When you sup with the Devil, you need a long spoon

Bolivia's government sells out its women - cheap:

Good: The Iranian Red Crescent paid $1.2 million to build a hospital in the Bolivian city of El Alto.
Not good: The Iranian government is requiring that the hospital’s female employees, who are mostly Christian, all wear Iranian Muslim-style hijabs. As might be expected, El Alto’s doctors and nurses are livid.

According to local paper La Prensa (Spanish, English translation here), the hospital told potential female applicants that they would be required to wear the hijab during job interviews.

The South American country is in the middle of a national debate over the hospital’s policy. Lourdes Millares of the opposition Podemos party called the hijab-only policy “an assault on the dignity of women” and criticized president Evo Morales for “submission to the rules of another government.” Popular Bolivian television host and gay rights activist Maria Galindo criticized the hospital’s rules as well — she considered it a step backwards into the medieval era.

A lot of prestigious American universities have similarly been gobbling down free food from Muslim tables; how long before we read about dress codes for students enrolling in courses of study bankrolled by Saudi-donated "chairs", or maybe quietly-enforced entrance barriers (i.e., no Jews allowed)?

False advertising

Winter may be just getting underway, but I have something to help me get through the dark months ahead: the first spring seed catalogue has arrived!

My Dominion Seed House catalogue came in the mail a few days ago, and yesterday I finally settled down to examine it. I usually order something from them every year - they're the source for Chaleur seed potatoes, and I'll probably get some multicoloured swiss chard seeds from them this year, as well as the usual Morning Glory (oh, faint hope!) which I try to grow every year.

We're going to cut back on the potatoes this year, in keeping with garden hygiene; you're not supposed to grow potatoes year after year in the same spot, because the soil can end up harbouring diseases particular to potato plants. So this year, we've decided to try growing corn. My aunts in Victoria grow corn, so I can consult them for advice, and the farms around Ottawa grow lots of corn, so I know the climate is suited to it.

Yesterday I turned to the Corn section in the catalogue to see what varieties we might go for, and as my eye travelled down the page, I stopped at a certain entry. Here it is in the online catalogue: http://www.dominion-seed-house.com/en-CA/ProductList.aspx?CatID=838&PL=1. Looks nice, eh? "Best early variety. High yield. This variety of white pop corn is the one that is best adapted for our northern climate..."

But in the printed catalogue, THIS is what you find:

I don't know if Dominion Seed House is quite prepared for all the orders they're going to receive from Las Vegas and the San Fernando Valley, nor for the complaints that are sure to follow: "Hey, I swallowed them and I inserted them, and nothing happened! I want my money back!"

Chesterton on ClimateGate

Well, what do you know?  It looks like the Global Warming hoax has exploded in the sky like a supernova instead of lingering on for decades as its credibility trickled away.  I remember when "scientists" began talking this up in the 90s, and thought, "Well, nobody'll ever fall for THAT!"  To my astonishment, I was wrong - after enough repetition, people began to believe it, and then to believe it fervently. The current scandal is progressing at a satisfyingly fast pace; dumping that much information on the public at once was the way to go. If the incriminating emails had been cautiously dripped out, the bogus "science" community would have been organized and determined enough to rub out the trail the moment it appeared. This has caught them flat-footed, with their corruption on display for all to see.

One person who would NOT have been surprised by this turn of events was G.K. Chesterton. In "The Thing: Why I Am A Catholic" I came across this passage:

Even in those things he [Sir Arthur Keith] betrayed a curious simplicity common among such official scientists. The truth is that they become steadily less scientific and more official. They develop that thin disguise that is the daily wear of politicians. They perform before us the most artful tricks with the most artless transparency. It is like watching a child trying to hide something. They are perpetually trying to bluff us with big words and learned allusions; on the assumption that we have never learnt anything - even of their own funny little ways. Every leader-writer who thunders "Galileo" at us assumes that we know even less about Galileo than he does. Every preacher of popular science who throws a long word at us thinks we shall have to look it up in the dictionary and hopes we shall not study it seriously even in the encyclopaedia. Their use of science is rather like the use made of it by the heroes of certain adventure stories, in which the white men terrify the savages by predicting an eclipse or producing an electric shock. These are in a sense true demonstrations of science. They are in a sense right in saying that they are scientists. Where they are perhaps wrong is in supposing that we are savages.

