There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

– GK Chesterton

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

– Alexis de Tocqueville

HT: Right Mind

Here are a bunch of videos I picked out from the past year at NSA for your enjoyment. I’m not allowed to post anything from Rhetoric (there were some really good ones…and I recorded the most in that class), But you’ll find some from every other class.
Note about downloading: because a lot of these are straight from my camera, they are not optimized for streaming. If you click on a link, it may seems that everything is frozen, but it’s not; it’s downloading, and some may take some time. If you want to make sure it’s downloading, then right-click, and “save as”.
I pity him who hath not broadband…

• Is this the place for an argument? – Christ Church Dinner Skit
• Music at Bucers
• A peak into Choir
• Il Fait Froid de Canard
• Game at Courtney’s
• Lewiston Rodeo (We are a wild bunch…)
• St. Andy’s Rugby!
• Numa Numa Dance (by a local – don’t miss this one!)
• Mikado
• A bit of Moscow in Winter – I took this during Christmas break to send to my parents who were in France, so that’s why we talk to them in the video at one point. There is also part of a Lordship Lecture at the end.

The next two kind of go together… they show a little of the intensity of study at NSA 🙂 (Warning: These videos are not intended for prospective students)

• Christine Studying Latin at Bucers
• Lydia Reading City of God

Some Singing:

• The Day is Past and Gone
• O ‘Twas a Joyful Sound to Hear
• Merkle at Midnight – (that’s not the name of a song, but it should be…)

Natural Philosophy:

• Roger eating a mouse
• Learning the bones of the body
• Inflating the lungs of a fetal pig
• more inflation
• Right before Euclid Class

Latin: I have a lot of videos from this class… but only a few for now.

• A bit of Class
• Philosophy of Strawberry
• Reading a Story
• and of course, all the Latin Skits
• And the audio of Ghiligans Island
• Greek Opera – (a peak into greek class)

That’s all folks!

I have uploaded a bunch of pictures from this last year, divided by term. I didn’t have time to carefully sort, and they are rather random. These are by no means all, so if you have a specific picture in mind you don’t see here, I probably have it somewhere. 🙂

• Jerusalem
• Nicea
• Chalcedon
• Westminster

Since I sorted this quickly, the Complaint Form may be of use. Girls, don’t hesitate to use it. If guys use it, I expect a 3 point, logical explanation of the complaint 😉

The Latin Skits are now available for download from a server near you!

• Fiddler on the Roof – starring Brad, Brad, Daniel, and Ryan.
• Gladiator – starring Eric and Daniel
• The Wizard of Oz – Starring Kathryn, Molly, Luke, and Scott
• A Musical – Starring Alexander and Ryan
• The Importance of Being Earnest – Starring Gretchen, Hannah, and Margaret
• Aladdin – Starring Kirby, Laura, Kathryn, and Brian.
• Napoleon Dynamite – Starring Naphtali (As Napoleon), Hilary, Rhiannon, and Brooke.
• Three Indians – Starring Emma, Rachel, Christine
• The Rappers – Starring Katie and Audrey
• Pride & Prejudice – Starring Lizzie and Leah.
• The Moon Dog Saints! – Starring Robby, Jason, Kelly, and Donny!

I took this video in widescreen, but windows movie maker (grr) didn’t keep the format.

Congratulations to all of you (us) as we have now survived a full year at NSA! The blog name has now been changed (note this) to the NSA Sophomore Class! Thanks for making this a terrific year, and let’s enjoy our summers to the fullest, play hard, work hard, and look forward to the quickly approaching fall when we will have to study hard once again.

Edible: Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary

All homes have places where discipline occurs. As I was growing up, it was the basement. When we were “sent to the basement,” this is where my father would admonish us, discipline us, pray with us afterwards, and graciously invite us to rejoin the fellowship of the family. In other homes, the place varies according to convenience—it may be one of the back bedrooms, or the bathroom. But I have never heard of a godly home where the point of discipline was the dining room, during the course of dinner. Sometimes during dinner a child has to be taken from the table for discipline, but no one that I know of brings a child to the table for discipline. We bring our children to the table for food.

Discipline is important. Confession of sin is important. Working through hard issues of sin and restitution is important. But this Table is the place for fellowship, kindness, laughter, and joy. So come, and receive the gracious nourishment offered.

