There isn’t really much news to report (that I know of), but I thought I should write something about how it’s going, since about half my blog traffic these days is people reading the St. Rose articles. The church will have its own web site soon, and then I’ll start pointing at news there.

The furnace had gone out last week, so we had a chilly 8:00am Mass. It was fixed by the time Mass ended, but it hadn’t really built up any heat yet. It was cold enough outside that everyone was wearing coats, though, so we survived okay.

I was the one who printed up the Propers (a sheet of the prayers and readings that aren’t in the missals in the pews because they change from week to week), so I almost choked when I was following along with the reading and got to “nammer” instead of “manner.” Apparently I need to proofread those when I copy-and-paste them from a web site. There were a few other typos; I hope to have this Sunday’s mistake-free.

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the Latin Mass since all this started. Some people are interested in attending, but they aren’t sure what they’re getting into. I was the same way the first time I went, wondering if there was anything I should learn first, so I wouldn’t goof up and look like a newbie. (Note: the following are my understanding sprinkled with my opinions, not official instructions by any means.)

Don’t worry about goofing up; no one will be watching you. Dress nice and sit about halfway back or more, so you can watch the people in front of you to know when to do what. (We regulars are still shaky on all that, so if you sit up front, you might mess the rest of us up. ) Missals are in the pews, and the Propers will be on a folded sheet of paper you can get at the entrance. There’s usually someone there who will be glad to make sure you have what you need if you tell them you’re a first-timer. The missal tells you what’s happening when, and shows the prayers in English and Latin. Or leave the missal closed and focus on what’s happening at the altar and pray. Trying to follow along exactly when you’re new at it all can be distracting.

Women are encouraged to wear dresses or skirts, but I’ve seen lots of slacks and some jeans so far, and no one’s been kicked out. Try not to wear something that has people asking about your Buns of Steel workout, though. Men should dress nice too. I think almost every guy has a pair of slacks and a shirt with a collar, and if you don’t wear your nice clothes to church, what are you saving them for? But if all you have are jeans and you’re really strapped for cash, don’t let that stop you from coming. (Again, my opinion.)

Many women like to wear a veil or hat, as was required a couple generations ago. I’ll save the reasons for that for another post I’m working on, but don’t feel like you’ll stand out if you don’t wear one. I’m a big fan of hats on women in general, so I hope it catches on.

Since the Mass is the 1962 Roman Rite, there’s no Communion in the hand. Communion is taken on the tongue, kneeling at the Communion rail, as it was for centuries before all the changes in the late 1960s. If a disability prevents you from kneeling or climbing the stairs to the Communion rail, sit in the front pew and I’m pretty sure Father will bring it to you, but you might want to make sure he knows your situation. By the way, Confession is available before Mass, if you didn’t arrive in a state of grace. There should be a Rosary before Mass, but I don’t know if we’re organized enough yet to make sure someone leads that every time.

I think that covers everything you really need to know. If you’ve been thinking of coming but weren’t sure what was required, I hope you’ll relax and join us. The Low Mass at 8:00 takes about an hour; and the High Mass at 11:00 takes somewhat longer. Make sure you join us in the hall behind the church after Mass and introduce yourself. (Hey, I’m known for being anti-social, but I’ll be there.) If you decide you’d like to join, you don’t have to drop out of your current parish, since St. Rose is technically a chaplaincy, not a parish, for now.

Covenant knew that he was going to pass out—wanted hungrily to pass out—but before he lost consciousness, the hurt in his chest made him say, “Giant, I— I need friends.”

“Why do you believe that you have none?”

Covenant blinked, and saw everything that he had done in the Land.  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then you do believe that we are real.”

“What?”  Covenant groped for the Giant’s meaning with hands which had no fingers.

“You think us capable of not forgiving you,” Foamfollower explained.  “Who would forgive you more readily than your dream?”

“No,” the Unbeliever said.  “Dreams—never forgive.”

Then he lost the firelight and Foamfollower’s kind face, and stumbled into sleep.

Rating:

I’ve always loved to read.  When I was a kid, our mom had to limit us to five books per library trip, because we’d disappear into our rooms until we finished whatever we brought home, and she wanted us to get some sunshine too.  It’d be hard for me to pick out a favorite single book; one day I might say Monte Walsh, another day Atlas Shrugged, and another day The Stand.  Different moods bring to mind different books.

