Eclectic Amateur

Yes, there’s a new look at this place.  I’ve changed hosting providers, and migrated the blog from Blogger to WordPress.  We’ll see how that works out.

I’ve updated the blog template to show my Amazon.com wishlist.

Because I know you were all wondering what to get me for my birthday / for Christmas / for the anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Vienna / out of sheer gratitude for my witty blogging…

Dale has tagged me with the “name five people” meme, so, here goes…

If you could meet and have a deep conversation with any five people on earth, living or dead, from any time period, who would they be?” (Explaining why is optional.) Name five people from each of the following categories:Saints, Those in the Process of Being Canonized, Heroes from your native country, Authors/Writers, celebrities.

1. Saints
1. Benedict of Nursia
2. Thomas More
3. Joseph
4. Athanasius
5. Maximillian Kolbe
2. To Be Canonized
1. Pope John Paul II
2. John Henry Cardinal Newman
3. Pope Leo XIII
4. Kateri Tekakwitha
5. Bishop Frederic Baraga
3. American Heroes
1. Thomas Jefferson
2. Col. David Crockett
3. William Jennings Bryan
4. Benjamin Franklin
5. Father Jacques Marquette
4. Authors/Writers
1. Wendell Berry
2. G. K. Chesterton / Hillaire Belloc (can I get them as a twofer?)
3. J. R. R. Tolkien
4. C. S. Lewis
5. Masanobu Fukuoka

   And, of course, S. M. Stirling

5. Celebrities
   1. Pope Benedict XVI
   2. Larry Wall
   3. Richard M. Stallman
   4. “Doc” Watson
   5. O-Sensei Morehei Ueshiba

The NEW Eclectic Amateur! Now, with ads from Google!

We’ll see if this is beneficial or baneful …

Dale has tagged me with the Book Meme, so here goes …

1. Total number of books I’ve owned.

I have said before that my Dances With Wolves name should be “Reads Too Much.”

2. Last book I bought.

Due to space and time limits, I’ve learned to make good use of the library, so my bookbuying is well off the pace that it was at B(efore) C(hildren).

3. Last book I read.

Why yes, there was a reason I named this blog Eclectic Amateur …

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.

Aside from the Bible, which gets to be at the top in a category of its own, here are some that come to mind:

1. The Lord of the Rings. Read umpteen times in sixth grade and then some after that. It’s still one of my regrets that I haven’t learned to write in tengwar.
2. The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis. Heck, everything by C. S. Lewis.
3. By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition by Mark Shea. Sorry, Mark — I don’t rate you quite up there with Professors Tolkien and Lewis. But, this little book was very helpful to me in articulating my view on sola scriptura, which of course has had other ripple effects …
4. The Imitation of Christ. I would be a much better person if I reread this more often.
5. The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry.
6. Anything by G. K. Chesterton.

OK, so that’s more than five.

5. Next!

Hey Bubbles, you there?

Yes, I’m late to the party. I saw the ten things list from Henry Dieterich; here’s mine:

Ten Things I’ve Done (That You Probably Haven’t):

1. Fenced competitively for a Big Ten university.
2. Shorn sheep. Even used hand shears at least once (and left a relatively non-bloody sheep).
3. Learned traditional West African music from an internationally-recognized African composer.
4. Had nine living grandparents.
5. Contributed to multiple free/open source software projects
6. Flunked RCIA.
7. Caught a Blanchard’s Cricket Frog in the wild in Michigan.
8. Worked at a cyclotron.
9. I can draw a circle on the map around all the places I’ve lived, and the radius is less than 100 miles.
10. Read The Lord of the Rings. 15 times. In sixth grade. Did I mention that one of those times was in a single day?

The Sirman Made Me Do It

… so, at least I get to feel more virtuous — or, I would, if I weren’t so gosh darn humble:

The Dante’s Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Inferno Test

Doug has reminded me that the proper term is “People’s Republic of Ann Arbor”.

Hi Anne. No, I hadn’t seen Midwest Conservative Journal yet. I’ll have to keep an eye on this. While I’m certainly a Midwesterner, I’m pretty sure I’m not a conservative. At least politically. (I used to think I was a liberal. I’ve decided that’s not true, I’m actually a Distributist.)

On the other hand, as far as being an Episcopalian goes, I seem to be something of a theological ultra-conservative these days. All I lack to be a true reactionary is attachment to the 1928 BCP.

Yes Roy, I still live outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan (“the Berkely of the Midwest”). And I know my place well enought to not (usually) get lost driving around, even through the downtown maze of one-way streets.

“Remember: Wherever you go, there you are.”
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai