When God Made Me Born a Yankee He Was Teasin'

Off with the dogs - we left the dogs out* - to points due south to our Laughing Gull spot in Seapines. We drove by a couple of interesting kayak opportunities: one, the Ohio River at Ravenswood; there’s a feeder river/confluence not far from route 33. The other was the Scioto near Grandview Avenue, and near where I-670 cross over it.  Driving to Hilton Head makes me want to do a dozen more vacation-type activities.

And it didn’t take long for Max to provide trip log material.  I stopped at a rest stop and Steph and I went to the bathroom. I got back first, and rather than climb in, close the doors, put the dual leash on the dogs and then take them on a quick potty break, I tried to simply corral them at the door.  Maris got on the leash fine but Max is deceptively quick (or I’m getting reflexively old). He squeezed through with a head fake and skipped across the Wendy’s drive-thru lane without a care in the world. The only thing that allowed me to stay with him was his frequent marking-his-territory moves, like peeing on the Wendy’s menu sign.  He went up to the drive-thru window and looked briefly up as if begging for food, and there was a car waiting for food, so he was sandwiched in the small area between car and window. I ran frantically, trying to make sure the driver wasn’t preparing to drive away and flatten Max. Meanwhile I had only one hand free (because I was holding Maris on leash) and my pants were coming down since I had loosened my belt on the car ride. Eventually I got him, only to later trip and fall on a hole and get dirt all over my leg and forearm. Fun stuff. 

But we arrived to our palm-shaded Shangri La. A new place this time that allows dogs and has balconies off just about every room. Windows galore. 

Sunday: 

Slept like a rock and woke up with these age old songs in my head. 

One was arguably the worst lyrics found in a Catholic hymn: “Our priest is presiding / with love we are abiding”.  I like the song but “our priest is presiding” seems a bit lame. I haven’t heard it in decades. 

The other song is one I heard in grade school. It went something like this, to tune of “On Top of Old Smokey”: 

On top of old coney

All covered with cheese

I lost my poor coney when somebody sneezed...

Google adds where memory faileth. Turns out it was a hit song from 1963, "On Top of Spaghetti”:

On top of spaghetti

All covered with cheese,

I lost my poor meatball

When somebody sneezed.

___

Cold and cloudy alas.  Temp at 64, 70 by noon. Not really beach weather given the 13mph winds.  Max continues to feral. He pooped in the house last night and again this morning. He also thieved Steph’s breakfast sandwich we’d had delivered thru Panetta bread: Steph bought two, one to eat and another to save for tomorrow but she forgot to put it away after breakfast and Max helped himself. 

(Later): He’s up to three poops in the house, one of them 15 seconds after we got back from a walk. I saw him literally pooping as I was putting away the leash. 

Monday: 

Morning dog walk past some exquisite beachfront homes. Ours is valued at 1.2 million, but the neighbor’s is 4.6m and another on our street is over $8 million! “House porn”.  Some dream properties around here.   

It’s like living in a terrarium - or a glass tree house - given all the beautiful variety of plants and trees flooding the dinette windows.

The official island song is that of the morning leaf blower. From 9 to about 11:30 this morn. Makes the need for AirPods.  

Come 11:30: pool-side. Exquisite sun and very nice temp. Idyllic echo of Miami’s early Septembers. The water gently gesticulates with the noiseless jets; Maris is loose but lying on deck while Max is leashed and resting next to the water. Tall pines and medium-sized palms fringe the pool area. A nice variety of vegetation with bushes and flowers to the south, the tall trees on the east and west. The sublime feel of Monday, the earliest era of a vacation. 

I got sidetracked by Malachi Martin of all people, via the ’net. The exorcist and exposer of Vatican scandals died in 1999 under the mysterious circumstance of a demon pushing him off a stool in his New York apartment, leading to cerebral damage and death. So he told a friend before he died. Killed in the line of duty one could say. Scaring and humbling. But he was a mysterious character with a lot of scandal. 

Headed to the beach around 1:30 and read leisurely 20 pages of book on Justice Kavanaugh nomination. Off-and-on clouds and windy, but good running weather and I did 25 minutes while listening to a YouTube video on Martin. 

Then took the dogs to the beach and got in the waves with them, although after they got smashed by one they seemed less than eager and stuck to the shoreline. But fun to see them as puppies, with Maris loose as a goose running timing patterns and Max on a long leash that that we let go and he didn’t have a yen to wander (just ambush Maris).  Really decent privacy and plenty of beach space to romp. 

