It’s been some time.

Nathanael and I were married on July 31, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at Diamond Lake Lutheran Church. Fr. William C. Sisterman of The Anglican Church of St. Dunstan, St. Louis Park, Minnesota, presided. We used the Order for Matrimony from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and used the unabridged version of ‘The Lorica of St. Patrick’, and ‘Be Thou My Vision’ for congergational hymns. The reception was at the Fort Snelling Officers Club. The first song we danced to was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘No More Shall We Part’. I danced with my father to The Magnetic Fields ‘Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing’. After being stranded in Detroit, Michigan at the airpirt Westin for lack of identification, we honeymooned in Old Quebec City and stayed in a local hotel, a socialist hotel, another local hotel, and an old Victorian hotel across from an Ursuline convent. I was reading Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain at this time; it did quite a number on my head. There exists a picture of me trying to escape to the convent from the roof top of a Victorian hotel, but I doubt it shall ever get published. We did a lot of exploring the old city on foot, eating at various restaurants and pubs, went to a low mass in a cathedral (which was boggling) and bought some local art, a painting of nuns in the winter street, and a miniture etching of the Ursuline convent, a dark red vase, and an admirable black hat which I’ve since lost in a pub in Atlanta. We flew back to Mobile, Alabama, and drove down to Valparaiso, Florida, which exists in the middle of nowhere. ‘Exists’ might be too strong of a word. Valparaiso’s exsistence, I find, is nothing very definite.

We live in a two bedroom cottage that we’re renting from Nathanael’s step-grandmother. Nathanael works at Eglin Air Force base as a contract engineer, working on ‘defensive’ weapons of some sort, but that’s about all I’m allowed to know. Bi-monthly, in an attempt to keep him honest, I make him promise that he’s not doing anything violent and evil, and he gives his word. He started his masters a week ago at the University of Florida; we’re looking at moving in about five years: we’ve discovered I belong to the city and the cold. I’m a housewife and do the usual, along with reading, taking long walks by the bayou and incessantly debating in my head the whether to write, working on finishing Latin, drinking a fair amount of tea, and correcting the jail’s Bible study assignments to help the chaplin (which is something we’ve just begun). After Latin is done away with, I shall, I think, take a masters in medieval history, with an emphasis on the church. We attend Trinity Presbyterian Church, where N. has gone all his life, which is close enough to walk to some Sunday mornings when the weather is not too muggy and otherwise disheartening. I honestly cannot remember what denomination of which they are a part, but it’s something outrageously small.

Speaking of N., he shall be home soon and I ought to get lunch ready. Wedding photographs to come soon, tonight, I hope.

Other: Here is a collection of religious sonnets, Raised in a Barn 4, edited by Masha Poyurovsky, Jerah S. Kirby and Matthew Kirby. In other words, what J. Campbell described as “The great iamb versus the great I AM.”

I guess this post marks a return to the ol’ (I saw someone write this abbreviation as ole’, which I think is a pretty poor misspelling. It’s either old, ole, or ol’.) weblog. As Sarah exclaimed in the previous post, I have graduated (no more of those highly sought after posts containing my playlists from the Music Listening Room — I know y’all will miss those dearly) from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. The firm with which I have interned in the past offered me a full-time spot, which I readily accepted. I began work immediately upon my return home, but after two days of paperwork, the prospect of spending the Holiday with my gal drew me into the vast white (well, the snow on the freeways is mostly brown slush, but those who dream of White Christmases readily overlook such trifles.) North. As I mentioned on The Desolation Angels, I was quickly initiated into the Cold. I’ve since learned to not go outside without a jacket and a key to the house. Apart from that brief escapade, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the weather here.

Tomorrow will be a nother first for me, as I will be attending a church which follows the old Calendar and celebrates tomorrow as the fourth Sunday of Advent. My home church — Trinity Pres. of Valparaiso, Florida — is moving toward a high liturgy, and it’s likely to be only a matter of time before it begins following the Calendar as well, though there is likely to be a good deal of resistance to be overcome if there is such a move. I’m really glad that I will be there for whatever happens. Atlanta never was home in my mind, and though I dearly love the congregation at Chalcedon, it was no more than a home away from home (away from Home, since I am but a sojourner on this earth). Soon, I hope to be one of the men that reads from Scripture and leads in prayer during that portion of our service. This is a role given to heads of households, and though I will be living with my parents for the first part of the year (while I whittle away at the student loans — pray that my knife is as sharp as I hope it to be), the church allows for college graduates to be put in the line-up.

As I am still on vacation, don’t expect a high frequency of posts, but I think most of my readers, you Dear and Gentle Readers, don’t expect that from me anyway. I shall, however, do what I can, when I can.

Nathanael is flying me down for the Advance in Florida this weekend. Anyone else attending?