But it is rather amusing for us who watch the preparations for giving us an electric shock, when we are seriously expected to be shocked by the shock. It is rather a joke when we, the benighted savages, are ourselves not only quite capable of predicting the eclipse, but capable of predicting the prediction. Now among these facts that have been familiar to us for a long time is the fact that men of science stage and prepare their effects exactly as politicians do. They also do it rather badly - exactly as politicians do. Neither of these two modern mystagogues has yet realized how transparent his tricks have become.

The dummy sciences that Chesterton was dealing with in 1926 were Darwinism, spiritualism and eugenics. One thing he didn't foresee was that the following 80 years would erode his healthy skepticism and result in the elevation of "science" by credulous post-Christians to the level formerly occupied by religion. This must be the explanation for our willingness to submit without a struggle to anything with the imprimatur of "Science" slapped on it. This scandal makes me hope that we may be finding our way back from our superstitious veneration of "Science", to something healthier and saner, as Chesterton observed a few years later in "The Well and the Shallows":

Scores and hundreds of times I have heard, through my youth and early manhood, the repetition of that ultimatum: "You must accept the conclusions of science." And it is that notion or experience that has now been concluded; or rather excluded. Whatever else is questionable, there is henceforth no question of anybody "accepting" the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not ask us to accept the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not accept the conclusions of the new science. To do them justice, they deny vigorously that science has concluded; or that it has, in that sense, any conclusion. The finest intellects among them repeat, again and again, that science is inconclusive.

He's done it again

Seeking to top the Grovel Heard Round The World, Little President Fauntleroy scrapes and bows before the Emperor of Japan:

Seriously, where did this guy get his ideas on how to behave before royalty, from watching "The King And I"?

Hot Air Pundit has an interesting series of photos showing other heads of state and government meeting the Japanese Emperor; compare and contrast.

I wish to add that the Prime Minister of Canada knows how to behave properly:

as does our Governor General:

Birthdays approaching

Thomas and James both have birthdays in November - James's comes first, on November 12 (Dean was so relieved that we didn't have a baby born on Remembrance Day). He doesn't care much for cake, except to demolish it - I've gone on a cake- and pie-baking hiatus right now, because James was getting obsessed with destroying the lovely smooth surface of a new cake or pie by plunging any nearby available object into it. I decided to wait a few months before making anything new, so that he could get that little quirk out of his system. It's very demoralizing.

As for presents, it's usually quite easy to get things for both boys - any Thomas the Tank Engine video or book is sure to be a hit, and this year there are more cartoons available on dvd that they'd like: I saw a collection of Scooby Doo episodes, which would probably be very unpleasant for the rest of us, but Thomas or James would LOVE them.

But this week James has gotten into a few fights with Thomas, and yesterday he decided that all his problems would be solved if only he could get a Death Ray. Since I mentioned birthdays next month, that's what he's been asking for. "Oh no! Death Ray Thomas goodbye - oh nooooo!" Despite precedents....

I think he had in mind something that would be a little more personally hands-on, like the famous Death Ray in 'Chandu the Magician':

But what I think I'll probably get (if it can arrive in time) is something called "Magic Dust".  James has been obsessed with a picture of this barbecue spice rub for months.  Something about the colours and the arrangement of the font. He really just wants the bottle, so we'll take out the spice mix and give him the empty bottle, which should make him very happy.

Betrayed

The Captains of the Outlands

The best opinion piece so far on the Pope's audacious invitation to the believing Catholic remnant in the Anglican Church has come from The Belmont Club.

