There is nothing quite so exciting as attending a grand function in the middle of a storm. Thunder, lightning and high winds.... Possibly hail...
As soon as the lights go out, we suspect that the music will stop, the chaperones will lose control and that there will be kissing in corners. The theme for this week is that life's a wonderful, chancy, gloriously uncertain and rather serious affair, much like the battery indicator on my laptop, so, without further ado, come with me and experience the Cotillion, also hosted this week by Small Dead Animals, Baldilocks and Darleen's Place.
First up, Kate at Small Dead Animals has a thought for you:
The juxtaposition of the "miracle" of the Air France crash against the "unprecedented" repair work on the shuttle this morning was one of those moments when the universe aligns to send mankind a reminder - and mankind forgets to look up.
And Soldier's Angel - Holly Aho has some lovely video tributes to our troops: 
She does not forget what's going on outside our borders.
Steal The Bandwagon meditates on porn stars, sparrows and Christians, and decides that life's not meant to be lived in a self-made cocoon.
TFS Magnum brings us a story of a woman who fought back against a stalker and is alive. It's not a situation you'd want to find yourself in, but it does happen. Zendo Deb concludes that self-defense is a human right.
The American Princess explains why she finds both feminism and the new J-Lo school of anti-feminism appalling. Great stuff:
...to push the limits, to think outside of boundaries, to take on responsibility, to not play by the rules, to respect the challenges, to firmly ground my beliefs instead of quoting ideology...
The Anchoress writes about reality, creation and our role in it. An absolute must-read, print-off, save-down and email-to. Popular western culture has lost its ability to speak of the sacredness of the individual almost in proportion to its exaltation of individuality. To be powerful and responsible we must understand both.
And Fausta at The Bad Hair Blog touches upon the same theme while contemplating a story from France. Do we really want a future in which the dignity of the individual is not respected? There is a puzzling dichotomy appearing between what we say we're about and what our institutions actually do.
Mary Katherine Ham has a short, exquisitely funny news anecdote about stereotypes and accents:
Reuters seems awfully quick to think of us Americans as crazy fundy Christians....
Cassandra at Villanous Company discusses wars and winning them (most specifically the war on poverty) by reviewing the ideas of a great, classical liberal and one of the most influential conservatives of our day. Could anything be better than starting your day with both Thomas Sowell and Daniel Patrick Moynihan?
Who Tends The Fires writes about learning how to pray because her son wants to learn how to pray:
I am a jaded skeptic who has spent years looking at God from the outside. I still have many questions I haven't found satisfactory answers to. A part of me still finds these spiritual vestments odd and itchy, finds the words and the habits a bit hard to swallow, and all too easy to forget. At times I feel like a wild animal at the edge of the firelit circle--wary, curious, yearning for what wonders may be found there in the light, but also cautious of traps and deceptions.
Finally, Yeah, Right, Whatever takes a baffled look at the DNC's attack on Bush's exercise habits. It does seem like the final elaboration of a mindset which shifts all responsibility away from the people who can actually affect things and toward those who cannot. Not a successful strategy, and in a way this is a modern-day reflection of the ideology that Cassandra of Villanous Company thinks caused so much damage in the war on poverty. These two posts gain a lot from being read together.
Don't forget to visit the rest of the Cotillion and my cohosts Small Dead Animals, Baldilocks and Darleen's Place. There's much, much more.
Posted by MaxedOutMama at August 9, 2005 08:24 AM