Picking out a favorite series is much easier.  I love the Belgariad, and I think it’s long overdue to be turned into a TV series or miniseries (the dialogue is perfect for it), but it’s a little too light to call my favorite.  I’d have to give that honor to Stephen R. Donaldson’s “Chronicles (and Second Chronicles) of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.”  Like a lot of Covenant fans, I first read the books in high school when some of the language and topics were honestly a bit over my head, but I stretched to understand them and loved what I could absorb.  I’ve reread them every couple years since.  The Land, the Giants, the Haruchai, the Lords, the Ranyhyn, Andelain, Revelstone—all the characters and places are incredibly vivid and deeply explored.  Even today, my computers are named Bannor and Brinn after two of the Haruchai, and my usual Internet pseudonym is my favorite character from the books.

People often report either loving or hating Donaldson’s books, and the reason seems to be that he explores his characters in such emotional depth.  He takes interestingly flawed people, puts them through hellish circumstances, and shows how they can conquer those circumstances (or not), chronicling every drop of blood and sweat along the way.  Some people get bored with that—stop talking and obsessing and do something!  But some of us love it.  I’ve rarely felt like I knew characters as well as these, even some that only appear in a single book of the series.  With a few paragraphs, Donaldson can make a person come to life: not just the way the person looks, but his hopes and fears and personality.

In the first book, Lord Foul’s Bane, Thomas Covenant is an author whose first book becomes a best-seller, soon after which he is diagnosed with leprosy and loses two fingers and the feeling in his hands and feet.  His wife takes their infant son and leaves him, and the townspeople ostracize him.  After an accident, he wakes to find himself in another world where his leprosy is healed and he’s hailed as a returning hero who will save the world from its ancient nemesis, Lord Foul the Despiser.  His white gold wedding ring, which he still wears in defiance of his divorce, is considered the ultimate magical talisman, with which he will “save or damn the Earth.”

His doctors at the leprosarium warned him against this very thing: when a leper is completely cut off from society, he may begin to have delusions of grandeur and begin to think he can have an ordinary life again—or even a heroic one.  If he accepts the delusion, he won’t be able to handle waking up to his real existence, and he’ll fail to maintain the careful life that keeps his disease under control.  So Covenant insists that the “Land” isn’t real, that he’s dreaming or hallucinating, and names himself “the Unbeliever.”  From then on, he’s torn between the Land and its people which he comes to love, and his absolute need to believe they aren’t real.  In trying to maintain that insistence, he makes mistakes that hurt the people around him, and the more he tries to atone for those mistakes, the deeper in he digs himself.

I won’t go into it any further and spoil it, because it really is a great story, and I hope anyone who likes epic fantasy will read it.  It was shopped around Hollywood for a while and some big names wanted to make a series of movies out of it, but all the studios thought it would be too much like Lord of the Rings because there’s a magic ring in it.  (That’s just stupid; when a teen slasher movie is a hit, all the studios line up to copy it!)  I’m still holding out hope for a mini-series someday, though; it’s really too deep for movies.  In the meantime, I’ll review all six books.  Then there are four more coming in the “Last Chronicles,” but they won’t be finished until 2013, so we’ll have to wait a while on those.

Jason reminded me about the Geek Code; that really takes me back. Those were the days when nearly everyone on the net could do a little programming, people waited until the low-usage late-night hours to access servers overseas, and Internet polls for president gave the majority vote to whoever promised the smallest government. How things have changed.

Like everyone else, I had my Geek Code proudly displayed in my email signature for a while.  Unfortunately, due to the Great RAID Disaster of 2002, I don’t have my emails from before that year, so I can’t pull it out and dust it off.  So for nostalgia’s sake, I made up a new one.  Enjoy.

