Now I am a tourist attraction

Some of the few people on campus this week are visitors--high school juniors and seniors by the look of it. Usually these folks blend into the crowd or are part of a big tour group, but this week they stick out.

Anyway, one of them just stopped outside my window and took a photo of me hard at work at my desk. Makes me want to go outside and see what I look like.

Back in the rain

Just returned from a really, really restful week in Tucson. I brought back with me:

• A bit of gadget lust for the father's-in-law new big-screen LCD tv.
• A new desire to sleep in every day.
• The realization that it really does rain once in a while in Tucson. (And the mountains get a very pretty frosting of snow)
• A new author to praise: Vernor Vinge. This was a boingboing recommendation.

And we got back early enough today to still enjoy a full weekend at home. I did promise to straighten up the basement, and I'm hoping to get in a good bit of thesis work as well. L brought a cold back with her. Hopefully she doesn't share it.

Spent the afternoon at the Goat catching up on spam deletion and listserv reading. Lots of great stuff--maybe there will be a link dump post this weekend as well.

Comments, we get 中文 comments.

If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have taken any classes this quarter. There was a ton of follow up work to do from my trip, there's the whole 'transition the library to a learning commons model' task that's been assigned to me, and I have been desperately trying to maintain at least enough language skill to not waste my partner's time each week.

So I never got around to translating several comments on the blog from the summer. I wanted to do this (a) for my personal edification; (b) for the benefit of my Engish-only readers; (c) so that I knew what they were saying before anyone else did. While some of the comments were signed by people I know, a couple turned out to be spam.

So, in response to this post, my friend Hui said:

每年农历七月十五日为“盂兰盆节”(佛教），也称“中元节”（道教），有些地方俗称“鬼节”、“施孤”，又称亡人节、七月半。

Which means: Every July 15 (on the lunar calendar) there is the Buddhist 'yulanpen' festival (haven't been able to some up with a good English name for that. Maybe 'potted orchids?'), also called the mid-summer festival (by the daoists). In some places it's commonly called the 'gods festival.,' 'carry the orphan,' and 'the mid-July festival of the dead.

I like that 'the dead' (亡人) is literally 'dead person.' Does that mean that the Chinese word for zombie is 没忘人？

China fire, doctrinal debates,

That paper's shortcomings turned out to be nothing that seven more hours of work couldn't take care of. My schedule, though, had me working noon to eight the day before it was due, so those seven hours turned Tuesday into an all-nighter. I'm too old for this. The night itself wasn't too bad, but the hangover was intense. I made it through about 2/3rds of the workday, but wound up going home and taking a nap before a meeting Wednesday night.

That evening saw us debating RC doctrine at the Bosco House. Actually, we weren't so much debating doctrine, but debating whether or not we were obliged to take doctrine into account when making organizational decisions. Before any other considerations.

I thought we had a well reasoned response: the Catholic Worker isn't part of the church; it has no central organization; and here in Lane County, the most active individuals have traditionally not even been Catholic. So no, it's the spirit of the group that makes decisions. Prayerfully and respectfully of most of our beliefs, but not necessarily doctrinaire. I sort of thought that that is the position that most American Catholics have come to. We don't know the rules, let alone follow them. Dogma versus doctrine versus discipline? I know about three people who know the distinction, and I'm not one of them anymore. I used to, but sometime around 12 or 13 years ago, I realized that most people just don't care. They observe or don't observe based on their own consciences. They have worked out a set of practices that works for them.

Why am I even worked up about this? Because Bosco has a mission that I support, and I don't want my own iconoclastic views to hurt that mission. My opinion tells me that most of the things that I am iconoclastic about (which tend to be disciplines and not doctrines) are trivial, but apparently some get very, very worked up over them. So do I have to bifurcate my views?

Fact is, we lack clergy. And those that we have (a) are overworked; (b) contain a significant number of criminals; (c) are pretty far removed from the real life of most people. Most of the actual work in the parishes is done by the laity. Maybe it's time to put more of those who are doing the work up on the altar. And pay them a living wage.

Speaking of a living wage, if we had married priests, could the church afford to provide health insurance for their husbands and children?