Dolores Hart

Driving to the airport at an unfortunate hour last week, I became fascinated by the rebroadcast of a 2007 BBC interview of Dolores Hart. I had never before heard Ms. Hart's story. For those as uninformed as myself, here's the terrible abbreviated version.

1) In the early 1950's and 1960's, she was a Hollywood starlet with two leading rolls opposite of Elvis.

2) At 24 years of age (1962), Ms. Hart walked away from her career and her fiancee to become a nun (listening to Ms. Hart recall her emotional struggle to make this decision was captivating).

3) 40+ years later, she has reentered the public sphere as an advocate for those suffering from peripheral idiopathic neuropathy, which she herself battles. As far as I can tell from two minutes on wikipedia, she remains the Prioress of the Abbey of Regina Laudis in CT.

Anyway, in my favorite part of the interview, Ms. Hart described how she went through the motions of monastic life for months while battling doubt and fear. When asked how long it took until she no longer felt like she was "performing", Ms. Hart replied that she is always performing. She went on to explain that she is always seeking to perfect her thoughts and actions to the greatest extent possible.

I'm enamored by the concept of "performing" as a Christian, or striving to act faithfully in spite of doubts and fears. I don't think this interpretation is perfectly consistent with what Ms. Hart meant, but her interview has been resonating in my thoughts. Regardless, it reminded of one of my favorite books. In The Sparrow, the protagonist confronts disillusionment after a lifetime of "performance" results in great tragedy. The persistently dark tone of the novel surprised me. It's difficult to overstate how relieved I was when I discovered the sequel that redeems (at least partially) the malignancy of the first book. I would highly recommend both books to anyone.

Hemlock Overlook Park

Much to the dismay of the spousal unit, I've been sucked back into the world of geocaching in the last few weeks. The wet weather here in Northern VA has most of the mountain bike trails closed down and I was desperate for an excuse to poke around the woods. The combination of outdoors, dweeby technology, and inordanitely meticulous data logging has me hooked.

We took advantage of the sunshine yesterday to explore Hemlock Overlook Park. This is the second neat-o pocket of forest I've stumbled upon through the world of geocaching in as many weeks. I'm kicking myself for forgetting the camera. Not only did I miss out on snapping some nice winter landscapes, but the camera gives the SU something to do while I tramp around in circles looking for deviously hidden ammo boxes. Yesterday she spent lots of time standing amongst the dead leaves with the I-haven't-been-this-bored-since-Transformers-The-Movie look on her face.

The oddest part of the day came when we stumbled across the Summer Camp. It's amazing how decrepit the various benches and wig-wams in the woods look in the dead of winter. Entering from the back-end of the camp, the place looked like it had been deserted and rotting for years, but the website indicates the place thrives every summer. Check out the professinal team-building high ropes course here. It's going to take a killer PowerPoint package to talk my boss into shelling out $4K for this :-)

Gratuitous linkage

Quick web-game link: Karoshi

Behind the graphics style reminiscent of the "animated" stick figure wars I meticulously drew across hundreds of pages in the corners of my elementary school text books is a crafty little puzzle game. The core game mechanics are never quite defined, keeping things fresh. I should admit that the cruxes of a few levels were too much of a leap for me to get past without scouring the internets for some advice. Enjoy!

CO Valentine's Day Escape

As if I weren't already spoiled enough, the spousal unit and I burned some frequent flyer miles to hit the CO high country for a Valentine's Day/Presidents Day. Hooray for the (mostly) free plane tickets and the (mostly) free rental car. Top it off with dinner at a Himalayan place, and it was almost romantic. Usually we just celebrate Ground Hog Day instead (easier to get dinner reservations).

By the way, is it President's Day, Presidents' Day, or Presidents Day? I think I prefer the grammatically pretentious s' style. Who can resist the a little typographical bling now and then?

Barnes and Noble Splurge

I just finished up The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008, which I had to actually purchase. This alone is high praise as I typically can't be motivated to seek out a book that can't be transferred to the library 2 miles down the road.

Lots of interesting pieces in the book. It's to close to dinner time to go into more detail now, but here is my favorite line.

From A Mighty Wind published in Outside magazine:
"From the top of a 164-foot-tall metal shaft perched on the small Danish island of Samso, the wind can just about suck the eyelashes off your face."

From a sciene article! Unfortunately, I didn't find the rest of the article as provocative as the opening line.

Heat wave

The spousal unit and I took advantage of the rare warm Winter weekend in Northern VA to poke around the woods. The only open space left around here is of the swampy variety that wasn't worth developing. Kinda pretty...I guess...if you're into the whole death and decay thing.

Not your Sunday morning VeggieTales

I believe I am the last heterosexual male in the United States to hear about the PETA commercial NBC has declined to air during the Super Bowl today. Even my father knew about it before me. Criminy.

I have a hard time taking PETA seriously for a number of reasons. For starters, I find the organization's overt sensationalism quite off-putting. But they sure know how to make an internet sensation.

According to the PETA blog, here is NBC's list of objectionable material:

• licking pumpkin


• touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli


• pumpkin from behind between legs


• rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin


• screwing herself with broccoli (fuzzy)


• asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is ready to be inserted into vagina


• licking eggplant


• rubbing asparagus on breast

This begs for a game of I Spy. Before you watch it again, study the list for a moment. Now see how many you can identify in a single viewing. I can honestly only take credit for finding four on my first pass. Quite poor, I think. Particularly because the pumpkin licking (and who hasn't licked a pumpkin on occasion) is a freebie. I think I'll need to make up a BINGO sheet and try again.

Bonus VeggieTales Link - if only we had a VeggieTales Super Bowl ad