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New blog post: Daily Digest for June 28th http://bit.ly/3lasvH [#]
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Listened to You Can’t Stop Me Loving You – Tina Turner
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New blog post: What is Unity http://bit.ly/GK78O [#]
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New blog post: June 28 – Idyll by Szymon Zimorowic http://bit.ly/dz7gq [#]
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New blog post: June 29 – From the Pastoral of Damet and Myrtil by Jan Gawiński http://bit.ly/10DhrS [#]
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Listened to 5 songs.
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New blog post: June 30 – From the Fairy Tales and Parables of Ignacy Krasicki http://bit.ly/tBo3z [#]
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New blog post: Blogging will be limited – Jedziemy na wakacje http://bit.ly/IbMl6 [#]
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New blog post: July 1 – The First Dream, A Wife by Tomasz Kajetan Węgierski http://bit.ly/9XPxZ [#]
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New blog post: July 2 – Solitude by Leopold Staff http://bit.ly/152bZx [#]
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New blog post: July 3 – Love is an excellent thing by Thomas í Kempis http://bit.ly/MVTVm [#]
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New blog post: July 4 – United States by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz http://bit.ly/Uf3We [#]
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New blog post: Górale znają odpowiedź… (The mountaineer knows the answer…) http://bit.ly/16Abfv [#]
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New blog post: July 5 – O Joy! by Władysław Broniewski http://bit.ly/16AWnO [#]
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Getting the grill going and frying up peppers and onions. Italian sausage fest for me. Hamburgers and dogs for the family. [#]
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Enjoyed the week at Hampton Beach/Kittery/Salem. Great family vacation. [#]
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Nibbling on cherries and blueberries as I cook. [#]
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has joined MySpace! [#]
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New blog post: Coffee, Kawa, Café http://bit.ly/VhzeX [#]
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New blog post: Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – B http://bit.ly/kklZ4 [#]
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New blog post: July 6 – The Judge’s Breakfast from Pan Tadeusz, Book II, by Adam Mickiewicz http://bit.ly/mdTeN [#]
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New blog post: July 7 – Dream of Victory by Ryszard Riedel http://bit.ly/8Fv2a [#]
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New blog post: The theological economist http://bit.ly/9NeMk [#]
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Listened to 5 songs.
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New blog post: July 8 – Busy with many jobs by Tadeusz Różewicz http://bit.ly/49yXA [#]
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New blog post: July 9 – At the Vegtable Stall by Jan Brzechwa http://bit.ly/Vb1hD [#]
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New blog post: Four worms and a lesson to be learned!!!! http://bit.ly/DA50u [#]
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New blog post: Poles "are distancing themselves from systematic religious practices…" http://bit.ly/rISr3 [#]
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New blog post: Pennsylvania politics http://bit.ly/hdNOZ [#]
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New blog post: An assessment of arts education http://bit.ly/7qp55 [#]
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New blog post: Attention clergy: Important IRS tax information http://bit.ly/16lwJc [#]
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New blog post: July 10 – Why does the pained pickle never sing by Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński http://bit.ly/2Yyhyr [#]
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The question that our title
has cast in deathless bronze
is painful yet so vital,
we owe it a response.If our little green friend
won’t sing, croon, lilt or chant,
it’s clear that, Heaven forfend,
it most probably can’t.But what if evil stars
trample its throat? If divine
airs die in air-tight jars,
engulfed by teary brine?Meanwhile, time flies, alas
first sunshine, then rains trickle,
and still we callously pass
by many a pained pickle.
Translation by S. Barańczak and C. Cavanagh
Dlaczego ogórek nie śpiewa
Pytanie to, w tytule
postawione tak śmiało,
choćby z największym bólem
rozwiązać by należało.Jeśli ogórek nie śpiewa,
i to o każdej porze,
to widać z woli nieba
prawdopodobnie nie może.Lecz jeśli pragnie? Gorąco!
Jak dotąd nikt. Jak skowronek.
Jeżeli w słoju nocą
łzy przelewa zielone?Mijają lata i zimy,
raz słoneczko, raz chmurka;
a my obojętnie przechodzimy
koło niejednego ogórka.
The Internal Revenue Service has published its auditing guide for clergy. The guide provides tons of useful information as to how the IRS will treat various items that appear (or should appear) on a clergy member’s tax return. The Minister Audit Technique Guide begins:
Under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as ‘IRC’), ministers are accorded some unique tax benefits for income, social security and Medicare taxes, which present several potential examination issues on ministers’ tax returns in addition to income and expenses issues found in most examinations.
The Table of Contents includes an Overview Of Issues; Who Qualifies For Special Tax Treatment As A Minister; Income To Be Reported; Gift or Compensation for Services; The Parsonage Allowance; Retired Ministers; Members of Religious Orders and Vow of Poverty; Determination of Deductible Expenses Where Some Income is Tax Exempt; Self-Employment Tax: Exemption; Employee versus Independent Contractor and more.
Clergy and their tax advisors should familiarize themselves with the audit technique guide and IRS Publication 517, Social Security and Other Information for Members of the Clergy and Religious Workers.
