Today was a fun day for Libby and I. We got to spend quite a bit of time together, which is always a blessing. We also got to see some good art. Well, great art and good art. First,

"Now is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer by this son of York."

Libby and I finished reading this play today. Wow. There is a lot to unpack from Richard III, and I am still barely beginning. It's a great play. I'm not sure why it's attractive, though. It is amazing how evil and justice are intertwined. The hump-back is little more than an instrument of God.

Tonight we also went and watched the Phantom of the Opera, which was at the dollar theater. That was an intense movie, and it has some interesting thoughts on evil in it, as well.

Curiously, both of these are about evil ugly men.

Today was a very good day with respect to birding. I didn't see any new birds, but boy did I see some cool ones, and all in an hour or two at La Mirada Park!

This afternoon, after work, I decided to drop by the park to see if an oriole I've been watching was still there. It's such a pretty bird that I go look at it at least once a week.

But, when I was walking towards the trees that it hangs out in (near the gym) I saw a giant white bird circling the lake in the park. I hot footed it over there to find out what it was, just in time to see it setting its enormous bulk into a sycamore on the far shore. My suspicions were growing, but when I reached the bottom of the tree, and gazed up, I was sure. It was an osprey! In La Mirada Park! Awesome!



Crows were unhappy about it, they kept dive bombing it, and anywhere it flew they followed. Some older gentlemen at the park say that they do see it from time to time fishing there. But I'm still flabergasted.

Other birds that Libby and I saw at the park (and most of them you can see, too, if you drop by) plus I'm updating this list as I see more:
1. Western Bluebird (there are some nest boxes in the park, so there are at least two pairs)
2. Cassin's Kingbird
3. Cedar Waxwing (spring)
4. Barn Swallow
5. Black-crowned Night Heron (We saw one of these eat a baby duck!)
6. Double-crested cormorant
7. Mallard ducks
8. Muscovy-mallard hybrid duck, plus other unique hybrids
9. Domestic Geese and ducks:
10. Chinese Domestic Goose
11. Greylag Goose
12. Mourning dove
13. Great-tailed grackle
14. Brewer's blackbird
15. House Sparrow
16. European Starling (rumor has it the Romans taught these starlings to speak like humans.
17. American Crow
18. American Coot
19. Rock Dove (feral domestic pigeons)
20. Band-tailed Pigeon (the largest pigeon in North America, a game bird with tasty flesh)
21. Sharp-shinned Hawk
22. Townsend's warbler
23. Wilson's Warbler
24. Ash-throated Flycatcher
25. Western tanager! (5.06.05)
26. Great blue heron
27. Green heron
28. Snowy Egret
29. Great Egret
30. That ol' Bullocks Oriole (spring)
31. That ol' Osprey
32. Black Pheobe
33. Ring necked Duck (a week in April)
34. White fronted goose (April, 05)
35. American Wigeon (Winter)



Other times we've gone we've seen lesser goldfinches and house finches (of course) plus mockingbirds, etc.

In the winter, there are a lot more ducks and geese in the lake: The wigeon, the ring-necked duck, a white-fronted goose, and chocolate runner at least.

You can also find, at varying times, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets.



La Mirada Park is cool!

(for image credits, right click on the images to see their source page)

The Badonkadonk!

I have tears in my eyes. Wrap your mind around this piece of engineering marvelry. Then read the reviews. Then, recall to your mind that this is called a "badonkadonk." Read a few more reviews, and then, again, consider the name. The "badonkadonk" is calling you!

It looks like a landcruiser from Return of the Jedi.

Well, we've certainly gotten a little less frequent in Blog posting. Probably just because we've gotten to a point where life is going so fast that it's hard to stop and reflect on it. Reflection is just absolutely prior to communication, and that's what this blog is.

Today Dustin, Luke, Lem, Phil and I went driving all over Southern California tux shopping. The thing is, Dustin's getting married, and he doesn't want us to show up in t-shirts and shorts. Personally, that seems a little absurd, but to each his own, you know?

First on the iternary was Friar Tux in Brea. That was a little hard to find, because its in some other Bridal store called Allusions Bridal, which is hardly evident. After defying a conditional argument (don't ask! it's dustin's fault!), we finally found it and made our way inside. Problem: $95.00 each, after a discount. What do people think their selling? Tuxedoes? Gosh! Lem enjoyed a little Rayman Bowling on his cell phone, and otherwise we mucked about while Dustin attempted a few little magical negotiation techniques. Finding these futile, we loaded back up in our car and scooted off to eat lunch at our traditional local eatery: Great Wall Mongolian BBQ on Harbor and Imperial.

Mongolian BBQ was awesome, we hadn't been there in a long time. I loaded up an egg roll with a wasabi-like horseradish sauce, revelling in the rolling burning tongues of flame that licked the insides of my sinus cavities. Ah, delightful torture! Oh the delicious flavors that can be found within the circumferance of a bowl! We ate until we were satisfied.

Now we decided to go back to the place where we got our tuxes for Phil's wedding. That place is, however, in Cerritos. So a half an hour later or so we finally found ourselves on the corner of Del Amo and Bellflower. We didn't get back till after 3:00, and we left around noon! Still, it was fun cruising through the streets of Southern California with the boyz. This other tux place is awesome. You should go there. They cut us a nice deal, $75.00 each. $20 less, and the tuxes are fine and dandy. If I remembered the name, I'd tell you. But I don't, so ask Dustin or Phil. Maybe I'll add it in an update.

Now I'll be settin' to work on the ol' Thesis. Lord Byron, here I come!

I started doing observation hours at a new school today. I'm in a 4th grade class this time, and it's in a Christian school. The first day is always really exciting because I get to meet the kids, and they get to meet me, and they're usually really excited because there's a new face. Some funny things happened. Here's one of them...

During recess a couple of the girls came up to me, jumpropes in hand, to introduce themselves.
Jessica: My name is Jessica.
Nicole: And I'm Nicole.
Me: Well, hello Jessica and Nicole. It's nice to meet you both.
*pause*
Jessica: I like eggs.

And I like you, Jessica.

William Dembski was at Biola today talking about Intelligent Design, a movement in which he is a major mover and shaker. So, in celebration of his lectures, I'm posting the link to the Intelligence Design Blog.

And, buy his book!

Intelligent Design is one of the most important and most successful intellectual projects in our lifetime (it helped convinced Flew!). It was exciting to hear what he had to say in person.

An interesting article by Stanley Kurtz on gender studies, and the goals of radical feminism. I think that he probably mischaracterizes the feminist movement by lumping everyone in with this one group of radicals, but reading it with this in mind lends an interesting perspective.

Can We Make Boys and Girls Alike?

I think the stuff on kibutzes is interesting.

Some cool Google Map Locations:

Hoover Dam

The Statue of Liberty

Disneyland!

Here's Pokonobe Lodge on the northern end of Lake Mary. There are clouds, I think, over the cabin. (Click on the map to move it around: Mamie, Horseshoe, Twin, George, all the way to Duck is displayed in this resolution)

There are just a few of the cool places you can see using Google Maps and their new satellite feature. Check it out!

Update:

It turns out I was totally reinventing the wheel. Besides the ones I posted here I had searched for a bunch of other things. I probably found about half of what's on this blog. I can vouch for it being more fun if you look for it yourself, but this is the cheat sheet of cool American places seen from satellites and visible on Google Maps.

Google Sightseeing Blog

Grandpa Moothart and little Jonathan Phineas.

Grandma Moothart takes a turn with the little one.

Emily let me hold him while she signed some papers.

Introducing Jonathan Phineas Moothart, born at 12:03 last night. He's 6lb, 13.5oz. He's perfect, and everything he does is cute. You can check out Gabe's blog for more details; I'm sure he'll be updating it!

