I am glad I am not the only person instinctively afraid of installing the software that comes with hardware. Is having easy access to the ink levels in my printer really worth the 50,000k of random inexplicable HP software with late-1990's style UIs that I will inevitably end up installing in order to get it?

I don't remember if I posted this around the time of Fr. Neuhaus's death (RIP), but the following is a moving meditation
on life, death, suffering, and illness, and the meaning of it all by Fr. Neuhaus.

In Soviet Russia, there were Яolcats (Is outrage!)

And for the liturgically inclined: LOLSaints

And if somehow combining them makes you think about taking over the world, make sure you install an extremely intimidating washing machine in your evil lair.

(Ok, ok, so this is more of a linkdump than a coherent blog post... cleaning out the old to do file...)

I think this is sort of like a steampunk synthesizer, except it's not steam powered. Is there any such thing as vinylpunk? Solidstatepunk?

Has anyone written a concerto for optigan yet?

Subway optigan busker is the new official gold standard for getting large-denomination bills in the instrument case (now that subway theramin players are dime-a-dozen).

This almost reads like a call to arms:

"The Philippines is a disaster-prone nation and an archivist’s nightmare. Situated strategically in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it is subject to earthquakes, typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, and other natural catastrophes. Political instability and waves of invasions by contending forces have made historical documents extremely vulnerable to man-made devastation. ... Many musicians who were literate in western music ntation did not entrust their music manuscript collections to libraries or archives. In part, this might have been because competition among rival orchestras, choirs, and bands led to the jealous guarding of personal scores, which were therefore accessible only
to one’s trusted associates. "

Finding Marcelo: Reconstructing the Lost Repertoire of a Nineteenth-century
Philippine Master (Elena Mirano)

Well this makes MegaBus an essentially useless Portland to New York connection.

The beautiful French baroque church of St. Jean Baptiste on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (my former parish) hosted Bishop Rifan of Brazil two weeks ago, the first time a pontifical rite was celebrated in New York using the Extraordinary Form ceremonial in over a decade and only the fourth or fifth since the Council. This is almost certainly the most complex and intricate Roman-rite liturgy to occur in NYC in the past decade, even moreso than the recent papal visit and installation of the new archbishop in terms of ritual (if not numbers).

Anyway, thanks to the dedicated MC's, priests, and amazing musicians, it was a glorious occasion to celebrate the outpouring of Christ's love symbolized by his Sacred Heart:






Now that's what that old high altar was made for...

Tons more amazing pictures and images (and some video) at: Pontifical Mass Photos and Footage courtesy of the Sacred Heart Confraternity

In thanksgiving and memory.
Hinky, beloved family cat for 16 years.

Died May 19, 2009 at home in North Yarmouth.

Liturgical punk band name idea:

The Wholly Rude Guild

(inspiration: The Holy Rood Guild)

Conlon Nancarrow's Study #12 is a bit like Bizet's Carmen meets Super Mario Bros, all on player piano...

St. Patrick's day was celebrated in my office today with soda bread, corned beef and cabbage, and the like.

Office Services likes to send around factoids tangentially related to the food theme for the week and this week we were informed of how the Druids held three to be a sacred number, and thus the shamrock's significance.

Reminded me of this.

Another minor blow against civilization:


Obama is loosening the dress code at the White House. Although I agree the plates are lame. Can't be good for the folks peddling the official Obama collector plates, though...

And since the tie industry needs a bailout, couldn't Obama throw them a bone?

Then again I've been reading the "death of necktie" articles since I've been old enough to read articles... and the curmuddgeonly circle of friends I have may be able to prop-up the industry a bit longer.

Also there are now only a handful of eateries left that require ties in New York, although the Times (as it is wont to do) does slightly exaggerate the 21 club's capitulation. And, aside from the Union League Club (for lectures) I haven't actually been anywhere where a tie is required, and in the neckwear department I am semper paratus anyway.

Sit or Squat helps you find bathrooms near you using your iPhone, other mobile device, or just over the Internet. There are even pictures of many toilets to preview how grimy the place is.

Putting the wisdom of crowds to good use. Remind me how we survived without the Internet again?

Inspired by fellow-server Nathaniel at First Things, I offer yet another awesome Advent hymn, this one of very ancient provenance: the office hymn for Lauds (through Dec 16):

Vox Clara Ecce Intonat, available in PDF form from Aristotle, and a different version to listen to here: Vox Clara on Last.fm

Nothing like a hymn decrying sloth to get you going on a wintry morning.

Two other advent gems:
Wachet Auf

Lo, he comes with clouds descending

One Viennese School: the distance between something awesome and the modernist reinvention of it.

One Vosko: the standard unit of suck involved in an architectural renovation of a church. Can be negative (one stroik = -1.5 kilovoskos)

Two of my favorite things in one very mildly hilarious Youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ-jv8g1YVI

This may have already made its way around the blogosphere, but I missed it if so.

Apparently vicars in the CoE rebelled against the requirement that they fail to post "no smoking" signs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6652997.stm

I haven't seen a follow-up, alas.

At least we won't have to spend the next four years listening to how stupid, evil, and mendacious the President of the United States is.

And Obama's election has improved the perception of the United States in the world (particularly in "Old Europe")--and since Obama is unlikely to upset the UN/EU consensus, that diplomatic capital may be useful to the next Republican administration.

I also hope that with the bogeyman of Evil Bush gone, it will be more acceptable to differ from the liberal orthodoxy in polite company.

Obama can't run on Change and Hope again - he'll need to run on results. And perhaps the Republicans will get their act together and nominate an electable, real conservative in the next election.

A wonderful trip.

