Film!! YES FILM!!!!

OK. So I am old school (skool for those in that generation) and I LOVE using film over digital. Somehow to me the colors are a bit deeper and the whole concept of photography (the writing of light, photography photo-light, graph-to write)of light marring and engraving itself of various solutions of chemicals and then manipulated to reproduce an image is so much more magical to me than digital. I know, the idea that an image can be created from a series of Zeros and Ones is just as magical,the idea of the physical is lost to me. But I do like digital music over vinyl! lol

ONTO THE PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!
I actually stole the idea of this picture. I have no idea of where I saw this, but I loved it, and the the opportunity arose with the wind blowing and the flags flying...SNAP!


Do you realize that the White House was the LARGEST HOUSE in the USA until the Golden Age in the 1880's! It is impressive!


The view is from the World War II Memorial, looking west across the reflecting pool...and yes it does reflect!


Closer.....


CLOSEST!


And these words speak for themselves! I an honored to have known some of these brave men and women. My father is one of them.

Washington DC

I was in Washington this past week to lobby for the Education Jobs Bill. This year over 200,000 teachers were laid off nation wide. Over 17,000 in California alone. While there, I brought both the film camera and the digital. Here are some pics from the Digital. The film I should have by the end of this week.

The Supreme Court Building. Being a Con Law Major, this was an awesome event for me!


Me pressing the case at the Court! OK, so I was just standing there...


Looking from the WWII War Memorial towards the Lincoln Memorial:


Mr. Lincoln himself, with Morning light shining into the memorial.


Inside the Library of Congress:


The Washington Monument with the early sun rising behind it. I like this one! :)



And looking back at the Washington Monument from the Lincoln Memorial:


And a view from the street of the US Capitol Building. (detail shot)

St. Paul's Outside the Walls

Though looking old, it is very new. the church burnt to the ground in the late 1800's and was rebuilt. The mosaics were picked from the rubble (mind you that is one tiny chip of stone) and reset anew in the Sanctuary of the Church, as well as all the portraits of the popes that surround the Nave of the structure. The outside is beautiful and the monastery attached to the rear of the church survived the fire and does date back to the middle ages. It is often refereed to as the "Forest of Columns" due to the number of columns in the nave. The windows are actually alabaster, sliced very thinly to allow the passage of light and give an aura of wonderful earth tones to the inside. Let the show begin!
Walking up to the Front of the Church:


The Statue of St. Paul that sets in the center of the court yard. In Rome you can tell statues by the symbols they carry. St. Peter has keys, St. Andrew the X cross and St. Paul by the Sword. Tradition has Paul be decapitated outside the city walls (thus this church at the supposed spot of his death being located outside the city walls) since he was a Roman Citizen, he could not be crucified.



the facade of the Church in the next two shots:



the entry doors to the Church:


the Nave:



the main Sanctuary Moasic

Detail:


and the wonderful windows!




Hope you enjoy these!

Been a LONG time

Yeap, almost a full year since I last updated. Thankfully nothing has happened. Yeah...right...anyway..I am getting used to digital cameras. I hate them, I love film! But I guess that is what they felt like when they went from glass plates to film too! Gotta go with the flow. I also have been using my Droid hand held platform to take pictures too. So here are some Droid pictures for you to enjoy, or not!

This was the view from my room in LA at the last CTA State Council meeting:




And now the Sunday Morning Car Accident from 29 stories up!

with zoom

with cops



Now to downtown Fresno...I know what a joke...but there is an old county build in Fresno that was built during the Art Deco period. IT IS AMAZING. I was there with Cathy and saw this drinking fountain. When I got closer I saw that it was SOLID MARBLE! Yes, one solid block of marble...it is beautiful and so Art Deco!


Like I said nothing has happened all year! Well nothing you want to know about! I will be heading off to Washington DC on Tuesday. Who knows if I will get a picture or two from there!

