Archive for April 17th, 2019

Notre-Dame.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2019

I don’t feel like I have to comment on everything in the news here, but I feel like I have to say something. I’ve spent the past couple of days going around in my head about this.

I don’t have the personal connection to Notre-Dame de Paris that a lot of folks do: I’ve never been to France, much less seen it up close and personal. I feel like I should have more of a connection, being a frustrated amateur historian and Notre-Dame being one of the spiritual centers of my people.

I don’t know that I have any kind of profound take on it, compared to other, smarter people. There is a part of me that finds some level of symbolism in the fire taking place this week, of all weeks: Notre-Dame rising from the ashes as symbolic analogy to Christ rising from the tomb.

There is another part of me that wants to echo Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the distinction he makes: the church as corporate body that pays bills and employs people and owns buildings, and the Church as the great mass of believers, the continuity of belief and tradition in the lives of people, not in a building. Notre-Dame might burn, but the true Church will never die as long as there are believers.

But that seems dismissive. On the other hand, there are some takes I’ve liked:

(Thread.)

(Also thread. But calling out:

Remind you of anything in particular?)

It looks now like there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic: the rose windows survived, the art and relics were rescued (and if there’s any justice at all in France, Father Fournier will never be able to pay for a drink or meal with his own money for the rest of his life), and the cathedral will be rebuilt. As other, smarter people have pointed out, this isn’t the first time: Notre-Dame was desecrated and damaged during the French Revolution, and restored between 1844 and 1864.

(True side note: my mother emailed me and asked if Quasimodo made it out. I had to explain to her that he wasn’t actually in the cathedral at the time, but was in a small space behind the building: the hutch back of Notre-Dame. Thank you, I’ll be here all week.)

Edited to add: One thing I forgot to note: we know a lot about Notre-Dame.

Posted in History, Religion | Comments Closed

A small silly diversion.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2019

Lawrence stated the other night that you can Google DuckDuckGo “Florida Man” and any combination of words and almost be guaranteed you’ll get some results back.

Here is a perfect example of that theory:

Florida man arrested after aggressively eating handfuls of pasta

No, you are not having a stroke. Yes, that is an actual headline, though the gentleman in question was actually arrested for (quel frommage!) being drunk and disorderly in public and resisting arrest. To the best of my knowledge, the eating of pasta – even in an aggressive fashion – is not an actual crime in Florida. Yet.

In other news of the weird:

Man in monkey mask stole mail from Southwest Austin apartments, police say

Moral of this story: don’t mess with the postal inspectors. They got his fingerprints off light bulbs, and…

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service, told police the agency had planted a gift card in the mail designed to force the recipient into giving up their personal information to access the gift card. The day after the burglary, postal inspectors learned that the card was accessed by a Texas woman who — joined by a man later identified by authorities as Ortiz — used the card at a Target retail store on Research Boulevard about two weeks later, the affidavit said.

“The Man in the Monkey Mask” was also one of Dumas’s less successful works.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 17, 2019.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2019

Owen Garriott, astronaut.

In 1973 he was the science pilot of Skylab 3, the record-breaking 59-day mission — more than double the duration of any previous flight — to Skylab, the first United States space station.
He logged nearly 14 hours outside Skylab in three spacewalks, during which physiological and biomedical metrics were monitored to determine the body’s response to long periods spent in reduced gravity.

…

He returned to space in 1983 on the 10-day flight of the shuttle Columbia, which carried the European Space Agency’s Spacelab 1 module, on which a multinational team of scientists conducted research.
On that mission, Dr. Garriott operated the first amateur radio station from space. He used his station’s call sign, W5LFL, to connect with about 250 ham operators, including his mother in Enid, Okla.; Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona; and King Hussein of Jordan.

…

His marriage to Helen Walker in 1952 ended in divorce. In addition to his son Richard, his survivors include three other children from that marriage, Randall, Robert and Linda Garriott; his wife, Evelyn (Long) Garriott; three stepchildren, Cindy Burcham, Bill Eyestone and Sandra Brooks; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Posted in Geek, History, Obits, Radio | Comments Closed