The Stuffing

Every year, without fail, I go out to the grocery store on the eve of some major holiday and wonder who all these people are and why they're clogging up the place when I just want to grab a few things.

Today I'm heading out to pick up the last ingredients for the cornbread stuffing, our family's major Thanksgiving tradition. Hope the crazy people out there have left me some celery...

• 2 boxes Jiffy cornbread mix, enough to make a 9x13 pan of cornbread (you can make your own, but the sweetness of the Jiffy works well with the stuffing; I prefer it.)
• 2 c. celery, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 c. onions or scallions (I often use green onions)
• giblets from turkey to make broth (or 1 can, about 2 c., chicken broth)
• 1 stick butter
  
• 1 Tbs. parsley
• 1/2 tsp. basil
• 1/4 tsp. sage
• 1/4 tsp. thyme
• 1/4 tsp oregano

1. Bake cornbread and put it into a large bowl. Don't crumble it too much yet.
2. Boil giblets and neck to make turkey broth (my mom says just cover them with water, but it works out to be about 2 cups.) Alternatively, boil chicken broth.
   
3. Add celery, bell pepper, onions, and butter to broth; boil until tender.
4. If using giblets and if desired, chop up giblets and neck meat and add to corn bread.
5. Add all seasonings to cornbread along with salt and pepper to taste, mix.
6. Pour broth with vegetables over cornbread mixture and stir just until everything is moistened. This can be refrigerated for several days (makes great leftovers!) or you can put it in a pan, dot the top with butter, and heat through. Serves lots.

Home Sweet Home

Because there can never be too many new house pix.

St. Margaret and Macbeth

My confirmation name is Margaret, after St. Margaret of Scotland, queen and mother. (I've emulated her in one aspect, if not in the other). Brandon of Siris provides some historical background on Margaret, including her tangential connection with Macbeth (the real guy, not Shakespeare's version).

I really do think this would make a more interesting television series than most things you find on television. Who doesn't like Vikings, Scottish kings, Anglo-Saxon political bickering, and Norman Invasions, all rolled into one big story?

Waiting for Blood

I've been ending day lately with an hour or two of reading Jose Maria Gironella's, The Cypresses Believe in God, a massive novel set on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Given the novel's sheer size, and that it starts out spending so much time just giving a sense of early 30s Spain as a place and time, as the civil war itself begins to approach one feels with the characters a certain creeping unreality, as the descent of politics and then society as a whole into factional violence seems to become first imaginable, then possible, and finally inevitable.

Having fallen asleep, as it were, in 1935 Catalonia, it was with an odd sense of unreality that I clicked on a link this morning and found a New York Times columnist declaring it impossible to work with his political opponents peacefully and darkly predicting "there will be blood".

When Are Points Not Worth Making?

The media firestorm swirling around Pope Benedict's discussion of morality and condom use seems like a good illustration of the problem of great trouble and anguish being caused by making completely true and reasonable points. The pope's comment itself is both true and sensible: there is nothing magically wicked about condoms in and of themselves, rather it is using them in order to render sexual relations sterile which is immoral. However, because the pope is such a uniquely high-profile figure in the world, both those (inside and outside the Church) who are desperately eager for the Church to approve artificial contraception as morally licit, and those who live in constant fear that the faith will somehow be betrayed to the ravening hoards outside, immediately went into full freak-out mode.

Various writers who consider the Church's stance on birth control to be hopelessly backward immediately declared a "first step".

Nervous traditionalists took pause, yet again, to publicly worry that Benedict is betraying them.

And, doubtless, many people (Catholic and otherwise) who don't pay much attention to such issues noticed the headlines, didn't read any in-depth coverage, and quietly filed away in the backs of their minds, "Oh, so Catholics can use birth control under some circumstances."

This kind of thing can be frustrating to those who care deeply about exploring the nuances of moral points. On the one hand, what the pope said is completely true. On the other, the way in which it became publicized will doubtless lead more people into error than into truth. Does this mean that such nuanced discussion of high profile moral issues should simply not happen? Or that it should not be undertaken by someone as high profile as the pope?

It seems anti-intellectual to say that issues sufficiently borderline as to present the danger of leading people astray should simply not be discussed. And yet, at a certain level, the purpose of our Church is to bring people to heaven -- including ordinary people who are easily unsettled or deceived -- not to serve as a debating society for a small number of people who are educated in the finer points of theology. Ideally, it would be possible for the pope to discuss such issues in venues primarily read by those capable of understanding what he is saying, and not have his comments distorted and repeated out to those who are likely to be confused or upset. Yet in a world of mass global communications that seems clearly impossible.

The same technology which makes it more possible than ever for anyone, anywhere to access Church documents and other sources of Catholic teaching which were much harder to come by only a few decades ago also makes it all to easy for a line or two to be pulled out of context from some longer statement and flooded all over the world in a matter of hours. Whether that means that prominent thinkers must now be more circumspect in what they choose to discuss at all than was the case in the past is probably a question worth giving at least some thought to.

Ticking Time-Bomb Molestation

You all remember the ticking time-bomb torture scenario: what it -- what if? -- we had a terrorist in custody, and it was known that he's planted a time-bomb somewhere. Couldn't we torture him, just a little, in order to save all those lives that would otherwise be blown up?

It seems to me that this TSA pat-down/strip search flap is this very scenario put into practice, but without the imperative urgency of the time-bomb. Someone out there might be carrying something dangerous on a plane. What if -- what if? -- we could prevent this by fondling children in airports? Don't you think it would be worth it? Aren't you concerned about lives that might be saved, if only you'd consent to be searched, or let your children be searched?

My answer to someone who would insist that searching me was only for my safety: of course it's not for my safety, if you're searching me. It's not for my child's safety, if it's my child being searched.

Check out Bearing's thoughts on what to do if ever confronted with this situation in an airport.

Cthulhu in the Basement

The house passed inspection with flying colors, though parts of the basement retain their terrifying aspect.

Where Cthulhu sleeps:

Where Cthulhu goes potty:

But the house is pretty: