A promise kept

A few days ago, I promised that I’d go into more detail about the Google Books project.  Here it is in a nutshell.  I haven’t been this impressed by an internet undertaking since I first fired up a modem.  You may think this is overstating the case.  Okay, I can see why.  The creation of email, the development of the World Wide Web, the near instantaneous availability of video reports from all corners of the map…what is so special about Google Books?

Two things:  First, this little thing called public domain.  Second, Google’s tireless Library Project.  Even as you read this, there are “agents” all over the place scanning library holdings into Google Books.  For the most part, I am only concerned with their public domain scans.  These are works whose copyright has expired or those which never held a copyright.  They belong to…me.  And you.  And they are increasingly more available now online.  You can read them online.  You can download the PDF on a portable drive and take them with you anywhere.

Okay, PDFs are kind of clunky to read on a computer and are even worse on portable devices.  Gotcha.  It is better than not having the books available to you.  And then, two things are quickly coming down the pike that could erase the headache.  Amazon is coming out with a next generation Kindle book reader with nearly a ten inch diagonal screen, which will make most of these public domain books eminently readable.  The new Kindle will cost around five hundred bucks.  If you have the cash, that’s a small price to pay to be able to carry an entire library around in your briefcase or purse, and when you find time to read, for it to feel like…well, like a book.

Sometime next year, Barnes and Noble will be rolling out their version of an electronic book reader which incorporates plastic electronic technology…that means a flex screen book reader.  Why am I so excited?

It is simple really.  I subscribe to John Senior’s worldview.  That is to say, if we are to restore Christian culture, it will be because we smash the television and the video game system and all of these technologies of separation and return to the hearth and the porch as families.  We have to return to a human scale and pace.  And we have to have the normal experiences which will prepare us to fight for our culture.  That includes hiking in the woods, sledding down hills, wading through creeks, chasing dragonflies, singing wholesome songs together and reading the “thousand good books” that prepare the soil of the soul to receive The Faith.  If you didn’t have those experiences as a kid, can you still?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that we had darn well better make these experiences available to our children.

At this point, ninety-or-so percent of these irreplaceable works are available for free on Google Books.  Many of them had been out of print for decades, and if you couldn’t find a copy in a used bookstore after weeks or months of searching, your only recourse was to unicode text versions stripped of their artwork and peculiarities.  Google Books are the real thing…high quality scans of the actual books, in most cases with color artwork intact.

I am in awe of those at Google who have devoted their time and effort to this undertaking.  They may not realize it yet, but they’re saving the world, one book at a time.

As I said, these books are available for PDF download if that appeals to you.  You can also create your own library.  Check out mine.  It is fledgling, but I’ll flesh it out.

The GB project is still in beta, believe it or not, and there aren’t a lot of controls, but to help you out, here are some simple instructions.  Go to books.google.com and then click on the “advanced book search”.  Once on that page, click the radio buttons for “full view only” and “all content.”  That will give you only the books which are public domain, and it’ll give you all of them.  Happy hunting!

What happens after you get there, I’ll let you discover.  Make sure you get to bed before 3 a.m.

 

Ten Reasons you should move to Peru: Reason 2

Reason one, cheap land, should have a wide appeal for many, especially those who live where real estate is unreal estate. The second reason is closer to my heart, the parish church.

St. Charles was glorious in it’s heyday before the wreckovators came in after Vatican II and installed orange carpet and painted the ceiling mud brown. Don’t even ask, I don’t know. Maybe it was on sale because nobody else would buy it.

Certainly, no crew from “Total Makeover – Ecclesiastical Edition” was involved. Take a look at the first picture, it is from the 1930′s. I’m not sure if they had “applique” in those days, so I’m assuming that the images to either side of the crucifix are frescoes. The ceiling was ornate and the detail work was amazingly delicate. Now this is what a Catholic church is supposed to look like.

According to whom? Why, people with uncommon sense, of course.

I have another picture of the church from 1964, and not much had changed. the altar rail had been painted white, the adoring angels on the outside pedestals of the high altar were gone though the ones directly to either side of the tabernacle remained.

If you really want to see it, let me know. But for now it will suffice to introduce picture number two, or what St. Charles Borromeo in Peru, Indiana looks like today.

Yeah, I know that the unwieldy and, shall we say, uncomely Advent wreath is blocking out a lot of the altar view, but it does show off the neon orange carpet and the brown ceiling.

And so I give you reason number two for moving to Peru. A lot of potential to work with. You see that someone had the foresight to suggest they put the altar out in the nave and wrap some pews around it to the right and left, thereby leaving the high altar undisturbed.

When somebody goes to that length to assault the Catholic sensibilities of the average parishoner, suggesting something completely unheard of and one might say “discontinuous” with tradition, they sometimes leave a base or two uncovered. In the end, it is pretty easy to reverse the ill conceived work of perhaps well meaning but destructive persons.

