My second cover video, hot on the heals of my first, nearly two years ago. I’ve been meaning to do this one for a long time. Hopefully it won’t be so long before my next!

I’m a little hesitant on the last verse, I’m afraid. After about 12 takes, I could scarcely believe I was going to finish the thing without a major mistake.

I recoded the vide with a Canon PowerShot Elph 310 HS and the audio with a Zoom H2. Video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 on a mid-2012 13″ MacBook Pro.

The beer is a Triomphe Belgian IPA, by Brewery Vivant.

It is not that one is tempted by the indulgence of Mardi Gras going on in the rest of the culture, even among those who do not know that Fat Tuesday is followed Ash Wednesday.

In fact, it is the opposite temptation: the temptation to be like the Pharisee who, in the Byzantine Rite we recalled three weeks ago on the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee, one of the Weeks of Preparation in advance of the Great Fast: “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men . . . I fast twice a week.”

Those weeks of preparation also included our own version of Carnival—literally “the removal of meat”—called “Meatfare Sunday,” a week before the beginning of the Great Fast, when those who follow the traditional fast eat meat for the last time until Pascha (Easter).

So by the time Roman Rite Catholics begin Lent, fasting from meat on Ash Wednesday and the seven following Fridays, Byzantine Catholics will have already fasted from meat for nine straight days.

In the Byzantine Rite, today is not Fat Tuesday, but Clean Tuesday, the second day of Clean Week, traditionally a period of rigorous prayer and fasting.

For one who undertakes these traditional mortifications, Fat Tuesday—Mardi Gras—Carnival—is a temptation to pride: “God, I thank thee that I am not like these Roman Rite Catholics. I have already fasted from meat more days than they will during all of Lent! As they indulge themselves today, no food has touched my lips in two days!”

I have no wise words to offer in response to this temptation; in fact, the very act of my writing this reflection may be nothing more than a not-so-subtle way to indulge it, giving public voice to those Pharisaical thoughts.

But the truth is that I can’t help but be disappointed that so many of my fellow Christians have given up on fasting—really fasting such that we “limit our food and live on the virtues of the Spirit”*. But to write about this is extremely difficult. One is accused—one accuses oneself—of playing the Pharisee.

For that reason, I have not written about the Great Fast in many years, as much as I’ve wanted to—to urge others to discover how the mortification of a persistent, mild hunger truly helps us “persevere in our longing for Him … rejoicing the while with spiritual happiness.”

I practiced my first Byzantine Great Fast in 2005 when I was still a Roman Rite Catholic. Shortly thereafter I formally switched rites, and in 2006 I wrote several articles here on the Great Fast.

Since that time I have kept quite about my fasting, learning some things along the way—like how not even a rigorous fast can prevent a man from forgetting utterly about God for hours or even days on end.

I’ve also come to appreciate the Great Fast more and more. A persistent, mild hunger is a constant reminder that “man does not live by bread alone,” that the desires of the flesh (for food, for sex, for comfort, for distraction) can be quieted, and the desire of the soul for God more deeply felt.

So at the risk of being called a Pharisee this Fat Tuesday, I invite my fellow Christians to embrace fasting this Lent. Don’t just give up the indulgences—the favorite treat, video game, soft drink or TV show. You might miss the those things, but you won’t feel their absence in your flesh, in your body, the way that you will miss eating a full diet.

This Lent, give up having a full belly. Let yourself feel hungry. And see what it does to your soul.

* Quotations from the verses of the versperal stichera of Forgiveness Sunday.

I first heard this song at the Kalamazoo show on January 27, 2011. At the end of the first chorus, when Seth sang, “If I live the life I’m given, I won’t be scared to die,” we all realized this unfamiliar song was not a cover, but a new Avett song.

It has since become one of my favorite of their songs. Find a discussion of this song on forum at the Avett Brothers website here, and my PDF of the lyrics and chords here.

I recorded this video with a Flip MinoHD (older version at 30fps), and the audio with a Zoom H2, and mixed them together with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 on a Macbook Pro. My guitar is a 2004 Santa Cruz D/PW (Dreadnought Pre War).

I stumbled on this awesome widget for figuring out what guitar chord you’re playing.

I’ve used this both for figuring out chords I’ve come up with when composing, and for determining how to annotate chords figured out when I’m laying out songs, as in my Avett Brothers Archive.

Check it out:

You’ve got what it is (a postcard). You’ve got what it’s about (a protest). You’ve got where it’s happening (Chicago). And when it’s going on (July 2010).

At least four different “folders” you could put it into. But why have to put it in just one? Or better yet, why not just one—one folder for everything, with user tags to make it all accessible?

If every file, no matter what file type, could be user-flagged—if in fact the OS made it a point to gently ensure each file at least gets presented for tags (along with contextual suggestions), none of us humans would ever have to think about directory structure again. We can leave that to the robots; they seem to like that kind of thing.

I could tag that postcard as “postcard,” “protest,” “Aurora” and so forth. I could add tags for “picket” (the kind of protest), “activism” (the larger category of which protest is one kind), “two-color” (the print method) and on and on. The OS will also do as it already does and tag every file with a filetype and datestamp. Then just search for anything you want by tag.

Having everything heaped in one box is messy and confusing for a human being, but robots couldn’t care less. Let the robots search by tags for us, and we can forget all about folders.

No band has inspired me to play so much, and I can credit the Avett Brothers’ music with helping me to improve my guitar playing dramatically. I hope my arrangements will be helpful for others Avett fan guitarists. Check out the page here.

