Monthly Archives: April 2020

The Night

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This is the night,

when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children,

from slavery in Egypt

and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea

This is the night

that with a pillar of fire

banished the darkness of sin.

– from the Exsultet, the traditional Latin-rite chant on the Easter Vigil. Sadly this year it was not possible to attend in person, we had to watch online; and our priest did not sing the entire Exsultet, merely the first part, and recited the rest. But that is excusable, as it is rather long:

(This is how Lent ends: the faithful gather at sunset, and the priest or deacon lights a fire and sings the above while carrying a metre-high candle.)

(The linked video is the Latin version, which is even longer: the English version is a mere 10 minutes.)

Kitchen stuff

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A cake stand:

A salt mill:

We’ve been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation from the beginning. I’d heard the early seasons were shaky but had only watched a few episodes here and there and had no idea how they fitted into the general picture. (Tasha Yar was completely new to me.)

The Enterprise keeps running into mysterious energy beings, or beings from other planes of existence, or creatures with ludicrous godlike powers, or what have you. (It did in the original series too.) You’ve got to wonder at some point, do these entities know about each other? Talk to each other? Why does Jean-Luc Picard never ask any powerful energy beings any questions like, “hey, do you have the Traveller’s phone number? We’d like to ask how he’s doing” or, “what do you think of that Q fellow? Does he go round irritating you as well? Or are you powerful enough to irritate him?”