Genesis revisited

The post that appeared here originally, I re-dated (2/13/2010) it and posted it as Genesis re-revisited

Megan ~ Jason

Today, in a singularly happy, formal ceremony at the beautiful Our Lady of Ostrabrama Church in Cutchogue, Long Island, my granddaughter Megan Kenney was joined to Jason Pieroni in Holy Matrimony.

Megan, of Italian, German and Irish derivation is the daughter of Linda, an Administrative Nurse and Robert Kenney a prominent, precedent-setting Attorney. A highly placed careerist in advertising, Megan is an incandescently intelligent, exquisitely beautiful young woman. Jason, of Italian, Polish and Slovakian extraction is the son of Barbara, a Dietician and Joseph Pieroni, a CEO in Imported Pharmaceuticals. Jason, is a remarkably handsome and virile young man. He is currently an active Internet Marketer.

Prior to reaching the Pellegrini Vineyards where the reception was held, all of the many celebrants were treated to a delightful wine-tasting interlude at the nearby Gallucio Winery. The reception setting and services were outstanding. During a repast prepared by first-rate chefs we were plied with beverages of every description. There was almost ceaseless modern dancing to music played by an ensemble that knew how to keep everybody jumping and wriggling. Memorable, emotional speeches were made by Megan’s Dad, the groom’s brother and others. Everyone, family and friends alike, joined in wishing this newly married, happy couple, a long and procreative future.

Matrimony: Only in those countries and cultures whose basic language is Latin rooted, is the word matrimony used to define the Religious Rite that joins and bonds men and women who have "plighted their troth" to each other. It is a Latin word that signifies Motherhood. Clearly, however, every non-Latin culture must have its own words, definitions and descriptions of the marriage union. If readers of this Blog would care to comment on this subject, it would please us and enlighten us.

<{}> May I draw your attention to the Post entitled "Genesis revisited." Be forewarned, it is an irreverent spoof about Adam and Eve.

Aaah!

Have you ever seen a cuter baby picture?
(Left click over it to enlarge it)

While reading a Journal I had just downloaded from the internet, this photo suddenly popped up on my screen. I hasten to share it with you.

As you gaze at this baby, you are smiling, aren't you? Hasn't your day become brighter and more hopeful? And yours too, Osama?

Let's ruminate: Clearly, what this baby projects is radiance, happiness and pure innocence. At this age, its mind is a tabula rasa, a blackboard upon which nothing profound has yet been writ. He (or she) knows absolutely nothing about Buddha, Zeus, Allah, Attila, Mother Teresa or even Christ. But what will be inscribed upon its mind by age 20, 30 or later? Will the radiance and happiness still be there? Will the innocence have survived or will it have been twisted into mindless intolerance or fulminating hatred? Will this baby grow up to respect and perhaps even nurture its fellow beings? Or will it become committed to destroy and kill? What determines what eventually happens?

Loose lips sink ships!

8/24/05: Not one letter in response to these two OpEds has yet been published. Is it possible that there was no reader reaction to these columns? Or did the Editors realize they had helped to reveal a very critical area of our nation's vulnerability? Do you suppose Homeland Security took notice of this dereliction of journalistic responsibility?

In today's OpEd section, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Director of the Trudeau Center for Peace and Conflict, at the University of Toronto, states that our highly "connected" world provides great benefits, but it is now much more susceptible to catastrophic breakdown. Then, after noting that "greater connectivity allows companies (to make) larger profits" he advocates that the US should be less dependent on oil. He concludes by taking a gratuitous swipe at the energy bill just passed by Congress and signed by Bush, saying that it does nothing to address the appalling vulnerability of the USA. Does the Times ever fail to remind us that our problems are caused by corporations seeking to get richer? The Horn