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Origin stirs my mind in many directions

What I find most interesting about Origin is that he was untainted by the philosophy that followed him. He was more concerned about what he read in "scripture" led him. I put scripture in quotes as the Bible as we know it was not around. Origin went where his mind led him, he was castigated, not by contemporaries, but by those who came after him. They judged his work by their standards, not the standards he worked with in his time and place. It is like making an ex post facto law, then persecuting the dead for not following the law. I do not think that Origin, in his life, ever said anything that he did not first think, reflect or pray over. His students had a great love for his wisdom and his teaching skills and methods. His compilation of the scriptures and translation of the the scriptures allowed the Jerome to do his work and claim stake to the greatest single edition to history. Alas, with out the writing and work of Origin, Jerome would still be in his room, trying to gather the information needed to complete what would become, the Vulgate Edition of the Bible.

However, what intrigues me more than the exegetical work of Origin, is his thinking on souls and what becomes of them. He basic idea , and if thought of correctly, makes a lot of sense. Four things are necessary to accept if you are to follow my thinking:

1) What is in the mind of God is real, not potential. If God thinks it, it is real from the moment of the thought.

2) All creation (no matter how it came to be) is from this "mind" of God, and as such, contains that "image and likeness" of that God.

3) Creatures, with rational souls, make free choices, with real consequences.

4) Time, as we use it in common everyday usage is not the realm of God, who exists beyond time, or better yet is time itself, constant and always in the now.

If you can accept these four principles, you may be able to follow me a bit better as I use these ideas to express my understanding of Origin and "life after life".

All rational souls originate in God's mind, weather at the moment of conception (an absurdity if you think that God is dependent upon a carnal act to create a rational soul each and every time) or that they have pre-existed in his mind from all time. Being Free creatures, created and immortal, souls have consciousness from the very moment of their creation. For they would be alive in the mind of God. This is Origin's idea, and he says that at some point souls waver, fall, separate from God, not just by sin, but by degree of participation in the Divine Life. These souls, through the mercy of God are given life in human form to try and realize that there is a way back to Him. In a sense, each soul is predestined to return to the mind of God as perfected in their love for him (I will use the male pronoun as that is what is most common and easy for people to understand, but we must also remember that gender is not a trait of a spiritual being, but only of physical beings.).

If we accept this idea of the "falling away from the divine" as a reason for souls being here on earth, it makes sense then that the "original sin" was not a sin committed by an individual, which is transmitted to all humans by birth, but is the "common sin" that all souls have by their own free will, are present here on earth, for their failure to stay within the Divine Plan of being in the presence of their God. Origin refers to this as a "cooling of desire". Thus the need for "redemption" and the Felix Culpa of Aquinas. The happy fault is that we have all failed in the first level, now we have another chance to redeem ourselves (as redemption is a choice).

How we live our lives, how we try to make life better for ourselves and others. How we love and endear ourselves to others and how we seek the good in people, not the evil. How we try to emulate others in their good deeds and life styles, and above all, our desire to be back with the God from whom we have fallen from, will in the end, bring us back to that God. Now I understand that I have left out a lot of things, and many will have issues with the fact I did not mention the Church or sacraments or Bible Study or prayer or Sunday worship, but are not all of those things included in what I said we must do? You see, the road is much more clear and simple less cluttered and less road signs to distract. Simple, as Aquinas says God is simple and not complex. If those are the roads you choose, then that is the route you take. If those are not roads you choose, then you go a different way. However, all roads that seek perfection and goodness, lead to the same end. Some are more convoluted than others, some are more comfortable than others (in a personal way, not a touchy-feely way) and some, if chosen poorly do not work at all. "My father's house has many rooms."

Where all this is still confusing to me and I am still thinking and working is that, as free willed beings, souls can lose their way even after achieving the goal, and Origin does not discount the fact that all of creation can be repeated in a new age. Why would a soul, with so many life experiences not wander in thought and direction. Some may not, they stay in that eternal now forever, in fact have never left. Others, like me, wander about and lose direction often, but always come back. Why not multiple ages of man, why not multiple physical existences? Why would one deter from God the constant love he has to bring us all back. Origin goes so far as to say the devil himself (again keeping the male pronoun for linguistic comfort) could come back to God, but is there a desire to return on his (the devil's) part?

What then is this all about? Predestination. We are predestined, but not in our actions or our free will, we are just all predestined to return to whence we came, the mind of God. This is my response to predestination, my account of how it can be that all our actions lead us in one direction. "How many times must we forgive our brothers? 70 times 70". Why would God only give us one life, one chance one age to reach and regain what we lost of our own free will?