G d>+ s:+ a c++$ UB++++L+++HISCX P++++ L++ E+ W++ N++(-) o? K- w— O- M- V PS— PE++ Y+ PGP>++ t+(—) 5? X++ R>+ tv– b+++ DI+ D+ G e* h— r+++ y+++

It’s time to use the awesome marketing power of my blog to plug one of my other web sites: FreeBSD Ports Review.  This is an idea I came up with over a year ago, but it’s been percolating around in my head for a while, and I finally decided how I wanted to do it.  But first, some technical background that 99% of my readers won’t care about:

My operating system (OS) of choice is FreeBSD.  For those who have heard of Linux, FreeBSD is another Unix-like OS, but with a more structured development process and design than Linux.  (Or to put it another way, Linux is like FreeBSD for hippies.  Which is funny, since the B in BSD stands for Berkeley, the center of the hippie universe.  But I digress.)  FreeBSD is particularly excellent for servers, but I run it on my desktop workstation, and the only thing I’m missing is Flash 9 capability, which is probably just as well.

One of the best features of FreeBSD is its ports tree.  A ‘port’ is simply a few small files that automate the process of getting and installing a particular program.  There are currently over 19,000 ports in the FreeBSD ports tree, arranged in a simple two-level directory.  For example, there is a ‘games’ directory, and in that you’ll find about a thousand games.  You can simply go into a port’s directory and type “make install,” and that program will be built to match your system, installed, and made ready to use.  Just “cd games/xlogical; make install” and in a few minutes you can be playing XLogical (a solid clone of a great old C64 game) without any need to go track down the game, download it, run some installer wizard, figure out what other programs you need to install first, or any of that mess.  Any dependencies are handled automatically, and the entire thing is slick as can be.

The good news is there are 19,000 ports, ready to be installed as easy as you please.  The down side is….there are 19,000 ports.  If you know what program you want to install—no problem.  But if you don’t already have a program in mind, it can be hard to find what you need.  Anyone willing to learn the ports system can submit a port (I created games/xlogical, thank you very much) so there can be some pretty obscure stuff in there.  If you just want to install a game, how do you figure out which of the 1000+ games would be most fun?  If you need to install an MySQL database, which of the six versions in the ports tree works best on FreeBSD?

FreeBSD Ports Review was created to solve this problem.  It provides a searchable database of all the ports, but there are lots of sites that already do that.  What’s new here is that it lets people write reviews.  Soon it will also collect ratings, probably on a five-star system.  With time, I hope it will collect enough reviews and ratings that FreeBSD users can quickly see which ports are recommended by their fellow users, and read about the experiences others have had with them.

Even more technical jargon:  I created this site with HTML::Mason, an extremely cool perl module that works with mod_perl to allow you to embed perl code in your web pages, but in much more powerful ways than PHP scripting, and with none of the evil you get with PHP.  I’ve wanted to do something in Mason for a long time, but never got around to it.  There are turnkey programs for so many things nowadays that it rarely makes sense to write your own for anything; but in this case, I wanted to interface directly to the ports tree, and none of the usual content management systems would have done that easily.  It came together very quickly in Mason, considering I was learning how to use it as I wrote the program.  It looks like it’s going to be very easy to extend it to add more features.

I plan to add a ‘featured port’ section, a 5-star rating system like I mentioned, and other new features.  I’ll also be improving the style, adding a real logo and things like that, as quickly as I can squeeze that much artistry out of my brain.  Please comment if you think of anything else it should do, or should do better.

I wanted to blog regularly about our garden this year, with pictures and updates on how things were growing, what we were planting or harvesting each week, and so on. Clearly this did not happen. Oh well, something to do better on next year. I thought I’d write up a little recap, though, and maybe I’ll remember to look back at this next year to remind me of a few things.

Our garden consisted of two 4′x8′ raised beds in the back yard, with about 5-6 hours of sunlight.  The raised beds were a blessing this year, since we got tons of rain for once.  Other people had plants drowning, while ours could drain and maintain the right moisture for most things.  We never had to water at all, which was very nice.  So, on to the individual plants:

Lettuce: It’s always the same story with me and lettuce.  I get excited about all the varieties and plant half a dozen different kinds, and then end up only picking it 3-4 times before it all bolts.  We really only need 2-3 plants for the amount of lettuce we’re actually going to use; but in March, salads sound really, really good.  This year was the same: planted too much, didn’t thin it enough, and it got tall and spindly and bolted.  While it lasted, we ate as much as we wanted, though.