Then, in a companion piece on the same page, Gregory S. McNeal gets right to the point. In case the jihadists have not already included this option in their planning, he tells them that with a few synchronized hits at only 4 or 5 "very poorly protected" electrical control sites, the US could be plunged into darkness and chaos for weeks on end. He noted that these sites are often described and referred to in Trade Journals. But I did breathe a sigh of relief when he stopped short of identifying their latitudes and longitudes. Doesn't Staff work for Al Qaeda get easier by the day? The Horn

<{}> The Hornblower has already drawn attention to the fact that Al Qaeda’s next attack on the USA will almost certainly exceed 9/11 in scale. To maintain credibility in itself and in its jihadist cause, Al Qaeda has to be planning something horrendous. But while it is thus engaged, should we be telling it to make sure it doesn't overlook another of our Achilles’ heels. (Check Osama’s comment in the Pasta con sarde posting)

Pasta con Sarde

Pasta con Sarde e Finocchio, a Sicilian delicacy, is the most delectable pasta that can possibly be made on this side of heaven. How fortunate that my mother, who was born in Sicily and was a cook without a peer, taught my wife how to prepare it. We hope we can induce you readers to try it.

Of Arabic origin, Pasta con Sarde e Finocchio is in fact indigenous only to the Western side of Sicily. In America, hardly anyone knows about it and it isn't featured in any traditional Italian restaurants. So, if you wish to savor this exquisite dish before you have it in heaven, you will have to make it yourself. With luck, you will find the canned "condimento" import in your local Italian deli. It comes in a flat yellow can and the most authentic brand is made by Pensabene.

Allow the contents of the can to simmer for several minutes. It is a green sauce, made with fennel leaves, onion, garlic, small pieces of sardines, salt, pepper, currants, pine nuts and olive oil. Then gently layer it over freshly boiled linguini. As the aromatic vapors rise from the dish, lightly dust the pasta with toasted, herbed bread crumbs. Buon appetito!

If we owe the Mafia nothing else, we are deeply in their debt for their having zealously preserved this Arabian legacy. Now, if Osama has never had it and we can get him to try it, I am sure he would emerge ecstatically from his cave, salaam deeply and promptly call off this jihad.

Replies to Brooks

Though I predicted the NY Times would publish only 3 or 4 letters in reaction to David Brooks' OpEd column, Aug 4 - they published only 2 and neither took any swipes at President Bush. Make what you will of the letters and the judgement of the Editor who selected them:

To the Editor: Re: "Trading Cricket for Jihad" (Column, Aug. 4):

David Brooks is right to take on the misperception that the typical jihadist is impoverished, humiliated, jobless and trapped in an unchanging traditional society. He calls the conflict between the jihadists and the West "a conflict within the modern globalized world." But this is a problem that still has one foot in the traditional world and one foot in the modern. These individuals live somewhere in the transition between the traditional world and the modern world, whether in a non-Western society that is modernizing, or in a western society where they are undergoing the "instant modernization" of immigrants. Radicalism seems to be one of the prices of the modernazation process since at least the French Revolution. The best we can do is to contain the madness by force of arms whiledoing everything possible to foster the development of successful middle classes everywhere. Nick Balamaci, Scarsdale, NY

To the Editor: Re: "Trading Cricket for Jihad," (Column, Aug. 4):

David Brooks concludes that countries should encourage assimilation as a way to provide national security. In fact, countries that promote a strict assimilation can end up creating disenchanted migrant populations, who hear that they should join with everyone else but may find barriers to doing so. Assimilation policies also convey that immigrants’ cultures are inferior, which furthers resentment. Assimilate into what? Whose definition of culture wins? I don’t pretend to know what could have prevented the London bombings. There hasn’t been sufficient evidence that the problem is one of "immigrant adjustment" in the first place. Multicultural policies, joined with bold efforts to allow for social and economic advancement, create attachment to and respect for a nation by rewarding groups for adjusting to the rules. Assimilation may happen on its own but enforcing it can backfire. Pawan Dhingra, Oberlin, Ohio

Is our nest be-fowled?

Scavengers? Not really! God’s favorites? Indeed!

