Inflorescence: Our Fishtail Palm Blooms

I've never seen this from our palm. It's a spectacular inflorescence.

Happy Birthday, Calvin!

In the rise of your university education . . . in the decentralized . . . character of your local governments . . . in your championship of free speech, and in your unlimited regard for freedom of conscience; in all this . . . it is demonstrable that you owe this to Calvinism and to Calvinism alone.

-Abraham Kuyper, in his Lectures on Calvinism given at Princeton Seminary in October 1898, as quoted by John Piper in "America's Debt to John Calvin" in the July 4, 2009 issue of World Magazine.

He Shines in All That's Fair

Carol and I saw Pixar's "Up" last night. What a charming movie! And what a remarkable example of God's Common Grace, coming as it does from Hollywood to a theater near you.