Month: June 2012

Another Comment

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I’m no lawyer – but here’s Instapundit’s take: “The Supreme Court has refused to save us from ourselves. The solution now must be political.” I guess it’s time we didn’t expect those dead white guys to do all the lifting – they must have been getting tired. Still, it was comforting to think they had our backs. And I’d like precedent to limit – well, strong.

Mercersburg Academy Chapel

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Recently I had an opportunity to see the beautiful Mercersburg Academy Chapel and campus in Pennsylvania.

Here is a view of the campus library and a great hot rod there for a wedding pickup.

Here is a view of the stained glass inside the chapel.

It is a sign of our era that a wedding is the only time that I sit still without an electronic device of any sort for an hour and a half or so.

Cross posted at LITGM

Taylor 1: Liberal Arts Purpose to Leave Our Selves Behind

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Delbanco’s The Real American Dream argues American culture/literature narrows focus from God to Nation to Self. Paradoxically, such movement also universalizes God seen as a 17th century Puritan did; Nation as an Enlightened American did; but the self ah, going far inward, externals blur. Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” or its opposite, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, are accessible whatever a student’s religious background. Understanding that “Self”, though, is also deepened by understanding the vestiges of history buried in our culture, affecting writers newly come to this continent as well as those who self-consciously reject much of that heritage (as do both Emerson and Hawthorne). So the first fourth of the first half of a chronological survey requires us to enter another world in another time with other beliefs to appreciate what they considered important, fought wars over, faced a wilderness to express.

Some heritage is general: Puritans brought with them an obsession with the word written, memorized, analyzed and a pared down, intense relationship with their God in which little church hierarchy intervenes. Translation of the Bible into the vernacular had powerful consequences. And church governance as they defined it seems to inevitably lead to government of, by and for the people. Of course, the communal remains important. The warmth of the Mayflower contract and agreements on the Arbella led to the great “ur” documents. Separatists like Williams were then, and are likely always to be, a minority. But individualism & self-conscious self-inspection are central to the 19th century. That tendency pulled American culture farther toward individualism as value and libertarianism as policy. To this day, our outlier position is characterized by individualism – a position most cherish, welcoming challenge.

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Fire Country

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(This is a picture that my father took of the 2003 Paradise Mountain fire coming towards their house – the puff of black smoke is probably from a burning structure, maybe a vehicle. The rest of the pictures on that roll of film were of the house interior – to document for the insurance company.)

Reading the news about the fires burning near Colorado Springs revive memories of what it was like, when I was growing up in the hill country the hill country of Southern California. Then it would be hot and dry all summer long, the green grass of spring would turn gold, the chaparral the native brush would dry out . . . and then . . .

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