Weekend 581.0 (…beautiful but woefully unkempt)

(1) The End of the Beer Option? Thoughts on the Closure of Spencer Trappist Brewery (Building Catholic Culture)

(2) The One, True, Imaginative Vision (The Imaginative Conservative)

“When disordered, it can also become a source of tremendous disorder: It is the raw nerve that Socrates set on fire, when he sought to teach Athenians to live an “examined life,” a choice to question even one’s own presumptions in favor of the truth; it is the painful climbing out of the Cave and learning to look at things by the light of Reality, not one given by the Puppet Masters of the age one inhabits.”

(3) A couple of UK Films on TUBI for your consideration:
(a) Albatross (um, Felicity Jones)
(b) Fever Pitch (NOT the version with the insufferable Jimmy Fallon)
(c) Tamara Drewe
(d) Ginger and Rosa
(e) The Bromley Boys

Also Strongly Recommended by Our Proprietor:

Bermuda 2023 (The Alley of Limes)

“…few who have visited this spot, only accessible in the calmest of weather, where not a seabird finds a resting place, can ever forget the impression of silence and solitude which it leaves on the mind.” — General Lefroy, Governor of Bermuda, 1871-1877

“Oh! could you view the scenery dear,
That now beneath my window lies,
You’d think, that nature lavish’d here
Her purest wave, her softest skies,
To make a heaven for love to sigh in,
For bards to live and saints to die in!
Close to my wooded bank below,
In glassy calm the waters sleep,
And to the sun-beam proudly show
The coral rocks they love to steep!
The fainting breeze of morning fails,
The drowsy boat moves slowly past,
And I can almost touch its sails
That languish idly round the mast.”
— Tom Moore

We were in Bermuda during Hurricane Lee. It was an amazing trip despite the tough weather. The only museum we missed on our itinerary was the National Musuem of Bermuda.

Smith’s Parish
(1) Spittal Pond
St. George’s Island
(2) Unfinished Church (Flickr Album)
(3) Gates Fort
(4) Sea Venture Memorial

“In memory of our great deliverance, both from a mighty storm and leak: we have set up this to the honor of God. It is the spoil of an English ship of three hundred ton, called the Sea Venture, bound with seven ships more (from which the storm divided us) to Virginia or New Britania, in America. In it were two Knights, Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, Governor of the English Forces and Colony there: and Sir Geroge Somers Knight, Admiral of the Seas. Her Captain was Christopher Newport, Passengers and Mariners, she had beside (which came all safe to land) one hundred and fifty. We were forced to run her ashore (by reason of her leak) under a Point that bore Southeast from the Northern Point of the island, which we discovered first the eight and twentieth of July 1609.”

St. David’s Island
(5) St David’s Lighthouse
Pembroke Parish
(6) Bermuda Historical Society Musuem & Public Library
(7) Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity
Southampton Parish
(8) Gibbs Hill Lighthouse
Sandy’s Parish
(9) Somerset Bridge
(10) Scaur Hill Fort
Hamilton Parish
(11) Crystal Caves & Fantasy Caves
(12) Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo
St David’s Island
(13) Carter House
St. George’s Island
(14) St. Peter’s Church
(15) Stella Maris Roman Catholic Church

Related
(1) ‘Full update’ on Fairmont Southampton promised (The Royal Gazette)
(2) Bluck’s of Bermuda Store Closes After 175 Years (Bernews)
(3) Milestone reached in recovery of endangered cahow (The Royal Gazette)
(4) Premier: Fairmont Southampton deal ‘very close to closing’ (The Royal Gazette)
(5) Springfield: Quaint, Charming and Historically Significant (The Bermudian)

Limestone Archives
Bermuda Redux
Weekend 565.0
Odes to Nea written in Bermuda by Tom Moore <<< Transcribed from Tom Moore’s Bermuda Poems by William Zuill

Spittal Pond

More prose from Tom Moore:

Farewell to Bermuda, and long may the bloom
Of the lemon and myrtle its vallies perfume;
May spring to eternity hallow the shade,
Where Ariel has warbled and Waller has stray’d!
And thou — when, at dawn, thou shalt happen to roam
Through the lime-cover’d alley that leads to thy home,
Where oft, when the dance and the revel were done,
And the stars were beginning to fade in the sun,
I have led thee along, and have told by the way
What my heart all the night had been burning to say —
Oh! think of the past — give a sigh to those times,
And a blessing for me to that alley of limes!

The greatest saint ever to have lived…

(1) The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Westminster Cathedral)

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of three liturgical feasts in which we celebrate a birth: Christmas, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, and the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Only the three most important figures in the Bible receive the honour of a liturgical celebration to commemorate their nativity.