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Rome, The Eternal City

Rome is eternal on many levels. Holding the Holy See in its center, it proclaims eternal life, life beyond this mortal shell. The antiquities proclaim the eternal desire of the human spirit to build and be better than we are and were. The people of Rome itself proclaim an eternal spirit of endurance, no matter the weather or the government. For me it is eternal in that this was the 30th anniversary of my first visit to Italy, and so many of the landmarks that I remember from that first visit are still present.

I took a left turn instead of a right when I exited the Metro at the Batitstini stop (Okay, 30 years ago the Metro did not go this far out!) when I went to Via Boccea to visit Fr. Brian. I knew (from looking at the Metro map prior to leaving the station) that either route would get me to the General House, but one was a lot shorter than the other, so off I went. It was up hill, and when I got to Via Boccea, I knew where I was, it was at the place where I used to catch the bus to go to the Vatican (the 49/, yes the slash belongs there!). So I made a quick right onto Via Boccea and started walking down hill. YES, I walked UP hill to walk DOWN hill, I told you I made a wrong choice. As I wandered down the street I saw the grammer school that was there my first visit, then I saw this Trattoria, with a green patio covering and I knew I was very close. Imagine that, 30 years after my first visit, and this place still has the same look. Better yet, think of a restaurant that you know of that has been in the same location for 30 years! Within minutes I was at the General House. Rome, the eternal city.

There was the morning I took 4 of the group shopping on the Via Borgo Pio, then took the short walk over for a cappuccino at what I (and some good friends) refer to as Guido's. And YES, Guido was still making coffee and yes Guido remembered me and the last few visits I made to his negozio (place of business). (Just to let you know, this man makes the BEST cappuccino in the city of Rome.) Rome the eternal city.

Then there are the usual landmarks that bring the tourists. That too is part of My Eternal Attraction To The City of Rome. So from the mundane memories of an old man, to the spectacular views of the Eternal City, view on.


The Piazza di Pantheon, a view from the front of the Pantheon looking outwards towards the Piazza


Trevi, always a pleasure to see, and do you know that they feed the hungry with the money they collect from this fountain. Over a 1,000 €uro a day (1400USD) is removed from here and it supports a soup kitchen for the poor in the local area! Here is one of the poor of the area.....


And here is the "Fountain"


A view from the TOP of the Spanish Steps. I thought I would let you see the City of Rome!



The Campo di Fiori, where the cattle market used to be MANY years ago. Now it is a daily market, which closes and disappears about 5PM everyday to open up the area for dinner, socializing and night life.



And for that random shot of IDK WTF this is, but it is old and there is a statue of St. Paul on top..here for your viewing pleasure.........



And, lastly, the true picture of how stupid an old man I am, how dangerously I live, this shot is from the middle of the street looking west down the Via della Consiliazione towards St. Peters...and if you know how they drive in Rome, you would know just how dangerous this can be!



There are some more pictures of Rome to come. I am working on trying to recover the pictures I lost, there is a small glimmer of hope...or it is the bullet coming at me..I am not sure..but more of Rome will be here soon. Enjoy!

Too long of a wait!

Well yes, I am alive and doing well, and so is Cathy and the rest of the families. It has been a busy few months between school and "other" things. We have been busy with a lot and the end of the school year is upon me. I have only 8 school days left and then after that 4 days and I am off to Italy. But those pictures are yet to be taken! Below are some that have been taken since I last posted for Seattle. SO, lets start with Sacramento and Cathy and I in the Capital Park:


Then wishing we had the cash to enjoy buying one of these!



This was taken in the koi pond at the State Capital Park:


Then there was another "home improvement project" with Bob. We don't need no stinking directions!



And the proof of our work is the finished project!



Then April came and it was our 15th anniversary. We went back to Monterey and had the BEST weather you could ask for! Here is one from the ride over:


Here on 17 mile drive:


And the same place we took our honeymoon picture. I need to scan that and get it in here as well:


and of course MULTIPLE dinners with Friends and Family, but here is a shot of a center piece from the yard and the bar tender for the events!




Sorry about the long wait, but what can I say besides I don't get paid to do this. At least not yet! Enjoy and I will have more to post when I return from Italy! Ciao!