This is exactly the problem with this kind of bumper sticker. If the person reading it isn't Catholic, they don't know what it means. If the person reading it is Catholic, they can at best guess at what it means. And everyone's response will be "Who cares? I'm ____________, and I vote too." If I ever put a sectarian sticker on my car, it's going to be so cryptically inside-baseball that only people who already agree with me will understand it. Like, "More incense, Less nonsense." Or, "HF: Answer the Dubia." Everyone else behind me at the red light can be puzzled. :D

If you like good anti-Catholic reads, I'm 2/3 of the way through Eugene Sue's The Wandering Jew (1844), one of his "anti-Catholic novels" (the other one being the more famous The Mysteries of Paris, which I'm still trying to get hold of), and it's just fantastic. Besides being nearly 1500 pages of Everything (heiress imprisoned in a madhouse! psychic twins immured in evil convent! wild beast tamer with murderous panther who sells rosaries in his spare time! labor riots! Indian Thuggee stranglers!), in Sue's universe the Jesuits are a secret all-knowing, all-powerful Illuminati who have their tentacles wound into absolutely everything. It makes one wistful for a Church really that administratively competent. If you can find it -- and it isn't easy -- I do recommend it. ETA: Didn't mean the first sentence to sound quite that weird.

What I'm seeing in common from these experiences from different cultures and continents is eating as a culturally embedded set of practices, similar not necessarily in their forms and rules but in their relation to human lives. A forensic approach to food is alien to both sets of experiences. My great-grandparents would have been bewildered by the technical nutritional explanations for modern "fasting"; they fasted because it was a fast day. My grandparents didn't refrain from snacking because it was extra calories -- they certainly enjoyed Happy Hour -- and I doubt they would have considered the mid-afternoon meal you describe as "snacking," because like their own afternoon drinks, it was an established adult practice, with cultural rules.

I agree to the extent that we’re discussing content of one’s diet; my grandparents and great-aunts/uncles ate plenty of carbohydrates: potatoes, bread, tortillas; ate desserts, drank alcohol; and their few vegetables came out of a can. But everything was in much smaller amounts than their children and grandchildren were consuming by the 21st century. Adults didn’t snack between meals, eat candy or drink soda, take seconds, or eat while engaged in other activities: I still remember both my grandmothers in old age amazed at adults eating “like childrenâ€, which they considered not so much unhealthy as rude. Like yours, mine were physically active: they didn’t go to the gym, but they went dancing, did heavy farmwork or housework, walked or bicycled everywhere. TV was for children to wach.

Yes. My exercise program is shaped by a substantial family history of devastating osteoporosis. My diet is influenced by nonexistent obesity in my family tree, on either side, until my and my parents’ generation. I eat like my grandmothers did (even literally using their [smaller] dishes). ETA: No diet or exercise can fix my bad spelling

My books for the start of 2018 are the same as for the end of 2017; it's been a busy week. So instead, here's what the rest of the Crown family is reading. Dh: Edith Wharton, Hudson River Bracketed Great Girl: Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow Middle Girl: Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter Wee Girl: Sister Bernadette: Cowboy Nun from Texas Wee Girl's book was an on-target gift from Great Girl; I've never seen her read so avidly.

When I’m running, the last thing I want to think about is fitness. This American Life distracts nicely.

Okay, 2017 Bingo.... B Prime Number: “A Light in the Heavensâ€: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII Flufferton: Henry Green, Loving Eastern Europe: Karel Capek, R.U.R./ The Insect Play/ The Makropulos Case Spouse Birth Year: Charles Portis, True Grit Steampunk: --- I Science fiction: Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? My name in title: Stephen Crane, The Third Violet Short stories: The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake Seaworthy: Richard Hakluyt, Voyages Middle Ages: Turold, The Song of Roland N Western: Larry McMurtry, Horseman, Pass By Up to 100 A.D.: Seneca, Phaedra Free: J. F. Powers, Morte D’Urban Dystopian: ------- Mystery: A. A. Milne, The Red House Mystery G Translated: Emile Zola, Nana Outer Space: ------ Finance: ------- One Word Title: Joseph Conrad, Victory Debut Author: ------- O > 500 pages: Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel Local author: Jo Ella Powell Exley, Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine: Voices of Frontier Women Female Adventure: Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond Classic: Ovid, Ars Amatoria Selected by friend: Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle --------------------------------------------- 2017 Personal Book Categories: Books I Covered The Title Of When Reading In Public: Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock Henry James, The Reverberator Books About Books: Gilbert Highet, People, Places, and Books James Sutherland, English Satire Milton, Areopagitica Oddly self-referential books: Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper Not their best work: Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote Somerset Maugham, The Magician William Faulkner, The Reivers Stephen Crane, The Third Violet Books you haven't read but should: Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man Book I didn't like but recommend to others: Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Book I did like but don't recommend to others: “A Light in the Heavensâ€: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII 2017 Book coincidence: Larry McMurtry (Horseman, Pass By) is married to the widow of Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)

