It is late morning and the in-house chores are complete. It appears that the rains forecast for today will arrive before the lawn will be freed from last night's dew. This guesstimate rules out the task of mowing the lawn at least for today. With some free time on my hands and more out of a need for remembrance, I have decided to attempt a blog entry--the first in some time. But I don't have to tell you that.

Yesterday, I learned that Gene Logsdon passed away on May 31st. Gene has written a weekly blog under the title of "The Contrary Farmer" for several years with a new entry appearing on Wednesday of each week. I have followed this blog for a few years. It has been an entertaining, informative, and thought provoking read. I figured any author, who can convince a mainstream publisher to publish a book titled Holy Shit, is worth reading on that basis alone.

Gene's last blog entry was posted on May 25th and was on the topic of gardening in the nude and rhubarb. One or both of these subjects has to rank up there in the top ten of tombstone epitaphs. I am sure neither will appear on Mr. Logsdon's tombstone, but they can be marked as the man's last words in the e-edition.

Yesterday in Gene's memory, I cooked up a small batch of rhubarb sauce, transplanted Marigolds and a single parsley plant in the flower bed, and made up a few pots of Impatiens to add a bit of color to the deck. Let me assure you that I kept my clothes on while completing these tasks. Remembrance or not, the urge to disrobe was not a part of this ritual event. Just in case, there is a gardener or two out there, who reads this entry, the flower bed has full sun and the deck has full shade. This should explain my choice of cultivars.

I have a neighbor, who writes a weekly column for the local paper. His column appears on Thursday having been submitted to the editor early in the week. This week's topic was rhubarb. There was no mention of nudity or clothing, so I will assume that all the actors cited by Howard were fully clothed and not harmed in anyway in the making of this week's column.

I am looking forward to Michael Perry's column in next week's edition of the Wisconsin State Journal. I suspect that he will also have something to say on Gene Logsdon passing. His comments will be far better crafted than mine. I am sure he will fold a bit of wry or not so wry humor into a more serious note.

The following is a quote from an article in the April 9th edition of the National Catholic Reporter. The article is titled: "Why is the Catholic church moving away from just war theory?" Its author is Terrence Rynne.

"...The just war theory, on the other hand, ignores the New Testament. It is an ethical discipline that came to us from the "pagan" Cicero by way of St. Augustine. It approaches the problem of war and violence using natural law thinking and does not measure up to the call to positive peacemaking that we find in the New Testament."

This is a radical re-conceptualization of human conflict, and it will be even more radical if it moves forward. It is radical in the root meaning of the word in that it strikes at the very foundation from which the theory arises. If the former foundation is removed and replaced with a substantially and substantively different foundation, we will end up in a very different place by a very different route.

Re-evaluation and refinement of the just war theory with the possibility of outright replacement may be but one moral principle requiring such a review and examination.  So much of the Church's thinking on Natural Law and the use of a Natural Law argument in support of moral thinking and decision making rests on pre-Christian philosophers and medieval science. It is well past the time to use New Testament teachings as the basis for Christian morality. Is it not also time to move forward and incorporate the knowledge and science acquired by the human community over the past millennium into those contemporary principles guiding individual and corporate acts of and by the members of this same community?

Maybe it is time for the U.S. political scene to give birth to a third or even a fourth political party.

I will propose a different, maybe even skewed, take on the 2016 races for the parties' presidential nominations. Both parties have traditionally pursued the "bigger tent" road to victory. Each has tried to attract an increasingly larger proportion of the voting public. In the attempt to accomplish this objective, each party's message has become more and more dilute on one hand and more and more strident on the other. The very real doublespeak that results may have worked in another time and place. Currently there are too many video cameras, cell phones, social media, search-able databases and other technologies available so that it is impossible to maintain the secrecy of narrowly focused utterances. (Think of M. Romney's 47% comment.) As these technologies have disclosed duplicity on the part of the current political leadership, they have also provided a vehicle whereby those disillusioned and disenfranchised are able to communicate and collaborate.

As the "bigger tent" efforts become effective, it makes for stranger and stranger bedfellows, who may share a common language of politics but a very different political reality. This difference often only becomes available when a particular party assumes leadership on the national or state scene and then proceeds to legislate in response to the interests of a narrow subset of the public which voted it into power. This may be particularly true for the Republican party, but my position is that the Democratic party has performed in like fashion.

It certainly is attractive to work within the two party system and attempt to take over one or the other party. There is all this political infrastructure in place; there is a history or hagiography for which to feel some allegiance and affection. Furthermore, we all want to believe that there is at least a modicum of sincerity in the utterances of each party's leadership as they pursued to date the goal of a "bigger tent." It is time to at least consider to stop doing the same thing that we have been doing for 50 years and to expect a different outcome this time. The U.S. society is too diverse to be divided into a two-piece pie. More pieces to the pie will mean that more folks can eat pie, that is, have their interests more clearly and vigorously represented. A substantive third or fourth party movement will immediately dilute the power of the Republican and Democratic parties. Politics will become the art of the possible and a negotiated resolution of divergent interests. This effort will not be successful without considerable time, effort, and sacrifice. There will be forces that will directly and indirectly work to thwart any movement towards a third or fourth party. Current actors will restate old promises ("It will be different this time.") and, when that doesn't work, will throw up barriers to any upstart political organization.

