In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

As I had hoped, a visitor set me straight on the question of the Anglican vestments at the National Cathedral post-inaugural prayer service: I'm not sure that they are "black stoles" but, rather, "scarves." The stole as a liturgical vestment was discarded in the Church of England at the Reformation and did not return until the Oxford Movement, and that unofficially and indeed, arguably, illegally. Nor were the traditional Catholic liturgical colors for vestments preserved after the English Reformation; they, too, came back with the Oxford Movement. The same was the case in the Episcopal Church, although their restoration to use in some circles in PECUSA met with less violent and less prolonged opposition in the former, than it did in the Church of England (among Evangelicals especially). In both the CofE and PECUSA the wearing of such post-Reformation style of vestments tended to hang on in cathedrals and especially big public services of a politica...

In Wednesday's post, I noted that the clergy presiding over the post-inaugural prayer service for Trump's second inauguration wore black stoles. This puzzled me, because I was an Episcopalian for over 30 years, and I've been a Roman Catholic for a dozen, and the liturgical colors for The Episcopal Church follow those of the Catholic Church. The current Catholic liturgical season is "Ordinary Time", for which the color is green. The Episcopal Church regards this season as an extended "Epiphany" that lasts until Ash Wednesday, but its liturgical color is also green. Thus a priest or deacon presiding over a normal eucharist or prayer service at this time of the year would wear a green stole, not a black one, and black isn't normally listed as a liturgical color -- just red, white, purple, rose, or green. According to Wikipedia , in Roman Catholic practice, which Episcopalians have followed since the Oxford Movement, For the celebrati...

Via the UK Daily Mail , Kamala Harris was all smiles and affection for her 'beloved' second gentleman Doug Emhoff in the immediate aftermath of her crushing presidential election defeat. But now that President Donald Trump has been sworn into office, for sore loser Harris, it is now all about the blame game, and her target has flipped to her 'dead weight' husband. And as she weighs her political future – maybe a 2026 run for Governor of California or another try for the nation's top job two years later – she has to consider whether Emhoff is an asset or a liability. . . . Despite their brave united front at the inauguration and at President Jimmy Carter's January 9 funeral, those close to the couple believe all is not 'hunky dory' between them. And word is the husband of California girl Kamala has already signed up for a job with a Big Apple law firm which would require them to split their time between New York and Los Angeles. The...

The intgriguing thing about Episcopalian Bishop Marianne Budde's homily at yesterday's National Prayer Service is how many people it confused. Just for starters, DeVory Darkins, the YouTube commentator in the clip above, says at 2:35, I didn't know you could be a bishop as a woman, I'm just being honest here, I'm not too familiar with the Catholic religion, I'm a Christian. . . The commenters quickly explained that Bp Budde isn't Catholic, she's Episcopalian -- but nevertheless, aren't the Episcopalians hitchhiking once again on Catholic prestige here? She's vested in a strange mishmosh of a surplice-cum-black-stole that's at least reminiscent of Catholic tradition, and the service is conducted in a faux Catholic-style cathedral with faux medieval stonework and a rose window, which calls itself the National Cathedral. Wikipedia says , The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, comm...

According to Joel Kotkin, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass “is a dead woman walking”, as a union organiser friend told me this week. The revelations of incompetence, poor planning, and awful communication, combined with the fact that the LA mayor was partying in Ghana when wildfires started in her city, have worked against her, and yesterday angry protestors gathered outside her home. Some charges made by Donald Trump and Elon Musk tying the disaster to DEI and climate policies are exaggerated. But Bass’s lack of interest in public safety mirrors the new progressive script which prioritises “social justice” over actual justice, racial quotas over merit, and climate alarmism over common sense. I'm not so sure about this. The Eaton Fire, one of the two that dominated last week's news, was entirely outside the LA city limits. The Palisades Fire, though, was mainly within city limits, but the part within city limits was Pacific Palisades : If you were meeting a talent ma...

A second California fire that's been edged out of the news by the ones in the Los Angeles area is a fire at a battery storage facility at Moss Landing near Monterey on the Central Coast. The site's battery energy storage facility is the largest commercial battery energy storage facility in the world. The energy storage facility stores excess daytime electrical energy for later use during periods of lower electricity production (usually at night.) Such excess energy is typically produced by renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. . . . Utilities in California are required by a 2013 law to provide significant battery storage by 2024. The Moss Landing Power Plant site has since been chosen as California's primary location to provide battery based energy storage in order to better utilize renewable energy sources such as solar and wind on a grid-wide commercial scale. On June 29, 2018 Vistra Corp announced that it planned on building at the Moss Landing Powe...

Speaker Mike Johnson reveals just how out of the loop and cognitively impaired Joe Biden was as President after meeting with Biden and discussing his LNG Executive Order: “Biden was not lying to me. He genuinely did not know what he had signed.” Scary. pic.twitter.com/Clbytug8e3 — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 18, 2025 All of a sudden, Speaker Mike Johnson and Democrat Leader Schumer are getting in line to say they knew all along that Joe wasn't running on all cylinders. This suggests to me that even more will be coming out as Trump's staff gains access to White House records, but it's nevertheless significant that the House Speaker and then-Senate Majority Leader were aware of serious problems with Joe's ability to perform his duties but nevertheless did nothing, at least partly because they currently have no constitutional ability to initiate any sort of action. Sen Schumer is now trying to cover himself by claiming he met with Joe on July 13 of last year, j...