Middlemarch

Just finished rereading Middlemarch today on a flight from Calgary to Ft MacMurray.
It's a tender, moving book, and my appreciation for George Eliot grows every time I read (or reread) her works. At this time, they include "Mill on the Floss", "Felix Holt, the Radical", and "Middlemarch". My next will likely be Silas Marner, since I was a good 40 pages into a copy when I left it in the seatback pocket of a NWA flight from Minneapolis.

I think I also have a short book called "The Professor" by Charlotte Bronte, which I snapped up from Beth's collection before repacking them.

Really, shouldn't we be moving soon?

Ah, the good old days

þat it please youre highnesse of youre influent grace by the auctorite of þis youre parliament to pardon
and acquite all and euery prest aswell religiouse as seculer of all maner felonie3. of rape done by fore the first
day of Iune next comynge

These guys had the gall to ask for a proactive pardon for sex-crimes by priests?!
The 1440's were a wild time indeed... but they go on:

And also to pardon and relese by the auctorite of the same parliament to all and euerich
prest Seculer stipendiar anuell all yat longeth or apper teineth to youe by wey of forfature of euerich of theim. by fore
the said first day of Iune by cause of takyng excessious selarie contrarie to the statutes theruppon made

Ah, asking to be let off for dipping their hands in the offering basket? Oh, but they offered a fine of 6 shillings, 8 pence to be paid of any of them who were caught...

by cause it touchith þe Immunite and
liberte of þe Chirch. the which þe kyng intendith to kepe withoute hurt or preiudice in alle
wyse. And as touchyng the pardon conteyned in this bille. in cas þe nobles of þe saide preestes be grauntid
to hym in þe said Conuocacions. then þe kyng woll þat the saide pardon stonde in his vertu
and strenght. with oute fyne or fee payng þerfore by auctorite of þis present parlement.

Yeah, I did it! So what, wanna fightaboutit?

And. yn struglyng be twene hem bothe: he brake of the seales: and so he knoweleched the brekyng ther of: openly
a fore alle the Court / and said these wordes: I didde hit. what wolle ye sey ther to: take youre auauntage:

Thanks to the Pope

This week the holy father will beatify a conscientious objector who was beheaded in Berlin for refusal to fight in Hitler's army. His martyrdom is an inspiration to us all.

26 Friday
Linz (Austria), Cathedral, at 10.00
Beatification of the Servant of God
- Franz Jägerstätter

Idle Dreaming

A little over half way to Melbourne. Need to rack up 165.000 points on my amex to get two tickets to Melbourne (and we'll need to get to SFO to use it, but that's okay.) Is it fine in September there? If I have 100.000 points now, I need to average about 65000/11 (11 months since I'd need to book at least a month out) = $5909 per month to get this by next fall (or spring, depends where you stand!). Assuming a balanced work schedule, it's just out of my reach. If airfare is suddenly a higher percentage of my spending due to more flights or higher costs, this could be obtainable. Isn't a shame the things I think about. That would also get $1,650 worth of Home Depot giftcards, but what's that all about?

I am a little annoyed at NWA for not linking up with Qantas. The only way to Melbourne on a northwest mileage game is Alaska air to LAX, Air TahitiNui to Papeete, Air TahitiNui to Melbourne. The mild advantage is that a stopover in Tahiti is included. I can't begin to imagine what the cost of this would be in miles.

Middlemarch some more.

How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
...
With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions about the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.
...
She was humiliated to find herself a mere victim of feeling, as if she could know nothing except through that medium: all her strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, of despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation, transforming all hard conditions into duty. Poor Dorothea! she was certainly troublesome—to herself chiefly; but this morning for the first time she had been troublesome to Mr. Casaubon.
...
Both were shocked at their mutual situation—that each should have betrayed anger towards the other. If they had been at home, settled at Lowick in ordinary life among their neighbors, the clash would have been less embarrassing: but on a wedding journey, the express object of which is to isolate two people on the ground that they are all the world to each other, the sense of disagreement is, to say the least, confounding and stultifying. To have changed your longitude extensively and placed yourselves in a moral solitude in order to have small explosions, to find conversation difficult and to hand a glass of water without looking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory fulfilment even to the toughest minds.

Middlemarch

Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.