Guarino

Traditional Italian Easter Lamb Dinner

When I was growing up, Easter Dinner was a major affair.  It was an incredible amount of food-- course after course.  And the centerpiece of the meal was always lamb, in accordance with Italian tradition.

As a young person, I gave that no particular thought.  It was just the way we did it.

But as I grew older, quite belatedly, it dawned on me that this must have been somehow a commemoration of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.  The original Good Friday had made Him, after all, the Lamb of God.  It was never explicitly represented, however, that this was the derivation of the Easter lamb tradition.

It is not difficult to find references to the role of lamb in the Italian Easter dinner; but finding an explanation of the source of this tradition was a bit more tricky. 

However, an online reference refers to the tradition of the Paschal Lamb, which dates back to the middle ages, and which has earlier roots in the Jewish tradition of the sacrificial lamb:

One of the most common Christian symbols, especially associated with Easter, is the lamb. It is often depicted with a banner that bears a cross, and it is known as the Agnus Dei, meaning “lamb of God” in Latin. The origin of the symbol is related directly to the Jewish Passover. In ancient times the Jews sacrificed a lamb in the course of the festival. The early Christians, most of whom were Hebrews, associated the sacrifice of the lamb with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. They connected the joyous Passover festival, which commemorates the liberation of the Hebrews from their years of bondage in Egypt, with the liberation from death represented by the resurrection.

The popularity of lamb as an Easter food is undoubtedly related to its importance as a symbol. During the Middle Ages roast lamb became the traditional main course of the pope’s Easter dinner, and it is still customarily served on Easter Sunday in many European countries. Decorative lambs made of candy or cake are also frequently seen at Easter time.

So the Italian Easter lamb dinner probably was derived from the practices of popes during the Middle Ages, who drew from the perspectives of the early Christians, who in turn referred back to the traditions of the ancient Jewish people.

Tomorrow, the Guarino clan will gather at my cousin's home in central New Jersey for this dinner; and unfortunately my own family cannot be there this year.   But it is a cool tradition.

Happy Easter.

A Manufactured Greensboro Water Crisis?

Conservation of natural resources is a cause that is dear to the heart of many progressives because it is an intrinsic part of environmentalism.  And water, of course, is one of our most important natural resources.  In fact, it is critical for life.  The recent drought has dramatized these realities for us.

But many of us may have false conceptions regarding the water supply situation in the city of Greensboro.

Occasionally, we hear from individuals who challenge us to examine any preconceptions we might have.  One person like that has been an acquaintance of mine for several years-- a person of good character who happens to feel passionately about water conservation.  His name is Mike Baron, and he has a story to tell.

Mike used to be the water conservation manager for the city of Greensboro.  He was ultimately terminated by the city.  His programs were effective in reducing water demand significantly.  This, unfortunately for him, caused a significant decrease in city revenues related to the sale of water.  He believes this reduction in revenues jeopardized his own position because of the success of his program.  He explains that municipalities profit from selling water.

Mike has data suggesting that water demand in Greensboro-- in spite of his dismissal-- has been decreasing.  He attributes this to a sharp reduction in high-volume industrial users.  There is much less industrial usage of water because so many plants have closed or downsized over the last decade.   This has occurred even though the city had been projecting significant increases in water demand; and these projected increases were used to justify the Randleman Dam project.

Baron says, however, that the city has also tended to sell down its water supplies at below-market rates, with no conservation program in place; and this has tended to exaggerate the perceived need for the Randleman Dam, and artificially create an undersupply situation.  He questions the need for the dam project, and feels its cost to Greensboro residents may be unjustified.

The take home message, according to Baron?  We have a city that has insufficiently emphasized water conservation; that profited by selling down its water supplies at unrealistically low rates; that continued to promote the need for the dam project on the basis of projected demand increases in spite of years of declining demand;  and that may be burdening its taxpayers unnecessarily with costs associated with the dam project.

These are messages that are counter to many that have been presented previously.  But Mike just fired up a blog, with a chart that dramatizes the data in a compelling fashion.  Check out the blog here.

(Click to Enlarge)

Mike has been in ill health; and has had considerable reservations regarding the act of "going public" with what he knows, and with his concerns.   But he is a good man; and deserves to be heard.  The questions are whether the city's approach has been honest; has appropriately emphasized water conservation; and has been in accordance with citizens' interests.

Stop the Sales Tax Hike

A new blog is introduced to stop the proposed sales tax hike in Rockingham County.  There will be a referendum on primary day, May 6.

This is a worthy cause; so if you are interested, please check out the site.  And of course, vote NO.

Impersonating a Police Officer in Greensboro

The News and Record reports on its front page this morning that two area men have been charged with impersonating a police officer.   The Greensboro Police Department (GPD) had investigated these two men.

At least several employees within the GPD have also been suspected of impersonating a police officer.  There was no immediate word, however, as to whether these employees will be similarly charged.

