Saturday Morning -- November 3, 2018 -- Nothing About The Bakken

Huge shout-out to George Kaplan over at Peak Oil Barrel, Gulf of Mexico reserves and production update 1H18. Most folks probably won't read to the end, but if you do, you will be rewarded with a great nature post on the coot. George also quotes and references The Big Lebowski which speaks volumes. And finally, the comments are very interesting, 157 responses at this moment. He's a regular contributor.

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Keeping America Great

From SeekingAlpha: Enbridge places Valley Crossing Texas-to-Mexico gas pipeline into service.

• Enbridge says its $1.6B Valley Crossing natural gas pipeline from Texas to Mexico entered service on October 31, 2018
• The 165-mile Valley Crossing project is designed to carry as much as 2.6B cf/day of gas to help Mexico meet growing demand for power generation as utilities in the country shift away from plants powered by fuel oil and imported liquefied natural gas [apparently natural gas from the US is not considered imported]
• Valley Crossing connects in the Gulf of Mexico with the Sur de Texas-Tuxpan pipeline, which runs ~500 miles in Mexico and was built via a joint venture between TransCanada  and Sempra Energy's IEnova unit. 

Somehow this one escaped me. A quick google search of the blog and I didn't find an earlier entry regarding this pipeline.

Aha! A better search of the blog reveals that I did indeed mention this pipeline -- I just didn't have the name of the pipeline at the time. The post is here.

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Blogging Delayed

On another note, I'm not in the mood to blog this morning. I'm going to take a break -- the break could be as short as half an hour to as long as two days.

It's going to be a great weekend: one granddaughter in a two-day water polo tournament; one granddaughter playing soccer; and, then, there's always Sophia. I never know what the two of us will do on any given day. On the drive home from TutorTime yesterday she said she wanted to wash windows today. So, I know that's one thing on the agenda.

Meanwhile, I've got four big books in my book bag: an annotated Bible; a biography of the Peabody sisters, H. L. Mencken's book on the English language; and, Frederick Ahl's translation of Virgil's Aeneid. I won't get bored today.

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The Literature Page

I'm posting notes on Megan Marshall's The Peabody Sisters, c. 2005, elsewhere, but this is where I am at in the book -- the history of Unitarianism.

The year 1819 was a turning point for the Peabodys... The time was ripe for a bold statement of the new [religious] views, and William Ellery Channing was chosen for the job. In May, he traveled to Baltimore to give an ordination sermon for antoher Harvard protégé, Jared Sparks, in which he outlined what it meant to be Unitarian and emphatically welcomed the term for himself.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of Channing's "Baltimore Sermon."

Presses worked overtime throughout the Atlantic states to publish rebuttals and rejoinders, including a virulent attack from Salem's Samuel Worcester But the controversy only spurred the demand for copies of Channing's sermon itself, which quickly became the most widely published piece of literature in America, a place it held for over a decade.

Defections to Unitarianism by clergy and congregants became rampant, leading to a historic court battle that, within the year, put an end to the Calvinist hold on Massachusetts churches.

The court case? The "Dedham Case" adjudicated by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. From Chapter XXXV,The Unitarian Controversy in America, 1805–1835:

In the unhappy division that took place at this time, congregations were split in two, and even families were divided against themselves. But the question now arose, whose should be the church property when Unitarians and orthodox drew apart?

This was the question involved in the Dedham case.

In order to understand the matter, one must remember that in the Massachusetts towns there had long been two religious organizations.

The “parish,” or “society,” consisted of all the male voters of the town organized to maintain religious worship, which they were bound by law to support by taxation.

The “church” on the other hand consisted only of those persons within the parish (generally a small minority) who had made a public profession of their religious faith, and had joined together in a serious inner circle for religious purposes, and were admitted to the observance of the Lord’s Supper. The church members were on the whole (though not exclusively) more devout and more zealous than the rest of the members of the parish, and a large majority of them were usually women.

By law a minister must be elected by vote of the whole parish which supported him; but by natural custom it had come to be generally expected that he must also be acceptable to the church, even if not nominated by it.

For generations church and parish had generally agreed; though if they did not, means were provided for settling the matter through a mutual council. But when the controversy arose between the orthodox and the Unitarians, disagreements became frequent and often serious; and in many cases it happened that while the majority of the church members wished to settle [elect] a conservative from Andover, the majority of the parish would prefer a liberal man from Harvard, and usually no way of compromise could be found.

This was the situation at Dedham, where the pulpit fell vacant in 1818, and the parish voted two to one to settle [elect] a liberal man, while the church [orthodox] by a small majority voted against him.

As the parish refused to yield, a majority of the church [orthodox] withdrew and formed a new church, taking with them the church property, which was in this instance nearly enough to support the minister.

A lawsuit followed, to determine which was the real church, and which might hold the property, the majority of the church who seceded from the parish, or the minority who stayed in it.

The case was bitterly fought, and the Supreme Court of the state at length decided in 1820 that seceders forfeited all their rights, and that even the smallest minority remaining with the parish were still the parish church, and entitled to the church property; indeed, that if even the whole church should secede it must still leave the church property behind it.

This legal decision, which would of course apply to any similar cases arising elsewhere, aroused among the orthodox a storm of indignation so deep and bitter that it has hardly subsided after a hundred years.

They declared that the judge, being a Unitarian, was prejudiced in favor of his own party; and for many years they continued to cry out against the injustice of the decision, and against what they insisted was “plunder” of their churches.

From wiki, more succinct:

In 1818, though citizens were still taxed for the support of ministers and other "public teachers of religion," Dedham set a precedent toward the separation of church and state. Residents of the town selected a minister different than that chosen by the church members; the selection by residents was confirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court. This decision increased support for the disestablishment of the Congregational churches. 

See also this site.