Thanksgiving at Our New Table

I promised myself that when our new table arrived, I would put up a puzzle. I saved this Peace Like a River puzzle by Kim Norlien just for the occasion. He is, or was, a local artist. His studio was down the road from us in Clearwater. When we stopped in there this past summer the studio was locked, and there was a realty sign on the lawn. The last time I checked his web site it still had the Clearwater address. At any rate, the puzzle finally went up and was finished.  But just like a country music song, I have to analyze it! Notice that the sky looks like daylight. You can't see it from the picture, but there are people sitting out on the deck on the right, just above and to the left of the blue car. Yet. the fireplace is lit, and all of the lights are on in every room of the house. They are wasting electricity and firewood! I guess that means the light is merely symbolic. When I first started this puzzle I was dropping in pieces left and right. As I neared the end, when it is normally easier, it got harder and harder. It was a challenge. The hidden images were a little bonus, and the scripture quote a commentary on the artist. I am sorry that he is moving, or has moved from, the area.

I have been able to finish two mysteries, Ralph McInerny's On This Rockne, and a garage sale find, George Harmon Coxe' Top Assignment (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1955). Ralph's book was entertaining from his commentaries on academic life and on the state of affairs in the Catholic church. I got a kick out of "The Old Bastards Table" and the faculty senate. Took me back to my days at CSB/SJU. Academia! Top Assignment was interesting in that Communist infiltration in the United States was part of the plot. Today no one would think anything of it, and in fact people would probably cheer it on.  

We have had some life adventures this week. Arthur's car just came back from the garage. Mine needs to go in. On top of that our local e-mail service provider closed up out of the blue, or if it was a one man operation, he was injured in a hunting accident and is lying in a hospital bed somewhere while the company goes belly up. We had not had service for almost a week. Last night we decided to scramble and go for a new e-mail.

The St. Marcellus Mission group craft sale is over for the year. I am free to craft as I like without deadlines for another whole ten months! Glory! But not really any time to rest. I had to deliver a bunch of leftover hats and scarves to Catholic Charities, and I brought home some stained and holey vintage embroidered tablecloths that I will have to figure out how to use for next year's sale. There is no rest for the wicked. And I still have to get caught up on dishes, housecleaning and laundry. 

More Books

 My latest children's read was Astrid Lindgren's The Children of Noisy Village. I found a copy at Saver's about three weeks ago. I have found almost every children's book that I have wanted at Saver's sooner or later. At any rate, it was such a fun read. I got a kick out of the blunt telling of the lives of the neighborhood children through the eyes of nine year old Lisa. It left me feeling happy and refreshed. 

After that I discovered Ralph McInerny's autobiography,  I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You on the shelf. I wondered how it had gotten there. I did not remember buying it, although it would have been something I may have purchased somewhere. Turns out my husband was the culprit. He had read a review of the book somewhere, ordered it and read it, all without my knowing, or remembering. Stinkerpants! At any rate, I picked it up for a read. It appealed to me on a few different fronts than perhaps it did for Arthur. First, because I was a philosophy major, and I remember McInerny from my time in college. Second, because I have read Fr. Dowling and a few more of his mystery stories and other fictional works. Third, because we have his book, A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists. I had no idea that Ralph was a Minnesota native, so it was interesting to read about his childhood in Minneapolis and his time at Nazareth Hall. I was quite young when my brother Gerard was at Nazareth Hall, and I remember only negative comments that my mom made of it. Ralph painted a different picture of a place with a very classical curriculum where it was expected that not all who attended would continue on to the priesthood. Of course, my brother was there after Vatican II, so it may have been quite different by that time. I only recognized the names of two of the priests who were there when Ralph was there. I was unaware that Ralph had written under several pseudonyms, and I did not know he had a series of mysteries based on Notre Dame University. They are now on my Saver's/used book store list! A quick search on Amazon shows that most are out of print and not available. When I was in college we used texts from Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, both mentioned in Ralph's book. I did not know of the Maritain Center which Ralph headed at Notre Dame. The book gave me insight on the solidity of Thomistic philosophy compared to other modern philosophies. I wish that I had had that insight while I was in college. It might have saved me some confusion. For that reason alone the book was profitable for me. He gave a  negative assessment of symbolic logic. I had symbolic logic at CSB/SJU, and my feeling at the time was that it was like learning chemical formulas. High school chemistry boggled my mind, so it is not surprising that symbolic logic did the same. Nice to know he did not think symbolic logic is what it is cracked up to be. His writing on what it means to be a Catholic university or college as opposed to "Meatball Tech" was helpful since my time in college was fraught with professors who dissented on church teaching. I am afraid my alma mater has continued down that path to absurdity. Just this past year they were unable to condemn an alleged sex competition in any other way than to cry rape, because the only sex they claim to be immoral these days is non-consensual sex. His writing on Vatican II was also helpful. He pointed out the expectation that Pope Paul's commission on birth control would overturn the ban on the Pill. When this did not happen, there was open dissent. (I knew that Bishop Shannon of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis had left the priesthood to get married, but I did not know that it was because he objected to Humanae Vitae.) We are still dealing with that dissent today. Some would perhaps say that Ralph was naïve in not noting the deliberate masterminds behind liturgical changes, he did rightly point out that the "spirit" of Vatican II is very different than the letter of Vatican II, and that most Catholics have not the slightest knowledge of what the documents actually say.  I experienced that myself at CSB/SJU. I believe that it is also fair to say that those who dissent from moral law have also not cared if they dissented from liturgical law. The two seem to go hand in hand. I do not think this book will go into the give-away pile. I may have to re-read parts of it from time to time. 

On the craft side, I have been doing loads of embroidery. I am also trying to redeem a table runner that I put together for a gift for someone. Better had I trimmed each unit before sewing together. It is waiting for quilting. The first time I basted my sandwich I had lots of puckers. I had to take it apart and re-sew a few seams. It seems to have helped a bit. This time around I put in loads more pins. I am also hand-basting to ease in what is left of the fulness.