Another pretty church in the diocese also had the misfortune of enduring such an arrangement. I spoke with the holy priest several years ago after he was installed as pastor, and he didn’t hesitate to bring up the subject of the altar arrangement.

After a campaign to institute perpetual Eucharistic adoration and months and months of down in the street pastoral work, he implemented a church renovation plan that ended up with the results captured in picture number three. So you see, we could have similar results here in Peru with St. Charles.

I say that it wouldn’t take much, but it say it with tongue in cheek. But I’ve seen it happen, right down the road in Kokomo at St. Patrick’s, where the third photo was taken from.

And yes, if you move to Peru, you can tell people that you live just north of Kokomo, and they’ll think you’re in the Florida keys.

St. Charles Borromeo is my domiciled parish, to use a canon law term. And I attend some weekday Masses there, but I attend the parish of my childhood in neighboring Wabash.

Once you get here, we’ll figure it out. Stay tuned for reason number three.

 

10 reasons you should move to Peru: Reason 1

Today, I'm picking up where I left off in an earlier post (Auburn).  Don't freak out because there are some pre-conditions.  I'm not going to let just anybody move here.  But if you're Catholic and serious about it, if you have a desire to simplify your life and basically get off of the fast track and onto the Nickle Plate Trail, if you don't have a fear of "glad poverty" and you want to live in a small Midwest river town where you could walk to work, school and church, and are interested in transforming a town into a place where everyone (like us) would want to live, then consider my list carefully.  You think I'm joking, but I'm not.  You don't have to build an Ave Maria to have Auburn.  All you need is enough like minded families to band together, pray and work.  If we're going to build up a civilization of love, a small town in the Midwest is as good a place as any to start.  So humor me!

Reason number one:  Dirt cheap real estate.

Want to live in town within walking distance of church and work?  Here's what $100,000 will get you. 

Want to live in the country?  Add 22 acres to the above and add another hundred grand.  You could raise your own beef, pork and chicken, and have a garden big enough to feed the entire parish. 

Powered by ScribeFire.

 

Scaling back to scale the heights

You know, I've been thinking a lot lately about scaling back. This is particularly because I have been doing this very thing myself, but also because I haven't gone far enough, and because there are spiritual reasons why I'm doing it. But I'm extending the scenario further. I'm focusing on the things I should be doing, the things that don't matter, and the things I shouldn't be doing. These are three categories, but if you get the right activities in the right categories, it can change your life. Once you throw the third category out and pare down the second, the focus becomes clearer. Reflection on the three categories reveals that I should be loving God more. I should be praying more. The focus of my life should be from "Catholic time" and not pop culture. By that I mean sanctifying time through the daily Office, the liturgical season, Saints' feasts and memorials, which decade of the Rosary is prayed on each day and actually praying it, and so on. Is it a feast day or a fast day? Is it an ember day or rogation day? I think of how rich my life could be, and I cringe when I see how shallow I am, and how shallow I've allowed my family to remain. I shouldn't be watching television at all. I should be seeking holiness and not wealth. I should be involved in parish functions such as Rosary and Benediction and Stations of the Cross. Just a few thoughts. What does your list reveal to you?

 

To hastening ills a prey…

More thoughts on Dr. John Senior.  This humble professor really makes me think…deeply.  The Domino’s pizza guy is buil ding a brand new, outrageously priced Catholic city in Florida.  The SSJ tried to do it in Pennsylvania before they were uncovered for what they truly were. 

Meanwhile. across the nation, Auburn seeks a kinder shore.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but my point is that there are plenty of half abandoned towns across this land with empty storefronts, quiet parks, half empty churches because everyone has made himself so busy.  Why build new when the same thing could be had right where you are by becoming unbusy and simplifying your life?  Ave Maria will end up being a half empty church in a town full of overly busy people if they don’t focus their priorities.  But you don’t need an Ave Maria to accomplish something great.  I’m not knocking Ave Maria, Florida, I’m just saying…

My own Peru is no different than any of the thousands of similar places where you can buy a house for a song and open a shop within walking distance from your home, sell the car and cancel the auto insurance, and have time to spend with your wife and kids.

If we were to but reject the allure of wealth be content to live more with less possessions, these dreams could be reality.  I know, I’m on that road.  I’m a man in transition, but I’ve taken the first steps.  Much more to do, but now that the doing is in progress…

…there is hope.

 

Heading to Carmel

This afternoon we’re driving the family to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Carmel, Indiana to assist at the Gregorian Rite (Extraordinary Form) of Mass. The availability of this Mass is the fruit of the Holy Father’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, and we are grateful to Bishop Wm. Higi of the Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana for greatly expanding the availability here in north central Indiana. Though the Mass is currently held in a small day chapel on the Seton parish grounds, and I’m sure it will be standing room only, I have no complaints. I encourage anyone living in the area to support this important work. If you’re further north, you’ll be happy to know that Bishop John D’Arcy of the Fort Wayne – South Bend diocese is also expanding the availability of the Gregorian Rite.

