Virtue Quest

Remember my delight at that Old Spice commercial? Well, this does it one better:

Hat tip to Mark.

This is just too awesome:

Eileen Nearne

I ran across this eulogy of Eileen “Didi” Nearne, an agent of Britain’s Special Operations Executive charged with maintaining communications with France during World War II.

She worked cleverly and faithfully, but ultimately was captured and tortured by the Gestapo (apparently using a technique similar to waterboarding). She was interred in a concentration camp, but escaped and hid until the Allies arrived.

I tend to imagine a war as a highly dramatic situation where the moral lines stand out more clearly; but Didi’s work, for the most part, took a much more everyday aspect. She operated a wireless set. She held down a day job. She had to decide when to tell a lie and when to tell the truth. She had to make difficult choices with uncertain consequences. Her stakes were, in some ways, higher; but the nature of her choice was not very different from the kind of choices I face each morning.

She maintained her cover as long as she could, but when captured she refused to contribute her labor to the Nazi war effort suffered greatly for her stand on principle. She managed, not only to escape herself, but to help others to escape with her. This required both prudence and courage in choosing just how best to combat the evils she faced.

When she returned home, she also returned to a more “normal” life. She did not cling to either the pain or the glory of her work during the war. She lived with her sister, and made the best contribution she could to her community. She continued to suffer what we now would call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from what she endured during her captivity. But she resisted the temptation to leverage her heroism or her suffering for personal benefit.

Her service was to God and Country, and she left it at that. She may not have been a saint, (or maybe she was); but she certainly was a model of courage and prudence, and is a good reminder to me that simply doing my work quietly can sometimes help change the world for the better.

Other information is available:

• Her biography at Wikipedia
• Obituary in the London Telegraph
• Obituary in the New York Times

40 Days for Life is an internationally coordinated, yet community based, campaign to peacefully raise awareness of the consequences of abortion for neighborhoods, for friends, and for families. There have been six coordinated campaigns since 2007. This time around, the campaign will run the 40 days between September 22 and October 31, 2010. 40 Days for Life follows a three-pronged strategy:

1. Prayer and fasting
2. Peaceful vigil
3. Community outreach

The prayer and fasting acknowledges that human action alone is insufficient to overcome the widespread assumption that abortion is a reasonable option. The peaceful vigil aims at letting a clinic’s employees and clients know that there are alternatives to abortion, and at letting the wider community know about the activity of an abortion clinic in their neighborhood. The community outreach educates people about the reality of abortion through church, media, and campus outreach.

It’s easy to get involved, and it’s a great way to grow in the virtues of justice, fortitude, and charity.

In some corners of the internet, and of academia, there’s currently a big kerfuffle over an adjunct professor who was fired for “hate speech.” He was teaching a class on Roman Catholicism and, in response to a student’s inquiry, he noted that the Catholic Church considers homosexual behavior to be contrary to nature and therefore to be wrong.

I’ll get to my own take on the situation in a moment. But first, I want to point out an article on the following web site: Edge Boston. This is a site dedicated to gay interest and advocacy. So naturally they take an interest in the story, just as many Catholic news sites have taken an interest in the story.

Now, it’s awfully tempting to toe the line of whatever agenda or issue you’re focused on. But what impressed me about their article was how truly balanced and restrained it was. The author, Killian Melloy, resisted the temptations of inflammatory language or condemnation of those he disagrees with – temptations all too common on the internet. Rather, he provides as fully he can the details surrounding the event. He describes the event in such a way that the reader can draw his or her own conclusions. This kind of restraint is laudable. It provides the reader a service by offering the matter for thought and argument rather than imposing a conclusion.

My own take on controversy

Now, I normally don’t like to wade into controversy myself. I usually am far too ignorant of the issues involved to have anything worth adding to the discussion. Moreover, I find my emotions tend to get involved in ways I don’t notice until it’s too late and I’ve said something in anger or fear that I can’t retract. That lack of self-control is a definite vice on my part.

So, in this case, I have more questions than answers. For example:

• Was Howell fired or was a completed contract simply not renewed?
• Did the university cite Howell’s statements as providing cause for his dismissal?
• What exactly did the students find offensive or hateful in Howell’s statements, and how does that compare with the literal meaning of Howell’s statements?
• and so on….

Apparently, Howell is suing the university; and it seems he may have a strong case. After all, he was hired to teach about Catholic beliefs and practices. Should a professor who gives a class on the Ku Klux Klan be fired for describing the Klan’s hatred of Catholics, Jews, and non-whites? Should a professor who teaches about Islam be let go for acknowledging that women and men have very different statuses in Muslim faith and practice?

However, there’s much that remains unknown. And without all the facts, I’m in no position to pass judgment on the students, the professor, or the university. (Even with the facts, I have no authority in the matter, and so….)