Peas did very well.  We had an edible-podded snap pea variety, the name of which I don’t recall, and Little Marvel and Alaska for shell peas.  Little Marvels really can’t be beat.  The Alaskas were nearly a week early, but the Little Marvels drastically out-produced them.  After opening a few dozen Alaska pods with only 1-2 peas in them, I knew why my mom sticks with Little Marvels.  The edible-podded ones grew to the top of a 3′ fence and back down to the ground again.  They did great, but all the peas got a rust or mildew from the wet weather, and died off a little sooner than they really should have.

Radishes did well, but I didn’t replant them after the first batch, so I just got one big helping.  The wet weather was good for them.

Carrots were a complete loss, as they usually are for me.  I’ve never grown a decent crop of carrots, and I don’t know why I keep trying.  I don’t even like them much, except for a little flavor in soups and stocks.  Our soil was too nitrogen-rich and wet for them, and they mostly just grew tops.

Onions were also almost a complete loss.  They really didn’t like the rich, compost-heavy soil or the moisture, and they grew maybe twice the size of the original sets.  I cleaned up 50 or so of them, and they all fit in a half-gallon freezer bag.  I’m tossing them into stocks and crock-pot recipes a half-dozen at a time, so they won’t last much longer.  We probably shouldn’t try onions or carrots in these gardens again, unless we mix some sand into a corner to make the soil drier.

Swiss chard was awesome as usual.  I’d never grown the Bright Lights variety before, and the colors are very pretty, but the taste is a little bitter or something, not as good as the old standard Fordhook.  It’s still going strong now, just a little droopy from the recent frosts.

Green beans (Blue Lake bush variety) did great as usual, but we could have used more of them.  By the time we planted them we were running out of space, so we just ended up with about four square feet of them.  We managed to freeze a few quarts, though, after eating plenty of them fresh.

Tomatoes did great, which was unusual around here this year, from what we heard.  Four Roma plants produced enough for a few salads, five pints of diced tomatoes, a couple batches of sun-dried ones, and a few quarts of sauce.

That was it for our little backyard gardens.  We also tried some new varieties of squash and melon in a plot over at the community garden, but that didn’t go so well.  Several different people grew squash, and when the squash bugs got started, they wiped out all the vining plants in a hurry.  Our plants melted in a little over a week.  We did manage to harvest a couple dozen white scalloped squash before the invasion, though.  The downside to those is that they need to be picked small or they get tough and tasteless, so going across town once a week to check them really isn’t often enough.  We learned that, for us, a garden needs to be close by, preferably where you see it every time you go outside.

Next year, we may add another 4×8 bed, but we haven’t decided that yet.  If we cut back on the lettuce, carrots, and onions, leave out the colored Swiss chard, and add more green beans, we should be in good shape, even with our small plots.

Recently I’ve tried watching a few new shows in what I think of as the X-Files genre, like Heroes and Eureka.  Science fiction mixed with supernatural and some mystery; what’s not to like?  I just can’t seem to take them seriously enough to stick with them, though.  They seem to be trying way too hard stylistically, and it’s off-putting to me.  I feel like they’re reaching through the screen and poking me in the shoulder, saying, “Isn’t this just sooooo cool?  Isn’t it?”  Maybe it is, but I’d like to figure that out for myself, without the show yelling it at me.  They seem way too self-conscious about striking the perfectly hip pose right from the start.

The looks of the actors don’t help.  They all look like they were pulled out of ads for jeans or cologne.  On the pilot of Eureka, I started laughing when the third or fourth incredibly hot babe was introduced to the superbly hunky male lead, and they turned their noses up at each other.  It’s downright distracting when everyone involved in the story is so ridiculously good-looking, and they act like it’s no big deal.  It’s like if they made a show set in Kansas but used only 7-foot-tall Chinese actors, and never explained why.

So anyway, since these new shows weren’t doing much for me, I thought I’d go back to the one that started it all.  I’ve seen a lot of the X-Files episodes, but only in reruns; so they were out of order and I’ve missed some, especially toward the end.  I’d forgotten how good this show was, and it’s refreshing to watch a show that just tries to tell an engaging story at its own pace.  What’s funny is that The X-Files became a show that was considered super-cool, but it didn’t just declare that in the first episode; it built that reputation over time.