Andrew Brown of the Guardian called the Roman Catholic Church’s offer to admit disaffected Anglicans “the end of the Anglican Communion”, describing the 1/7th of the clergy which its believes will jump ship as a death blow. If so, it is the coup de grace. The Anglican Communion has long been hemorrhaging members, fleeing from a church which many of its members believe has abandoned its traditional beliefs. Most of those who were expected to take up the Catholic Church’s offer to convert are described as social conservatives who think their community has gone too far toward embracing openly gay bishops and women priests. The Daily Mail put the indictment against the Archbishop of Canterbury plainly: he’s no longer a divine, but a politician and those are dime a dozen. “If our Archbishop spent less time fretting about climate change, he might notice the pope is about to mug him”.

Many are echoing Andrew Brown's speculation that this will turn out to be a sort of Trojan Horse manoeuvre, and that by bringing in Anglicans, Benedict will (unwittingly?) import the virus that will destroy priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church. I think this too-clever-by-half conspiracy theory will come to nothing. First of all, I don't think the Holy Father does ANYTHING 'unwittingly'. His enemies perpetually use any excuse to drag out their pepier-mache puppet Pope and try to get people to throw rocks at it, chanting accusations of "clumsy" "out of touch" "undiplomatic" "gaffe" and anything else that will get people excited. He's none of those things. We're just repeatedly surprised to find that his priorities are not the world's priorities, and he won't cower and hide when they are in conflict.

If the Pope really thought that clerical celibacy should go, he wouldn't have to stage this rigmarole to do it. The anti-celibacy propagandists remind me of the Scots in an old Goon Show called 'The MacReekie Rising of '74':

RED HAIRY MCLEGS:
Tonight we march north to England!

SECOMBE:
But England's south!

McLEGS:
Aye, we're going to march right roond the waarld and sneak up on them from behind!

They seem to think that married priests will behave like Tribbles: just get one on board, and before you know it, they'll be tumbling out of overhead chasuble cupboards and purring in the choir stalls. It's not going to happen. Nor will the Church be somehow tricked or trapped into "logically" having to extend the married priesthood beyond the narrow confines of the Anglican Colony. They will always have the last word on who gets to be a priest, and I don't think that it should even be assumed that every Anglican priest who wants to cross over will automatically be handed a comp ticket - married priest couples, for example, where the husband wants to convert but the wife doesn't, would be a scandal to the faithful. In fact, I would think that any married priest whose wife doesn't also convert would probably not be allowed to be a priest in the Catholic Church. I've no evidence for that, just my own gut feeling, coupled with the logic of how Catholic marriage has to work.

Everyone says that "the Catholic Church thinks in centuries" but they don't have to bother when dealing with the Anglican Church. There will be no "precedent", because in another generation, there won't be any more Anglicans to convert. The Catholic Church can read the demographic tables as well as anyone else. There won't be a steady stream of Anglican priests coming to Rome; this generation is it. If Rome decides that future ordinands must be unmarried, then when this generation of priests dies, the brief anomaly of married Catholic priests will die with it.

The thing that seems to be missing most from the commentary about this Anglican Outreach is the question of whom Benedict is really reaching out to. Everyone fusses about the priests and the bishops, and how soft a landing they can make when they parachute out, carrying all their luggage. I don't think the Pope is doing to this to make life easier for Anglican priests. I think he cares about the little nobodies in their little pews, trying to live Catholic Christian lives. THOSE are his flock. For such an intellectual, Benedict XVI has a deep love and reverence for the simple faith of the common man. I think that they were also the reason for his demarche towards the SSPX. While the press were shrieking with outrage about the solitary "shiten shepherd", Benedict was looking at the "clene shepe" - the thousands of lay Catholics who follow these clergy in search of spiritual food. Should THEY remain forever stranded on a flooded knoll, when they could be brought to safety?