My 2017 reading list. I don't think I actually pulled myself together sufficiently last year to post my final list. I only got halfway through Hakluyt, but counted it anyway, because. Also I counted Milton's long essay "Areopagitica" because Middle Girl and I read it together, out loud, and pulled in lots of discussion of the first amendment and related case law. So it took a verrrry long time. * = chunkster 1. Richard Hakluyt, Voyages (vols. 1, 2, 3, 4)* 2. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle 3. Frank Norris, Octopus 4. Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper 5. Kingsley Amis, The Green Man 6. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita 7. Joseph Conrad, Victory 8. Dylan Thomas, Adventures in the Skin Trade & Other Stories 9. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear 10. A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad 11. Andre Malraux, Man’s Fate 12. Kingsley Amis, Ending Up 13. Charles Lamb, Essays of “Elia†14. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman 15. Gilbert Highet, People, Places, and Books 16. Turold, The Song of Roland 17. Charles Portis, True Grit 18. Charles Lamb, Last Essays of “Elia†19. Xenophon, The Persian Expedition (Anabasis) 20. A. A. Milne, The Red House Mystery 21. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine: Voices of Frontier Women 22. Bentley, ed.: The Classic Theatre: 6 Italian Plays 23. Stephen Crane, The Third Violet 24. A. E. Housman, More Poems 25. Joseph Conrad, Youth/ Heart of Darkness/ The End of the Tether 26. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native 27. Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors 28. August Strindberg, Easter 29. James Sutherland, English Satire 30. Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel 31. Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 32. Seneca, Phaedra 33. Karel Capek, R.U.R./ The Insect Play/ The Makropulos Case 34. Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote 35. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge 36. William Faulkner, The Reivers 37. James Hogg, Selected Poems 38. George Douglas, The House with the Green Shutters 39. James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man* 40. George Mackay Brown, Andrina & Other Stories 41. Robert Frost, Selected Poems 42. George Mackay Brown, An Orkney Tapestry 43. Max Beerbohm, The Incomparable Max 44. Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands 45. John Prebble, Culloden 46. Thomas Hardy, A Changed Man & Other Stories 47. Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief 48. Tolstoy, War and Peace* 49. Voltaire, Candide 50. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 51. Breece D’J Pancake, The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake 52. Francis Bacon, Essays 53. H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man 54. Marguerite Yourcenar, Hadrian’s Memoirs 55. Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus 56. Joseph Conrad, Typhoon & Other Stories 57. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 58. Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper 59. Larry McMurtry, Horseman, Pass By 60. Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man 61. Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience 62. Franz Kafka, The Trial 63. Henry Green, Loving 64. Leo XIII, “A Light in the Heavensâ€: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII* 65. Ovid, Amores 66. Ovid, Ars Amatoria 67. Somerset Maugham, The Magician 68. Henry James, The Reverberator 69. John Updike, The Maples Stories 70. Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt 71. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 72. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire 73. Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea 74. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel* 75. Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest 76. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (illus. Aubrey Beardsley) 77. J. F. Powers, Morte D’Urban 78. James Reeves, ed., Georgian Poetry 79. Walter Scott, The Antiquary 80. Athanasius, Select Treatises (trans. J. H. Newman) 81. Henry Alexander, The Story of Our Language 82. Emile Zola, Nana 83. Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond 84. Edwin Muir, Selected Poems 85. Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marthe 86. Milton, Areopagitica 86 total. Now to see if I can fit enough of it into Bingo squares to get a bingo.

She's read some, but can't make any sense of it. I appreciate the sympathy. So we got the part, replaced it, and the dishwasher worked ... but it leaked uncontrollably from the connection and we couldn't make it stop. So we paid $100 to our lovely appliance guy to make the leaking stop. Turns out we needed to replace the corroded $2 elbow connector to the valve assembly, too. $2 for the part, and $98 for knowing that that was how to stop the leak, I guess. But I can use my kitchen! Books purchased (Merry Christmas to me!) Emile Zola, La Bête Humaine Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy Gregor von Rezzori, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in 5 Stories Jean d'Ormesson, The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, A History Simon Leys, The Death of Napoleon Charles Beaumont, Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories (this one is for dh)

Agreeing that there is no way to fail at Book a Week. I do few challenges (only those that happen to coincide with something I wanted to read soon anyway) - don't use Goodreads - often miss threads pretty much entirely - and take the occasional sabbatical. I keep my book list on a piece of notebook paper in a folder on a bookshelf. Pretty often I just list the book(s) I've read that week and don't talk about them, unless someone else wants to. Robin has yet to cast me out for nonparticipation. She has plenty of bells and whistles for those who want them; there are lots of participants who read copiously and discuss the books intelligently and at length; all of that is optional. tl;dr BaW Rules: (1) Read a book. (2) Repeat.

