Monmouth School’s new sports pavilion on a misty, frosty December morning. A photo taken using the TrueHDR app on my iPhone.
Book Review: The Masonic Myth
The Masonic Myth by Jay Kinney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you’re a mason, this is the book to give your friends who ask you what freemasonry is. Well-informed and written with sufficient detachment to inspire confidence, the tone is neither reverential nor apologetic, and makes needed criticism of the institution where it’s deserved.
Familiar anti-masonic claims are debunked efficiently, placing their origins in historical context.
Photo – View from Wyesham
I’m experimenting with a HDR photography app on my iPhone and sometimes get interesting results, like this shot taken from my neighbourhood, Wyesham, across the River Wye to Penallt and Mitchel Troy.
The All-Seeing Eye
The eye within a pyramid: a symbol of an evil masonic conspiracy?
Actually, no. This symbol was used in European religious art as a representation of God. The eye represents God surveying his creation, reminding Christians that they are accountable to their creator.
That’s not a pyramid either. It’s a triangle representing the Holy Trinity.
Pyramids, by the way, don’t really have much place, if any, in masonic art as the mythology of the masonic degrees isn’t located in ancient Egypt.
I found this particular example of the “All-Seeing Eye” not in a masonic building, but in a frieze at the front of the 19th century Helsinki Cathedral when I was visiting that city earlier this week.
I’ve seen the same design in a 17th century German church.
Ample evidence, I hope, that this symbol is not “masonic” in origin. It was obviously borrowed by freemasonry as a symbol for God because it was already familiar to people through religious art.
Further reading: http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/anti-masonry02.html#eye_pyramid
Balloon Glow, Monmouth
Restaurant/hotel review: “The Drawing Room”, Powys
We stayed here recently and I though it might be worth sharing our experiences.
More a restaurant with rooms or a boutique hotel, the owners of The Drawing Room set very high standards of presentation, decor, comfort and cooking, without being stuffy or overly formal. If you are staying in the area and can afford it, I’d recommend this over one of the larger hotels in Builth or Llandrindod Wells, particularly if you like elegance and peace and quiet.
The rooms are decorated in pastel shades with hand-made wallpapers and furniture in keeping with the archtiectural era of the house. Sumptuously thick materials suggest no expense was spared in getting the curtains and bedcovers right. There were more pillows and cushions than I could imagine using. Bad luck meant we weren’t able to get one of the larger rooms, but ours did not feel cramped.
As for the food, starters of a sort of crab timballe and a seafood meunière were competent and tasty while not dramatically good. The main courses delivered on their promise though. I had a Tournedos of Welsh Beef with caramelized Shallot “Tarte Tatin”, Potato and Root Vegetable Pavé, Horseradish and Parsley Cream and Beef Jus with Oxtail while Mrs Monnowman had a haunch of venison with sweet potato and asparagus. Both were very good, though of the two I was glad I had gone for the beef: the shallot tarte tatin was a revelation.
Cappuccino Mousse was a very grown up (read: “not too sweet”) dessert for Mrs M. while I went for the Toasted Pine Nut & Honey Tart with poached Figs and “Glaslyn” Estate Wild Flower Honey Ice-cream: a delightful combination of flavours and textures.
The passion of the proprietor chef for good, local ingredients, sympathetically cooked, is obvious in the richness of flavours delivered without the food becoming over-contrived in that fashionably- Michelin-starred way.
Only quibbles were the request in the literature not to drink your own alcohol in the rooms (you are asked to buy their -very expensive- stuff); we could easily hear our neighbours in the adjacent room; and the hostess, when serving food, said “thank you” too often!
But these are minor niggles. We really enjoyed our stay and the food was very good: recommended.
Phenomenon or phenomena? A guide for Coast to Coast guests
I listen to quite a lot of the UFO/paranormal internet media, including Coast to Coast, The Paracast and Dreamland and have noticed that there is a real confusion sometimes among guests and presenters about when to say phenomenon, rather than phenomena.
Now I suppose it’s risking appearing snarky by pointing out the difference here as I only have third form Greek (I gave up after my teacher shouted at me for not learning the Greek capital letters) but my motivation is pure: some of the speakers on these shows are well-educated and are trying to make a case for the scientific investigation of UFO’s, bringing the subject out of the world of tabloid ridicule, because frankly, there is a genuine phenomenon of potentially paradigm-shaking importance that deserves serious investigation. And I’m right behind them.
