Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Ash Wednesday

Did you know that the ashes used to smudge believers on Ash Wednesday 
are made by burning the dried out palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday?
(Image thanks to Clayton Faulkner)

7 comments:

  1. Dean is First, no doubt smiling about the news that there are no more roadblocks to passage of the National Nurse Act!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alan, thanks for the link to the SNOW photos. They match the ones my family has been sending. People are shoveling super narrow paths, because it's so very hard to shovel and it has to happen so often!

    Cue the theme to Northern Exposure. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. Hallo, Cat. Did you get smudged today?

      Delete
    2. No, unfortunately. But I learned something wonderful (in all senses of the word). You can eat Nutella during Lent! It's not considered chocolate, because it's made with cocoa powder. And it's not cream or butter or anything of that sort. So, though it is sinfully delicious, it is permissible. Amazing, isn't it?

      Also amazing that I'm only now discovering Nutella, the food of the gods!

      Delete
  4. We made a shopping run to San Jose today. In addition to the almond orchards, the wild mustard, wild radish, poppies and lupine are in bloom, together with a more brushy yellow-flowered plant in the mountains that I don't know the name of. Oddly enough, there was no wind in the Pacheco Pass, either going over in the morning or returning in the afternoon.

    Yes, I knew the source of the Ash Wednesday ashes.

    I'm having a nice intellectual workout educating myself about Marxism, which was not a part of my formal education. It's fair to say that it furnishes useful viewpoints on a number of things, even today, the significance of which were not evident to me in my callow youth. The more (rational) ways we have of looking at current events and relationships, the better.

    --Alan

    P.S.: At the mexican grocery in Madera, not too far down the road, I found (and stocked up on) the brand of mexican chocolate I was looking for. One of my coworkers at the hospital is from Calexico and volunteered her sister to look for the premium version in Mexicali--for both of us. (Mexicali and Calexico are twinned border cities.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alan, it sounds like a lovely drive. All we've got is snow.

      Delete