The Crowhill Journal

I recently traveled, so I had to worry if I had contracted the virus on my trip. I’m relatively unconcerned about the virus for myself, but I don’t want to give it to people I know, for whom it would be a bigger deal.

After my trip, I started to have a tight feeling in my chest — similar to what it feels like after you go running on a cold day. It only got worse, so I went to get a COVID test.

I wanted to have the virus (and relatively mild symptoms, of course) and get it over with.

No such luck (if the test was accurate). I have bronchitis. Just regular old sick.

So now I have to wait until it’s my turn for the vaccine, I guess.

If this is true, it’s really bad.

Trump plans to outshine Biden on Inauguration Day with opposing rally: report

I probably have more sympathy than many of you with the “Democrats cheated” story line. My reasons. (1) People cheat, and they cheat even more when they believe they can get away with it. (2) Democrats disproportionately embrace an “ends justify the means” attitude. (3) The surge in mail-in voting made the possibility of widespread cheating more tempting, and more probable. (4) Many of the places where cheating is alleged are not known as beacons of fairness and good government, to put it mildly.

However …. Nothing substantial is sticking. IOW, while it’s a dead certainty there was cheating, it’s also fairly certain it wasn’t enough to change the results. At least from what we’ve seen so far.

Accusation after accusation has been shot down, and not only by Obama appointees. Even the suitcase thing, which seemed so damaging at first, might be no big deal. (Although Mollie Hemingway says it has not been debunked.)

I suppose it’s possible there’s this great, underground, fabulously successful conspiracy out there that stole the election. After all, the Russia thing almost worked. But so far, we haven’t been given convincing evidence.

This leaves two plausible explanations for Trump’s strategy.

1. He truly believes the election was stolen, and he feels it’s his duty to expose it.
2. He’s cynically using the issue for future political advantage.

Even if he believes #1, it doesn’t excuse skipping Biden’s inauguration. That’s petty and unbefitting a man, let alone a president.

What is freedom, and why should we value it?

The hippies grooved on freedom, but Janis Joplin called it merely “another word for nothing left to lose.”

Casting off restraints can cause very potent, positive emotions. Like the first time you could drive your own car.

But unrestrained freedom is not a good thing. We love freedom, but we put clear limits on it. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, you can’t commit treason, and you can’t incite violence. Also, there’s a tension between freedom and safety, and between freedom and order. We’re okay with seatbelt laws, for example, and rules in the courthouse. So “free” in the context of human society can’t mean completely unconstrained.

What is it then? What are the limits? And why is it a good thing?

When I was a lad, my parents would occasionally have Advent services. They’d read from some little booklet they got from church, and we’d sing a Christmas carol or two. I recall not liking it that much as a kid, but when I had kids, I decided to try again, and try to make it more fun.

You have to have an advent wreath, or a yule log. Ours used to be made of evergreen branches, with a little thing in the middle for the candles. That was sometimes a fun family project — gathering the greens and making the wreath. But now we have a simpler one.

In the service itself, you light one candle on the first Sunday of Advent, two on the second, etc. The pink candle is for the 3rd Sunday. The white candle in the middle is for Christmas day.

There would always be cookies and egg nog. (And whiskey or sometimes port for dad.)

We’d always start with a Bible reading relevant to Christmas, then everybody would pick a Christmas carol and we’d sing. We’d end with the Lord’s Prayer.

My kids loved it, and always wanted to do it, even after they moved out. So this morning we tried to do it over WhatsApp. It didn’t work that well. There’s just enough of a delay to make group singing difficult. Whoever starts the song (usually me) has to plow on, heedless of the discord.

The odd thing was that Captain Crowhill in Korea had less of a delay than Mr. and Mrs. Crowhill (jr.) just up the road.

It’s a nice custom. It makes it feel like Christmas, and it’s not about presents or buying things.

(About breakfast. We had to do it in the morning to accommodate time zones. We would normally do it at night.)

I got off twitter a while ago, so I lost connection with Titania McGrath. Titania is a breath of fresh air. Here’s a page that shows some of Titania’s best tweets.