September 2008

  • Ave Maris Stella The period from roughly the quarter moon through the three-quarter moon gives me of lot of pleasure if the nights are clear or partly clear. That’s when my nightly walk with the dogs, which usually happens somewhere between nine and eleven (maybe later on weekends), gives me a chance to see the…

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  • No greater art was created in the 20th century than the best of Bergman’s films, and this is one of them. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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  • I listened to this album once and thought “wow, that’s brilliant, in a twisted sort of way.” Then several months went by before I got around to listening to it again, I think partly because I was in no big hurry to revisit the twisted part. When I finally did, I half-expected to change my…

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  • Pray for Coastal Texas

    I'm not going to pretend I'm sorry that Hurrican Ike is not coming here. But I really do feel for the people in its path. As you may or may not know, it's bearing down on Galveston, which was hit by a hurricane in 1900 that resulted in the greatest loss of life of any…

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  • Heron

    I walked out the door one day last week and heard a repeated low buzzing sound that I’d never heard before. I finally realized that it was coming from this heron perched in a dead tree across the creek. The normal heron noise is loud and ugly—something like a crow’s call but lower in pitch…

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  • Palin Madness

    It seems that Sarah Palin’s nomination has driven the entire country and parts of the rest of the world completely crazy. On the left, the mere sight of her and her family apparently sends some people into a frenzy. Mark Shea and Rod Dreher (see links in sidebar) have been documenting a lot of this.…

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  • A Note On the Culture Wars

    Francesca brought up the topic of the American culture wars yesterday, which I think are pretty puzzling to Europeans, and coincidentally I later read a really good comment on the topic by Pentimento. A big chunk of her post is a quote from Tertium Quid, who blogs at From Burke to Kirk, and you should…

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  • Arguing Conservatism The ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) put me on its list for review copies of their books a while back, and I haven’t held up my end. I haven’t mentioned them here very often, or written any reviews at all for the local paper, because I haven’t had time to read most of them.…

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  • I hadn’t heard this for years before this week, but I must have listened to it a lot at a more leisurely time in my life, because it was very familiar to me. I was about to say it was like meeting an old friend, but when one meets an old friend after twenty or…

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  • Coon Wars and Hummingbirds

    My wife recently developed an enthusiasm for feeding the local bird population and put up several feeders, two of which hung from lightweight steel poles. There followed a week or two of coon wars, in which raccoons came at night and pulled down the feeders, opened them up, and ate all the bird seed. Here’s…

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