Blog CPR

I am trying to resuscitate the place, since so much has happened since I last posted those ridiculous pictures.

For one - I'm now married.

Two - We are expecting our first child, our son, June 14,

And three - we live roughly 9 hours away from BOTH sides of our families, and are the only ones that have moved further than 20 minutes...so we're rare. Or unique. Or rather, our experiences are quite different from that of our families and close friends, so this is one way I want to attempt to keep in touch.

A bonus is if I can get a following on here, I won't rely on Facebook to update family and friends on the latest and greatest news.

Teaser for next post: We attended our first childbirth class (and hopped in on the last night of a previous class, for reasons that will be explained in said-upcoming post) and we are more excited than ever for the grand entrance of our son! Details and stories forthcoming!

A Walk Down the Lane

This was the highlight of the walk: I stood on the culvert and looked stupid.

Actually, no, there were some very pretty trees. Faith took this one of a huge pine by standing almost directly underneath it. It doesn't look like there are needles, but it really did have plenty of needles on the ends of the branches, she just cropped them out in the pic.

A very pensive Faith. One can only really be truly pensive when one has a stick on one's chin.

Our lovely creek! Surrounded by the....dead....or....dying shrubs. Yeah. But it looks good, eh?

Our awesome shadow picture. Yes, we posed, and let me tell you, I'm lucky Faith hasn't put my shadow YMCA pictures up on her blog yet.

Surprised By Joy Quotes

I'm finally reading C.S. Lewis' Surprised By Joy all the way through for the first time. Granted, I'm only in the middle of the second chapter, but it's farther than where I was the last time I picked it up (first chapter). And I've got my American Scholar HB 2 pencil with me. Not as cool as Dixon Ticonderoga, but hey, it's got a lead and an eraser, along with the added bonus of that cheerful yellow colour.

And so, without further ado, I give you the words of Clive Staples Lewis.

"From a very early age I could draw movement - figures that looked as if they wre really running or fighting - and the perspective is good. But nowhere, either in my brother's work or my own, is there a single line drawn in obedience to an idea, however crude, of beauty. . . . Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did."

"The charm of tradition and the verbal beauty of Bible and Prayer Book (all of them for me late and acquired tastes) were [my father's] natural delight, and it would have been hard to find an equally intelligent man who cared so little for metaphysics."

"As Owen Barfield once said to me, "The trouble about insects is that they are like French locomotives - they have all the works on the outside." The works - that is the trouble. Their angular limbs, their jerky movements, their dry, metallic noises, all suggest either machines that have come to life or life degenerating into mechanism. You may add that in the hive and the anthill we see fully realized the two things that some of us most dread for our own species - the dominace of the female and the dominace of the collective."

"My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them."

On praying for a miracle to save his dying mother: "I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even without fear. He was, in my mental picture of this miracle, to appear neither as Savior nor as Judge, but merely as a magician; and when He had done what was required of Him I supposed He would simply - well, go away."

At his school in Hertfordshire: "I was already doing Latin exercises (as taught by my mother) when I went there in 1908, and I was still doing Latin exercises when I left there in 1910; I had never got in sight of a Roman author."

I can feel the frustration of this last sentence coming through. My father has always said the point and purpose of going through Latin grammar (or the grammar of ANY language, in this case) is to read an author in his native tongue, to understand his words.

Down With Down Syndrome

A few weeks ago I read an article in the local paper about some family who had surgery done on their daughter who has Down Syndrome. The surgery was to keep her from growing bigger than her 9 year old size (I believe she is a few years older now), and it was successful. Her growth stunted, her parents now feel they can take care of her better without her gaining the natural weight and length of an adult. The hassle is cut in half.

Obviously, this article bothered me, and I didn't really know how to respond to it, even though I was immediately distrubed by the idea. Albert Mohler recently wrote an excellent post about aborting children with the possibility of having Down Syndrome.

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=856

It's definitely worth the read; it's short, concise, and to the point. I know lots of families with children afflicted with Down Syndrome, and I have seen how well they handle and train up their children. Sure it's difficult, but does that mean we should shrink from the challenge of having Down Syndrome people in America? What is so threatening about it, after all?

Totally LOST

Dr. Leithart has an excellent post about the second season of LOST. Click this post's title to get to it.

I agree completely with what he has to say about the main characters. They are all complete psychos. I do appreciate some of the newer characters, like Eko. And I've like the Korean couple for a long time, they are fun to watch. They keep it together better than the rest of the survivors.

Let the record show that Sayid is indeed the best character: cool, calm, brave, strong, intelligent, the middle eastern good looks, and the best hair on the show. Unfortunately, he has bad taste in women.
In short, I'm glad he doesn't have mental and emotional breakdowns every 5 minutes like Jack, Kate, Michael, Shannon, Charlie, and Hot Lips (aka Analucia).

Oh, and the dialogue is idiotic. Let the record show that the screenwriter ought to be drug out into the street and shot. It's cruel and unusual punishment to give the most annoying characters a limited vocabulary. Michael keeps spouting the same things over and over again. "They took my son!" Yes! Alright, you pathetic, so-called man! We heard you the last 20 million times you said that.

I'm only watching the rest of season 2 because 1) I appreciate Sawyer's dry humor, even though he is dirty, crude, and a bad sort of 'hickboy' and 2) I think Sayid is simply the bees knees. (And I'm not one to go crazy over actors. Good ones are far and few between, especially these days.)