Beau Jackson

Bo Diddley died today.

I don’t know that I have ever heard one of his songs, although I learned today (via the linked article) that he wrote the “shave and a haircut, two bits” rhythm/melody.  You learn something new everyday I guess.

The only reason I even know about Bo Diddley is that roughly 75% of the people that have ever been introduced to me have decided to refer to me as “Bo Diddley” at some point.  Without fail, they all think they were the first person to be clever enough to make the connection between my name and his.

Anyhow, rest in peace Bo, and God be with you.

So, as you all know, yesterday (Mar 23) was Easter.  It also happened to be my birthday – I will now pause briefly while you sing, and wish me a belated birthday.   All done?  Ok.  For those who may be curious, I turned 37 yesterday.  According to my (very brief) research, the next time Easter will fall on my birthday will be in the year 2228.  Chances are I won’t be around for that ;) so I feel safe in calling this a “once in a lifetime” event for me.

It would seem I got hacked.  I got a message today asking me to moderate a comment (it was spam – I was going to delete it).  Anyhow, I couldn’t get logged in.   Somehow, the email address and password for my account got changed.  It doesn’t look like anything else got messed with, but I haven’t gone back and reviewed all my old posts or comments or anything.

Fortunately, I have raw access to the database, and was able to change my email address back, and with that was able to get a new password generated.

Must’ve been some kind of bot – I can’t imagine anybody would be interested enough in my blog to hack it, unless it was some script kiddie doing it just to see if they could.  I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress.  Hopefully the hole has been corked.

If you’re not Catholic, and even if you are and just don’t pay much attention to the news, you may be unaware of a document the Pope published last July called “Summorum Pontificum“. The gist of this document is the liberalization of the use of the Mass using the Roman Missal from 1962 as published by Blessed Pope John XXIII. This is often referred to as the “Traditional Latin Mass” or the “Tridentine Mass” or simply “TLM”. Prior to the publishing of this document (which went into effect last September), the Bishop of the local diocese had to give his permission for this form of the Mass to be used.

I’m a fairly traditional Catholic, and I like this form of the Mass – I find it very spiritually uplifting, even though I don’t know much Latin. However, I live in Southwest Missouri which is NOT a bastion of Catholic traditionalism. Consequently the Bishop of the diocese I live in has never given his permission to celebrate this form of the Mass.

Well, now that the Pope has given his permission, we have a couple of parishes in the diocese that are making this form of the Mass available, one of which happens to be the parish I attend in Stockton, Missouri.

Today I received word of a new website: the Missouri Latin Mass Community

The ‘Missouri Latin Mass Community’ was organized in January of 2008 as a communication forum for Catholics, interested in the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), in the Diocese of Springfield – Cape Girardeau.

I was asked to help spread the word, and that seemed like a worth while thing to do. I’m also including a new link to these folks over there in the sidebar.

So, it’s been about a month. I’m getting to be a terrible slacker when it comes to posting to the blog. I’ve had a couple of things to post about, and I have pictures and I keep forgetting to get the stinking pictures off of the camera. So, now that I’ve finally done that, I’m going to make one big ol’ post about all of it.

Several weeks and I Dominic and I had the opportunity to go cave exploring. We went to Smittle cave, which is located about about 20 miles South of Lebanon, Missouri. The DNR only lets people into Smittle cave two months out of the year – September and May (I think) – due to there being a large bat colony in there. Dominic and I were joined by our friends Andrew and Damien from Kansas City. That’s Damien on the left below and Andrew on the right.

Smittle cave has a very large opening and we were able to just walk through the cave for a good long time. The cave is very muddy though. I think we were about 200 feet into the cave and I sank up to my knees in the mud. The deepest mud I discovered was up to my belt (and I’m 6′ 5″). There were a lot of really beautiful formations in the cave – the pictures don’t really do them justice. You can see more pictures of the cave in the Smittle Cave photo gallery.

Later on in the cave things got a little tighter. There was a lot of tunnel that we were able to kind of squat-walk in, or at least crawl. Further on it got REALLY tight. I haven’t low-crawled since I was in the army. For those who aren’t familiar with that term, low-crawling involves sliding on your stomach with your head flat against the ground. In the army you low-crawl to keep from getting shot. In a cave you low-crawl because that’s the only way you can squeeze through the little crack you’re trying to call through. I’m not normally claustrophobic, but I actually got a little nervous. When you’re crawling on your belly with no space to turn around, it is not a good time to think about a cave collapsing on you! Things soon opened up a bit though – at least we could sit up and turn around. I was really proud of Dominic on the whole adventure – there were a few places where he was obviously scared but he powered on through and had a great time. Did I mention the cave was muddy?

The next thing I wanted to talk about in my cumulative post is the Spindle And Wheel fiber frenzy swap. I participated in the “goodies” swap – and I got some really cools stuff. Most of it is pictured below, but both of my pals sent some candy and it just didn’t last long enough to make it into the picture. Anyhow, I got some really soft sock yarn from each pal, as well as some nice roving. From one pal I got some really big “man sized” knitting needles, and from the other I got some tiny needles for knitting socks with. I think I may try to knit a cargo net with the big needles. I also got some gourmet coffee (I’m a coffee snob so I love this!) a book mark, a “real men knit” magnet, some stitch markers and post-it notes. Thanks very much to Nancy and Lea for all the great stuff!

The final portion of the multi-post is about birthdays, of which we’ve had a several lately. All of our kids birthdays fall in a short period of time so in the last couple of months, Elizabeth turned 5, Dominic turned 14, Teresa turned 3 and yesterday William turned 1. So, today we had a big party with lots of kids over for cupcakes and hotdogs and lots of running around and playing. I think this was William’s favorite gift, but all of the kids have had fun with it (even Dominic!).

I had a Tonka truck a lot like this one when I was a kid. They’re dang tough and I expect it’ll see a lot of of use.