Another view of Islamophobia

"Out of control clergy, religious demagogues with their consecrated militias, religious parties usurping the functions of the state . . . It all sounds like the worst stereotypes of contemporary radical Islam, in Iran and Somalia, Iraq and Lebanon.  . . .  Just a century after the conversion of the Roman empire [in the 300s AD], Christian churches were acting precisely on the lines of the most extreme Islamic mullahs today." (my emphasis) 

So writes Philip Jenkins in Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New York, HarperOne, 2010), p. 30.

“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein

Olio

If you do crosswords, you know what to expect under the  title "Olio" --

1. 1. A mixture or medley; a hodgepodge.
   2. A collection of various artistic or literary works or musical pieces; a miscellany.
   
   Here are some of my pix which had not yet found a narrative home on the blog.
   
   

   

   Taken of a puddle in a Waldoboro pine grove.
   I was under my huge, Boston Coach umbrella.

   
   

   

   One of many spectacular sunsets,
   from the deck of the Waldoboro house.

   
   

   

   Headlight reflections at the Owl's Head
   Transportation Museum near Rockland, Maine.

   
   

   

   October 8, 2010, Day of My Vanity.
   My one wearing of earrings for pierced ears,
   before the holes rebelled, closed up tight.

   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   Leaning to check their appearance before
   spring arrives along the Sudbury river.

   
   

   

   You remember! January 31, 2011, Wayland, MA.

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   Hooked rug from the 1940s, by Mercedes and James Hutchinson. Was shown at the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine. "Bundling" dates from the colonial days, if not earlier. The Hutchinsons produced hundreds of rugs, each unique, during their 20-year cottage industry.
   
   FiNiS

   
   

Grandmother's Happy Day

[If you view grandmom-love as shameless schmaltz, you may want to quit reading here and go on to something else.]

Kaleigh and Gavin are my grandkids. I love to visit them. They live near a good zoo, so we usually spend a day there when I visit. This blog records, via my trusty cellphone camera, a happy day in late February, 2011.

This is Kaleigh, adding a Bengal tiger
to her journal. These seriously endangered
cats have fired her imagination.

This is Gavin, adding a black rhino to his journal

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Gavin's main goal for the day, though,
was to photograph the trip to the zoo,
using a digital camera with a tripod. 
Mom (Leah) watches as Gavin begins
to figure out the engineering of the tripod.

Kaleigh wants a piece of the action.

Photographer and model.
He did shoot animals, too.
He carried his own equipment all day.

Leah early learned the value of recording
life events via still and video photography,
journaling, drawing, and painting, and has
passed that interest along to her children.
She asked all of us to sketch six animals.

In the zoo's butterfly house.

Gavin and Kaleigh have also been
encouraged to study what they see;
in this case, butterflies in various
stages of development.

Setting up for the black rhino.

Got him! At this point, Leah had Gavin
switch to drawing, which brought his
observations of animals to a new
level of awareness.

Where are those hippos?

Last shot of the day,
Kaleigh with a statuesque cobra.

The Best of April

You might expect my "best of April" to be the disappearance of winter's snowbanks and ice dams. Or the return of crocuses and daffodils.
No. It's our return to living on the deck.

This year's best signs of deck life are:
1. Pots of flowers and flowers-to-be.
2. A pair of new Adirondack chairs.

Hers.

Him with his.

Roy surprised me with the first chair yesterday, after he put it together downstairs in his home office. He thought it should be yellow. I said robin's egg blue. I wanted to buy one for him, so off we whisked today to Home Depot to choose paints and a second chair. Roy's chair -- in soft yellow -- is well on its way to its spot on the deck.

Sing, birds!

Walking in the April Rain

Pristine puddle.

One stomp.

Two stomps.