DaveTown

“It isn’t the sad people in movies who make me cry, it’s the good ones.”

–Roger Ebert

“Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing and life doesn’t.”

– Neil Gaiman

Or else operatives from Adidas have slipped hallucinogenics in their water supply:

Writing about what it takes to have courage, G.K. Chesterton tells us that one “must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine”.

The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong- doer.

– Marcus Aurelius

Here On The Island – by Lewis Napper – A Scholarly Critique of the Style, Symbolism and Sociopolitical Relevance of Gilligan’s Island

” . . . the secret of life lies in humility and laughter.”

– G.K. Chesterton

Dave at Oklahoma Lefty gets it right:

“Let’s establish a couple of things here…both the Left and the Right have a dirty and bloody past. This is a simple fact of history and it’s not worth either denying or trying to turn into a battle cry. Doing so is simplistic and ignorant. Sadly though, the polemics on both sides generally could care less about pesky little things like historical accuracy or holistic / big picture outlooks.

The simple fact of the matter is, that if either the Right or the Left were left unchecked and to their own devices, the result would be horrendous. Things like authoritarianism and totalitarianism couldn’t give two shits about Left and Right. All they care about is power. And if you think for a second that both the modern Right and the modern Left aren’t filled with people [having] authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies then you are just a blind fool.”

So in Arizona it will soon be a crime to not to be able to prove your citizenship or legal residence.

So, if say, a light-hued person, such as myself, was walking down the street in Phoenix, a police officer could suspect that I am in this country illegally, having fled Sweden for the economic opportunities and political freedoms unavailable in my native land, intent upon stealing jobs assembling Ikea furniture from deserving American citizens. Upon this eminently reasonable suspicion, he could demand my “papers” (as they say in the movies), and if I failed to provide him sufficient proof, he could arrest me for that very fact. Not for being in the country illegally, necessarily, but merely for having the temerity to appear in public, flaunting my lily-white skin, without proper identification.

Is that how it works?

One of the paradoxes of our age, which has so far not distinguished itself as an Age of Faith, is that millions of men who have found it impossible to believe in God have blindly submitted themselves in human faith to every charlatan who has access to a printing press, a movie screen or a microphone.

– Thomas Merton

The Easter Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

Again, Edward Feser succinctly explains what Easter is all about.

Excerpt:

The Man Who said “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” was either raised from the dead or He was not. If He was, then His startling claims received thereby a divine seal of approval, and the only rational response of the non-Christian can be to request baptism. If He was not so raised, then His words reveal Him to have been a megalomaniacal lunatic. An interesting lunatic, maybe; a lunatic whose historical, cultural, religious, and moral impact has vastly – one might say miraculously – outweighed that of any sane man.

Edward Feser, one of the brilliant minds of our generation (though he would be loathe, I think, to be referred to that way), answers definitively the question: “So, what is ‘Good Friday’ all about, anyway?”

I was going to insert a small quote from the piece here, but you just need to go read the whole thing.

It’s funny how things work.

Jaime Escalante, the math teacher who inspired the film “Stand and Deliver” died yesterday of cancer at the age of 79.

Coincidentally, also yesterday, I was feeling particularly negative and depressed. I was questioning my ability as an educator, I was discouraged about the state of education in general, and, really, to be honest, I was just generally down on life in general.

But thinking again about Mr. Escalante’s life has given me a boost. Mr. Escalante purposely left the world of business because he wanted to make a difference by teaching. Once he got to the classroom, and found that it was far from the ideal he had envisioned, he didn’t get discouraged. He worked with what he had, refused to allow his students to not believe in themselves, and performed feats that his peers and patrons (fancy teacher talk for parents) thought impossible.

I needed to be reminded: in education, there is no impossible.

I needed to be reminded: kids are capable, but need to be challenged to excel.

I needed to be reminded: what I do is important.

I needed to be reminded: there can be joy in performing the tasks that make up our lives.

So, what happened was, my discouraged state of mind was cured (well, temporarily alleviated, at least; depression is a tricky thing), by the passing of Mr. Escalante from this life to the next. Not that I think God timed the man’s death for my benefit or anything like that. But, in truth, it points out how none of us knows how our life can and will effect the lives of others. The world is a large, complicated tapestry of events and people, both good and bad; no one of us can see the whole thing at one time. The life and death of Mr. Escalante uncovered a little piece of the tapestry for me, and it was refreshing.

John Donne wrote: “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am part of mankind”. But sometimes, in a life well lived, a man’s death can edify me as well.

Thank you Mr. Escalante, and rest in peace.

“Like most dreamers, I confuse disenchantment with truth”

– Jean Paul Sartre

Let us all, for Lent, do our usual analyzing of politics and current events, but (and this is the hard part) without ascribing motives to individuals.

For example, if the President, or Rush Limbaugh, or Simon Cowell (insert your favorite villain here) says something, try your hardest not to assume his intentions are evil and that he is trying single-handedly to bring down Western Civilization. Instead, use the energy you save by not hating him to thoughtfully analyze the substance of what he has said, and to come up with a reasonable alternative.

Let me know how it works.

Modern philosophy can be described as the Reformation carried on by other means.

– Ralph McInerny (RIP)

This proposal, from John Médaille on the blog “Distributist Review” seems fair:

“Each congressman will be required to wear those NASCAR suits which prominently display the names of the corporate sponsors. So the typical congressthing might have Big Pharma on his chest and Exxon on his ass, with the big banks running up and down his arms. Each politician would be required to begin and end each speech with the statement ‘This message brought to you by …’ and list the names of his three top contributors. And each bill will be required to bear the logos of its corporate sponsors. This won’t make politics any more democratic, but it will make it a lot more fun. And a lot more honest. We can dispense with the fictions of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ and go directly to the real issues: ‘I favor the big banks’ or ‘I favor the manufacturers,’ and such like.”