCB and was
not authorized for publication. “The teaching of sacred Scripture and of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church make it clear that all persons are created in
the image and likeness of God and have inviolable dignity. Likewise, the church
proclaims the sanctity of marriage as the permanent, faithful, fruitful union of
one man and one woman.”

He continued: “The church opposes, as I do too,
all unjust discrimination and the violence against persons that unjust
discrimination inspires. I deeply apologize for the hurt and confusion that this
column has caused.”

The Pilot also issued an apology on its website for
“for having failed to recognize the theological error in the column before
publication.”

Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations
for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement: “While the
general population has debated whether it’s nurture or nature that leads to a
homosexual inclination, the church has not posed any theory in that
regard.”

END

I wanted to post the whole article on Avila, homosexuality, and the Devil to make sure I got it right. I now wonder what the Catholic Church stand is on sin and homosexuality. Also, does the “modern Church” no longer believe in the existence of an entity known as the Devil? If they do, and if they consider homosexuality a sin, and that the Devil is someway responsible for sin in the world, why did they hang Avila out to dry? This column is so PC–it reminds me of the Episcopal Church’s often murky theology.

The Tree (Dum spiro, spero)

This morning, as Kathy and I, went down the hill to walk the dogs, I noticed that one of the trees had fallen over in the front yard. Thankfully, it was only a small sweet gum that had rotted through and fell over instead of one of our 100ft+ pine trees. I had considered cutting that tree down for about three years, but it was big enough and situated in such a place that I was afraid that I would hit one of the two power lines that formed a right angle about twenty feet from the tree. I had scoped, considered, and figured my way into not cutting that tree down for three years. This morning I walked over with the dog and saw that it had fell in just the right location-it didn’t hit either power line. Best of all, I hadn’t had to cut it down. Now, if I can just figure out how to get Mother Nature to trim up the trunk, pick up the pieces, and then haul it way, I will have been totally successful. I really don’t think that is going to happen, but hey, I didn’t figure it would fall perfectly either.

The Lack of Place

In the past few years, I have spent a lot of time reading material about and by Wendell Berry. I really admire him, both as a writer and a man. There are a lot of things such as moving to a farm, working that farm the old, manual way, remaining ludditious in his relationship with the modern world, and his writing ability that I would emulate if I could, and in most case, if I would. His way of life seems ro involve a lot of manual labor and sweat-two things that I try to avoid as much as possible. I would be a lot more green and more likely to do things the old way if they didn’t involve so much time, involvement, and work. But that is the subject of another day, not this one.
In Berry’s writings, he is quite involved with his concept of place and man’s relationship to it. In Berry’s case, his place is a multi-generational farm in Kentucky where he was raised as a child and returned to as an adult in an effort to find and retain his self. Place, to Berry, is a result of the land and its relationship to him. As Berry learns the land, the land molds Berry, and somehow, the communication between the two is both primal and religious. That is really great for Berry, and I am really happy, almost jealous, for him. The problem for me is that I find it hard to share his concept of place, because in actuality, I have no place. That is, unless, you can define place as one of the several houses that my mother and father rented, and finally bought, as they lived in the surburbs of a small Southern town, Camden, South Carolina. My father worked in the A&P grocery store there from the time I was two, until I joined the Marines in 1969. From the age of five until I left home, my concept of place was the fenced-in backyard of a small suburban lot, carved out of a farm owned by one of the richest families in town. I couldn’t wait to get out of there; so when I joined the Marines, I never looked back. That is, until much later in life, when after a divorce, I decided to go back and learned rather quickly that Thomas Wolfe was right, at least in my case, “You can’t go home again.” So, when Berry writes of his attachment to place and how that helps him spiritually and physically, I am left wondering exactly what that feels like. As I read his work, I have come to find myself reading it as if I were reading scripture. It sounds great and I guess I should be receiving something from it, but the language is strange and the sacredness foreign.