TThe principal attraction of the Roman Catholic Church, at least to conservative Anglicans, lies precisely in that it hasn’t been eaten out by socialist/communist faith to the degree that the Anglicans have been. It’s not that they love Rome, they’re simply seeking shelter within its walls.

That’s not to say that Roman walls are safe from the same relentless attack of secularism which did Canterbury in. Given enough time, Rome too will go under; and Benedict knows it is only a matter of time until some ecclesiastical Barack Obama mounts the pulpit to warn in a honeyed baritone against Climate Change and extol the virtues of Islam. For that reason Benedict is picking up stragglers, having judged the Anglicans already shattered. But its real foe, upon which Rome’s eyes are fixed, are the socialist/communists. Osgiliath is driven in and the orcs are hard behind. Roman Catholic Archbishop Nichols, the primate of England, put it bluntly.

He claimed the Pope had made the decision because he wants worshippers to unite in the face of increasing secularism rather than form numerous smaller churchers. … Quoting the Pontiff, he said: “As he has written: ‘In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God.’ “

One part of 'The Return of the King' not shown in the movie was the arrival of the Captains of the Outlands, marching up the south road to Minas Tirith, to join in its defence. The little principalities down the river and along the coast, taking their part in the battle of Gondor against the Enemy. But Gondor was not just the biggest policeman on the block; it was also their mother, the civilization that planted them and made them thrive.

And so the companies came and were hailed and cheered and passed through the Gate, men of the Outlands marching to defend the City of Gondor in a dark hour; but always too few, always less than hope looked for or need asked. The men of Ringlo Vale behind the son of their lord, Dervorin striding on foot: three hundreds. From the uplands of Morthond, the great Blackroot Vale, tall Duinhir with his sons, Duilin and Derufin, and five hundred bowmen. From the Anfalas, the Langstrand far away, a long line of men of many sorts, hunters and herdsmen and men of little villages scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord. From Lamedon, a few grim hillmen without a captain. Fisher-folk of the Ethir, some hundred or more spared from the ships. Hirluin the Fair of the Green Hills from Pinnath Gelin with three hundreds of gallant green-clad men. And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and company of knights in full harness riding grey horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came.

And that was all, less than three thousands full told. No more would come. Their cries and tramp of their feet passed into the City and died away.

Medals for suicide?

A new first for Canada: now we will be giving out medals to soldiers who commit suicide.

Soldiers killed in service-related accidents or suicides will now qualify for a newly created medal intended for military casualties, the Canadian military announced Monday.

The Sacrifice Medal was first unveiled in 2008 to recognize only those killed and wounded by hostile action.

The Department of National Defence said Monday it expanded the criteria to include all service-related deaths after concluding a review this month, which was launched in response to criticisms from the families of slain soldiers and peacekeepers.

There's no indication that this will be for cases of "altruistic suicide" - where a soldier heroically flings himself on a grenade to save his comrades. No, this will be when a guy gets depressed and offs himself - but because it happened while he was engaged in military service, we are now going to consider this deserving of a medal.

I don't want to increase the pain of the families left behind by such suicides, but this whole approach is just wrong. It's an example of the "therapeutic approach" to life which is seeping into everything. Now we no longer give medals because a man's actions are intrinsically admirable; we give them in order to "mean a lot" to the families - to make them feel better, in other worlds.

Medals used to be to acknowledge GOOD things - heroism, bravery, skill. Now they're to be consolation prizes for people who have been victimized by their experiences. If they hadn't gone to a combat zone, this wouldn't have happened, so now Canada has to make it all better. I'm sure there are sad and pathetic stories behind each military suicide, but the same thing is true of EVERY case of suicide. We help nobody by pretending that there's no difference between dying at the hands of an enemy and taking one's own life. The first is endured, even though it's the last thing a soldier wants, for the sake of a greater good. The second is sought out, at the price of rejection of every other good. G.K. Chesterton wrote the definitive description of suicide, and why we must harden our hearts and reject it, no matter how compelling the sob-story that accompanies it:

Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the crossroads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man's crime is different from other crimes--for it makes even crimes impossible.