(2) A quote from The Gift of Silence by Jerome Kodell, OSB:

The favorite images of Mary in art are the moments of silence: the annunciation; the scene at the crib—as a Christmas carol says, ‘How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given’; and Mary holding the body of Jesus in her arms beneath the cross. The silence of Mary is not an empty silence. It is a silence of contemplation: of waiting, of pondering, of loving. Mary pondering the message of Gabriel at the beginning and Mary with Jesus at the end: these are two different moments—of bewilderment, surprise, and apprehension, and loss of life, pain, and sorrow. The word that comes out of these moments is then and for all eternity the word of acceptance, submission: Fiat, ‘let it be.'”

The Visitation
The Visitation from the Stained Glass Museum in Ely

Kingdom Hearts Updates

(1) What Kingdom Hearts 4’s Lost Master Arc Could Imply (GAMERANT)

(2) Quote from The Legend of Kingdom Hearts by Georges “Jay” Grouard:

“Tetsuya Nomura was born on October 8, 1970. He grew up in the south of the island of Shikoku in a city located in the delta of the Kagami River with a castle perched above it. From its forests, to its beaches, to its limestone cave, and of course its various capes jutting out into the Pacific, Nomura’s hometown is heaven on earth. It was like the Destiny Islands for the young man, who felt restless and dreamed of adventure and becoming an artist. His life has been marked by the many people he has met along the way. He became a protégé to several important creators who “connected” with his heart and soul so that he would never lose sight of how yesterday’s principles can guide the way tomorrow too. Having gone through his own Mark of Mastery exam over a decade, he ultimately became the Master of his own destiny: an exceptional architect. Through great selflessness, ingenuity, and cleverness, he was able to convince the biggest entertainment empire in the world to yield to his genius, giving rise to one of the greatest works of our time; indeed, one of the greatest because it is much more than a video game…”

(3) This is my KH3 tribute video. Each scene is from KH3 and was taken in-game (not from cutscenes). The track is “Music from 358/2 Days” by Yoko Shimomura. Can you name the land each photo was taken?

(4) Do think now that Rapunzel has been reunited with her family that the festival for ‘the lost princess’ has been repurposed as the festival for ‘the hero’?

KH3
The Old Mansion in Twilight Town

Weekend 580.0

(1) Work and Monasticism (Imaginative Conservative)

“We find in St. Benedict’s Rule something of a tension between toil and rest. This tension is actually fundamental to the whole monastic life, and to the whole Christian life. Benedict speaks often in terms of urgency, even haste; certainly energy, purpose, determination in pursuing our heavenly goal. To his way of thinking, we don’t have much time in this life, and we need to make full use of the little we have been given. Yet, on the other hand, we need to be at rest in God’s presence. We need to have space and time to listen to his still, small voice. We need to be perfectly clear that we prefer nothing whatever to Christ. As later medieval writers would express it, the monastic life could even be defined as sanctum otium—a “holy leisure”; the life symbolised by Mary rather than her sister Martha (cf. Luke 10:41); an environment which provides for that freedom from the pressing business of this world, and from distraction, and from a divided heart, which St. Paul recommends for the unmarried (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:35, 34).”

Anime: Japan in WWII

I had a little downtime this weekend and watched In This Corner of the World (2016) on ROKU. It’s a beautiful film and a reminder that the victims of war are never the ones rattling the saber. It’s also good to watch films that portray war from the eyes of those you’re fighting (fought). There are two other great films that deal with similar subject matter. The first is The Wind Rises (2013) by Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki. The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biographical film of Jiro Horikoshi (1903–1982), designer of the Mitsubishi A5M fighter aircraft and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero¹. The second is Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and it’s the tragic story of two Japanese children orphaned during the war. It’s a difficult film to watch and does a good job chronicling the dangers children face (particularly) at the end of war. All three hopefully inspire you to always encourage those rattling the sabers to exhaust every measure possible to find peaceful resolutions.

¹Wikipedia

Related
The Remains of the Day (1993)

Weekend 578.0 (Retro Gaming, Baseball, and Nostalgia)

I couldn’t get the Box Score and Stats Compiler for Microleague Baseball to work on my APPLE IIE emulator but was able to on a Commodore 64 emulator. Scrambling now to find a dot matrix printer. Do the airlines still use these?

Working on my roster. My original plan was a Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves ONLY roster but can’t have a team without George Brett. The other dilemma- Smoltz as a reliever or starter?

(1) Microleague Baseball Forever (microleague-baseball-forever.com)

Related
A Gen Xers Top 20 Video Game List