When I cut some rind from my Parmesan cheese or a bit of fat from my prosciutto, instead of throwing those scraps into the garbage, I place them on my patio wall. Within a few hours crows invariably appear and they devour it all with quickness and dispatch. But what amazes me is that I don’t otherwise see these birds near our house. Their sense of smell must be so acute, that from as far as a mile away, they can detect that I have set another smorgasbord for them. And they are grateful, they leave "thank you" notes.

Unhappily, the word scavenger has a derogatory connotation. But think of the carrion that by now would encrust our planet if crows, vultures and other organisms that do our environmental sanitation did not exist. As God (or even Darwin) must have divined, keeping the world clean is a major priority. But would it surprise some of us to know that we and all other living creatures have countless active "scavengers" in our blood streams? They are called phagocytes. Their vital function is to clean up degenerating tissues as well as harmful and noxious debris. Toxic bacteria dread them but symbiotic ones love them.

Like some of you, I often fantasy what our world would be like if humans had never been created. Without predators, excavators, drillers and congenital despoilers, this planet could truly have been the Garden of Eden that God envisioned. No great clinical acumen is now needed to see that our local cosmos is gravely ill and we don’t have to look too far to know why.

David Brooks, OpEd

Re: Today's NY Times OpEd ~ by David Brooks

"Trading Cricket for Jihad"

We are citing this OpEd by Brooks for 3 reasons:
{1} It echoes my Posting, "Britain, beware!"
{2} I predict it will elicit only 3 or 4 letters to the editor and that each of those letters will take a negative anti-Bush tack.
{3} Take heed to the very ominous threat issued today by Al Qaeda: Military attacks on Britain and America are imminent.

What follows is an attributed rephrasing of his column:

David Brooks points out that according to recent analyses, about 75% of the anti-Western terrorists are well educated and that they come from middle or upper class families and homes. Many of them have already rebelled against their families and their countries of origin and yet they are reluctant to sink roots into the regions where they now reside.

Humiliated by the backwardness of the countries they came from, they eagerly seek Utopian causes to give them and their lives identity and meaning. Extremist Islamic teachings like Salafism help to reinforce in their minds that the fundamental conflict between the jihadists and the West is economic as well as religious. Marxism once expressed similar theses. Globalization is a concept that frightens Islam.

Brooks believes that the Arab world is prone to adopt ideas that the West has discarded. Indeed, one basic jihadist weakness is that it has no meaningful or viable input from the Arab or Muslim world. Terrorism, he says, is also an immigration problem. Migrating Muslims are disinclined to root themselves into the cultures of the countries they have fled to. Countries with large migrant populations should begin to make much greater efforts to assimilate their Muslim arrivals.

David Brooks can be counted upon to write seminal columns ~DG

Happy B-Day, Morrison

Left click on the scorecard to enlarge it

Then left click on the "Back" arrow to return here

Although he is still parachuting out of airplanes into rarefied air, Dick was once a heroic but sane marine who fought gallantly in China and the South Pacific during World War II. He also served as President of the Knollwood Country Club in Westchester. So grateful was that Club for his inspired leadership, they made him an honorary member, last year.

Unlike other sports, golf can be played and enjoyed by people well into senescence, the stage of life that follows seniority and precedes eternal oblivion. It is unmercifully characterized by irreversible decrepitude and ineptitude. By turning 90, effervescent Dick Morrison is now a member of a distinguished group that is becoming older and more numerous.

But it might surprise some to know that we senescents do perform an important environmental service. The height and verdancy of most golf course trees is really due to the regular doses of highly concentrated nitrogen they receive from senescents like Dick and me who can no longer pass a tree without stopping to piss on it.

In truth, senescence golf is a tragicomedy acted out on weekends by oldsters who are now physical caricatures of their former selves. Their exertions are woeful exercises in comic futility. Instead of exuberant exclamations like "Great shot" you mostly hear Dick and the rest of us shout, "Where the f--k did it go?"

"Semper Fi, Dick" from all of us, to you, a friend like no other.