Kay Hagan and Emily's List

Mark Binker has a post on Kay Hagan receiving the endorsement of Emily's List in the U.S. Senate race.  Hagan qualifies for this nod, of course, because she is reliably pro-abortion.   Says Binker:

(The endorsement) is more like a Good Housekeeping Seal or Energy Star rating for political givers that says you can invest in the candidate without being worried they'll take some nutty position that'll have you asking for a refund.

Huh?

It seems to me that the implications of the Emily's List endorsement are precisely the opposite of what Binker suggests.

The State of our State

Doug Clark has a great column today on the awful reality of North Carolina state government.  A change is needed.  The column is must reading.

A Development in the GPD Sexual Assault Case

Ben Holder points out the remarkable change of heart by Simkins District Attorney Doug Henderson regarding the GPD sexual assault case.

The question is what precisely led to this change.  Did we have a miraculous discovery of new evidence?  Did we somehow learn belatedly that the state crime lab is still at work, after having prematurely announced that a determination was forthcoming?  Did the News and Record somehow misreport?

Or perhaps, were signals from above somehow sent and received; and if so, why?

Update: The News and Record reports the following:

Neither Henderson nor police would say what evidence the SBI is analyzing.

Capt. Janice Rogers , commander of the police department's Criminal Investigation Division , said detectives sent the evidence to the SBI per their normal procedure after getting statements from all witnesses and according to the department's normal schedule for sending evidence to Raleigh .

"We could make special arrangements for one item," Rogers said. But that would not result in any faster analysis by the crime lab, she said.

Henderson said that although he first learned of the evidence Thursday , when he received the last of the documents he requested, he did not think the police department was responsible for any undue delay.

"It is not unusual for the investigation of an alleged sexual assault to take this much time or considerably more," Henderson said. "This has not been abnormally slow in its development, in my estimation."

 

In Defense of the Natural Family

I have posted previously about a concept that Allan Carlson has introduced called the "Natural Family". 

David Mills, the editor of Touchstone Magazine, has an excellent article that attempts to describe precisely how we need to "move minds and hearts" on behalf of the Natural Family.  He gives specific suggestions. 

But he points out that many citizens-- even folks that regard themselves as Christian, or conservative, or both-- do not want their own lives meddled with:

Many traditional Christians and cultural conservatives love what the family scholar Allan Carlson has called “the Natural Family” as a theory, because Americans love anything “natural.” It seems more direct, more genuine, more authentic, untainted by commerce and calculation. And it has its political uses: They love to appeal to Nature to argue that homosexuality is unnatural.

But they do not respond so favorably to other appeals to Natural Law, ones that meddle with their own lives. They like things “natural,” but they do not like the Natural Family as a way of life.

You go from preaching to meddling when, for example, you assert that the Natural Family has a "quiverful” of children; that it requires a permanent, unbreakable bond between the husband and wife; or that it is marked by what are called “sex roles.” This is too much nature, it is nature untempered by technology and culture, as if you were asking people to go naked in the winter or hunt and kill their own food and eat it raw.

You will, for example, see some very conservative people stiffen and scowl when you say, as Allan Carlson (a contributing editor of Touchstone) and Paul Mero do in their book The Natural Family: A Manifesto, that “the calling of each girl is to become wife and mother,” and that “everything that a woman does is mediated by her aptness for motherhood.” That seems to some of us built into the nature of things (and to have a parallel for men, as the writers note), but to many conservatives it meddles in their lifestyle choices.

Even conservative Americans, religious and not, seem to understand marriage as secular Americans do, defining it as a contract based on affection and mutual satisfaction; believing that you may design your marriage in almost any way you like; assuming that sexual activity without consequences (that is, children) is a human right; thinking that they must as a matter of duty pursue an ideal of the good life that requires spending too much money to have more than one or two children; and feeling that they must create perfect children, which is a burden when you have one and very hard when you have many, especially when “perfect” is defined in worldly terms...

These people, who represent the great mass of American Christians, and Americans in general, and I suspect Canadians and Europeans in general, do not really believe that marriage is governed by external, objective ends, that it has a nature. They do believe that it is governed by certain rules, especially faithfulness to your husband or wife (until you feel you must leave your spouse), and these they call “family values.”

The rules are mainly negative, not positive, telling us what not to do but not telling us what to do, perhaps because that would raise the question of ends and thus of a higher, more demanding definition of marriage. “Do this” implies “to reach this ideal.” “Don’t do this” implies only that the action will hurt you.

They do not see that marriage has a nature, that it is something given to us that we cannot change. Or else, if I am being unfair to them, they do not see very clearly or completely what is the nature of marriage. They understand the family in a conservative sense, as what middle-class religious Americans already do, but no more. In other words, they believe in the Partly Natural Family.

Mills, of course, is very perceptive.  We are all heavily influenced by cultural expectations; and we tend to act on behalf of our own self-interest.  But we should not allow our lives to be predetermined by these cultural norms, Mills suggests, when they conflict with the Natural Law that shows a better way.  Moreover, he says, we need to be prepared to defend that viewpoint.

New Blog

Debbie Sawyer (Wendell's wife) has teamed with some friends to launch a new blog, Mothers Against Madness.  Check it out.