New York State Alliance for Arts Education notes that the National Assessment Governing Board released the 2008 National Assessment in Educational Progress in the Arts on June 15th. They note:
On the whole, the report shows that Arts education has held steady but gained little ground over the past ten years. Some highlights for the report of surveyed schools:
8% do not offer music instruction
14% do not offer visual arts instruction
8% offer music instruction less than once a week
10% off visual arts instruction less than once a weekOf eight-graders who attended surveyed schools during the 2008:
57% received music instruction at least three or four times a week
47% received visual arts instruction at least three or four times a weekPerhaps most startling is the omission of dance and theatre education statistics. The reason? There were not enough schools providing instruction in these areas to provide a statistically relevant sample.
Encouraging were the comments of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:
—This Arts Report Card should challenge all of us to make K-12 arts programs more available to America’s children and youth. Such programs not only engage students’ creativity and academic commitment today, but they uniquely equip them for future success and fulfillment. We can and should do better for America’s students.—
Here in New York, NYSAAE is working in conjunction with the NYS Department of Education on the inclusion of ten questions to gather an overview of arts education, as part of the 2009 Basic Education Data Survey, distributed to every school in New York State. It is our hope that this census will provide data that will be beneficial to the dialog on the current state of arts offerings, and their impact on student achievement…
More information on upcoming arts education programs, professional development forums, calls for papers, and job opportunities can be found by subscribing to the Alliance’s newsletter.
An interesting analysis of Pennsylvania’s political geography from the Daily Kos PA-Sen and Gov: Western PA
Actually the full title should be the rest of PA outside Metropolitan Philadelphia. But mostly I’m writing about Western PA. Which is generally important in PA politics and maybe even more so in the Governor’s race in 2010.
…
There some small steel cities in the valleys and a few small towns and then there are a lot of rural areas. The valleys flood. Johnstown, in Cambria county would be the most famous example. It didn’t just flood in 1889, it also flooded several other times including 1936. This is the reason for the tax at Pennsylvania state stores. Western PA is still very much an ethnic Catholic area. My mother remembers that after Vatican II, the churches went from Latin to Polish, Croat, Slovak, Romanian and Czech. No one under 50 could understand the mass. The French and Indian war is the major source of historical tourism. Steel and Coal mining used to be big, but not anymore.
Central PA-East of Bedford County to the Susquahanna and Lancaster County has a large concentration both conservatives and Anabaptists (Brethren and Mennonite folk.) Moravians, on the other hand are in the Northeast around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. The more common names in Lancaster and Dauphin county include Schlosser, Royer, Stoltzfus (or Stoltzfoos), Myer and Hartmann.
Demographically Pennsylvania is full of Seniors with the second oldest population in the country, and Union members. Pennsylvanians join the National Guard and Reserve in higher than average numbers…
From Reuters: Fewer Poles going to church, most still believe: poll
WARSAW (Reuters) – Fewer Poles attend church services every week or have confidence in the papacy than a decade ago but levels of religious belief remain very high in Poland, according to a survey published on Thursday.
Poland is probably the most religiously observant country in Europe and its churches are generally packed on Sundays, in strong contrast to the empty or half-empty pews commonly found in many other parts of the continent.
The poll, published in the Rzeczpospolita daily, showed 37 percent of Poles go to mass every Sunday, down from 42 percent in 1998, but the number of people going to church on a less regular basis showed a small increase.
Confidence in the papacy has slipped to 80 percent from 91 percent in 1998, when Polish-born Pope John Paul II led the Catholic Church, the poll showed. German-born Pope Benedict XVI took over the church in 2005 after John Paul’s death.
The poll, conducted by the Institute of Sociology attached to Warsaw’s University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, showed 81 percent of Poles count themselves religious believers, against 86 percent in 1998.
A further 11 percent still feel attached to Catholic traditions even if they are not sure about belief, it said. Only three percent described themselves as non-believers, unchanged from 1998.
In line with church teachings, more than two thirds of Poles are opposed to abortion, up slightly from 1998, and more than half oppose divorce, also up from 11 years earlier.
“Poles are not abandoning (religious) belief… but are distancing themselves from systematic religious practices,” Slawomir Zareba, the professor and priest who organized the poll, told the newspaper.
The Catholic Church played a key role in preserving a strong sense of national identity among Poland’s 38 million people during decades of atheistic communist rule.
I saw this coming seventeen years ago as friends complained about clergy focusing on politics rather than the spiritual life, including from the pulpit. Back then Sunday attendance was still de rigueur — people actually questioned you if they didn’t see you at Sunday Mass. The children of those people are now foregoing ecclesiastical marriages and church attendance.
I also predict that the Church will loose more and more adherents as the new crop of clergy coming out of Polish seminaries forego the hidden wife/girlfriend for the hidden boyfriend. There has been a seed change in many of the seminaries.
The Polish Church’s focus on politics and its internal hypocrisies will have a far greater affect on attendance and adherence than membership in the E.U. and migration will ever have. It is too bad really. In cases like this the Church only has itself to blame.
I usually avoid reposting jokes I get through E-mail, but this one’s an exception. I really enjoyed it and it was just what I needed today. I didn’t know the punch-line before hand and was thinking to myself, “Hey, this would make for a good homily…”
A priest decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon, so he placed four worms into four separate jars.
The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.At the conclusion of the sermon, the priest reported the following results:
The first worm in alcohol – Dead;
The second worm in cigarette smoke – Dead;
Third worm in chocolate syrup – Dead;
Fourth worm in good clean soil – Alive.So the priest asked the congregation, “What did you learn from this demonstration???”
A child sitting in the back quickly raised her hand and said: “As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!”
That pretty much ended the sermon!
See what happens when one takes one’s homiletics too seriously. A special thank you to the friend who sent it.