10 Favorite Posts, The 2012 Edition

January 1 will be the fourth anniversary of this blog.  This past year has been a light one, as my posts have been particularly few and far between.  I expect this will be the case for quite a while, at least until the school year ends in June.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!  We had a busy, but quiet, one here at home (Relatively quiet, that is, considering we had twelve people here including one AMAZING AND ADORABLE three-week-old baby plus two dogs), and I spent the day after Christmas doing literally nothing.  The next few days will be busier; you'll find me grocery shopping, cleaning up from Christmas, and catching up on some mundane tasks I've been putting off since before Thanksgiving.

We've seen our new nephew twice now since he was born in early December.   His mommy, my sister-in-law Jenn, has a wonderful blog called The Cookie Jar Adventures where she has been posting lots of cute photos and video of "Baby E."  Yesterday we got to spend some time playing with him, watching him wiggle, holding him, and taking some family photos with him.  Jenn posted some of their photos and memories of E's first Christmas here!  I can't wait until we see them again!

Last year around this time I published a list of my ten favorite posts of 2011.  Since 2012 has been a light blogging year (I've posted nothing since the tragic shooting in Connecticut, for instance; I've kind of been at a loss for words on that one), in the spirit of Seven Quick takes I figured I'd choose only seven of my faves from this year.  When I came up with eight and didn't want to eliminate one, I thought, oh heck, surely I can find two more good ones.   Here they are, in chronological order (click on the title to read each post):

--1--

7 Takes, 7 Choices, The 2012 Edition

Each year on January 22, Jill Stanek invites prolife bloggers to ask, "What exactly do you mean by choice?"  This was my seven-part question.


--2--

Get Thee To the Church:  St. Stephen Martyr, Washington, DC

In which Joe and I spend a night on the town, and enjoy Mass and a pretty spring walk the next morning.


--3--

Take a walk down this Broken Path

In which I, somewhat reluctantly, review a book and learn a little something in the process.


--4--

Get Thee To the Woods: A Couple of Blacksburg Parks

I like to blog about our adventures in the out-of-doors; here we explore two parks while visiting my parents for Easter.


--5--

Today

I picked this one because it was the last day of CCD classes last spring, and I really miss teaching CCD! (despite the fact that with so much going on in our lives, not teaching has been kind of nice, too)


--6--

The Marvelous Gift of...well...

Possibly my most bizarre post ever.  But there are lots of pretty pictures, and links to some cool animal sounds.  Besides, I had fun posting it.  So there.


--7--

Friendship. Loss. Rock and Roll. Gavin DeGraw. And Rick Springfield.

Mostly Gavin DeGraw.  In which I act like a teenager one memorable evening.


--8--

7 Long Days: The Alaska Edition

Lots of photos of our summer vacation.  You'd be hard-pressed to find prettier scenery, and I expect it will be quite a while before we go anywhere like this again.


--9--

Get Thee To the Church:  Immaculate Conception, Fairbanks, Alaska

The first place we went after arriving in Alaska.  Possibly the prettiest little church in the 49th state.  One of the oldest, anyway.


--10--

A Visit to Monticello:  Life, Slavery, and the Pursuit of Religious Freedom.

In which we spend a wonderful day with my parents at Thomas Jefferson's home, and I share some random thoughts.

My apologies for not including any posts this year from my other blog, Cooking Nick's Books; for one thing,  I've all but abandoned it (temporarily, I hope), plus I'm hoping to publish another "7 Quick Takes" over there highlighting some of my favorite posts (and if I can't find 7 good ones from this year, perhaps I'll include some earlier ones, too).  Maybe that will motivate me to jump-start that one again, and maybe chew on some ideas to make it better.

UPDATE:  Done.  Read it here.

Merry Christmas, and many blessings for the coming year!

And for more Quick Takes, visit Jenn's Conversion Diary blog.  And be sure to read her post; you'll laugh your head off!  Have a wonderful Last Weekend of 2012!

A Visit to Monticello: Life, Slavery, and the Pursuit of Religious Freedom

Monticello called us.

It was Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  The weather was beautiful, I hadn't been to Thomas Jefferson's home in years, and the boys had never seen it.   My parents were visiting, and it was their suggestion and their treat.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

The tour guide (Oh, sorry, docent) said something that gave me pause:  When Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he stated that we are given (I don't think she mentioned God or the Creator, come to think of it) specific rights, including liberty; but that ironically, he owned slaves.  I resisted the temptation to point out that the first right he mentioned was life, and wasn't it ironic that we now allow the rampant killing of unborn children in the womb, and act as though it's another inalienable right?

I was thinking about that again this morning.  I realized that back in Jefferson's day, slaves were considered non-persons, and that's how people justified the buying and selling them as personal property and treating them however they pleased.   Nowadays, we know better.  In 1973 the Supreme Court decided that unborn children were non-persons and therefore can be disposed of as a piece of unwanted garbage.  We are right 

back where we started, it seems to me.

On our way out we stopped by Thomas Jefferson's grave.  When I read the inscription on the tombstone ("Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia") I realized I was standing on sacred ground.  Even though Jefferson's religious views were a little bit unconventional--I'm told he wrote his own version of the Bible that eliminates all references to Jesus' miracles and makes no mention of anything supernatural--he understood the importance of our right to practice our religion without interference from the government.

...Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time; 

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical...

(Source:  Wikipedia.  Emphasis mine.)

Jefferson noted that we are to be free to exercise our faith without coercion, without ridicule, without the threat of being sued, and without having to pay any taxes or penalties.  

Standing there I thought of the HHS mandate that forces employers to pay for contraceptives and abortifacient drugs even when it violates their religious beliefs.   I wonder how Thomas Jefferson would feel to see the United States government giving faithful Christians and Catholics the finger.  I think he would weep.

(P.S.  I may not be using Blogger much longer.  When I went to upload my photos I was informed that I'd used up all my space on their photo sharing site, and if I wanted more I'd have to pay $2.99 a month.  Since I'm a cheapskate and this blog generates zero income for me, I'm not willing to do that.  I deleted quite a number of photos that I'd published on older posts, and that seemed to do the trick--we'll see if they're also deleted from the posts--but at some point I will run out of space again.  Wordpress is looking quite attractive today.  I'll keep you posted...)