Mulder starts out as kind of a geek, and in four episodes he hasn’t shown off ripped abs even once.  Gillian Anderson is certainly a beautiful woman, but not so distractingly Dallas-Cowboys-cheerleader-hot that you can’t imagine her being an FBI agent and going on a stakeout without a crowd forming around her.  In the early days of the Internet, her picture may have been on more screensavers and backgrounds than any other person’s, but that was because of the whole character, not just her looks.

The show took its time, too.  After four episodes on the first disc (I’m Netflixing it), we’ve gotten a little of Mulder’s backstory, but we haven’t seen a single alien yet, we don’t know much about Scully, and we have no idea who Cigarette Smoking Man is or any of the other conspiracy stuff.  Two episodes have been monster-of-the-week stories, so they didn’t advance the main arc at all.  I don’t know what’s coming in the next few episodes, and I’ve probably seen them!  That’s refreshing, to watch a show that’s subtle about its mysteries and takes the time to develop them slowly.

Duchovny and Anderson are great, both in their individual roles and as a team.  The guest stars are convincingly spooky or scared or whatever they’re supposed to be.  It’s just a really solid show, and I’m looking forward to working my way through it, in order this time.  I remember it got pretty flaky toward the end, so I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way, but we’ll see.

Funnily enough, I actually missed The X-Files the first time around because I kept hearing how cool it was, and I’m contrarian that way.  If “everyone” likes something, there’s a good chance I won’t.  That helps me avoid a lot of garbage, but occasionally it means I miss something that actually is good, at least at first.  That happened to me with The Matrix, which I didn’t see until a few years ago.  If something’s really good, though, I seem to eventually discover it after the hype wears off and people still recommend it, and that’s fine.  I prefer it when the whole show is on DVD so I can watch it at my own pace anyway.

I thought about reviewing the episodes as I go, but if any show has been reviewed enough times on the Internet, it has to be this one. I may write about particular episodes that strike me as special, though.

Blogging is a strange avocation, when you think about it.  Unless you’re already famous, when you start a blog, no one will be reading it.  But you’re hoping people will, otherwise you could save yourself the trouble of setting it up online and just keep a diary.  I suspect most bloggers hope to eventually make a profit on it someday, either directly by advertising on their blog, or by getting noticed and getting a real writing job.  The former takes thousands of regular readers, at least, and the latter probably will too, since people have to read you before they can be impressed by you.

It seems to me there’s something arrogant, or at least very confident, about believing that’ll ever happen, like a high school athlete expecting to make the pros.  Unless you intentionally write on inflammatory topics to get people arguing, you can have hundreds of readers without ever getting a comment, so there’s very little feedback.  If you write for a newspaper, an editor approves your work every day.  Even a novelist gets feedback from editors and personal readers occasionally.  But the blogger, starting out, is communicating through a one-way mirror, and just has to guess whether the people on the other side are nodding in agreement or pointing and laughing.

I really have no idea why anyone would pick my blog over the zillions of others out there.  I’m the only person writing about the new Latin Mass in Quincy, but that’s an awfully tiny niche.  I’m solid on grammar and spelling, but I don’t find my writing that interesting; to me it comes off too dry and lecturing.  But who am I to judge?  I’ve certainly seen worse writers out there who’ve developed a large base of readers and commenters.  I have a tendency to underestimate opportunities, to assume that unless an idea is brand new and overwhelmingly good, it won’t catch on.  I’m gradually learning that if an idea is good, there’s probably room for one more person to be doing it.  And if a product, in this case writing, is good, there will be a market for it.

Before I started blogging, I never really thought about whether anyone read my stuff.  I posted on lots of forums, and I knew people were reading because they were replying, like I was replying to them.  It was always more-or-less anonymous: people could find out who I was if they wanted to, but I never made a point of it, because the important thing was the conversation, not the participants.  With blogging, I have to care about it, because there’s no conversation.  If people aren’t reading, there’s no point in it.  If it grows to the point where there are enough comments to qualify as conversation, then I probably won’t care how many readers there are anymore.  (Full disclosure: I have about 50 visitors a day right now, but it’s hard to say how many of those are actual people and how many are various kinds of bots other than search engines.)