About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some freethinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin; the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because h has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe.

I notice that Chesterton contrasted the suicide with the martyr, not the soldier who falls in battle. Because this was written in 1908, he was closer to an age where war was regarded as a common hazard of life, and was not sentimentalized. Today, in Canada, not only do we want to honour suicides, some want to give medals to everyone who has the bad fortune to die:

"I have always felt that all soldiers that have fallen in Afghanistan should receive it," he said. "It certainly means a great deal that this will be received."

And another person is quoted as saying

"If a person has forfeited his natural life expectancy in the aid of his country, recognition should still be there."

So now the "All Must Have Prizes" mentality has crept to the point where medals are to be routinely given just for the bad fortune of dying. I'm sure in a few years, we'll have the "Participation Medal" for those who just packed a suitcase and had to leave home for a few months. Why should "recognition" be withheld from those who left friends and family behind, even if they eventually came back?

Entropy

The Anglican Curmudgeon has a good post up about the entropy overtaking The Gay Church. As happens with many (perhaps all) institutions, it carried on for a while on a surge of original energy, but today we see it falling to the inexorable Second Law of Thermodynamics.

In the same way, institutions can for a time defy the Second Law. They accumulate people and energy, and flourish and spread and thrive. Some can maintain their health for centuries, or even millennia. But if the flow of energy out begins to exceed the amount that is taken in, eventually the institution must succumb to the Second Law if the process cannot be reversed.

The Episcopal Church (USA) is no exception to the Law. I submit that all of the outward signs point to a draining from it of people and energy which at the moment is very much greater than what it is managing to attract to itself.

Being purely mortal, the Episcopal Church is sharing the fate of all purely mortal things, which will also be the fate of our governments, cultures and civilizations in time.

But let us not be too downcast. The topic gives me a chance to post a YouTube video by Flanders and Swann, giving a musical physics lesson. I have to say, this little song has worked for me over the years. If someone mentions the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, I immediately hear the syncopated verse in my head:

HEAT - cannot-of-itself - PASS - from ONE - body-to-a-hotter - BODY."

And while we're at it, here's another Flanders & Swann song - 'The Gasman Cometh', animated with Lego figures. This is one of my favourites, and I have even learned to play it on the piano!

Totentanz

A powerful essay on the corruption and spiritual death overtaking a post-Christian world. I was struck by how applicable it is to The Gay Church:

Postmodernism posits the notion of “narratives”, which are an understanding of culture and society largely determined by those in power. It specifically rejects the notions of Divine lawgiver or transcendent moral absolutes as mere narratives of religious power centers whose intent is to control. For the postmodernist, all behavior will ultimately be judged against their own narrative rather than an absolute which transcends culture and time. What the religionist views as a transcendent absolute is seen as nothing more than another narrative by the postmodernist — a narrative imposed by religious and paternalistic authority solely for the purpose of controlling the flock. The intersection of these two radically different worldviews makes compromise and communication virtually impossible between them, since there is no common framework of understanding or language to bridge the gap.

Even the jargon has been imported: "narrative" is one of those soft sociology terms always creeping into Episcopalian plans and programs. And where have we heard this recently?:

Even seeming linguistic commonalities lead to confusion in the interface between these cultures. For the traditionalist, the concept of evil, for example, represents a violation of moral absolutes, by individuals ultimately held responsible for their actions. In the postmodernist vocabulary, evil is corporate, embodied in institutions and groups, and is a social construct rather than a moral one.

It's the flip side of The Madwoman of Second Avenue's claim that individual salvation is "the great Western heresy" (I strongly suspect that the dirty word in that phrase is supposed to be "Western", not "heresy".) It can be summed up as "All for the group, and nothing outside the group."

