Why wait???

Here are three more for the day. All of these are from the back yard and are representative of the colour that has bloomed this year. We are most pleased with how the yard and the colours have come back after the trauma it went through when we had the block fence constructed two summers ago. We had to have the sprinklers replaced, the lawn replaced and almost lost four of our trees. That loss alone, of the trees would have been devastating to our yard. Our gardener came in and in one day replaced all the broken lines and had water to the trees. To see the yard today, one would not know the horror of it just 2 years ago. We are most pleased with the results of our labours!

These roses grow over the fence that separates the dog area from the rest of the yard.


The gerber daisies have been with us for a few years now. I keep them in pots and move them about the yard. They make a nice touch of summer colour!


lastly, I love this plant. I put it in a pot about 4-5 years ago. It has come back every year with more and more blooms. Last year and this year have been the best ever. The location it is in fits it well and it has at least six to eight blooms this year!

Sunday 29 April 2007

Well yesterday was a camera in the garden day. Here are some of my favorites of the set, others will be posted later in the week, so keep looking, you too may find one that YOU like!

This is a Flamingo that was given to me by the staff @ Berenda School when I left to work @ MSHS. He (I am not sure it is a "HE" flamingo as I don't look too closely, but let us assume!) is hiding behind the bleeding heart plant looking into the setting sun. Thus the reason for him wearing those FINE sunglasses!


This is our latest art addition to the yard. I call her the Lady of the Garden. A very minimalist piece that we bought in Rosarito in during Spring Break.


I liked the motion of the frog jumping at the flower, sort like he was claiming it as his own!


This is an abstract for me. It is a glass wind chime in the Bradford Pear trees with the sun shining through and illuminating the glass from behind. I like the colours!


So that was Yesterday in the garden....more to come!

Predestination

I have been busy reading for this, but I have yet to finish all I need. I have a book by Reginald Garrigou-lagrange on predestination. I have a book on Aquinas and his ideas of aesthetics. I just got a book on the ideas of Freedom and Grace as understood by Augustine. The more I read the more I can see that predestination is based on a few ideas. The first of these is the power of the creator not being "all powerful". The second being the idea of "original sin" and its effects on the human condition. And thirdly, the one I see as most important, is that the whole teaching of Predestination is a negative teaching. All of it is based on refuting a particular heresy at different times in history. There is no positive teaching, separate from rebuttal teaching. This leads me to a very nebulous idea, that maybe what has been taught is not as sound as it could be. A person in an argument, especially in a religious dispute, will tend to pull ideas and proofs to fit their argument. It is also known that heretical teachings in the early years of Christianity were destroyed so it becomes more difficult to understand the other side of the story. What we know, of a lot of the heresies, are found in the rebuttals where they are quoted or in what the reformed are asked to proclaim. You can discern what the ideas they, the heretics, proclaimed, by what they were ask to profess (usually the opposite of what they were teaching).

So, where to now? I need to find Origin's ideas on predestination and then the Pelagian Heresy. They seemed to have hit on an idea that was quite along the ideas of the Eastern Fathers, and that Augustine ( a Western Father) laid a major fight on them and refused to accept their profession of faith on separate grounds from their reformed teaching on predestination. Seems like he was really taking a lot of the argument "personal" and not as a disagreement. Also Augustine threw in the idea of infant baptism, which added an even more diverse twist to predestination that has haunted the "loving God" image since.

Just an update of where I am, and that I have not forgotten the topic of the year. I know it is the center of conversation at every meal, every coffee house, donut shop and taco stand in the whole world. Okay, so I am alone in this conversation!

another find on the Internet

Towards the beginning of the Month of April, I was going through pictures on the Vatican web site of the funeral of Pope John Paul II. I was clipping through the pictures pretty quick as I have seen them before. I hit on this picture:


The gentleman on the right, rather "plump" and distinguished. I met him last year when I went to the Papal Audience of Benedict XVI. He was standing across from us, smoking and I was intrigued by his insignia that he was wearing. I called him over and asked him some questions. Here is the proof!


He is the Outside Door Chamberlain of the Pope. He is the gentleman leading the procession of the remains of Pope John Paul II in the first photo. To say that I was amazed at his position is to be calm about the event. It was a fun discussion that we had, and I am glad that I called him over and met him. I only wish I had asked his name as well. Next time I will!

Three posts in ONE day!

Well here are the pictures from Mexico. Okay, so they aren't scenic and they show none of the region we were in, but I always get comments that I never take pictures of people. Well here we are, people, pictures and well be happy, there are NONE of me! I had the camera!
This is my Father and Sue in Ensenada walking the streets looking like tourist with lots of cash to be taken from their pockets. I looked, I didn't see any cash...damn!



Here are Cathy, Sue and my Father on the balcony in front of the condo.



Try and be nice. Try and take pictures of people instead of flowers and what kind of cooperation do I get? No respect I tell you! NONE!



I wonder what they were looking at? I guess I could call them all smart asses, or am I the butt of the joke? OK, I'll stop!!!!!!

