Microsoft, please update your pseudepigraphal vocabulary

***Updated at the end***

I'm writing on 1 Enoch at the moment and Word is not being helpful.

Maccabean: suggest replacing with Macarena
Pseudepigrapha: no suggestions
pseudepigraphal: no suggestions
pseudepigraphon: no suggestions
intertestamental: no suggestions
Intertestamental: no suggestions
rabbinics: suggest replacing with rabbinic
pericope: suggest replacing with periscope
unfallen: suggest replacing with ungallant

Enochic: (the clear winner despite Macarena for Maccabean) suggest replacing with gnocchi, anarchic, or erotic.

If you like Dante and you like Tolkien you should read 1 Enoch. I suspect that maybe Tolkien did.


***Update***
Hasmoneans: suggest replacing with Tasmanians, Houstonians, Harmoniums. Really, what good is a spell checker that can't keep Hasmonians straight from Harmoniums?

Wheatstone Academy: Separating Chaff since 2000

Here's a shameless plug for Wheatstone Academy, a program I have been privileged to work for several times since the inaugural conference.

Wheatstone does the kind of education that excites me: it doesn't get much better than touring art museums, reading Plato, dangling off cliffs, etc. With high school students. In FabuLos Angeles.

If you or your bright and motivated adolescents are looking for an opportunity to blow the circuits on your Christianity I can't think of a better opportunity. Tell them I sent you.

To learn more check out the web site. Pay especial attention to the new promo video that features my friends and students. Oh, and my still photography.

IT LIVES!!! John Scott and St. Paul's win 5 hedons

Today at la House an honorary D.Mus was conferred on John Scott, the Organist and Director of Music at St. Thomas 5th Ave.




Dr. Scott mentioned in passing conversation that while he was organist at St. Paul's London they undertook the recording of THE ENTIRE COVERDALE PSALTER IN ANGLICAN CHANT.





I haven't heard the recording yet but I hereby grant it a pre-emptive 5 hedons* solely for the nature of the project.



And the recording is available at Amazon no less! I'm in the middle of a project on the psalter so the recording came right out of my book "budget". Hurrah.

Run out and get this in order to support Coverdale, Anglican Chant, St. Paul's, John Scott, and Your Immortal Soul.


*The hedonometer has lapsed as of late. For those who do not recall, I reserve the inalienable right to review animals, minerals, and vegetables and assign a score ranging from -5 to 5. To score a 5 usually means you wrote a poem and your last name is Alighieri.

THI Reminisced

Almost exactly 10 years ago I began the THI adventure. I've now worn the ring for 6 years. THI isn't the best thing that's ever happened to me, but it's close.

I came across a discussion board for incoming chums. They're so endearing (they don't get the Iliad). They're in for so much time in the crucible of learning (they have no idea how little they get the Iliad).

In 4 years most of them will emerge and we'll stand as brethren who wear the ring. They'll rise as battle-weathered undergraduates with a few less sparkles in their eyes but much harder squints that sparkle nonetheless. They'll know all the inside jokes that never die ("But where's the 4th?"), they'll know the jargon ("It's 'chum' to you."), and they'll shake their heads at each other and wonder what on earth to make of the incoming class who look so very young and so very foolish.

A few of those who rise to THI will graduate and rise again to tasks we all consider extraordinary: Oxford, D.C., Iraq, or territory untrampled by ring-bearers--territory increasingly rare as cohorts march forth.

Most ring-bearers will rise to noble tasks of apparent ordinariness: Parenthood, clergydom, business, teaching. God forbid we take them for granted.

Some few will succumb to the tempations we all face: Divorce, alcoholism, agnosticism, pessimism. By God's grace we are and always shall be sustained.

I spent a few weeks this summer with ring-bearers. Most of those gathered have moved on in life. Married, careered, dissertating, or somewhere in between these. We look back at the ring-bearers of 2007 wondering at how much they've changed since 2003, and how much more they'll grow in years to come. And what will another 10 years bring for us whose rings are dull and scratched from the work of our hands? God alone knows, for the road goes ever on and on.

At one recent gathering everyone present wore the ring, and it might as well have been the anniversary of Agincourt, for each did strip his sleeve and show his scars. And the brotherhood did stand together as friends of unmitigable bond, a bond worth dying for, but mostly a bond of endless laughter and the unbearable joy of learning in fellowship.

Take as a starting point the atoning work of Christ through his incarnation, death, and resurrection. Love your God, read your bible, follow the dialectic. Everything else pretty much takes care of itself.