If the serious researchers behind this movement want to be taken seriously, they’ll need a command of English up there with the best of those they are trying to convince. If they don’t know the difference between phenomenon and phenomena (both words they are going to be using a lot), they risk losing credibility in their first sentence.
It’s very simple: phenomena is the plural of phenomenon. Thus:
One phenomenon.
Twenty-seven phenomena.
It’s the same rule with criterion, by the way.
Recipe: My favourite comfort food: Chicken Liver Risotto
This is a meal I make when I need comfort food. It’s not an authentic Italian-style risotto as it uses Basmati rice and the aim is not to produce the creamy nursery food dish that is the mark of a real risotto. So if that bothers you, call it “Rice and Chicken Livers”. If you use frozen ready chopped garlic and blitz the onion in the blender, it can be produced within 40 minutes on a weeknight while listening to The Archers on BBC Radio 4. Adjust proportions of rice to chicken livers as you like; just keep the ratio of rice to stock 1 to 1.
Serves Two.
Ingredients
400g fresh chicken livers (preferably free range), cleaned of any green-looking bits and chopped in half
1 large mug full of basmati rice (definitely not ordinary long grain rice)
1 fat garlic clove, chopped finely
1 onion, chopped finely
200 dry cure smoked bacon lardons
2 large mugs of hot chicken or duck stock
1 Bay leaf
Small handful each of finely chopped fresh sage and oregano/marjoram or whatever herbs you fancy (tarragon works well too)
Small handful of roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
Half glass of white wine or dry sherry
Freshly ground black pepper
1 glug of olive oil or a dollop of goose fat
A shake or two of Barbados hot pepper sauce or Tabasco.
Method
In a suitably-sized heavy-based pan that that has a tight fitting lid: Gently fry the bacon, onion and garlic in the olive oil/goose fat until beginning to turn golden. Throw in the livers, give them a stir, then put in the rice. Stir again so the rice is coated with oil, then add the bay leaf, herbs, pepper sauce/Tabasco, wine/sherry and a generous grind of black pepper. Stir, then add the stock. Stir again and reduce to the lowest heat you can, cover tightly with the lid, then wait until the rice has softened and absorbed all the stock. If it threatens to dry out, add a little more stock or wine. It should take no more than 15 minutes. Check seasoning, adding salt if necessary and stir in the parsley. Serve in a bowl to your grateful spouse first then scoff the rest yourself.
Crop circle aliens are vandals
The silly-season, sorry, crop-circle season story of the man arrested in a crop circle for allegedly firing a shotgun to deter sightseers provoked the following thought:
There are those who marvel at the amazing complexity of some of the crop formations and find mathematical and symbolic meaning in them that, they say, is proof that they are not made by humans. Well, I’m in the “made by humans” camp but am willing to listen to those with sound, scientifically valid evidence who believe otherwise. However, what I’m not willing to do is marvel at how “advanced” these aliens are.
They are vandals that cause thousands of pounds worth of damage. If they really need to communicate profound insights into human destiny, surely it’s not beyond them to learn one of our major languages or send a radio broadcast? I mean, if I were trying to convey information to creatures on a remote planet, I wouldn’t thoughtlessly make cryptograms in their valuable crops, causing damage and costing the alien farmers money.
That would just be a display of selfish criminal damage akin to graffiti.
If extraterrestrials are making crop circles, they are certainly not gentlemen 😉
Halt says he saw “structured machines” at Rendlesham, “extraterrestrial in origin”
File this under in the “If true, it’s very important” category:
Col. Halt, famed in ufology for his taped commentary of strange sightings outside a nuclear weapon-packed US Air force base in 1980, has apparently stated in an interview cited in UFOWeek.com:
“I wish to make it perfectly clear that the UFOs I saw were structured machines moving under intelligent control and operating beyond the realm of anything I have ever seen before or since. I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and England [sic] were and have been complicit in trying to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham by use of well practiced methods of disinformation.”
The significance of this remark, if confirmed that he did indeed make it, is that he scores very highly on the credibility scale as the former deputy base commander outside which strange phenomena were observed over Christmas 1980. Much has been written and much pored over in the pursuit of the facts in this case, considered by some to be second only to Roswell in importance. This statement is completely at odds with those researchers who claim that what was seen by several people over three nights was simply a misidentified lighthouse.
If it isn’t already, this should be one of ufology’s stop-the-press moments and if the mainstream media would get out of snigger mode it would be breaking news.
Monnow Man 