Spring 2007

Let's hear it for Costco! They came through and the pics were ready Today by 4PM! SO, on with the flowers from this year's early spring in the Seybolds' Gardens.
This is the bleeding heart plant. It is potted and has returned every year now for four years. It really took off in its new location in the flower bed this year, and is very visible from the patio dining area.



The peach tree was in bloom, now there are small peaches forming. This tree was grown from a pit by my father and made two moves to two houses in 4 years. It took up residence here 4 years ago and has produced fruit every year since being planted. This is the tree that produces my peaches for canning, you know the "booze" flavoured peaches!


I was just amazed at the detail of this picture. This is a detail shot from the above photograph.

The people you find on the internet!

So, my father was here last week and was saying that no one had a picture of the ships he was on while serving in the US Navy. I drug him to my library and introduced him to GOOGLE. Sure enough the ships came up, as I typed in the names. As we looked at the pages, I noticed that there were pictures that members of the crew had posted. Sure enough, after about 15 minutes of looking at unknown sailors we found two of my father from his time on the USS Surfbird. I downloaded them and then burnt them to disc for him to take home. It is amazing what you can find on the internet if you look long and diligently enough. So, to let all of you see, this is my father when he was younger than I am now. Typing that made me feel old! My father is the sailor on the far right in each of the below two pictures.




I have no idea of who the others were/are, and neither did my father. I only hope that their families will find the pictures and enjoy them as much as my dad and the rest of us have!

I am still waiting on Costco for the vacation pictures. And this summer will see me in Italy again, so more pictures from Bella Roma and other locales as soon as I return!

Spring Vacation 2007

A week of vacation. Somehow that never quite turns out to be a week of rest. I find that to be an elusive venture any longer. I enjoy the rituals of vacations, from either the driving, the packing, the tourist thing of walking and buying as well as the stints of boredom from not being close to that what makes me comfortable.

I find that the older I become (isn’t that a silly phrase, as if I could become younger) I really relax when I can stay home and have time to wander about the web reading divergent texts and ideas. I like the mental stimulation that it causes and the ideas that it forces me to think or to rethink my previous concepts.

Books have become a major vacation staple. I remember when I was in my early 20’s that I would take a week at Soda Springs in the OSJ Cabin. I would drag up my stereo system (Thank God for iPods, boom boxes and CDs today) as well as a set of vinyl records. I would set up the system in the front room, open the cabin up, put on the obligatory gym shorts and lay about on the porch and sun myself while reading books for a week. To this day when I hear Al Stewart’s Time Passages, I associate it with The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I was a lazy record changer, and the album (remember I am talking vinyl here) would play over and over as I read through the 3 volumes of the Gulag. Usually during that week, friends would stop by and we would talk about things, have dinner and the drink a bit too much as college students tend to do, and we solved all life’s problems. Then I grew up.

I still bring books on vacation. I finished two that I had started earlier this year. One, The President, The Pope and The Prime Minister, Three Who Changed the World by John O’Sullivan, was very interesting. It discussed the role of Ronald Reagan, John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher in the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. A very one sided view of the Reagan Administration, as well as the Thatcher period. His approach to John Paul is even handed. Overall a very good read, but that may be that I agree with his premiss that the three above mentioned are the pushers and shakers that helped the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and with out their strong and steady wills, with lesser people in command, never would it have happened. Over all I would rate this one well up on a list of easy reads too. Not complicated and broken down so as to easily be interrupted and still pick it up and carry on as if no time has passed.

The second book, Christianity and the Transformation of the book, Origen, Eusibius and the Library of Caesarea by Anthony Grafton & Megan Williams, was amazing. The skills that these two authors, Origen and Eusebius, in the way they wrote and critically studied early Christian writings as well as pagan and late antiquity writings is amazing. In fact the very format of the book, as we know it today, is a direct descendant of these two men. I remember Fr. Gus talking about how St. Jerome had in his hands a copy of a book with the Hebrew, Greek books of the Bible. I now know what he had was the Hexapla.

The Hexapla was a book “written” by Origin that had a Greek equivalent for every Hebrew word. It contained not just the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, but two other Hebrew versions of the Old testament as well. What makes this such an amazing thing is that they were laid out in columns on a page so you could read across from the Hebrew word to the Greek equivalent to the text of each of the versions side by side. Where they differed in content Origin made diacritical marks and noted the difference for the reader. The reason for the quotation marks about written is that Origin’s hand may not have written the book, as copyist or scribes would have and he really isn’t writing a book as much as laying it out to be seen and read. He did write comments, and critical comments of origins of words and how they were used, but he is really not “writing” a book as much as presenting a book.

This last book was a good read and I have been trying to finish it while still reading on the ideas of Predestination and Free Will. It was a nice break to have some light reading to relax. I have one more I wanted to get done before Tuesday and my return to work, but that will have to wait until summer. Looks like I am back to the scholastic study of Predestination again and the lighter books will be put off for a few more weeks.

I had hoped to have pictures from vacation to post today, but Costco (at least the one I went to) was having difficulties with its processing machines and may not have my hour developed film ready until Tuesday! Oh well, I am sure we can all wait for that.