Comments become very important, since they’re your only feedback.  Your first comment is cause for celebration, even if it’s a Viagra spam—someone (or something) found me! You check for new comments several times a day, and even look through the ones in the spam filter to make sure something valid didn’t get caught in there.

Like I said, it’s a strange way to spend one’s time.  Something I picked up from one of my favorite authors, Stephen R. Donaldson, though, was: Every day before you start writing, give yourself permission to write badly.  That works a little differently for a blogger than it does for a novelist who writes for months before starting the rewriting process, but the essential point still works: don’t wait until you have a brilliant story or topic to start writing, just get busy and let the ideas come on their own.  Whether I’m writing a blog post or a computer program, I tend to want to work it all out in my head until it’s perfect, and then type it all at once.  Only problem is, that way takes forever, because my head is a cluttered labyrinth, and sometimes the story or program never does make it out of there.

So, I’m committing myself to regular blogging.  If my blog never gets popular, at least it’ll be writing practice, and maybe I’ll be able to develop a writing style I’m happier with.  (One that doesn’t require at least 500 words to get a point across would be nice.)  If it takes off and I make money from it, all the better.  If I can’t think of ideas, I’ll just write about writing, like I’m doing tonight, but ideas really shouldn’t be a problem.  Heck, if I wrote one review a day of each episode of Magnum PI, Scrubs, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 that I have saved, it’d keep me busy for months.  Those aren’t exactly innovative ideas, but they’re something, and who knows what might spark the next good idea, or become a gathering point for people interested in the same thing.  Whatever happens here, I hope it’ll be interesting.

Thought I’d write a little about how the first Masses went at St. Rose yesterday.  First, a few clerical details.  The Sunday High Mass has been moved to 11:00am, not 10:00am as I posted earlier.  That’s to make it easier for people coming long distances to get here in time.  Apparently we have people coming from as far as 100 miles away.  Also, we were calling St. Rose a “shrine” before, since there are technical reasons it can’t be called a parish; but it turns out that won’t work either, because shrines are places that have pilgrimages.  So technically, it will be a chaplaincy for now, which is much like a parish, but people who become members can stay members at their previous parishes.  The official name is now simply St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church.

I went to both Masses, because I plan to go to the 8:00 most of the time, but I’d never been to a High Mass, and I wanted to hear the choir sing, so I went to that one too.  The Low Mass at 8:00 was what I’ve gotten used to, with a few minor differences from the way Fr. Schlangen did it.  I can report that the kneelers are reasonably comfortable—certainly better than kneeling on marble like the servers were up front.  I heard there were 140 people there, which was more than I expected for the early Mass.

High Mass was pretty impressive.  The choir sounded good, but they need more voices to pump out enough volume to fill the place.  We had nine (9!) servers, and they all had things to do.  I told someone that the main thing we had to do when I served the Novus Ordo was try not to fall asleep, but these guys stayed busy.  They did a great job of keeping it all straight, considering it was their first time.  Kudos to them and the older guys who have been training them.

There was some confusion in the pews about when to stand, sit, and kneel.  The missal tells us when, but with the choir singing, I think people lost track of where we were exactly.  At one point I and about a dozen other people sat down, and no one else did.  We’ll get better with practice, though.  As Father said in his sermon, the Latin Mass does take some getting used to.  It has less dialogue between priest and congregation, and more internal communication between the individual and God.  During the consecration, there are long stretches of silence where we have nothing to “do,” so we have to get used to the idea of praying and using that time to prepare for Communion.  As Pope Saint Pius X said, “Don’t pray at Holy Mass, but pray the Holy Mass.”

There were about 230 people at High Mass, so nearly every pew was in use, but there was room for 100 or so more.  Not counting the people like me who went to both, we probably had nearly 350 altogether, so that was a great start.  In the hall afterwards, people were full of excitement and so thankful for Father Devillers and everyone who worked to make this happen.  I didn’t take any pictures, but I hope to get some from someone who did, and put them up soon.  I’ll keep writing about St. Rose and the Latin Mass, since I’m interested and involved in it, but also because it brings me more traffic than anything else I write!

