Unreliable statistics

Reading TIME Magazine this evening, I came across an article about the website AshleyMadison.com that had some content that I would like to strenuously object to. The article, titled Adultery 2.0, is about the fairly despicable site, which provides a platform for people who want to cheat on their spouses. It's pretty terrible overall, but one line in particular stopped me in my tracks and made me exclaim aloud, "You've got to be kidding me!"

"Traffic on the site - which takes its name from the two most popular female names in 2001, the year it launched - tripled on June 22, the day after Father's Day."

Excuse me? In whose world was Ashley one of the top two girls' names in 2001? Madison was, in fact, (unfortunately) #2 in 2001, but Ashley was all the way at #4. (Source: Social Security Administration) Doesn't everyone know that Emily was #1 for 12 years, absolutely precluding that statement from being true? Ashley hadn't been in the top 2 since 1995.

Duh!

Awesome Old Stuff

A couple awesome things in the news recently:

Roman Mosaic Unveiled in Israel

This beautiful mosaic is in the Biblical town of Lod, a thriving town in Roman times. Officials are trying to use it as the centerpiece of an effort to create a tourist industry here. Read about it at the NYTimes.

Codex Sinaiticus Available Online!



Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, we read of the recently-completed digitization of the Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest known surviving Bible, a 4th century Greek manuscript. Read about it here at the Washington Post, and actually read it here (well, you know, if you're fluent in Ancient Greece).

My Question Answered by Fr. Z

I'd e-mailed the ever-knowledgeable Fr. Z about an experience I had at Mass this weekend, and he answered me! Part of me feels really cool for making it up on his website, even though I know it's just a question. The other part of me just wishes his answer hadn't been what I'd really known all along it would be - that no, the Consecration wasn't valid, and I didn't receive the Eucharist unless I was lucky enough to have received a Host that had been reserved from a prior Mass. Read my question and his answer here: Words for the Precious Blood twice, none for the Body

7 Quick Takes Friday Part XXI

1. My cousin, as we listened to a local radio station's weekend-long tribute to Michael Jackson: "It's sad about his death, but this is the best weekend for music in years."

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2. ". . . and in your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety, as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ." Joyful Hope. It's been a long time since my waiting has been joyful or hope-filled, but I'm awash in Joyful Hope this week. Alleluia!

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3. I started Twittering this week. I still haven't quite figured out what I'm doing, and I'm reluctant to link to it here because it's attached to my real name and the real-live me. But if you really want to follow me on Twitter, go ahead and e-mail me and I'll give you my Twitter name or whatever that's called. Twitter's got a confusing lexicon.

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4. Speaking of e-mailing me, you will now be able to do that, as I've added a link to my blogger profile, which of course itself contains a link to my e-mail address. I had always vaguely wondered how someone could know my e-mail address from this blog, as there didn't seem to be any way to get to my profile, unless I commented on my own posts (which, of course, I do from time to time). It never occurred to me that I could do something about this seeming difficulty until, oh, a minute ago.

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5. Speaking of Twitter - anyone have any tips on, like, how it works? I feel a little lost. Maybe if I had my bearings, too, I'd be more likely to share my Twittering more widely.

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6. Hmm . . . here I am, composing a 7 Quick Takes Friday, which I don't do all that often anymore, and it occurs to me; I'll be on a blissful vacation in my favorite place in the world, mostly internet inaccessible, come Friday. Oh well. My Quick Takes will be posted, but likely won't be linked to from Conversion Diary. Worse things have happened.

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7. I like to use Roman numerals to number my 7 Quick Takes posts, because Roman numerals are cool. They are also, to my Arabically-formed mind, not particularly intuitive. That's why my recent Quick Takes were numbered 17, 18, 14, 20. That's what you get for trying to be cool.

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Check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!

Like a masochist in Newport we're Rhode Island bound!

I won't be around much for the rest of the week since . . .

1950 meets 2009

On Father's Day, we went to my grandparents' house. My grandfather and the menfolk were sitting outside under a tree, drinking sambuca and black coffee while the womenfolk sat on a swing on the front porch and tried to make me feel better about having just inadvertently blown the surprise of my cousin's upcoming wedding shower.