For those who did not know already and might care to find out, Miss Sarah Jones and her dear mother (who is every bit as Dear and Gentle as my mother), along with their close friend Mrs. Brown, spent the last several days (Thursday afternoon through Monday morning) in Atlanta. My own mother and sisters also came to town, but they were only able to be here Saturday and Sunday. Everyone got on swimmingly. I’ll be flying to Minneapolis in a couple weeks to meet the patriarch of the Jones clan (who claims that he is not as omniscient as the Good Doctor, my father, but since neither of them are omniscient, I don’t really know what is supposed to be meant by that statement) and the sisters and a veritable host of extended family and friends.

It so happens that a fraternity brother and friend of mine who recently moved to the Twin Cities area upon his graduation from Tech lives in the same neighborhood as Sarah, so he kindly offered to put me up. (And when I say neighborhood, I mean so close that it’s almost unsettling.) I’ll be going to class with Sarah, which probably means that I’ll get thrown out of her classes for snickering at ridiculous professors. If they make me vacate the premises entirely, I’ll likely freeze in the current cold snap that the Central North is experiencing. I reckon I’d better behave.

As for The Desolation Angels, it is not necessarily shut down for good, but I would not expect much sign of life over there - excepting perhaps Daniel Silliman running amuk in the Sensus Plenior commenting system. It’s possible that in the spring, a flurry of activity may present itself, as Sarah’s school load considerably lightens, but then, she still has to meet her language requirement, so don’t wait with bated breath.

I seem to have neglected to comment on Gods and Generals. I thought it was fantastic; it was refreshing to see a pro-South take on the war. Raised in schools (Christian, in my case) in the North, I was taught to regard the Southerners of the mid-nineteenth century as greedy, slave driving, hinterland infidels. The North had God on her side.

Sometime during grade school I acquired a copy of Harold Keith’s Rifles for Watie about sixteen-year old Jeff Bussey and his experiences as a soldier in both armies. I found it absolutely enthralling; must have read it three times during my grade school/junior high years. The Southerners were real flesh-and-blood people? The war was about more than slavery and abolition? There were good men (and women) in the Union and the Confederacy, fighting and dying for their native lands and moral and religious convictions? I found the characters of the siblings Lee and Lucy Washbourne, fiercely proud, Christian, aristocratic Southern rebels, absolutely fascinating and admirable. I’d like to read this book again someday.

Two and a half years ago (late August 2000, in any event) years ago my family and my uncle and aunt and their children, flew out to Washington D.C., toured the capitol and surrounding areas.

One really hot day, sun glaring, I saw my First Cousin Once Removed’s name on the Vietnam Memorial. (He went to Nam as a drafted young lad and never came back, wrote some weed-induced poetry from the jungles about his friends dying, accidentally shooting civilians, and wondering why he was left alive and sent it to his mother, my great aunt. He never came back. My great aunt is an aged, bitter and silent woman with a shawl and a cane, residing in Cold Spring, Minnesota. I don’t think she ever quite recovered after the loss. I’ve often wanted to speak with her, I’m told she’s well-read. I reckon I might be able to reach her in some way. Incidentally, my mother, who grew up with the boy, has a lot of his Nam poetry memorised. If you catch her at the right time, she might recite it for you.) That night, after hitting the GAP Outlet (my mum bought me so many “back-to-school clothes”, it was really kind of her, after a summer of traveling, I was sort of running out, clothes mysteriously tend to switch hands between my girl friends and I) we ate at this little Italian eatery in the city. After dinner my mum and aunt looked at handcrafted baskets, and I excused myself for awhile and walked along the streets. Ran into this old, black jazzman on the street and had him play all sorts of stuff old classic jazz songs for me. We had a blast. I returned to the restaurant pockets emptied.

The Lincoln Memorial was a majestic piece of work, stunning when lit up at night. I sat on the steps and looked across the Reflecting Pool and at the Washington Memorial obelisk in the distance. This place was amazing - Martin Luther King, Vietnam protests, Forrest Gump hollering “Jenny!” and running across the water to meet her.

Saw the Smithsonian. If the tattered Star Spangled Banner (it’s still there, by golly) Judy Garland’s ruby slippers, Ella Fitzgerald’s dresses, the extensive collection of each first lady’s china, and the diner seats of the Greensboro Four aren’t among the greatest things ever.

Ford’s Theatre was pretty moribund. There’s something sort of unsettling (to say the least) and seeing the coat Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated. My family stayed and looked at the jacket and other artifacts for an obscene amount of time, so Brent, whom I’d met up with earlier, and I walked down the block to have a look around and have a cigarette or clove, I can’t quite recall which. Ended up looking at, what turned out to be, a modern anti-smoking monument at the block’s corner. Not many people were around. A whole plot was surrounded by a white picket fence and inside where hundreds of black bodybags haphazardly thrown atop each other. We wondered what in the world this signified and stepped closer to read the copper placard. It said something like This Many People Died From Lung Caner Every Second. Just then we heard some commotion behind us - a red tour bus with a loudspeaker that said something akin to: This is an anti-smoking monument. 483974983274 people die each day from cancer, emphysema, and birth-defects. Smoking is the number one cause of death. People gazed silently from the bus windows, eyes glancing from us to the black bodybags; more than one person sneered at us. We stared back at them, absurdly. The bus quickly turned the corner and went on its merry way. We both looked at each other with absurd expressions: There’s no way that just happened, man. Shaking our heads and chuckling at the coincidental accident, we walked back to the Ford Theatre and went and ate at a brewery with my family.

