On the Dante Trail trail: Selfiepalooza

H/T to cailleachbhan for our latest beating: "Florence Diary", which has that journalistically important sound like Berlin Diary but in reality is more the sort of thing your great aunt with the enormous bosom used to abuse you with as a child.

Four, count em', four Rod selfies, each more oleaginously self-indulgent than the last.

This brings our filosofia di suini tote now to:

Total pics: 13 - 100%

Selfies: 7 - 54% of total

Things Rod Ate: 2 - 23% of total

More if anything worth reading breaks, like Rick Steves dropping a Twitter scolding on Rod for cutting in on his action.

(A correction to our previous tote: selfies were 38% of the total, not 25%.)

On the Dante Trail trail: Those Delicious Creamy Boar Squeazins

Following Rod Dreher on the Dante Trail trail we've now arrived at our second Station of the Belly, Taverna San Giuseppe. After a token shout-out to the Madonna as a stand-in for the therapeutic aesthetics of historical locales, Rod professes his true faith, what the Italians in their wisdom refer to as filosofia di suini:

Let me tell you, with no fear of contradiction: after the meal we had today, this place is holy ground.

And, happy day, today we are able to add both another selfie and another picture of what Rod ate to our treasured album of memories.

The first is a real keeper: Rod looking either post-orgasmic as he contemplates his communion



or, now that I think about it, more like Ruprecht after being granted permission to make room for more on site.



The second pic probably was the source generously afforded us as the subtitle of our post.

Incidentally, to reduce clutter from now on we'll only keep score on the selfies and food pics out of the total. To date:

Total pics: 7 - 100%

Selfies: 3 - 25% of total

Things Rod Ate: 2 - 25%  of total

As Rod and Casella depart on the bus like Joe Buck and Ratso headed to Miami, Rod reflects on his Tuscan good fortune

How did this happen? It’s all grace. As Piccardà said, “In His will is our peace.”

True. It could all go away tomorrow, but I would have had this, not deserving any of it, and for that I am grateful. I can hardly tell you how grateful. It’s too much sometimes. Dante teaches that there is no way to work yourself to heaven; all you can do is work to make yourself open to grace when it appears. This is also true, and not only true, but important.

Now as I recall, there was something more to it than grace, or, if it were grace, surely the source of it all was a sad and tragic sort of grace. How Rod arrived at the point pictured above, how this really happened was:

- Rod was in the process of being released from his employment at The John Templeton Foundation

- His agent, who I definitely want negotiating my next new car purchase, managed to snag him a $900,000+ advance for an exploitative, tell-all book about his sister dying of cancer.

- The book hasn't sold all that well, but, hey, there's still a bunch of that grace still in the bank

- Enough to fund an eating vacation to Tuscany, because, given the sales of the sister book, there doesn't seem to have been another advance this time around

Hmmm...I think I've heard of this sort of grace before.

Anyway, what is the real lesson we've learned today at our second Station of the Belly? Right.

That nothing can keep a dark cloud like stinging flies at bay like a heapin' mess o' delicious creamy boar squeazins shared among beloved male companions, far from home under the romantic Tuscan sun.

Grace indeed.

Toobin makes two large errors

“You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” This quote is attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and it's true no matter who said it first. With that in mind, we have to make some corrections to Jeffrey Toobin's article praising Ruth Ginsberg for being, oh, so smart and prescient in her Hobby Lobby dissent.

There was an exemption already for religious institutions. Hobby Lobby, a closely held corporation, is a secular, for-profit business, but the Court held that because the owners of Hobby Lobby held a sincere religious belief that certain forms of birth control caused abortions, they could deny employer-paid insurance coverage for them.

Is this just bad writing? Unclear. It's not a "religious belief" at all that "certain forms of birth control caused abortions" or, I think he means to write cause abortions. But syntax errors aside, there are certain forms of birth control which cause abortions. The links here would be useful to Mr. Toobin as sort of a science primer.