So, aspirants to the class of 2011, the Perpetual Members, for whom I presume to speak, salute you. Keep your feet on the ground, your noses in your books, and your heads in the clouds. Learn what friendship is. Kick Satan in the teeth. Ask JMNR why there's no hope for you and you're the hope of the West.

And when you wear the ring we'll stand as brethren. Forever.

Go see Aphrodite before it's too late!

CNN/Reuters reports the Getty will "plea-bargain" on art theft. Integrity is such a downer for art collections (sarcasm).

We have until 2010 to see her. I personally haven't since she's at the Getty Villa where I have not been.

Official page for the sculpture (whence the image) here.

And, dude!, Getty endowment exceeds $5 billion? Who knew? Can we get them to drop a few hundred mill's on something English Gothic that's within driving distance? And quake proof?

Live from Los Angeles (or close enough), UW is out.

Why Opera Rules

And I don't mean the web browser, which I know nothing about. Nor do I mean Oprah, who I understand is even more popular than the web browser.

Currently I am listening to Lakme, which is awesome. But.

It's an opera written in French. Apparently this is not so usual as Italian. Apparently Italian is best for anything loud; this has been verified by every experience I've had hearing Italians, and that's just when they're talking, but I digress.

Lakme is written in French, but Leo Delibes was an avowed Frenchman. I presume. I haven't actually checked. But it is pronounced "d'leeb" so I presume.

Ok, fair enough, why not have an opera in French?

Well, I did just find out the setting is India and prominently features covert Hindus, British imperialists, and an interracial, interreligious love tragedy betwixt representatives of each party, none of which, I again presume, speak French.

But, again just presuming, Operators (hyuck, I don't know another term for them so I made that up) might not train much in Hindi or even English for that matter, so idealism collides with pragmatics and authorial determinism, and we have a French opera about Pommies and Hindoos.

Beyond the is-ness of this, I can't do too much more explaining. I just like that opera can be like this, and truthfully it's harder to find an opera without a wacky premise.

The Kumars at #42, somewhere in the first season, do a rather brilliant expose to prove that all opera is ripped off from Bollywood but is not as long, exuberant, or absurd. It's a tense argument with a controversial conclusion but I found the case for Bollywood strong.

So, the circle comes, um, full circle as we finally have an opera, surely ripped off from Bollywood somewhere, that actually has an Indian story but is written and scored in some Frankish place which is almost surely not Vietnam.

If this kind of commingling doesn't contribute to Global Warming I don't know what would, and this is why I am a proponent of Global Warming.

White Whale of Breviaries, 5 Hedons

Do you remember painful joy of learning the splendourof Microsoft Excel? Hours and hours spent perfecting data organization and presentation, formulas that make you cry for happiness, discovering keyboard shortcuts that even the guys working in development don't know, remember that agony and ecstasy?

You don't remember that? Well, I do. I'm not compulsively left brained (usually) but when it comes to keeping track of everything exactly so, nothing beats a perfect (and I do mean Perfect) spreadsheet where there is a precise place for everything and everything precisely in its place. If you can relate to that I have the prayer book for you.


I have posted previously about the revived Anglican Breviary. Summer being here I have started using it, or trying to use it at least. My impression? Harpooning Moby Dick might be easier than mastering this summa of devotionals. I go to the spikiest Episcopal seminary and this breviary has got me flailing. But! It's the kind of flailing that leaves me sore and begging for more.

Can you man* up and sort out your own II Class Double conflict with a 3rd rank Octave for this solar day and lunar season?

Can you pound in the appropriate antiphon, nocturn(s), and versicle?

Can you pick and roll lessons and slam dunk them from outside the paint (I mean liturgical color)?

Can you do it 8 times a day?

Well, I can't. But I'm having fun trying and learning. I can't walk into the saloon (or chapel) and pony up to the bar (or rail) with the swagger that says "I pray bigger than you." I probably never will. But it sure is satisfying to try.

Sound good? This is the breviary for you, as attested with reassuring ecumenical latitude.

5 Hedons for a bound volume that is (for my money) as good as English devotion gets.
---

*Or woman up, I'm not biased and neither is the breviary.

Herbert's The Sacrifice

Re-found George Herbert's The Sacrifice yesterday poking through a book of his stuff. Only two weeks late for Good Friday, but I hope to remember it next year on that day.

I have a soft spot for Herbert the Poet-Parson who lived through what must have been the most-trying era of Anglicanism. Eliot says Herbert is better than Donne. I wouldn't know but it's a fair compliment.

The Sacrifice is here.