Santa despaired of picking out books for me this year and gave me an Amazon gift card. Books are being purchased on it. Santa did better with dh, who only wanted the Strugatsky brothers' science fiction, and Wee Girl, who only wanted Asterix. Santa failed to give me what I really wanted: a replacement inlet valve assembly for a Whirlpool Quiet Partner, so I could have a functional dishwasher, or indeed running water at all while the dishwasher is sitting in the middle of the kitchen. Santa Prime is bringing the part to me Wednesday. Until then it's dishes in the bathtub.

Last week, finished Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond; Edwin Muir, Selected Poems; and J.-K. Huysmans, Marthe. Currently reading Child's Ballads; Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn; and Eugène Sue, The Wandering Jew.

Robin, thank you for the lovely and literary gift! Now I have no excuse for not keeping in touch with BaW friends.

A lot depends on the When, Where, and Who of the olden days, too. Even just taking England, the 18th century was much more risqué than the 19th, in art and literature. Jacobean drama (early 17th century) was astoundingly sexual and violent; there was a reason theatre was banned during the Protectorate. When it was legalized again, the reaction against its excesses still affected public sentiments, and drama from the late 17th century was milder. People tend to assume that culture gets more and more prudish as you go back in time, but I think this is because the Victorians were one period of reaction, and we still have a 20th-century cultural bias against it. I see so many parallels between our current time and the 18th century that I really think we are due for another Georgian/Victorian-style reaction.

Howdy, friends! I finished Emile Zola's scandalous novel Nana, about a guttersnipe prostitute who brings all of Paris to her feet, ruining men and their families all about her. To really enjoy Zola's Naturalism you have to not read for the plot so much as for his delightfully described series of outrageous scenes. I may have to give Germinal another shot. And that finished my self-imposed Alphabetical Author Challenge. (Sorry Robin, no hope of getting a Bingo; my reading is too narrow.) Amis, Kingsley, The Green Man Beerbohm, Max, The Incomparable Max Conrad, Joseph, Victory Douglas, George, The House with the Green Shutters Exley, Jo Ella Powell, Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine: Voices of Frontier Women Frost, Robert, Selected Poems Greene, Graham, The Ministry of Fear Hakluyt, Richard, Voyages and Discoveries (vols. 1-4) Ibsen, Henrik, Peer Gynt James, Henry, The Reverberator Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Lamb, Charles, Essays of Elia/ Last Essays of Elia Malraux, Andre, Man's Fate Norris, Frank, Octopus Ovid, Ars Amatoria/ Amores Pancake, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel Seneca, Phaedra Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle Updike, John, The Maples Stories Voltaire, Candide Waugh, Evelyn, Black Mischief Xenophon, The Persian Expedition (Anabasis) Yourcenar, Marguerite, Hadrian's Memoirs Zola, Emile, Nana Currently reading Rose Macaulay's awfully amusing fictionalized travel memoir, The Towers of Trebizond, and Francis Child's immortal English and Scottish Popular Ballads, which I've used as a reference for years but am now enjoying reading through from the beginning (with no chance of completing before the end of the year, but who cares).

Enjoy “good food, good music, good smells, good sights, maybe good company (just me?), with time to reflect and be still and peaceful.†:) And eat from food trucks for every meal if you like.

Time to move to Austin!

Poor piggies are everyone's prey. We were having a nice outdoors lawn-time with our pigs, when I heard the bluejays go berserk and looked up; there was a big old redtailed hawk circling, checking out those chubby little morsels below. I'm sure nothing would have happened with us right there, but he was definitely interested.

Some cats get along great with piggies. Some don't. Our elderly and obese cat has enough of a glint in her eye (she was an energetic mouser in her salad days) that even though she just likes to watch them, we keep the cage lidded when she's nearby. I'd definitely be more concerned about the dogs.

Frankly if there's a valid reason to miss Mass this evening, it's got to be Game 7. Let's Go, Astros! But we will record it instead. ETA: The game, not Mass.

Yes. Should be beautiful!

Our church has only one Mass tonight and it is in Latin. :) Or as I like to say, linguistically unprivileged. Omnes Sancti et Sanctae Dei, orate pro nobis!

Hey! I just read some Updike from the '70s. (But, no, I haven't read any of them.)

Very interesting! And now I know Why Hops.