Friday Hodgepodge VI

Here are some of thoughts I’ve entertained—and been entertained by—this past week.

May Showers

When April showers
come your way,
They bring the flowers
that bloom in May.

If April showers bring May flowers...
















What do May showers bring?



















Mold!

Mold is up to a stratospheric range, according to local TV news reports. And evidently not only in Louisville, but also with our neighbors to the south. If a courthouse built around the turn of the last century is in jeopardy because of the stuff, what about my house, which is 101 years old? And what about me, who is allergic to mold?


This Is a Great Idea:

I already have my bag of food items on my porch beneath my mailbox.

The Da Vinci Code

I am finally getting around to reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. I have a major blog post process, but I need to complete my reading of the book and my research before you’ll see it. However, today on pages 134 and 135 of The Da Vinci Code I came upon a description of past evil that I had thought only some historians, a few theologians, and perhaps some feminists and followers of Wicca were aware.

Brown intersperses his fictional story with wonderful tidbits of science, art, logic, and history. The following excerpt from his book is, to my knowledge—and I’ve been aware of the evil and studied it for at least 25 years—basically accurate:

The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum—or The Witches Hammer—indoctrinated the world to “the dangers of free thinking women” and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them. Those deemed “witches” by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, and any women “suspiciously attuned to the natural word.” Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth—a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God’s rightful punishment for Eve’s partaking in the Apple of Knowledge…During the three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astonishing five million women.

I believe that Brown’s description of the Inquisition’s evil and murdering attack on women who did not fit the Church’s conception of the feminine and it place of women in the word, is basically, if horribly, accurate with two exceptions. (1) The Inquisition had other—and even more horrible—ways of executing women than burning them alive at the stake. (2) I cannot confirm that the Inquisition murdered 5,000,000 women during the 300 years it was most active. That figure seems high. However, I shall explore it further and note my results in my future blog post on The Da Vinci Code.