Some might object to this as too casual. They might say that Jesus said that if your brother had something against you, leave your gift on the altar, and go, put it right. Yes, and we really should do this. But notice that He said we should not give in this condition, not that we should not receive in this condition. So stop tithing, stop putting your gifts in the offering box in the back until you have put things right with your brother (as far as it is possible with you). Let this be your reminder to get things right. Leave your gift envelope in Your Bible until you get things right. But churches rarely tell the saints to stop giving them money until the donor is back in fellowship

But this is a radical gospel message. Until you put things right, we will not stop offering the grace of God to you. But if you have the power to do so, and you do not put things right with your brother, then stop tithing. Stop bringing your offerings. God would rather have your obedience than your money. Is the obedience hard? Do you need strength to undertake it? That strength is here.

Douglas Wilson, May 2006

We learnt that equality is about equal worth, not equal outcomes. Today our idea of society is shaped around mutual responsibility; a deal, an agreement between citizens, not a one-way gift, from the well-off to the dependent.

~Prime Minister Tony Blair, Brighton, October 2, 2001

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to the liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

~Barry Goldwater, 1964

Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It unavoidably results from that very liberty itself.

~Alexander Hamilton

We are told, ad nauseam, that a computer has to go into every classroom to prepare us for the twenty-first century. We have not yet realized that the computers may simply be moving our ignorance around the planet at incredible rates of speed. As one wag put it, “We used to think that a million monkeys typing away at a million keyboards could produce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not the case.” A fool in the back of a cart bumping along the road five hundred years ago is, today, a fool in the backseat of a Lexus. Certain things are not changed by the computer dashboard.

Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture, 176.

We want fat-souled children. We want them to have full, faithful lives–joyful, balanced, and lovely. But wisdom doesn’t happen passively. It takes a diligent household and constant prayer, but with that He promises that “the soul of the diligent shall be made fat” (Prov. 13:4). That should be our prayer: Lord enable us to raise children with fat souls. “He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat” (Prov. 28:25).

Doug Jones, Angels in the Architecture, 125

Stories frame a child’s interior life for living in this world. Fiction is far more realistic than we realize. Fiction and poetry mysteriously transfer truth in a far more powerful way than anything else. God Himself chose to write in passionate poetry and narrative and parables rather than in the bureaucratic style of a systematic theology.

Doug Jones, Angels in the Architecture, 124.

We talk of our willingness to die for the children, but are we willing to sincerely sacrifice careers and vacations and personal talents for their sakes without bitterness? The whole orientation of our household must be focused on sacrificing for our children. This is a sign of deep love.

Doug Jones, Angels in the Architecture, 123.

Part of learning to celebrate includes learning how to splurge and not be so tightly utilitarian. Our culture is so wicked in its neglect of savings and its slavery to plastic credit cards that we, with some right, run the other direction. But if your house is in order, it’s time to learn how to splurge at times. Beauty isn’t cheap, and neither are artistic meals and good wines.

Doug Jones, Angels in the Architecture, 84.

The first Herp Dinner, in 1977, was an outstanding success… The final spread was magnificent and included sautéed alligator tail…; legs of bullfrogs, leopard frogs, and green frogs; snapping turtle salad, (excellent on crackers); slider turtle stew; crispy fried mole salamanders; baked canebrake rattlesnake (a 4½-foot specimen coiled around tomatoes and green peppers); and deep-fried strips of cottonmouth moccasin.

Whit Gibbons, Their Blood Runs Cold – Adventures with Reptiles and Amphibians, 12

• Natural Philosophy Field Trip pictures available: http://www.nsa.foucachon.com/natural_phil_field_trip/

• Spring Windy Pics: http://www.nsa.foucachon.com/spring_windy_06/

• Pics of the Easter Party at the Courtney’s available HERE.

He feeds our bodies through bread and other foods, he illumines the world through the sun, and he warms it through heat; yet neither bread, nor sun, nor fire, is anything save in so far as he distributes his blessings to us by these instruments. In like manner, he nourishes faith spiritually through the sacraments, whose one function is to set his promises before our eyes to be looked upon, indeed, to be guarantees of them to us.

Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Ch. 14.12

The first degree of chastity is sincere virginity; the second, faithful marriage. Therefore, the second sort of virginity is the chaste love of matrimony.

– Chrysostom, quoted in Institutes of the Christian Religion, book IV, ch. 12.28