Paris in the fall is as good as the song says. (And did I mention the trees were turning? and the weather was excellent?)

And S is a wonderful travel companion and tour guide! I would be lost (literally) without her.

And I feel relaxed to go back to work tomorrow and see what the wreckage on Wall Street has done to my company. It could be good, it could be bad. Au revoir.

Our mornings now have a routine - S awakens and goes out exploring and shopping and brings a pastry back for me, since I am the lazy sleepyhead on vacation. I can't complain!

This morning we went to Mass at St. Germain de Pres. The freestanding altar here is much better than the other parishes we have visited so far, although the old high altar is still used as a credence table. It is interesting that every era leaves its mark in a church - St. Germain is the oldest church in Paris, and it consequently has touches that are Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, neo-Classical - and then the 20th-century additions. In some cases, they are harmless (like the nonsensical "seven sacraments" stained glass designs in the apse of St. Severin - pleasing colors, but without the guidebook totally incomprehensible), in a few others (jumping ahead chronologically to tomorrow's trip, the Basilica of St. Therese has a lot of well-executed Art Deco/He-Man Jesus style mosaics), but in most cases, destructive. Carpeting. Reorientations of the sanctuary. Star Trek chasubles. Scary pseudo-primitive sculptures. It makes one weep. Will this stuff go away eventually, consigned to the aesthetic dust-heap, or will it remain for centuries? Eventually will it look like it belongs?

And really, what kind of frightfully consistent ideologue would decide that not only should the chapel for reserving the Eucharist be placed outside the main body of the church (I see the point in pilgrimage churches that have so much foot-traffic) but then, the tabernacle in said Eucharistic chapel, which was originally built to combat Jansenism, should also be off to one side? Ugh.

On the way out of the church we saw our first Obama button in Paris.

St. Severin was our next intermediate stop -- skipping from one end of the Medieval architecture spectrum to the other. All of these Gothic buildings are the feasts for visual analysis... following the ribs of the ceiling vaults to the responds on the pillars - counting how the different layers of windows and blind arcades interplay. St. Severin is almost diagramatic of the Gothic style. Walsh's architecture lectures replay in my head (although not the warm, sleepy room where the slide projector fans dangerously lulling us into a post-lunch stupor.) and I attempt to impart some remembered knowledge on to S.

We stopped into a modernized Art-Deco Brasserie for Croque-Monsieur. There seemed to be only one waiter running the place, and service was slow, but we got a chance to do a lot of people-watching. Unlike New York, everyone seems to have an Outfit with a capital O. Now, I work in the Fashion District, and there are plenty of people with capital-O Outfits, but there are plenty of schlubs who look like they just rolled out of bed too. Here schlubbiness seems to be an affront to the national character. And everyone bikes to work too, even men in business suits!

I'm starting to do a lot more thinking in broken French and I think the eavesdropping is becoming easier. I don't know if objectively a lot of my vocabulary has come back - and I think . However, knowing that so many people speak English and that S doesn't speak French, we have no way to have private conversations here - except for a handful of useful words I've picked up in Tagalog so far. Still, we're thinking that Latin might be an even more useful secret language to learn.

On the way to the Musée de Cluny (otherwise known as the National Museum of the Middle Ages), in the Abbot of Cluny's former in-town Paris mansion (so the Middle Ages did have their excesses too...), we walked along the bank of the Seine where booksellers have set up shop. There are pages cut out of old Graduals or Antiphonaries, which are tempting but also sad - that these books are no longer used, and only thought of as useful for cutting into pieces and selling to tourists.

We also see a motorhome with a family and their dog drive by - my parents would appreciate that! Just like most of the cars, it is a miniature -- and judging from the roads, that's about all that would be able to safely make its way through the streets.

Remarkably, there was a very long line for the Cluny museum - which made our visit shorter than I would have liked - and it's hard to sum up - I saw quite a lot of sculpture that I had studied before (especially the heads of kings from Notre-Dame and some of the St. Denis column capitals). S seems to prefer that crazy modern stuff (you know, from the late 15th century!) but I'm happy to look at 12th century portal sculpture all afternoon.

S took me out for birthday dinner at the Auberge de la Reine Blanche (which does not mean Eggplant of the White Queen, just like Pour Énlargement des Buts has nothing to do with enlarging one's posterior). Vin Chateau Piconruean, duck, soup l'oignon... everything was perfect, and then as we were getting the check I heard organ music from the church across the street.

Sure enough, we were able to stop in for the second half of a recital by Lucie Zakova at the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile. She played mostly Czech composers, including a sonata by Benda - which I had played on the piano! And finished with Bach's a minor prelude and an encore of something very French and Romantic.

Proving that organ geeks are the same the world over, an older gentleman after the concert came over to tell me (in rapid-fire and incomprehensible French) all about le génie de M. Cavaille-Cole. He seemed satisfied when I told him I had enjoyed the concert and came from New York. Perhaps he thought we came just for the recital. The church had put up a large screen and projected a video image of Mlle. Zakova while she was playing - a great idea for organ recitals in general.

Back to the hotel, which has a somewhat peculiar system for securing the keys. You leave them at the desk when you leave for the day, and then if you seem nice and can remember your room number, they give you the key when you return - no ID, just an ability to smile and speak broken French. C'est la vie ici. The keys, which are high-tech lightweight RFID fobs, are attached to a keychain that weighs about 2 pounds.

Also, two cryptic notes from today that I can't remember what they were intended to represent:
like 8 event
even king doesn't stop

(And speaking of Law and Order: Paris, S. presented me with a birthday card that plays the famous chunk-chunk from LO:CI. Hehehehe!)