Blogging woes and Savannah withdrawl

Mahalo, as Hunter Thompson used to say. In this cruel year of our lord, 2009 spring has begun with water standing ankle deep in the low-lying areas around the Circle H Ranch up in good ole Hernando, MS. The Right Reverend Andrew Stoddard, shepherd of First United Methodist in Ripley assures me he has materials at hand in case we righteous folk need to start building an ark. I believe him. Andy has no reason to lie about these things.

How bout that beating Louisville dropped on Arizona, eh? Wow. Those kids are so doggone atheletic! What a beat down! It looked like a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition game toward the end, behind the back passing, clowning. whoah mama, what a rout.

My wife is a southside Louisville native and her family is split right down the middle, UK and UofL, kind of an Ole Miss / State thing in bluegrass state. This tournament, as for our house, we shall stand with Lousivlle.

I thought the “Christian Cinema” story wasn’t bad. Catches a real trend out there. I hope neither Greg Robbins, who’s a nice guy, nor Kirk Cameron, who I don’t know (but who my wife and Leslie Criss both agree is a “cutie”), takes offense to the little movie review I did in today’s paper. I figure that the 7 or 8 folks who read my section each week might get a laugh out of it. I thought it was good natured and harmless, and I wanted to convey that I think folks really should see both of these movies. I really liked them both. I think any movie that addresses the sad fact that half of all marriages today end in divorce deserves it props. Also, I admire “C Me Dance” for taking a bold stance on the reality of evil. We tend, today, to downplay the reality of evil, spiritualize it away. I think that’s wrong and the movie seems to agree with me.

Today I’m hunkered down with my laptop, a goodly supply of melba toast and pesto spread, and two cats sworn to defend me against all the world’s evil. I figure I’ll shrewdly rip the tops off three of four Cokes, read this week’s New Yorker, and watch a DVD of old Simpsons episodes. Maybe toward evening slide out on the porch, smoke a cigar, maybe eat a peanutbutter sandwich and write a letter to my old hero Barry Hannah who isn’t feeling so well these days and needs our prayers.

Derby, you know, is just around the corner, and today I’ll take a look at the possible field. Derby is a time for getting gussied up and preening around like a peacock, making irresponsible, impulse wagers with friends and generally pretending there are still such things as social grace and Southern hospitality.

I have “C Me Dance” and “Fireproof” still on loan from a good friend and I might even watch those two movies, again. It’s always neat to see something with Mississippi folk, and something filmed in the great state of Georgia, where I just left.

Aloha,

Galen

secularization, Hemingway, and The Simpsons

I anticipate getting a few emails about my column in today’s Journal. I really hope people don’t think I’m an irrelegious grouch. I’m really not. I just think there’s an awful lot of intellectually dishonest talk out there in the conservative Christian media about how religious our Founding Fathers were. I just don’t buy it. Look at Thomas Jefferson, my favorite of the FF’s.  A man completely in love with all things French, especially revolutionary ideas. The whole thrust of the French Revolution was the ascendancy of reason and science over old forms of authority – authority which especially meant religion and the church.

I don’t see how anybody can claim to read history objectively and not agree with that.

I’m not saying that I completely agree with the whole thrust of the French Revolution. It went pretty far off the tracks eventually. Still, the ideas of science, reason, democracy, egalitarianism – all of it – were the ideas that Jefferson and others took to heart in building this country. They were trying to get away from Christendom, a Christian theocracy , the old world, authority based on religious ideas. They were doing something totally new and I’m convinced that what they envisioned was a secular world where religion is welcome but private.

So, I hope people understand me on this one. I’m a devout Catholic. I love my church and I love God and my brothers and sisters. I’m not an atheist. For the record. I just don’t drink the Kool Aid when it comes to insisting that the FF’s were all a bunch of evangelicals who meant to build a Christian theocracy.

And, as always, I don’t mind if folks disagree with me. I have a number of close friends and colleagues, sources on whom I rely regularly, who strongly disagree with me. Fine. God bless them. They’re entitled to their opinions and I love them for it. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Still, as far as FOCA, well, at least Pat Robertson and I can agree on something

So, on to another subject.

Friday, like a good Catholic boy, I was stuffing my mouth wtih catfish and greens, staring at the Lee County Courthouse when my good friend the Rev. Jimmy Barnes of St. Paul UM sneaked up behind me and told me he’s trying to get together seven pastors for a servivce on Holy Thursday at his church. I think this is a great idea and I’d like to help him promote it when he makes more plans.

This weekend I have  few projects. First, fix this slow leak in my roof that’s been worrying me for about two weeks. It’s right above my favorite reading spot on the sofa, an expanding, brown ring that’s growing like infection across the candlelight paint on my ceiling. I’m not really up to the job but maybe I can fumble my way through it.

Tonight, I’m reading Ernest Hemingway’s last book, published posthumously, “True and First Light.” I skulked around the fiction section of the Lee County Library today on my lunch hour. My friend Jan Willis looked happily content in his office, behind that Tiffany lamp, so I didn’t go over and bother him. I picked up a new James Lee Burke audiobook, and Tom Wolfe’s “Hooking Up,” which I’m not too enthusiastic about but I liked “I Am Charolette Simons” so I’ll give this a try.

My favorite thing to do on Friday night is watch my DVDs of The Simpsons, episode after episode, while my wife and cats sleep. I’ll watch until two, three in the morning sometimes. My favorite all-time episode is “Mr. Plow.”

Sometime this weekend I’ll get around to finishing my story about St. Patrick’s Day, then I’ll go over to the boneyard and do some jogging.

I’ve gotten some really nice emails and calls, lately, and I’m very grateful. I have to take the good with the bad and I’m getting better about that. Todd Vinyard, our IT man at the Journal is going to help me next week in setting up a formate where I can do a live blog on Saturday mornings. I hope to accomplish that by next Saturday. Wow, people will really get online and let me have it then, eh?

La paz con usteds, hermanos y hermanas

Galen