There was a dinner tonight at St. Rose, for all the people who have helped with their time and contributions to reopen the church and bring the Latin Mass to Quincy.  It looked like close to 200 people came, so it was great to see so much support for what’s happening there.  I even saw some relatives who I had no idea were involved.  There were kids running everywhere, so the Latin Mass seems to be attracting lots of young families, in addition to older people who remember it from years ago.  The meal was great, with excellent roast beef smoked all day the day before, and lots of side dishes and desserts people brought.  Everyone seemed to have a great time.

Father Devillers arrived very early Friday, and a ton of work was done in the last week to finish getting the church ready.  It’s really beautiful; I can’t say enough about the many people who were there day after day cleaning and fixing things up.  (I’d name names, but not everyone likes being named on the Internet, so I’m avoiding that.  We know who they are.)  We also owe a big thank you to Father Schlangen and St. Joseph’s Church for providing the Latin Mass while St. Rose was prepared and we waited for Fr. Devillers.

Masses start tomorrow, November 9th, with a Low Mass at 8:00am and High Mass at 10:00am.  (High Mass has lots of choir singing; Low Mass has none except at the beginning and end.)  Then there will be weekday Masses at 12:10pm starting Monday.  The choir was practicing tonight, and sounding very good and ready for tomorrow.  (They tried to get me in on it, but anyone who’s ever heard me sing knows that’s a bad idea.)

We’ve been working on this since July (by “we,” I mostly mean other people, but I helped a little), so it’s great to finally get to this day.  Some of the members have been working on this for years, so I can only imagine how excited they are.  It should be a very special morning.

Correction: The High Mass on Sunday will now be at 11:00am, to allow more time for people coming long distances.

….for every time I stood in line behind some #^$%@ buying a lottery ticket….  Thank God for pay-at-the-pump.

Recently I wrote that lotteries are a tax on the innumerate (clueless at math), which may have insulted some people, so I thought I’d explain.  While many lottery players are spending money they really can’t afford, I know others who are well-off, who say, “Hey, I can afford a few bucks a week, so why is it any worse than buying a movie ticket or a magazine, if I have fun?”

But is it really that much fun?  Wouldn’t gambling on almost anything else—football games, poker, the weather—be more entertaining?  Watch the Kentucky Derby; now those people look like they’re having fun.

The usual response to that is, “Yeah, but with those things I can’t win big.  I know my odds of winning the lottery are a lot lower (massive understatement), but if I do win, it’ll change my life.  I can’t win millions betting on football games.”

And that’s where the innumeracy comes in, because your chances of becoming a millionaire are actually better with betting on football games, or almost anything else.  The numbers are just so big that people can’t get a handle on them to compare.

The Powerball, which I guess is the biggest lottery around here, is currently at a cash value of $12.5M, and the odds of winning are 1 in 146,107,962.  Now, let’s look at football games.  To keep this simple, we’ll assume you’re betting the point spread, nothing fancy, so you have a 50% chance on each game.  If you win, you double your money; if you lose, you’re out.  Start with one dollar and keep re-betting your winnings on the next game.  How long would it take to pass 12 millon dollars?

Well, one game gives you $2, two wins gives you $4, three gives you $8, and so on.  Keep doubling, and you’ll find that after 24 wins, you’ll have $16,777,216.  Bet one game on Sunday and one on Monday, and you’ll be a millionaire 2/3 of the way through the season—if you’re lucky.

At this point, most people will say, “Yeah, but there’s no way you could pick 24 games right in a row!  That’s not just improbable like the lottery; it’s impossible!”  Oh really?  Well, the odds of winning twenty-four 50-50 bets in a row are 1 in 16,777,216.  So you’re 8.7 times more likely to be able to win 24 football bets in a row than you are to win the lottery.  Looked at from the other direction, the odds of winning the Powerball are just a bit worse than the odds of winning 27 football bets in a row.

The problem is that we can’t really feel numbers that big, so we focus on the ones we can handle: one lottery ticket is easier to win than 24 straight football bets, right?  Well, no, it’s a lot harder to win with that one ticket, but it’s hard for us to accept that.  The numbers don’t lie, though.

So, the next time you feel like gambling a dollar, bet on something that’s actually fun and holds a better chance of winning, and stop holding up people behind you who just want to pay for their gas and get moving.