Melloy seems to realize that he is in exactly the same position. So he refrains from passing judgment in his article. He describes reality as best he is able. By doing so, he renders justice both to his subject and to his readers.

Now, we all know that Germany has a great reputation for precision engineering. It’s long-established and well-deserved. Germany has built a culture around principles of hard work and attention to detail. So it’s no surprise that they are capable of magnificent mechanical feats.

But who knew they had so darned much fun doing it?

I’m almost home, thank God. The past three days without internet were peaceful, but I’m glad to be back on the grid.

Which brings me to this quick note: Salt Lake International Airport has free Wi-Fi. I repeat: FREE!

So if you have to make a connection, SLC is one of the better places to do so.

Gotta run. My flight is about to board.

Eat, drink, and be merry!

Among the pungent foods, garlic stands out as my favorite. But onions hold a close second – especially sauteed or, still better, caramelized onions. This simple bulb hides an almost overwhelming variety of flavors that march forth in orderly fashion as it basks in low, slow heat: from bright and acrid to mild and savory to utterly buttery and ultimately to sweet in a way so different than every other sweet I’ve tasted that it’s almost a misnomer to call it sweet.

So when I was looking for a good burger the other night, I found the local restaurant Blazing Onion irresistible.

Let’s start with the virtues on display, right from walking in the door. They tell you where the beef comes from: Northwest raised, no hormones, just good local cows. They tell you what their proprietary “BOB” sauce contains: mayo, pepper sauce, spices. They even tell you that their “Butter Burger” is uber-high in cholesterol. So, they’ve got honesty down. I like that.

The staff joked around with each other and with me. They clearly know each other, like each other, and like working together. I like signs of humanity in a business.

And then there’s the creativity of the menu. Sure, they have the standard bacon cheeseburger, the requisite BBQ and bleu cheese burger. But they also have a Thai Peanut Burger with shredded cabbage and daikon radish; a Greek Burger with olive tapanade, pepperincini, and sun dried tomato; and burgers of buffalo and wild boar meat. In addition to the burgers, they have proper entrees such as salmon, sirloin steak, and fettuccine. Appetizers include a shrimp basket.

But all of this is before you even order. It was the quality of the food that convinced me to write a blog entry about this place.

I ordered their signature “BOB,” or Blazing Onion Burger. First thing I noticed was that they don’t skimp on the onions. Probably a 1:1 ration of onion to beef on that sandwich. And the onions had been sauteed to perfect butteriness. Most places that offer “grilled onions” seem to think it means heating the onions till they’re soft, and that’s good enough. Here, they clearly know what flavor they want from their onions, and they’re willing to take the time to prepare them correctly. Thank you!

Then the beef itself. One bite and I knew that they had chosen their meat with the same care with which they’d prepared their onions. There was no pink in the burger, yet the rich beef flavor emerged unscathed, which speaks of a good cow to start with and of cooks who know how not to burn it on the grill.

I don’t want to run on too long, so suffice it to say that the fries, the sauces, the French onion soup, and the couple other burger options I sampled from my friends plates (the Thai and the Greek) confirmed that Blazing Onion is more than a single trick pony.

I have only one critique: with burgers so bodacious, a toothpick or a paper wrap to hold it all together would have been helpful. But then again, I did enjoy licking my fingers when I was done, so maybe they planned that as well.

For those of you not blessed with a residence in the Puget Sound area, fear not: they’re planning to expand nationwide over the coming decade. When it does come to your area, do check it out, and see just how good virtue can be!

Eons ago, during the SuperBowl, Old Spice premiered a commercial which became an instant hit. Among the reasons, I think, is because it’s a great example of virtue. Here’s the commercial:

Virtue?

Yes, virtue. First off, it’s encouraging both men and women to strive for excellence. Men, smell like an excellent man. Here’s what the ideal is. (“Sadly, your man isn’t me. But he could smell like me…”) Strive for this. And women, hold your men accountable, accept nothing less than an excellent man.

On top of that, the humor is a humor of excellence: it’s highlighting the absurdity of its claims in the midst of claiming them: “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not like a lady.” Obviously not – but great things are possible when you strive for excellence, for virtue. Meanwhile, there’s a joyful exuberance in the exaggeration that I can’t help but laugh at – even after watching it a dozen times or more.

Finally, there’s the artistry of the filmmaking. The commercial is all one shot, with almost no animated effects. (The diamonds were the only part edited in.) Here’s a rather long-winded interview with some of the filmmakers. It’s almost twenty minutes, but it shows the lengths they were willing to go in order to produce a truly excellent commercial. The writers had great faith in the crew, the actor showed exceptional temperance (“He was spot on for every take”) and the director had the courage to attempt such a complex piece of work.

Beautiful. Downright inspiring. Can’t help but love it.

So: go and do likewise.