One of the problems with the whole debate and discussion is that "birth control" is somewhat of a misnomer. Birth prevention is really the goal of both contraception and abortion. The latter is more morally egregious than the former, but those who approve of contraception but are against abortion may want to consider the continued use of the softer phrase "birth control" as something which dilutes the strength of pro-life/pro-child argument against the anti-child mentality, or the contraceptive mentality as it is sometimes called.

Here's the next "mistake":

What about religious individuals who say that they have sincere objections to conducting business relationships with gay people or immigrants?

Oh stop it. You obviously mean, Mr. Toobin, to indicate illegal immigrants, so why not use the word? The use of the single, neutral word "immigrants" is meant to suppress or diminish the amount of eye-roll from the general public who are tired of the gay whining.

This line should offend legal immigrants tremendously because it implicitly lumps them together with illegals. Why? Because no mainstream religious denomination objects to legal immigration. This article is obviously written from a biased point-of-view, but these errors are either due to sloppiness and laziness or malevolence and they need to be pointed out whichever is the case.

Dale Ahlquist Talks

From the Cleveland Right to Life newsletter.

Week of October 3rd 2014

Dale Ahlquist, EWTN host Dale Ahlquist, host of EWTN's "G.K.Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense" and president of the American Chesterton Society, will be giving two local presentations:: "Chesterton's Saints: St. Francis of Assisi & Thomas Aquinas" Saturday, October 4th @ 6pm St. Dominic Parish Hall, 77 Lucius Ave., Youngstown, OH  Admission: $5 (incl. light refreshments: wine, cheese, etc.) "G.K. Chesterton & Lepanto: The Epic of Catholic History" Sunday, October 5th @ 2:30pm  Padre Pio Academy, 12920 Madison Ave., Lakewood, OH  Admission: Free

I've heard Ahlquist speak before--he's good. I'm planning to attend the one at Padre Pio Academy on Sunday at 2:30pm. (Where my kids attend school.)

Here's the location on Google maps.

On the Dante Trail trail: Week 1 - After The Beans

Bor-ring. Not so much as a Golden Corral in sight.

There hasn't been much to follow since our initial Station of the Belly, mostly some Fodor's type stuff re-branded with Rod's feelings to make it come alive for folks who have difficulty reading Fodor's. The lack of posting suggests Rod's holed up some place after the Buca Mario feeding working things out, so to speak. Interesting fact: according to Google, in Italian Buca Mario means "Buca Mario".

Some highlights of this following for our Dante Trail trail followers:

I knew this before I came to Florence, of course,

It’s that kind of place.

Casella and I are so grateful to Bill Stephany for his generosity this morning. His passion for Dante, and for Florence, were such a gift to us. I said to him, “Bill, my wife asked me the other day at what point one becomes saturated with Dante, and can’t take any more. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never known it to happen to anyone.”

I think this concluding quote gives us much to think about, don't you?

All was not lost, however - there was another selfie! For those keeping score at home, the complete visual record of the Dante Trail to date contains:

Selfies: 2

Pictures of things Rod ate: 1

A picture of a river and some bridges: 1

Both the second selfie and the picture of a river and some bridges were captioned "Bill Stephany, my Virgil today", which has an implicit importance so profound I think I'll jump to another paragraph to fully unpack it for our Dante Trail trail followers:

See, by referring to the third man in the Dante rendezvous as Virgil, Rod is telling us we should think of him on his Dante Trail as Dante himself. However you want to slice it, that's pretty heavy, dude.

But the real question is: will it make the Rod-as-Walker Percy jealous?

Howling Puppies for Friday

It's the first Friday in October. Have some howling puppies.

Bad luck, Begich

Speaking of Republican Senators, it looks like we're close to getting a new one in Alaska.

Begich’s campaign promised to attack Sullivan’s record early on. But it was forced to pull down an ad accusing Sullivan of letting “sex offenders get off with light sentences” while he was attorney general, including one who is accused of murdering an elderly couple after that couple’s family demanded the ad be taken off the air.

