good to know.

An Employer Must Compensate Employees For Time Spent Donning And Doffing Protective Gear But Not For Pre-Donning Waiting Time

--title of an article on a legal information website.

When Napoleon

and Tsar Alexander I met up in Tilsit in 1807 to discuss the potential alliance of their two nations, they ended up (according to Napoleon's valet) spending a long time discussing cures for baldness.

I'm just saying.

Can I quote a friend's blog on my blog? or is that too digitally derivative?

This is from Rachel's blog, and I liked it so much that I didn't want to just link to it. Also her layout made me think that it was like something Don Marquis' archy would have written, if he had been an Evangelical.

saying "I'm spiritual but not religious"

to me
is like

being thirsty but not getting something to drink

best quote of the weekend. Had heavy competition, too.

Me: Oh, you know what? Major Winters wrote an actual autobiography that just came out.

Miss F (gasps): Is it called "I'm So Swoony"?

FYI here is the book.

I woke up Tuesday morning and started laughing before I got out of bed, remembering this.

when you come across a sentence like this in life it must be shared.

Developed by the Graffiti Research Lab a division of the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab, LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood.

from notmartha.com

Everything I Need To Know In Life I Learned From Charles Dickens*

If you meet a mysterious and unhappy woman who looks at you as though you were a ghost...

...it may be that she is your long-lost mother who had been told that you died at birth. Ask her!


If you have never learned housekeeping or deportment because your mother is in the habit of practicing Telescopic Philanthropy and only employs you to help her write letters...

...don't use this as an excuse not to respect her. She is still your mother, and you will learn housekeeping skills from someone else before you marry the dancing master.


If you are sitting with a friend in your furnished room and notice that there is a terrible and ominous smell coming from the rag-and-bone shop on the ground floor as well as a strange oily soot in the air...

...it's probably because your landlord has spontaneously combusted. Call the Bow Street Runners.


*n.b. this is not true.

Have you ever...

...polished your shoes with hand lotion?
...had an anxiety dream involving McGill University, which you did not attend?
...owned a cat who habitually carried a stuffed dinosaur around in her mouth?
...worried that you are gradually but thoroughly destroying your knees by jogging, but the only sign of this will be that one day, when you are running down South Street, your kneecaps will just fall off?

ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three

Wednesdays at 6
Northampton Center for the Arts
Waltz lessons
Fun!

I love the fact that

part of my job today involved dealing with a haiku-related emergency.

Big Ol' Caveat

So I've been thinking about the previous post and I think it needs clarification. Because actually, obviously, I do believe that we are equal in our souls before God-- he shows no partiality. And we are told that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. And the idea of a caste system where your "place in the world" has anything to do with your virtue or favor in God's sight is deeply alien to Christianity, I think-- unless you want to talk about what's been called God's "preferential option" for the poor and powerless. Our God is a God who champions the underdog-- not because He doesn't love the overdog, so to speak, but because the underdog needs it, among other reasons.

So what's left of CS Lewis' quote and my previous post? Well, read the third link, the one to Mere Comments, in that post. That explains it better than I seem to be able to, partially because I have as yet had no coffee, and it's already almost 11:15 in the morning. It has to do with what mutual submission actually looks like. No, I don't think I'm going to be getting any more coherent than that at the moment. Maybe later.

Just to stir things up...

So this conversation has been going on over at James' blog (with this followup), both of which kind of touch on a previous post-a-thon at another blog in response to this from way back in November.

Are you with me?

Now. The following is from That Hideous Strength, the third in CS Lewis' Space Trilogy. And it's getting at the same question, from a slightly different angle. Well, a related question: we were talking at James' blog about church authority. But it's tied together somehow.

"You were saying, my dear?" resumed the Director.

"I thought love meant equality," she said, "and free companionship."

"Ah, equality!" said the Director. "We must talk of that some other time. Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed, because we are fallen...Equality is not the deepest thing, you know."

"I always thought that's just what it was. I thought that it was in their souls that people were equal."

"You were mistaken," said he gravely. "That is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law; equality of incomes; that is all very well. Equality guards life; it does not make it. It is medicine, not food. You might as well try to warm yourself with a
blue-book."

"But surely in marriage...?"

"Worse and worse, " said the Director. "Courtship knows nothing of it; nor does fruition. What has free companionship to do with that?"

--and it goes on. Page 148 in the MacMillan edition with the '60s graphic on the cover.

He's not talking about class inequality. Jane, the woman speaking, is later taken aback at the lack of servility that Ivy-- who cleans Jane's house-- shows, when they're both under the Director's roof. And of course he's not saying that some people are more valued by God than others, or anything like that. Almost the opposite: if he's right, and if you cross-apply this idea to the James-blog-debate, it means that while the world-system only values the strong, the leaders, those in authority, God genuinely values those who genuinely don't have authority, or who have less authority.

I, for example, "am a person also under authority." My editor is called Steve. And part of his job, what he may do every day to the glory of God, is to is tell me what to do. And my job is to obey him, as long as he doesn't tell me to do something immoral or illegal. He genuinely has authority over me, and depending on how we each fulfill our separate roles-- in love, to God's glory-- God is pleased, I think. Steve would be delinquent in not telling me what to do next as much as I would be delinquent (and have been, truth be told) in goofing off rather than doing it. It's like symbiosis. It's like the Little Drummer Boy.

You may froth at the mouth below.

Oh, lovely, lovely interlibrary loan! Huzzah!

Very Good Things, in no particular order.

Pour yourself a glass of this.
If you haven't yet seen this, you've got to.
Put your feet up and read this.
Get yourself some tickets for this.
Go in here and order a half of porter...
...or here on (as I vaguely recall) Wednesday and Sunday nights. (That's for the live music. I totally forget when quiz night is.)

Just some suggestions.

Oh...

...excellent. By the way, has anyone seen my first volume of Kirsten Lavransdatter? It's bound in brown cloth. I finally want to read it, and now I can't find it.

this + this = a good time