The There's Not Much To Say Edition

Apologies for the relative silence of the last few weeks. March is the time of numerous spring paper deadlines and as such I've spent the bulk of the period writing several essays. My paper on the Scopes Trial got a great mark and I'm hoping that the two I turned in this past week will bear similar fruit. The first paper was the second of three for my European Reformation class. Here's an excerpt.

The daily life of the laity was to be spent in pious contemplation. To reinforce the teachings of the Church, religious images were employed to great degree. The interiors of churches were filled with ornate displays of artwork depicting biblical scenes and saints. The Carolus Borromeus church in Antwerp, for example, had 39 ceiling painting and a large painting behind the altar that had a mechanism designed to switch the painting on command. Could this have been some form of a 16th century “show” to entertain the faithful as well as inform them? It is impossible to think such a display would not have a powerful effect on the laity, marvelling at he grandeur of the Church. These visual aids served a dual purpose- to inspire the faithful in their worship and to overwhelm the viewer with the power and majesty of the Church.

The full text of that can be found HERE The other paper was the one I'd spent the better part of the last few months researching for my Modern Espionage class. When I finally finished the paper it clocked in at 17 pages, which as it turned out was 7 pages above the limit set by my professor. He thankfully granted me an extra day to trim it to 10 pages. I'm not sure the final 10 page is as good, but one can hope. Here's an excerpt.

While American post-mortems of the Iran crisis are filled with finger pointing, personal reprisals, and disagreements, one point that is common is the failure of the intelligence to understand the nature of the Shah’s physical state. The Shah’s health had steadily declined since the mid-70s. French doctors diagnoses cancer, yet the Shah’s denial and avoidance of his disease had left his health status a virtual state secret. Intelligence services were completely unaware of the serious of his illness and when rumours did surface in the CIA station in Tehran they were attributed to Soviet disinformation. Without knowing the extent of the Shah’s cancer, the intelligence analysts could not accurately forecast the probability of the Shah’s reactions to forces inside and outside his government, his stamina to withstand the pressures of the opposition, or the immediacy of his possible succession. As protests grew in size and frequency in Iran, on 29 October 1978, the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research predicted the collapse of the Shah’s regime within 18 months at the most. On 9 November Ambassador William Sullivan sent a telegram to Washington arguing that the time had come to begin “thinking the unthinkable.” Yet several weeks later in a New Year’s Eve visit to Tehran President Carter toasted the Shah as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world”. There can be no clearer disconnection between intelligence analysis and policy makers than this incident. Within weeks the Shah would board a plane for a supposed holiday never to return to Iran and shortly thereafter the Ayatollah Khomeini would receive a hero’s welcome in the streets of Tehran.

The rest of the text can be read HERE Here's hoping I get decent marks on both. The next (and last) paper I have for this term is due Tuesday- the third Reformation paper- this one is on Geneva and the Calvinist movement. Shell is finishing up her project next week and as soon as school is done I'll be back at the ice cream mines full time. We're hoping something will come along soon for her though. I'm only a month away from softball season! I'm going to play again with the team that my father-in-law and I played for last year, and I'm also playing with a new team here in G'town. That gets me back to three nights a week which will help get me back into something resembling 'shape'. I'm hoping the local team winds up better than the one last year. In case you're new to the TGIF, the team I played for in G'town last year I wound up leaving because the coach was a complete jerk. Anyway this new team will be different I pray since I really want to play a night close to home where I can be home 15 minutes after the game ends rather than the hour it takes to get home from the other league. I really enjoy playing with those guys out there though because they have loads of fun and they really seem to want me to be a part of the team. Of course the big reason is that I get to play with Dad Snyder. This week in pictures... Playing with Daddy's Snoopy head cover and Falcons hat... Lovely long blonde hair... Gracie and Mommy all smiles... Sitting pretty in green... Just Ginny from the block... Playing with piggies before bedtime... Enjoying the spring day on Mommy's park bench... Making a face like cousin Quinn and showing her Canadian pride... Showing off a nice hat.. One of the Cubs prezzies from Scott & Alli... The carnage of carrots... Sneaky grin... mmm....JoJo=tasty clown... Close up... Looking up... Enjoying the great outdoors in her USA hat from Emma Bee... Until next week.. Cheers