"Perrineville Road Bridge
MS-49 is now open."

I noticed this Thursday, cars were coming through. I checked it out Thursday night in the dark but Jeff went through next morning in the daylight and says the job looks real poor.

There's a sign about "Pardon our mess." They probably need to wait until spring to repave, join up the old road with the new. I'm glad it's open, only one month behind schedule ... but it will close again as they pave it.

michele @ Reformed Chicks Blabbing needs prayer ... seriously:

papillary serous carcinoma, it's stage 3 C ovarian cancer -- it's an aggressive cancer.

It's "International Week" at school during which the kids learn about a particular foreign country.

Kenny's class has Greece. I sent him into school today with a white twin top-sheet ... and the Greek New Testament.¹

His class learned the upper case alphabet - Kenny told me the etymology of our word alphabet - and a few nouns. His light research project, due Fri., 1/26 - figure that one out! - required him to pick a Greek god, answer some questions and summarize a popular myth featuring the god.

I suggested he do Jesus, but he said,

"It's has to be a B.C.god!"

But Jesus was born 4 B.C. ...

Figure that one out.

Oh, oh, Ancient Greece. Of course.

I still pushed him to pick Jesus but he senses that Jesus doesn't fit in the same category as Athena and Zeus. OK, but I didn't want him picking any of those ordinary Greek gods either. His selection needed some panache.

And, so, wouldn't you know, I brought my Scofield NASB to the Precepts session Thursday and the middle chapters of Micah² took us to Deut. 16:18-20. And, apart from a fleeting mental lament that our leaders don't qualify, my wandering eye fell down to the next verse, last one on that Scofield Bible page:

"You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree ..."

and the notes clinched it:

"These were 'groves' devoted to the worship of Asherah, who was the Babylogian goddess Ishtar, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Venus of the Romans."

I must be thinking ahead already to Valentine's Day.

So I convinced him to do Aphrodite and I helped him complete the research paperwork with information from Wiki. I left out some graphic details of her origin except that her name means "sea form" and she was born as an adult.³ The vignette he chose to relate was the Judgement of Paris, a very interesting tale. Since Aphrodite emerges the fairest, he was glad he hadn't picked Athena.

---

¹ Most of his teachers are Jewish, so if the LXX I have were as portable as the GNT, I would gladly have sent that one in. Trust me.

² Micah 5:14. God doesn't like cities.

³ A thing Jesus didn't do.

Today's This American Life -

Act One. Take My Break, Please.

Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall were a comedy duo back in the mid-1960s, playing clubs around Los Angeles, when their agent called to tell them he'd landed them the gig of a lifetime: They were going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The only problem was that their performance was a total fiasco, for a bunch of reasons, including one they never saw coming. David Segal of the Washington Post reports. (18 minutes)

Spoiler: Air-date 2/9/64. The routine sounded funny to me, anyway.

Incidentally, why don't I have this?

Recession takes bite out of church collection plates - Asbury Park Press, 1/25/09:

There is bad news and worse news for churches in America as the nation flounders in the grip of a worldwide recession.

The bad news is that Protestants, by and large, don't drop a whole lot into the collection plate.

Now for the worse news.

"We did this research before the recession," said Snell, assistant director of The Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.

For Catholics, the idea of mandatory donations, or a "stewardship campaign" would be rejected by the communicants, according to the Rev. Douglas A. Freer , pastor of Holy Family Catholic Church in Union Beach.

"If I tried that here, there would be a mutiny," he said. Freer was an Episcopal priest before joining the Catholic Church. He knows how funding works in each religion.

But because Catholics churches are generally large, he said each church has sheer numbers on its side.

'We've had people in our congregation who have been laid off from Wall Street," said the Rev. Daniel F. Swift, the pastor. "We've not seen a decline in giving. We're holding our own."

"The economy doesn't affect us, but lack of faith can," said the pastor of the King of Kings Community Church in Stafford, which he started in his living room 17 years ago. [...] He's been known to offer a "90-day money back guarantee" to members in his congregation.

"If, in three months," he said, "God doesn't change your life or meet your needs, we'll return your offerings."

Gotta love that. CM&A with some AG.

First time setting foot inside the new middle school ... and I never for a second thought we were on Broadway. Frankly, the sound system sucked. If the narrator turned her head to the left, we couldn't hear her, despite the mic being on her right cheek.

But lots of girl scouts in the audience. I think they get a merit badge for the afternoon or something. Simply stunning how many of the girls had iPhones¹ and other gizmos.

Tim wore his private school gym uniform ... I can always count on him to show intense school spirit ... at the most inappropriate time! (Oh, he had worn his school uniform to church earlier in the day, yeah, but Fr. Mike is still out, so who cares).

Whenever Timmy monkeyed with the theater seats, I reminded him, "Tax dollars, our tax dollars."

---

¹ Jeff corrected me, these were iTouches ... and he said he was thinking of getting me one.

Front page news, in English this time:

Pope lifts excommunications of Lefebvrite bishops - Catholic News Service, 1/24/09.