I just don't get it

'Herman Cain's tax plan, picked apart by rivals and independent analysts, would wallop the middle class and benefit the rich.' from the NYT 30 October.

WHY????? are middle class people supporting someone who is going to do them in further than they already have been hit? Will someone please explain what goes on in people's minds?

Or is it that there is nothing going on in there?

Here's a clue from the same article: '“The way he words things, he doesn’t make it real complicated,” said a woman who declined to give her name.'

I just don't understand.

I still don't get it

From Bill Keller's article today, Is the Tea Party Over?

Perry is the most ardent of Tea Party ideologues. His book, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington,” is a manifesto of 10th Amendment hyperfederalism and radical individualism, assailing the constitutional basis of Social Security, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, consumer protection, and “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, establishing national labor laws,” and so on.

So, why pray tell, if he is so against any federal laws regulating this list of things, he and the Tea Party ilk are so obsessed with regulating marriage and reproductive access?

Sadly, the answer is too clear, so clear I don't even have to state it.

God help us.

Mill River

It was such a gorgeous day today that I ignore the cold I have and the leaf peeper crowds and the packing I have to do and the sermons I have to write (tomorrow and funeral Monday) and took off for a short walk on the LT/AT. I haven't been out since I fell in the NH Whites two months ago and gave myself a huge haematoma and banged my ankle so any stamina I had had is long gone.

Clarendon Gorge and the Mill River were altered by Tropical Storm Irene. This leaf is in a dry spot that up until 28 August 2011 was underwater. The river flows with greater volume of water today than three weeks ago but it still is not the river of this summer.

This whale-like rock also was underwater; the force of the river smoothed it out to transform its shape, to soften its edges. It is now covered with fine river silt.

This living water flows far too fast and strong for any nice baptisms. It churns enough to make one dizzy watching it.

I don't know how many more times I will have to return, how long it will take until my presence will be but a shadow of memory.

End of an era

In tribute to Steve Jobs, here is my current line up of Macintosh products: my MacBook Pro, an airport, my 1G shuffle, my 20G iPod (generation 4), my iPhone 3GS and my iPad 1. The photo does not show my 1988 Mac Plus (which I still have) on which I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation. My father wisely decided a Mac would be much better for this intuitive brain than a PC. He was right. Even in 1994, I would lug my Mac Plus to work to do desktop publishing because I knew it would look so much better and would take me a quarter of the time to do than on a PC. I have never owned a PC and never intend to.

TBTG for creative, imaginative minds like Jobs' who thought different and encouraged the rest of us to do so, too.

Another theme song

These songs keep popping into my head.... Here is today's from Peter Gabriel (with Kate Bush):

in this proud land we grew up strong
we were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

no fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my face, I've changed my name
but no one wants you when you lose

don't give up
'cos you have friends
don't give up
you're not beaten yet
don't give up
I know you can make it good

though I saw it all around
never thought I could be affected
thought that we'd be the last to go
it is so strange the way things turn

drove the night toward my home
the place that I was born, on the lakeside
as daylight broke, I saw the earth
the trees had burned down to the ground

don't give up
you still have us
don't give up
we don't need much of anything
don't give up
'cause somewhere there's a place
where we belong

rest your head
you worry too much
it's going to be alright
when times get rough
you can fall back on us
don't give up
please don't give up

'got to walk out of here
I can't take anymore
going to stand on that bridge
keep my eyes down below
whatever may come
and whatever may go
that river's flowing
that river's flowing

moved on to another town
tried hard to settle down
for every job, so many men
so many men no-one needs

don't give up
'cause you have friends
don't give up
you're not the only one
don't give up
no reason to be ashamed
don't give up
you still have us
don't give up now
we're proud of who you are
don't give up
you know it's never been easy
don't give up
'cause I believe there's the a place
there's a place where we belong

Keeping Vigil

This week a lovingly-made sachet [the purple square with butterflies at the base of the vase] of rosemary arrived from California. It is no ordinary sachet but a holy one for interspersed with the rosemary (for remembrance) are some of Kirstin's ashes. Before the snow falls, which could be any day, a couple of us will gather to commit them to God's care in the orchard at Church of Our Saviour, Killington, VT.

Church of Our Saviour is a tiny congregation that worships in a Norman-style 1895 stone church. Located on the Killington Flats, deep in a valley, the church has long ministered to the local community. These days, it is deeply involved in reaching out to those affected by the flooding caused by Irene. Some of the worst flooding happened here, as attested to in this photo:

(The pickup still is nose down in the pavement.)

In any event, Church of Our Saviour has historic connections with Holy Cross and some of the priests who have lived there have kept to the Benedictine way of life, labour is prayer. The church has had a working farm off and on and now there is a resident baker (who makes excellent fruit tarts which are sold at Monastery Greetings), who also is the church organist and maintains a Benedictine pattern of life. The church is always open for the way-farer and since the mid-1990s has revived its guest house ministry. There are now walking trails up above the church in the hills to enhance the sojourner's time.

So it is in this context that some of Kirstin's ashes will be interred. The apple trees had a good crop this year. Her life will become part of Our Saviour's.

Meanwhile, I keep vigil, placing the sachet by the 1000 peace crane arrangement that Kirstin received from her cat-sitter a year ago. Kirstin's laughter, stability, clarity and commitment to God and God's creation help me maintain steadiness and hope in this incredibly stressful time in my life.

'I believe in the Communion of Saints....' Don't know how else I could make it.