I'm going to be an aunt! Gabe and Emily went to the hospital to induce labor tonight. Apparantly, there's a bunch of stuff to do to get Emily ready, and the baby probably won't be born until the morning. So, tomorrow is going to be an exciting day for the Mootharts and Palmers. I'll take pictures of my adorable new niephew (whose gender will be known by that point) and post some on here. I can't wait! This baby is going to be the cutest. Well, actually, babies usually aren't that cute right after they're born, huh? All slimy and stuff. Well, it's true! Anyway, after a little while he/she is going to be so cute.

Pray for a safe and quick delivery.

I'll keep ya posted. :-)

This last week I read 220 pages of T.S. Eliot. It was an experience and a half. After finishing the Four Quartets, I felt that he had taught me something, somehow, that I had always wanted to know but never knew how to express. But I also had the impression that if someone asked me what I thought it was he had taught me, I could only tell them that it was what he had said, and refer them to the poem. That's unfortunate, but may be a drawback in my own experience of the truth. Poetry aims at communicating truths that otherwise we could never fully appreciate.

I love the Romantic Poets, and so I have studied them more fairly extensively. His commentary on their ideas, very present in the Quartets, especially, helped me understand them better than anything else I have ever read. I'll try and put some of the parrallels down here, show where he and Wordsworth have intersected. (I need a break from good ol' Richard II - a play that I realized yesterday has commentary on salvific theology. Whoa.)

From The Dry Salvages:

The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination -
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness...

This can be taken as a commentary on Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. It is the story of a man who is coming back to a place that he was years ago. When he arrives, he reflects on his prior experiences, and his intermediate experiences of the first experience that he had had in his memory.

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur...

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration...

This is much longer than Eliot's little section, but Eliot's section is parasitic, in my view, on Wordsworth, and so that makes sense. This is not even the sum of it, it's just showing that there is a similarity. Wordsworth goes on to say that, it's not just a matter of feeling, but a matter of understanding. Revisiting the experiences is when we:

...are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

I take sight for an image of understanding (uncontroversially, I think). See, as Eliot says, we have moved through the feeling of an experience to accessing the being of that experience, the truth of it. If you go back up and check the order, you'll see it flows in the order of Wordsworth's poem. So, that's so far.

Eliot's not done yet, though.

I have said before that
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations - not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

It's hard not to keep going, but this has helped me to understand something that used to puzzle me in Wordsworth. What did he mean, I always wondered, when he said in returning to the silvan Wye, he came with knew knowledge. (this is still progressing chronologically through Tintern)

...For I have learned to
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.

The connections here should be fairly plain. The backward glance is what has possessed Wordsworth with this "still sad music of humanity." A little context (which, Eliot, who was very familiar with William Wordsworth knew plainly) is that here Wordsworth is approaching the Wye (the river flowing above Tintern Abbey) with the knowledge imparted to him through the terrible experiences he had gone through five years before. He was visiting the Wye after the French Revolution and the Terror (ah ha! "the silent Terror" Eliot's line gains a new meaning!) had disillusioned him from his radical political mindset and faith in humanity's ability to progress, and he had lost his fiancee to the political rift between France and England that prohibited travel. He didn't see the daughter that she was pregnant with at the time for years after the poem was written. It's no surprise that he prefaces the above quotes with these lines:

...And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature fled; more like a man
Flying from something he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved.

Well, this post has gotten long again. I hope that anyEliot fans unfamiliar with Wordsworth find it somewhat useful.

The Dry Salvages is a poem that really caught me up in the Incarnation. Which is just a good thing for a poem to do. Little Gidding also hits on the theme of memory and its proper use in the well-lived life. These lines struck me as excellent. I will end with them.

III
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attatchment to self and to things and to persons, detatchment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them,
indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lifes - unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation - not less of love but expanding of love beyond desire, and so
liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

I haven't posted anything in a while. So, I'm going to make up for my silence by making this very long and profound. I mean, you're going to walk away and go, "Hmmm" for like, hours.

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Haha! April Fools!