Radical Feminist Theologian Mary Daly Dead at 81

This just in from The National Catholic Reporter:

Feminist theologian Mary Daly died Jan. 3. She was a radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian who taught at Boston College for 33 years. Daly consented to retire from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her Women's Studies classroom.

May the good Lord have mercy on her soul. Let's all remember her in our prayers. Many of you know about her and her legacy. For those who do not, you can read more about her here and here.

I note without further comment that, at her particular judgment, she was judged by a Man.

The Time of Your Life

One heartbeat at a time . . . moment by moment . . . inexorably . . . imperceptibly . . . you are moving toward that final moment which God has appointed for you when the last grain of sand will fall through the hourglass of of your life.

Will you be ready when that moment arrives?

"Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come" (Mark 13:13).

Tempus fugit. Memento mori.

Will The Next War Be Fought Over Water?

I am a Southern California native, born and raised. When we were in our mid 30s, my wife and I moved our family to the beautiful countryside of Central Ohio, and the very first thing we had to adjust to -- not the weather or the fact that there are no mountains -- was how green everything is here: lawns, plants & bushes, trees, everything. And, at least where we live, no one I know of has a sprinkler system to keep his lawn emerald green. Mother nature handles that chore quite well enough, at least She does here in Ohio.

But not so in Southern California, where there is simply no such thing as a green, living plant or lawn without a sprinkler system or a garden hose keeping it that way. You want something to grow? You gotta water it regularly. If you don't, your lawn will quickly develop the rich yellow-brown hue of terminal desiccation. Some, like folks on fixed incomes in retirement communities, dispense with the cost and effort of watering altogether and just put in a rock yard. No fuss, no muss, and no water required. (It saves money, and water, but try playing a round of golf on an 18-hole rock lawn.)

The reason water is such a big deal in Southern California is the opposite of why it's no big deal here in Ohio. There's plenty of H2O here in the Buckeye State, plenty of rain, plenty of snow, plenty of water everywhere you go. But Los Angeles? Orange County? Riverside? San Diego? They sit in an arid zone and most all the water consumed there must be brought in from out of the area. It costs big bucks to keep Southern California properly supplied with water, and with upwards of 23 million inhabitants there (about twice the number of people in a region roughly the size of Ohio), can be difficult as well as costly.

What would happen to all those people, one wonders, if for some reason they ran out of water?

The following article on the leftward-tilting NPR website considers that very possibility and raises some disturbing possibilities, wars over water included.

While I'm fairly certain that California will never go to war with Ohio in order to acquire water, even so, California will have a dire problem on its hands (even by California standards of dire problems) if, someday, the well runs dry.

"The lesson of history is that in the tumultuous adjustment that surely lies ahead, those societies that find the most innovative responses to the crisis are most likely to come out as winners, while the others will fall behind. Civilization will be shaped as well by water’s inextricable, deep interdependencies with energy, food, and climate change. More broadly, the freshwater crisis is an early proxy of the twenty-first century’s ultimate challenge of learning how to manage our crowded planet’s resources in both an economically viable and an environmentally sustainable manner. By grasping the lessons of water’s pivotal role on our destiny, we will be better prepared to cope with the crisis about to engulf us all. . . . (continue reading)

Related: "Three Reasons That Violence Could Erupt" over water.