Happy Traditional Epiphany

Yes, it's still Christmas... thank God! We're not bound to take the CHRISTMAS decorations down on December 26, and put the SAINT Valentine's Day candies and cards out in our stores... Chestertonians know how to celebrate.

And so, a gift. I have posted The Vestal of the Lord, the "first capitulum" from my forthcoming book Cloister Multicast, a collection of short stories about a cloistered Carmelite nun who has the odd habit (hee hee) of leaving the cloister from time to time, when God needs her to be busy with something out in the world. Yes, that means she bilocates... Very interesting, at least I hope you will think so. Her cloister happens to be the same one that T. R. Dailey (in Joe the Control Room Guy) has entered - yes, the one on the hill outside of Harley, to which Andy and Joe go for Mass. I guess some people are surprised that tech guys do stuff like pray, but we're in good company: Galileo, Pasteur, Galvani, Volta, Ampère, Fresnel, Pascal, Roentgen, Becquerel, Kircher, Mendel, Malpighi, Vesalius, Steno, Duhem... of course the more serious we are about our science the more serious we are about prayer. And prayer is the reason why Sister Mary Gabriel receives the gift of multi-location, as you will discover.

Here's a view of the cloister from the outside:


And a view of the chapel, which is open to the public for Sunday Mass:


Speaking of Joe and Andy, I have also put in four more chapters, but alas they do not have any illustrations yet. This takes us up to chapter 57, "The Calm Before the Storm" - which I think gives enough of a hint of what is coming.

In other news, I have nothing much to tell at the moment. Recently I noticed that something odd about the alphabet: that each of the vowels is contained within a Latin word, to wit:

ab = from, away from (motion in any direction from a fixed point)
de = from, down from
hi = these (nominative plural)
no = I swim (from nare = to swim)
tu = you (nominative singular)

So that was interesting. I was also thinking about writing something about the Boolean algebra of the DNA/RNA wildcard alphabet, but perhaps not just now. Maybe later. Meanwhile, back to work.