S’Mary’s World

Last updated on: December 11, 2013 at 10:05 am By willduquette

The colony world of St. Mary’s-without-the-arm, known simply as “S’Mary’s” to its inhabitants, was settled from Old Earth via the freezer ship Our Lady of Loreto in AD 2347, at the height of the Neo-Roman Ascendancy. Due to technical problems in flight, the ship missed its landfall at its intended destination (colony world Maria Victrix, also known as St. Mary’s-within-the-arm) and was long thought lost until contact was re-established by wormhole explorers in local year 633 YOE. Fortuitously, the planet... Read more

Lord of the Isles, by David Drake

Last updated on: December 8, 2013 at 10:34 am By willduquette

Many years ago now I picked up David Drake’s epic fantasy Lord of the Isles, and was enchanted. The book seemed fresh, and delightfully different from the other fantasy novels I was reading at the time. It was the first in a series, and I read each volume as it came out…until, seven or eight years ago, it was announced that the final novel on the series, The Crown of the Isles, would be published in three volumes. At that... Read more

Real Pulp Fiction

Last updated on: December 9, 2013 at 2:49 pm By willduquette

The most excellent Tom McDonald has found a source for high-quality scans of the pulp magazines of yore, filled with two-fisted tales of adventure and derringdo (is that how you spell that?). Plus, it’s iPad friendly! Read more

Besetting Sins and Pseudo-Virtues

Last updated on: December 8, 2013 at 1:20 pm By willduquette

In a comment on this post, reader ThisIstheEnd said that he found it odd for me to say that post-modern Americans have little sense of personal sin, given that America as a whole seems to be a more moral place that in past eras. He pointed at slavery, the KKK, and suchlike banished demons as evidence that this is the case. I had to think about that a bit. I continue to believe that people in our society have little... Read more

Evangelii Gaudium: God never tires of forgiving us

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 11:08 pm By willduquette

This question came up at RCIA this week: what’s the difference between Peter and Judas? The Gospel says that Judas betrayed Jesus, and Peter denied him. One is vilified, one became pope. What’s the deal? One obvious answer is that Judas delivered Jesus into the hands of those who would kill him, while Peter, hmm, well, he denied his Lord to save his skin. The two offenses aren’t commensurate in human terms. But there’s more to it than that: Peter... Read more

Dead as a Doornail

Last updated on: December 8, 2013 at 10:13 am By willduquette

Sometimes as I’m reading I’ll say to myself, “I like that sentence a whole lot.” And if I’m reading on Kindle, as I usually am these days, I highlight the passage for later; and eventually it may show up on my blog in the Words I Wish I’d Written slot. Manny at Ashes from Burnt Roses has borrowed the notion and done something interesting with it. Manny’s a mechanical engineer with a literature degree and a taste for poetry that... Read more

Bootstrapping the Interior Life: Devotions

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 11:16 pm By willduquette

Last time I talked about how spontaneity fails, at least for me, as an approach to daily prayer. So what’s the alternative? If I’m not going to sit down and simply pray from my heart at the stated time, what am I going to do instead? The answer is to cultivate a devotion: that is, a prayer that is meant to be said daily. Low-church Protestants sometimes have trouble with this kind of prayer; it smacks of “vain repetition”. But... Read more

Art by Accident

Last updated on: December 5, 2013 at 8:27 pm By willduquette

This was first posted in September of 2003. And if you haven’t read Chuck Jones’ Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, you really need to. The news of Donald O’Conner’s death prompted me to have a 2 Blowhards kind of moment the other day. As everyone knows, O’Conner was one of the leads in the classic film Singing in the Rain, arguably the best musical Warner Brothers ever made. It’s now clear that Singing in the... Read more

The Rocky Road to Dublin

Last updated on: December 2, 2013 at 9:04 pm By willduquette

I’ve been listening to a lot of Irish Traditional music recently, and one of my favorites is the “Rocky Road to Dublin“. It’s a 19th century music hall tune, per Wikipedia, and concerns the adventures of an Irishman who travels away from home to find work. He’s heartbroken, and his belongings are stolen; eventually he takes ship to Liverpool (the captain makes him travel with the pigs), where he gets into a fight with the locals who make fun of... Read more

Words I Wish I’d Written: Bad, Bad Beer

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 11:17 pm By willduquette

The travelers were served by the innkeeper, whose manner suggested that he hoped they died horribly just as soon as they left the premises. The beer tasted as if it was happy to connive at this state of affairs. — Terry Pratchett, Soul Music Read more