Sometimes it feels like my grandparent's house exists in a world just a few decades removed from the one I blog in.

Sometimes it doesn't.

My cousin and I headed over to sit and talk with our dads and uncles a little bit later. We chatted for a while, ate fruit, and then my grandfather announced unexpectedly, "So there's Twitter."

"Grandpa!" my cousin exclaimed. "You Twitter?!"

We well knew that he did not. They don't own a computer anymore.

"No," said my mostly-deaf grandfather. "But I hear things."

"There's another one, too," he said. "There's Twitter and. . ."

He looked up at the sky, hands folded over his stomach, as he tried to think of the "other one."

"Facebook?" we supplied helpfully. "MySpace?" "Blogs?"

"No, no. There's Twitter and there's. . ."

Moments passed.

"Text!" he announced decisively. Everything Grandpa does is decisive. "There's Twitter and there's text!"

He, of course, had no idea what either one was. My cousin successfully demonstrated texting (which my mother had recently taught my grandmother how to do; Grandma has and uses a cell phone, Grandpa does not) by texting her father as she sat next to him, and then showing Grandpa how the message instantly showed up on my uncle's cell phone, but I don't think our explanations of Twitter really got through. At the very least, he didn't understand the point.

Then again, neither do I.

Accidental Adoration

I've never been to Eucharistic Adoration before Friday, and I didn't mean to go then, either. I was going to Confession, and I didn't even take note of what was going on in the chapel as I passed it to get to the Confessional. Waited on line, confessed, was absolved, went to the chapel and sat down in a pew to pray my penance. I glanced up and stopped when I saw the monstrance on the altar. I was literally awe-struck at what was before me, stunned into silence. I couldn't think, couldn't pray, and tears welled up in my eyes. It was some time before I could choke out my penance and return to just sitting there, amazed to be in the physical Presence of Christ.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and deprivation heightens the senses. That confession had been a long time coming, and it had been some time since I'd been able to receive Communion.

And so, even though I was supposed to be meeting friends and had intended to bang out a quick Penance after Confession and be on my way, I sat. The Presence of the Lord was palpable. I've never felt anything like it.

Does that surprise you?

Last night, talking about our future, and the fact that Rhett ate angel hair pasta with butter and cheese for dinner every night this week:

me: ok, I can do the cooking

11:52 PM I'm the wife

Rhett: wow

you would've gotten your ass kicked by the other girls during the women's lib movement

RIP Father Thomas King

I just heard that Georgetown's Fr. Thomas King died tonight. Though he was 80, it was apparently unexpected. I was thinking that I'd have to include in this post the line, "Though I never took a class with him. . ." but I realize that that's inaccurate. Fr. King was actually one of my very first introductions to Georgetown. His Problem of God class was one of the classes I sat in on during an admitted students' weekend, before I knew whether I would be attending. I had no idea at the time that he was such a Georgetown institution, and, not yet having had the benefit of attending his Masses, did not know how softly he could speak. I was sitting in the back of the classroom, and picked up on very little of what he said. In later years, though my
"spot" in Dahlgren Chapel was generally the right side as you enter the church, several rows from the back, I always knew to make a point of sitting nearer the front at the 11:15 Mass. Father King always said something important, and didn't generally say it very loudly.

I just went and got out a CD of documents that I had copied off of my computer my Junior year at Georgetown. They're all that survived my hard drive's crash, and I'm glad now that I had them. There's one file on there, a Word document titled "Things that tell you how to live," that I started after one of Father King's homilies, given May 8, 2005. He had preached about a Jesuit who had lost his legs in the First World War, and soon thereafter received a letter from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, on whom Fr. King was an expert. My reflection, that night
after Mass, follows:

“...and he was a joyous man.”

~Fr. King on a Jesuit in the ‘70s who’d had his legs blownoff in WWI. He’d received a letter from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the day after losing his legs, in which he was told (and I paraphrase), “Let the greatest comfort to you be the knowledge that the Lord, in His Infinite Wisdom and Power, now prefers that you be so. Your most profound hopes and dreams, therefore, are not thwarted, but even enlarged.” Have hope in something greater than your dreams and aspirations. Have hope in the possibility of a life in God.