The rejection of absolute truth, and the resulting repudiation of reason as a basis for judgment, creates an exasperating comfort with contradiction, where cognitive dissonance is the norm, and that which is emotionally compelling or strongly believed becomes Truth by the mere force of conviction driven home by relentless repetition and coercive groupthink. The term “evil” thus no longer serves a universal meaning across the culture, and its use sows confusion rather than commonality. One could multiply examples without end from the linguistic miasma of politically correct speech, politics, and the mind-numbing inanity of popular culture.

This, I think, is the source of the nervous self-congratulation of modern Episcopalians on their "living into tension" - it's a way of escaping the charge of "hypocrisy" (one of the worst slurs possible today) by brutalizing their consciences into submitting to perpetual incoherence and contradiction.

There's a lot of good stuff here, and though the writer was talking about secular civic culture, not a religious denomination, it is eerily accurate as a portrait of The Gay Church, right down to "the ruthless dismissal of all moral restraints in the achievement of pursued goals " (i.e., jerry-rigged "trials" to liquidate opponents and plunder their assets), "through the erosive and relentless undermining of the traditional societal and moral constraints which oppose the desired cultural and political changes."

Read it all: it's The Picture of Dorian Gray's Church.

(Hat tip: American Digest)

Oh, NOW they tell us!

What the well-dressed fascist is wearing this year:

How long does a T-shirt last, anyway? This one is designed to fall apart in 1132 days.


(hat tip: Andrew A. at StandFirm

Das Boobs

Once again, life imitates SCTV.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Pentagon officials are calling for an end to the U.S. military's historical ban on allowing women to serve in submarines.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top U.S. military officer, advocated the policy change in written congressional testimony distributed by his office to reporters on Friday.

"I believe we should continue to broaden opportunities for women. One policy I would like to see changed is the one barring (women's) service aboard submarines," Mullen said.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said he was "moving out aggressively on this."

"I am very comfortable addressing integrating women into the submarine force," Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said in a statement.

Women account for about 15 percent of the more than 336,000 members of the U.S. Navy and can serve on its surface ships. But critics have argued that submarines are different, pointing to cramped quarters where some crews share beds in shifts.

Nancy Duff Campbell, an advocate for expanding the role of women in the U.S. armed forces, said it would be easy to resolve problems associated with so-called "hot-bunking."

Of course, we all know that the Kriegsmarine was experimenting with coed U-Boats over 60 years ago, with disastrous effects on PeeWee's virginity.

Fall in Ottawa

It's been an amazingly warm September; the nicest slow drift into fall that I can remember. The tomatoes are still producing, but we've stopped picking them. I forgot about the zucchini plant for the past month, and yesterday found 5 monster zucchinis under the leaves. They're too big to eat now - they'll have to be chopped up and put in the compost pile. There are still a few small zucchinis growing; I must try to remember to check on them every other day, and pick them while they're still usable. I pulled up the cucumber plants this morning, and put them in the compost too.

Fall is actually my favourite season. The heat is gone, or only returns at rare intervals, when it's really appreciated. The nights are cool and good for sleep, and the air has a lovely scent of leaves, with sometimes an exciting whiff of woodsmoke. At the same time, there's something a little tense about the season - I always get the feeling that we're living on borrowed time in the fall, and inevitably the winter will come, bringing discomfort and inconvenience. And even a bit of fear; winter is the season when you can die if you get careless and you're not fortified against Nature.

Every morning I see big Vs of Canada geese heading south. They started late this year, not until the second week of September. I've seen them heading south just after mid-August, so maybe this means we'll have a mild, or at least a late, winter.

This morning, on my way with James to pick up my first passenger, I saw a coyote crossing Limebank Rd. in front of us! That was just south of the airport, about 3 kilometers south of our house - not what you'd call out in the country, but definitely near an outlying suburb, that's just being developed. I was very surprised; I've never seen a coyote before, and certainly never expected to see one so close to the city. People better keep their kitties locked up in the house.