It is time to think such thoughts and to give voice to such ideas.

So Michael Hayden, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has decided to take a reading on his moral compass as he speculates about the choices that could be made in the event that there is a President Trump. In a recent news interview, he spoke of the lack of legal cover in the statement "I was just following orders." All actors up and down the chain of command must distinguish between lawful and unlawful orders and bear individual legal responsibility for any and all actions. In the event, that a President Trump governs like he campaigns, Mr. Hayden spoke with certainty that staff of any of a number of federal agencies will be faced with the necessity of choosing to follow lawful orders and refusing to follow unlawful orders.

My question is: Where was Mr. Hayden and his voice to this sentiment during the past 15 years when there was a discussion of and a use of extraordinary renditions, enhanced interrogation techniques, and unlawful/enemy/unlawful enemy combatants? There were multiple claims of presidential findings and Department of Justice opinions in support of actions taken. In retrospect much of that support was indicative of 1984 newspeak, or should I say politic-speak or moralistic doublespeak. Possibly, it is only in retrospect that folks like Mr. Hayden have come to their senses. I certainly hope there are more than just Mr. Hayden. Maybe it is recent news accounts of the extradition of South American military officers who are now being held accountable for actions taken 40 years ago or the trials of concentration camp staff some 70 years after the fact. There is a substantial body of law where there is no statute of limitations.

No one has the luxury of determining the rectitude of an action the "morning after." That determination must be made going in, up front, or in the heat of the moment. There may be extenuating circumstances, but an exculpatory claim can not be legitimately made in any event.

This past week I have found it necessary to keep the dictionary close at hand. Rather than occupying its regular position on the book shelf, it has taken up residence on my desk. In the past, Michael Perry's weekly column in the Wisconsin State Journal frequently contained a vocabulary gem which required a dictionary aside as I read his column. One of his more recent gems--zerk--I was able to handle without recourse to the dictionary. That is just as well since zerk is not in my Webster's New World Dictionary (the third college edition).

Such was not the case with three other unfamiliar terms I encountered this week. These include: treacly, galluses, and skrill. The latter two result in a spell check alert; that is indicative of something. The first two are in my dictionary; the third is not. An on-line dictionary of American slang came to my rescue. I suspect that I will not make use of any of these three words within the foreseeable future or any time between today and my dying day. I am quite certain that I will not encounter any of them in spoken or written communication during much this same time period. I have access to handy alternatives--saccharine, suspenders or braces, and frog-skins--which won't send my fellow readers and conversationalists in search of the closest dictionary. Having access to that on-line dictionary of slang may continue to be helpful.

I will probably not have a use for zerk either, since the bearings in the mechanical devices I encounter these days are sealed and permanently lubricated. But. I would recognize one, if I saw one. And. I don't own a grease gun (neither the real kind, nor the slang kind), so I couldn't do anything about a zerk, if I saw one.

Based on first hand experience, I have come to the conclusion that Thanksgiving dinner leftovers are great as long as the pumpkin pie holds out. Is there any better excuse to have pie for lunch than to accompany a lunch of leftovers? The same holds for supper or dinner. Dessert makes the entire meal all that more tasty. The anticipation of the end place makes the entire process of getting there more pleasant. Does one have to save room for dessert to make that happen? This matter deserves further study and more pie.

Belated Thanksgiving thoughts and wishes to everyone out there with or without leftovers.

I am trying to follow the Synod of Catholic Bishops taking place this month in Rome. I think "chaotic" is the most appropriate appellation describing the newspaper accounts of the various and varied goings on.

In the minds of those in attendance, who have given vent to their frustration, there is a sense that the survival of Roman Catholicism as it has been known over two millenniums is at risk. Why is it that any suggestion of change or development in our understanding of gender or marriage is perceived as a threat to the very existence of the Church and the human race? A rather cursory view of history provides ample evidence that both have not only survived, but even thrived, following previous periods marked by similar cataclysmic threats. I am inclined to interpret these contemporary reports of impending doom as one too many cries of wolf by a frightened little boy or a little boy's desperate plea for attention. Gender and marriage are phenomena shared between theology, sociology, and political organization. The great diversity of the human experience over the last 200,000 years and within contemporary societies provide ample evidence of the creative potential in gender role and pair bonding strategies. This creativity can extend to a community's ability to craft the theosophical underpinnings in support of their choice. If the Synod would be discussing transubstantiation, the divinity of Christ, or the afterlife of the individual, then I would agree that Roman Catholicism, as we know it, may be at risk to a terminal overhaul.

There are also mysterious bits in the reports coming out of the Synod or in the comments of those in attendance. Today an Australian archbishop speaks of finding a third way in between things staying the same and things changing.  I sense there is something in that comment that defies the logic of language; things either change or they don't change. Is there a third alternative where things both stay the same and change? Or where things neither stay the same nor change? Language as symbol may be simply incapable of expressing the fullness of reality. The inherent contradiction exists in human language and not in reality. Those Synod participants, who decry changes in language as suggestive of the lack of any and all objective truth, may well be onto something. Truth may well exist in some objective fashion; it is just that human language--any attempt to expound on that truth through the use of the symbols of speech--is not absolute. It is not the be all and end all of any or all communication that one might have with another or with his/her internal self.