I am what you might call a recipe “aggregator”—when I decide to try a new recipe, I look at a half dozen or more recipes online at favorite sites like All Recipes and the Food Network, and then mix them together on the general principle of putting in the largest amount of each ingredient given across all the recipes—especially the ingredients that are butter.

The tricky ingredient is salt, which is almost always underused; a good rule of thumb is “double the salt,” but you have to take care not to do that if you’re using a recipe by a cook who has already doubled it.

When I first developed this recipe about a year ago, I used the maximum amount of lemon juice and zest I found out there, and then some. But that meant a lot of painful zesting with a ratty old grater. Today I’m trying out a new Microplane Ultimate Citrus Tool. The entire household is giddy with excitement (my wife tells me that’s because it’s Christmas Eve, but I think it’s the new zester).

Crust

• 1 C butter (2 sticks)
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 C confectioners sugar
• 1/8 t salt

Filling

• 4 beaten eggs
• 2 C sugar
• 6 T flour
• 1/2-2/3 C fresh lemon juice
• 3 T lemon zest
• 1/8 t salt

Process

1. Mix the crust ingredients into a meal-like dough—crumbly and fine, just barely sticking together when pressed.
2. Spread crust mixture in 9″x13″ greased (buttered!) pan lined with wax-paper and then press down firmly and uniformly (the bottom of a cup can help with this)
3. Chill crust for about 30 minutes
4. Bake crust at 350°F for 15-20 minutes
5. Mix the filling ingredients together and pour over hot crust (careful not to let eggs separate out before your pour—whisk before pouring)
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until surface is firm

For example, he asked us to believe that what Barack Obama meant when he said he wouldn’t want his daughters “punished with a baby” if they made a mistake was that he wouldn’t want to see them deprived of all the joy that comes from learning that you’re going to become a parent when the time is right. “Punished with a baby” seems like a strange way to put it, but that’s what Obama told Kmiec, and Kmiec bought it.

Now I find this sentence in a National Catholic Reporter article on Obama’s Sotomayor Supreme Court pick:

Frankly, that’s a tough issue in knowing where the government is wrongfully using its funds to penalize you for your point of view differentiates from where the government is expressing its own opinion is often treacherous territory.

Wow. I think I know what he’s trying to say here, but I see at least three different sentences all wrapped up around each other in there like Siamese triplets—what I described to my students at a “mixed construction” when I was a teacher of English composition.

A “mixed construction” is what happens when you start out expressing an idea with one sentence pattern and somewhere in the middle switch to a different, incompatible sentence pattern. It happens all the time to people in live interviews, but it’s not what you expect from a supposedly brilliant scholar writing something for publication.

Kmiec starts off with the wordy and awkward “that’s a tough issue in knowing”—which we could streamline as “it’s tough to know”—but switches to a different construction at the word “differentiates” and then again with the clause “is often treacherous territory.”

He’s losing his place in this sentence just like he does over and over again in the debate with Arkes. You think he’s building up towards a point, when he just veers off into something else. I give Arkes a lot of credit for being able to find points to debate over; I found Kmiec so rambling that I wouldn’t have known where to begin.

Now, for anyone who thinks I’m picking on Kmiec unfairly for one badly-written sentence, there’s also this, the concluding paragraph of the NCR piece:

Of course, this woman is from New York, and at the risk of enormous stereotype of the Empire State, those of us on the West Coast have always noticed a certain—well, curt efficiency—in the New York personality. This is not likely to play as well as the bon vivant boyish charm of John Roberts, but hey, we can’t all smile pretty. And as we say in Malibu, Have a Nice Day!

“At the risk of enormous stereotype”? He sounds drunk. And what’s with the “Have a Nice Day!”? What does that have to do with anything? He really sounds like he’s gone mad.

That’s a very sad thing. I heard Kmiec speak at the Rose Dinner after the 2004 March for Life and was impressed. Along with the whole pro-life movement, I was dismayed when Kmiec came out in favor of Obama. “What can he be thinking?” we all asked.

Now it’s looking more and more like he isn’t thinking at all.

But don’t take my word for it. Kmiec will debate Robert George at the National Press Club this evening at 5 p.m. EDT on the topic “The Obama Administration and the Sanctity of Human Life: Is There a Common Ground on Life Issues? What is the Right Response by Pro-Life Citizens?”

The event is being hosted by the Catholic University of America and will be  moderated by, of all people, Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard professor who declined to accept Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal this year in protest of the honors being confered on Barack Obama.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek is attending the debate and will be live-blogging it, as so will Thomas Peters of American Papist. Afterwards the video will be posted on the CUA website, here.

I’ve never seen Robert George speak, but I’ve read his stuff in First Things. Smart guy. Should be an interesting debate.

Slow Joe has apparently forgotten about Aaron Burr, Vice President under Thomas Jefferson in his first term, 1801-1805.

Burr is most famous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, during which Hamilton reportedly shot wide; Burr shot to kill.

Had he done nothing worse to harm his country than that, he’d still be in the running for Biden’s “most dangerous VP ever” award. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton saved the young republic from economic catastrophe through a federal “bailout” of the states’ Revolutionary War debts. He had more to offer the nation he helped found.

But Aaron Burr is also notable for conspiring with General James Wilkinson—who was in the pay of the Spanish—to seize land in the west and create his own empire. Wilkinson was also guilty of encouraging settlers in Tennessee and Kentucky to secede and join the Spanish American Empire.

Burr was a scoundrel of scoundrels—there’s no comparison between him and Dick Cheney, however much you may hate Cheney.

But sadly, few Americans know their history these days, and guys like Biden can get away with ridiculous statements like the one tonight about holders of the office he is seeking.