Summertime reading

I did a fair bit of reading over the summer. Partly it was because it was so wet and cold (unlike the fall, which has been splendid so far!) and I had little incentive to go out into the garden. But I also came by some interesting books that I wouldn't normally have found. Back in May, I started volunteering at our public library - not in the actual library itself, you understand, but in the little used bookshop it runs as a fundraiser. A number of libraries in Ottawa do this, but our local Greenboro branch is very new and the bookshop has a special little area all to itself out in the foyer, so I think our bookshop is probably the best in town. Some of the books we sell are library discards, but most - probably 90% - are donations from the public, and they're really very good quality. The sorters try to stock mostly new books, published within the past 5 years, and people donate an amazing number of brand-new hardcover novels, which we sell for $2 each. Paperbacks go for $1, as do dvds, videos, cds, and tapes. Plus we also have a "Free" bin for magazines and other books that are considered too old or shabby to put on the shelves. All the proceeds go to buy items for the library.

What's nice about our shop is that we also sell fresh coffee, water, juice and snacks, so it's not so much like working in a library as running a tiny used bookshop. I really enjoy it - I go 2 hours a week, and very much like looking over the new books that have come in each week. Of course, I always end up buying some for myself, almost every week, and it's gotten to the point now where I've begun to weed out the books I have at home by donating them to the bookshop to make room for the new ones.

A few weeks ago I bought the 6-volume set of Churchill's war memoirs, and have started in on "The Gathering Storm". Naturally, the era he's describing, of time-wasting and passivity as danger closed in, is starting to remind me of our current decadent time. (Mark Steyn termed it "jaunty insouciance", in view of the rather less reflective, more carefree American character.) No doubt I'll be posting quotes from it as I proceed.

Another book I found (in the Free bin) was a biography of Bernard Spilsbury, who was, I guess, the chief Forensic Examiner of Great Britain for the first half of the 20th century. He did autopsies for and testified in some of Britain's most famous murder trials, including the Crippen case, the Armstrong case (both of which were combined and fictionalized in the novel "Malice Aforethought" which was twiced filmed for British TV) the Brides in the Bath, the Seddon case, and many others. The book dealt with his most famous cases, as well as his less public work, performing autopsies all over Britain. He pretty much worked himself to death, and the collapse of his own health, as well as the deaths of his sons in WWII led to depression and eventual suicide. A sad ending for such a brilliant and respected man. I'd never heard of him until I read this book, even though I'd read about the Crippen case before. I suppose he's remembered among people who deal professionally with forensics, but I think the public has forgotten him.

The book was quite dryly written, but it did provide a few humorous moments. One case that Spilsbury investigated was that of a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Vaquier, who fell in love with an Englishwoman and poisoned her husband with strychnine. He purchased the poison at a London chemist's shop, and, as was required by law, the purchases were recorded in a book. Vaquier must have thought himself very cunning and elusive, because he used a pseudonym:

Between Vaquier's arrival in London in February and the first week of March he paid several visits to Bland's shop, buying toilet articles and a few harmless chemicals which he said he needed for his wireless experiments. Bland could speak French, and the two became on friendly terms. Vaquier gave his name as Vanker, which, when it came to an entry in the poison book, he spelt Wanker.

Oh, yes, if I were planning a nefarious poisoning scheme, that's the name which I'd assume in order to pass unnoticed by any Englishman! "Mr...uh...Wanker?" "Oui...I mean, Yes, zat is my name!"

Another thing I noticed was how trials have changed over the decades. Describing the Seddon trial, the authors write, "The trial began at the Old Bailey on 4 March, before Mr. Justice Bucknill; among the longest of modern capital trials, it was to last ten days." Living as we now do in the Age of O.J., it's almost inconceivable that a MAJOR trial could be conducted and concluded in just 10 days, and that that would be reckoned a LONG trial! This spring we went through a trial involving our mayor, and an Inquiry about alleged improprieties by Brian Mulroney, and they both droned on desultorily for about 3 months apiece. Those snappy murder trials of the British are now a thing of the past.