-Wake up every morning, and be joyous. You have your legs – you have everything he lacked, you should have at least as much joy. Be joyous in the knowledge that there is a day ahead of you, in which anything can happen, and be joyous in the knowledge that God gave you that day. Greet the world with the wonder, hope, and expectations of a young child, whose dreams have not yet been limited by circumstance and the world.

It was the first homily in my memory that ever really hit me. I don't know that it changed my life - though maybe it should have - but it changed my evening, and I felt compelled to reflect on it. Sometimes I forget that Christianity is a joyous religion. My Georgetown career was the time when I went from going to church on Sundays because I probably should to being a Catholic because I believed, and Mass with Georgetown Jesuits, Father King included, was part of what got me there.

I wasn't a regular at the 11:15 Mass, though when I went to a week-day Mass, it was always that one (which was a far cry from the 12:10 Mass, the other daily Mass). On weekends, I split my attendance between the 10pm and the 11:15. Father King preached the first homily I ever remember hearing that mentioned abortion, birth control, pre-marital sex, and homosexuality. Priests still talk about those things?! The freshman me had no idea. His candle-lit weekday Mass was where I learned to pray the Sanctus in Latin.

At the moment, what stands out most in my mind, however, is the endearing habit he had, when he happened upon his own name in an announcement he was reading, of exclaiming with apparent surprise, "Oh! That's me!"

RIP Father King

"Babies Everywhere!"

An oldie but a goodie:


"I feel great!"

Disgusting

If Gossip Girl Were Written by Real New Yorkers...
Boyfriend: I wouldn't marry you. I would pay for half and give you a ride to the clinic.
Girlfriend: Baby, that's beer money. Just push me down the stairs and we'll go out.
Boyfriend: I love you.

--84th & 1st
via Overheard in New York, Jun 18, 2009


What was that we were told about the always "heart-wrenching decisions" that are never "made casually"?

7 Quick Takes Friday Part XX

1. I hate how during the day, I think of a really interesting thing, that's I can't wait to refer to in a Quick Take, and by the time I sit down to write my Quick Takes, I have no idea anymore what it was that was so interesting and so important that I wanted to share it with perfect strangers on the internet.

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2. My youngest sister is going to her senior prom tomorrow. Oh. My. Goodness. That is all.

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3. Earlier this week, I finally finally finally learned the date of my great-great-great-grandfather's death. It's a crucial bit of genealogical information that I've been looking for for months, but it wasn't until I finally thought to do searches under his second wife's name - she survived him - that after all these months, I came across his obituary. That just goes to show you, don't ignore anyone. Not even your great-great-grandmother's stepmother.

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4. Speaking of which, I've come to realize:
Negative effect of doing genealogy: All your friends think you're a nerd.
Positive effect of doing genealogy: All your relatives who are over 70 think you're the cat's pajamas.

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5. I need to start reading more. Like I said the other day, I've started reading The Screwtape Letters. When I read for pleasure - which is rarely during the school year - I usually read novels. I'd like to start reading things that are still fun and interesting, but have some substance. I don't know where to start looking for ideas, though.

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6. When I was younger, my dad used to tell me how one of his favorite things to do, once he hit college age and older, was drink with his parents. When I was a teenager who scrupulously hid any sign of my (limited) drinking from my parents, that sounded absurd. Now that I'm of the legal age, and my relatives are among my only friends above the Mason-Dixon Line, well, you know, drinking with my parents is one of my favorite things to do.

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7. One of my favorite things about working in a historical field is the ability to - nay, the necessity of - occasionally using terminology that is very much not PC. It's just a little fun, even though you'd never say these things in real life. But after all, the USCT are still the USCT, even though we wouldn't ever say that "C" in any other situation. But every so often, like this afternoon, you run across something in a public history institution that was written - academically - 100 years ago that's just downright racist. That makes you want to hide it in the back of a file cabinet and conveniently forget to make it available to the public. It's a fascinating look at the past, but it really makes you squirm.

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Check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!