Yes, the family's reaction to the ad would be exactly my own. There's a gray area with regard to sharing public information, but in my opinion that area ends at or before the exposure level of television advertising.

Begich’s allies found another way to hit the issue by asking Maryland’s tax assessor whether Sullivan had properly claimed tax breaks for his East Coast home. The assessor said on Tuesday that he was entitled to them because he’d been a Maryland resident during that period, triggering a wave of local coverage in the state.

But those attacks, so far, haven’t done much to halt Sullivan’s rise. Though the state is notoriously hard to poll accurately, he seems to have captured the upper hand in public surveys with a month to go.

When you serve in the US Military you are protecting your own state, plus 49 others. Are the Democrats going to attack every veteran of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines on the issue of residency? I surely hope so. Lead balloon city.

In response to Democratic attacks on his positions on women’s issues, Sullivan has rolled out a powerful new surrogate: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who cut an ad for the GOP nominee.

“The Lisa endorsement is big. She’s popular, she’s seen as the voice of reason by a lot of moderates up here,” said GOP pollster Matt Larkin.

Begich has responded with a pair of positive ads, one featuring his mother and wife and another with a Republican former first lady of Alaska touting his candidacy.

Uh-oh. It turns out Sullivan doesn't have the Radical Muslim view of women any more than any other Republican does.

On the Dante Trail trail: Week 1

While I was sleeping off that imaginary gut slug of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee goodness, Coalition of the Dante Trail Trail Followers follower Pikumatti has alterted us to the first Station of the Belly on our Dante Trail trail following quest, so, without further ado, let's get into it, shall we?

For the same reason that many seemingly staid professionals will anomalously hold their conventions in exotic cities populated on such occasions by stunning business women perched on impossibly high heels, the first Station of the Belly on our pilgrimage is, naturally, Buca Mario, where, as Pik has already mentioned, Rod and his Beatrice "Casella" dined on bistecca fiorentina, Tuscan white beans in olive oil, and a Brunello di Montalcino, as well as pappardelle with cinghiale (wild boar) ragu, and a salad of fresh sliced porcini mushrooms, shaved Pecorino, and a kind of greens they couldn’t quite identify.

First the mysterious "Casella", then mystery greens! Is it any wonder Rod Dreher is a far more intriguing subject to himself than Dante or anything else in Creation for that matter? But before we explore the mystery of the greens, I'm certain our Dante Trail trail followers will have some searching if not astringent questions concerning those Tuscan white beans.

To the point, were they properly prepared to rid them of their earthly oligosaccharides? Boiling them too long would render their delicately bland mealy texture indelicate while robbing them of flavor, so prolonged soaking would have to have been mandated. But was it? That's obviously another mystery. To get the full wind of this problem we are fortunate enough to have Pasquale Buonifagio's treasured parchment fragment as our source and guide:

Fagioli , fagioli la frutta musicale
Quanto più si mangia , più si toot
Quanto più si toot , meglio si sente
Quindi cerchiamo di avere fagioli con ogni pasto!

Pedants may quibble about some of the more superficial points raised, But I think Buonifagio has long ago settled this for most rightthinking individuals. Still, in addition to the mystery of the Tuscan white bean preparation there remains the mystery of one single or multiple rooms, obviously a factor in any subsequent revelations on the subject.

And now to the greens. Our Dante follower would have immediately identified kale if it were included, so, given the circumstances, our best guess must point us to some gaily deceiving combo of Swiss chard, escarole, and broccoli rabe, or maybe just rapini alone, whatever any of those happen to be. Me, I'm happy with plain old mustard greens with a little hot pepper sauce.

But, ultimately, our Dante Trail trail following has already pointed us to a potentially lucrative business opportunity: supplying Buca Mario with a steady inventory of cheap and plentiful wild hogs at a ridiculous markup. Unfortunately, we may have competition on this wild hog offshoot leg of the Dante Trail trail.

Stay tuned.