I asked Brent, the Google Mystic, to come up with a picture of the bodybag monument, but he IMed me this instead, so it’ll have to make do.

bnbechtel: This is a bodybag monument.

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Saw Jefferson’s estate in Monticello. Which was beautiful, and, I suppose, deistic. The surrounding woods and gardens were lovely. Someday I hope to have an extensive garden, vegetables and flowers. An urban farmer.

And Washington’s at Mount Vernon. I thought the most amazing thing about Washington’s estate is that the Keys to the Bastille are hanging on the wall in the foyer in a glass case. The Keys to the Bastille! Right here in America! I could scarcely believe it. Someone ought to lock those up. If I were a crook, I’d have meticulously swiped them a long time ago and sold them in Paris for an ungodly sum, and bought a yacht and sailed to Sicily and purchased a white mansion on a cliff overlooking the sea.

Arlington was interesting. My mum was quite taken with the Eternal Flame. And, you know, Kennedy’s never been much more to me than a useful pop culture reference; on a distaseful Misfits poster that’s been on the walls in the residences of various acquaintances; and an administration and dream I never experienced, so I watched the Flame for a couple minutes, and then went to explore the common graves. Little White Tombstones for everyone. (And little pink houses for you and me.) Robert E. Lee’s abandoned estate the Custis-Lee Mansion which overlooks the capitol and Arlington from a high hill, was profoundly sad. They repossessed the goodly/godly man’s estate because he’d fought for the South, and turned it into a giant national burial ground for war heroes. Compliment or travesty. Take yer pick. Bum deal either way.

The White House was… the First House, if the Reader will permit that tautology. The White House, when I toured it, was still the Clinton White House, which made me feel queasy at times. The modern art they had displayed out on the lawn was ghastly, horrible pieces that belligerently defied all laws of theology and geometry and ought to be tied into a millstone and cast into the Potomac.

Brent and I drove to his house in Morgantown, West Virginia one evening and became hopelessly lost in the slums of D.C. for a couple hours. I still don’t think I quite understand why exactly he left his break-taking frontporch in the mountains of West Virginia for the vast, boring flatlands of Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. Guess it was something to do. In most cases, that is warrant enough. He’s thinking of relocating to San Diego soon.

Oh, right! Gods and Generals. That’s what this entry was going to concern. Brought me to tears at some points. Incidentally, I was sitting next to a schoolteacher (what can I say, school teachers follow me around, it’s uncanny) who became tearful many times as well. I’d have to say I like it better than Gettysburg because Gods and Generals had so many scenes from the homefront. But then again, there aren’t so many scenes from the homefront around the time of Gettysburg. I read some review somewhere in which the critic criticized the battle scenes as being unrealistic and not bloody enough. For the love of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, man, what do you want? A-bombs, napalm, landmines, flamethrowers, and machine guns are exclusive to the horrible and dark times known as the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Back in the mid-Nineteenth Century they had canons, rifles, bayonets, and swords - elegant weapons for a more civilized age. The acting was sort of stiff and unbelievable at times. For some reason I had trouble with the scene involving Stonewall Jackson, his wife, and the Bible. There was something in the acting that just didn’t jive. It was stiff. It was like watching stoic portrayals of Greek gods. Mr. John Butler recently posted some opinions concerning religion in Gods and Generals.

When I was six my parents took my little sister and I on a road trip to the Carolinas and the surrounding states to visit and vacation with my mum’s childhood friend, Jeanie Brown, that had married a Southern man and moved to North Carolina and successfully transformed herself into a Southern woman, accent and all. I think it would be a fun transformation. We toured a lot of the battlegrounds from the Civil War. I was too young to remember the details of what we saw. I basically remember a lot of crumbling stonewalls, old houses, amiable people that talked excruciatingly slow, and horrible stories of lockjaw. We stayed at a resort surrounded by little, murky rivers. Jeanie and her husband Scott had a daughter, Maria, who was around my age and we ran around in the riverbanks and played, keeping a careful eye out for alligators. We had been told that the rivers were infested with alligators and we were absolutely not to swim in them. I remember skipping stones in the river at floating logs we mistook for alligators. We carried sticks around to protect ourselves and never got too close to the ledge. To this day I have no idea if there were really alligators in the rivers, or if it was just a story our mothers invented to trick us into keeping our clothes clean. This two-week trip into the Carolinas caused me to miss two weeks of class and was almost my undoing. I came inches away from flunking first grade because I could hardly read. My mum had to put in a good word for me and pursuaded (bribed?) my teacher to routinely take me out to dinner and tutor me over bananasplits, using Dick, Jane, Sally, and Spot books.