 

I have…

Thoughts inspired by reading John Senior:

I was lucky enough to have grown up on the edge of forty acres of field and  forest, and yes a creek still runs through it.  From where I sit writing this, I’m only about fifteen miles away from that spot, and yet I don’t take my kids there near enough.  I’m lucky still.  Mac Park lies down the road but a mile, the Nickel Plate Trail is five blocks a way, and there are three state forests within an hour of my ramshackle.

My response to creation was wonder.  As I look back, I mourn that somehow I’ve lost that, and I’m resolved to regain it.

I have tried to instill this in my kids, but you can’t force wonder.  During a summer excursion with the kids to Mac Park, I told them to put on the oldest sneakers they had, because they’d be getting them wet.  We walked the creek from the golf course to the playground, getting a water glider’s view of the landscape, collecting stones and watching iridescent green dragonflies chase and scatter.  I want more time like that, with the hand held video games lost beneath a couch cushion, the television unplugged, and the computer in sleep mode.

Anyway, after musing over some passages of Senior’s Restoration, I wrote the following.  If you laugh, I hope it is in the right places.

I have gazed at midnight into the embers of a campfire with a few close friends, when to speak above a whisper seemed sacrilegious. I have read the sky through autumn-tinged leaves, while lesser stories slept on the pages clasped to my chest. I have walked the creek to the river and felled timbers with an ax and lashed together rafts with maritime knots and stood aloft upon the waters of the Wabash, pole in hand and muddy sneakers on my feet. I’ve hiked the hardwood forests and scaled hills of crumbling Indiana limestone. I have slept under the stars and awoken under a dewy blanket. I have climbed so far into the forest canopy that the branches in my hands were smaller than my wrists. In my childhood, I have loved fire and wind and trees and waters both deep and rushing. I have played in the rain for hours, tipsy from the scent of wet oak and maple. I have cut the vine at the foot of a muddy embankment and swung screaming through the sunlight into the swimming hole. I have dined upon wild onion, May apple and dandelion . I have stood upon massive glacial puddingstones and surveyed the world through the eyes of a child. I have thundered down countless hills on a Stingray bike, and wept for the beauty of a sunrise from a canoe in the middle of a pond. I have called back to the blue heron and the hawk, and gasped, pole in hand, as fish jumped flashing and spraying into the cool morning air. I have dammed the creek and caught minnows in a sieve. I have lived.

You can live, too.  Turn the television off.  Dress for the weather, and go outside.  Do something.  Do anything.  Toss a football around with your kids.  Take a walk.  Jump in a puddle in a pair of old shoes, and let the cold water soak into your skin.  Zoom down a hill on your bicycle and feel the wind on your face.  Please?

 

here it comes again

I’d like to give a slap on the back to  IHS Press for republishing two books from the late professor, John Senior, who for many years taught the Classics in the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas.  He was a profound Catholic thinker.  The vision he presents of a restored Christian culture is provocative for many reasons.  You will only know what I’m talking about if you read the books.

I have a hardbound copy of Death, and my last soft cover copy of Restoration is in the hands of a friend.  I was lucky enough to purchase my copies at face value, when Roman Catholic Books still had some in stock.  Used copies are now selling on Amazon and Abebooks at unbelievable prices. 

You don’t have to worry about that now, if you want to read them.  IHS Press is beginning to ship their versions on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2008, after months of delays at the printer.

One reason to order Death is for the appendix “1,000 Good Books” which has been the standard of measurement against which classical home schoolers and those simply interested in the breadth and depth of their children’s reading adventures judged goodness.  Senior offers a compelling argument, why these books are a prerequisite to understanding the “great books” of Western civilization, and to a truly liberal education (understood not as political liberalism). 

Restoration focuses more on things we can do to bring about the restoration of culture.  It is strong medicine.  I’ll give you a spoonful.  The first requirement, which Senior repeats throughout the book as the beginning of the process is to “smash the television.”

Both books explore the role of wonder as man’s primary attitude toward creation.  No thinking Catholic should deprive himself of the opportunity to read these books.  When you sit down to read, bring a pencil.  You’ll be wanting it before page two.

 

newspaper ad orientem

Wanted:  Experienced crew to turn altar around in Catholic Church so that priest and people are both facing ‘liturgical east.” 

Responses: Pope Benedict XVI

For sale:  Portable table used in Catholic Church so priest and people could face eachother, taking focus off of Christ.

UPDATE – 7/3/08

This seems to have been the inaugural “ad orientem” public Mass by H.H. BXVI, and in the interim he has institued the practice, when Mass is celebrated versus populum, of placing the Crucifix and altar candles between the celebrant and the people.  He has also been giving communion exclusively on the tongue to those who are kneeling.  I can only applaud the return to tradition and liturgical common sense, and the sense of the sacred it promotes. – J.G.