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Autumn Pictures - This is an album of some pictures that have been building up in my camera over the past couple of weeks. There aren't many pictures of the kids but mostly scenery from our lot and some from the surrounding region. The peak of autumn colors was probably last weekend or so, but there are still some nice colors now. The colors are now a bit more muted -- more like earthtones rather than the 'fiery' colors we had about 10 days ago. There were many evenings when I took the Milford bypass/highway 101 when I wished I could have pulled over and captured a scene or two. Unfortunately that stretch of road is notorious for traffic accidents and I wasn't sure how legal it is to pull over for such trivial reasons. There are some pictures of the house, including a cheesy digitally stitched panorama that didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. I liked last year's picture better. We also had the sprinklers pumped out for the season. It doesn't show up that well in pictures but it's rather neat to see. Half the sprinkler heads pop up at a time like little geysers because compressed air is pumped through the system to empty the underground lines of water before winter.

Weekend wrapup - We had a nice autumn weekend. On Saturday morning Michelle, Abby, the twins and I raked some of the back yard so that it would be reasonably clear before I mowed later that day. Perhaps this will be the last lawn mowing of the year. We also went to Saturday night Mass because we heard rumors of rain for Sunday (which didn't really happen). Sunday we played outside a bit. The girls and I watched the 1961 version of The Parent Trap on DVD. You know - the version with Hayley Mills using trick photography to play both Sharon McKendrick and her sister Susan Evers. "Let's get together -- yeah, yeah, yeah" Yes, it's a bit cheesy but Claire and Abby enjoyed it. After the boys' naps, the girls went to play with some friends down the street while Michelle and I took the boys to Target and bought a bunch of winter clothes for the kids. Last winter there were several items that we 'stretched' to make last one more year, but those kids just keep growing. Funny how that seems to keep happening. *grin*

Sanctity - I recently resubscribed to This Rock magazine and got my first issue this past week. While their theme this month was a historic review of the papacy of JP II, there was an article which caught my eye because of recent discussions here about becoming a saint. It's a big theme of Vatican II, EWTN, Opus Dei, and others: that we are all called to be saints amidst the "ordinary world". An article in this month's magazine was an extract of a 1963 book by Dom Hubert van Zeller (nice name, I know...). The closest online equivalent to the article I found (somewhat poorly transcribed) is here. Excerpt:

"If personal holiness is thought of as being a name at the top of a list, it is understood wrong.  If it is thought of as something that merits a feast in the Church’s calendar it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as something to which is attached the power of working miracles it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as mooning about in a state of pious contentment (or sweet ecstasy or noble and aloof virtue) it is understood wrong. There is nothing `superior,' in the sense of being one up on everybody else, about it."

He goes on to talk about what I'd call "fake holiness" - holiness for our own sake instead of God's. If you can spare a few minutes (and bear with some typos), read it.

Clavinova review - Here's my informal review after one week with the Yamaha Clavinova CVP-206. It is pretty amazing! I'm sure that I have only begun to scratch the surface. The keyboard action feels almost eerily like a genuine piano. The piano sound (when that's what you select) is indistinguishable to the untrained ear. The other built in instrument voices are cool. My kids like 'guided play' because they can follow the lights and as they progress through a song, they get a degree of orchestral backup which makes for fun music dabbling. Soon I plan to see what you do when you connect it with a computer but even without the connectivity, it's been a lot of fun. Claire has asked me a bunch of questions about music: position of the notes on the keyboard, the notation of music, etc.

Pre-Digital - In talking recently with Claire about what makes a digital piano, a digital camera, etc. I realized that she and her siblings are going to be relatively ignorant of the original "technologies" that their digital counterparts try to supplant. With respect to cameras, she didn't know what film was. It was difficult explaining that there are no strings in this piano and that most pianos don't know to be powered on. She's so used to TiVo she probably does know that aggravation we used to have getting our VCRs to tape a program. I don't think she has ever seen a vinyl music album let alone a player. Technologies that were around for decades (vinyl) or even a century (film) are as meaningless to her as vacuum tubes are for me. Wow!