A second 10,000+ step day.  And I need it as I tend to eat more junk snacks down here (chocolate muffins, pumpkin pie and Fritos to name three). Read a bit of a Stephen King novel and learned my height is perfectly normal:

“He stood up to his perfectly normal height (five-ten and a fraction)..”

Tuesday: 

Cloudy and rainy but warm enough and had enjoyable run on beach despite the weather.  Made better by having taken a WatchOS update that allowed the AirPods to work without iPhone, so I could “run free”, hands-free, this time.  Third hard run in a row and I’m feeling it, whew! 

Took the dogs to the beach and Max was as tired as I was, while leash-less Maris gave into temptation and trotted off to join three other lab retrievers nearby. You could tell she was torn between obeying Steph’s voice and the thrill of playing with dogs more playful than dud Max. 

It’s enriching to drink in all the beauty here, the fecund Low Country landscape as well as the artfully designed house. This morning caught a Bishop Barron video on his new Bible and heard a quote that seems apropos. He said, “The beautiful does not merely entertain. Rather, it invades and changes the one to whom it appears...For God is not one beautiful thing among many, rather God is Beauty itself.” 

___

Me in 2016: “wow, Trump’s election seems a cry for help by those left behind in global economy.”

Me in 2020: “wow, Biden’s election seems a cry for help by those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and other anger and psychiatric issues.”

Anger makes you stupid and the more angry and thus stupid our opponents become the more the threat to us as far as self-righteousness. The Pharisees were right about a lot of things - they believed the Resurrection of the dead unlike the other Jews, and Jesus said that everyone should follow their teachings but not their example. But the problem with being right is that it just leads to self-righteousness. And there’s really no credit it all in “being right” in saying that riots are misbegotten and that liberal groups are trying to wreck the country. It’s like saying “fire is hot” and feeling self-righteous about your smarts. 

It was brought home how deeply destructive the Left is in a recent NY Times piece that said many urban public school districts in Democrat-run cities closed down their schools in part due to pique over Trump and in reaction against his wanting to open the schools. Certainly it helped stop pushback against teachers’ unions wanting to cancel school. But the issue is that many kids, poor or black, are only going to suffer more due to lack of in-school learning.  Whites and the rich can afford private schools, where teaching actually goes on in person. 

I suppose there’s a case to be made that Trump losing in 2020 would be good for the country in the sense of alleviating the mental disease (or at least a trigger, if not the root cause) of liberal hatred. 

St. Paul wrote of disregarding your own rights in order to save your opponent: “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak...Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”

It’s surely a moot issue now that Trump has a nearly impossible climb to make to win. 

Wednesday:

Cardinal Sarah writes, “Love does not impose itself; it cannot impose itself...Precisely because God is present everywhere, he hides himself all the more carefully so as not to impose himself...But we can never create intimacy with God; it always comes from above, and our responsibility is to build the setting in which the encounter can take place.”

Which, if you think about it, is one thing the old 19th century spiritualists and ouji board people would agree with - even they have to do their dark arts with patience and a receptivity. 

___

Third secret of Fatima has to be the most anticlimactic message. It already happened (i.e. pope got shot, apparently murdered, that is JP2), nothing to see here.  

___

Hard to overcome laziness and fatigue and go to 8am Mass today! Woke around 7:25, took Max on a 3 minute walk (Maris still in bed) and then rode bike 15+ minutes there. Almost sacrificial given the sacrifice of coffee and morning creature comforts. Made more difficult due to fatigue due to all the running the last few days. Coffee crave. 

I do kind of got the pine today of taking another week down here mostly at the prospect of visiting Savannah on my own along with boyhood home of Clarence Thomas and Flannery O'. Could see his homes and then hit Savannah churches and walk Savannah squares. Steph not overly excited about spending the money, nor at all pleased at the prospect of her working down here and me being footloose and fancy free. 

Today was the first rock star summer day!  There were glimpses and moments before, but today 80 degrees and full sun. The weather in Hilton Head in October is just really pushing the envelope of fall I guess. The vacation already feels perishable even though ostensibly we have three full days left! I anticipate ends too much, not enjoying the means.  

So here it is Wednesday and our first extended beach time. Did an hour or so on Monday but nothing Sunday or Tuesday. It’s the sort of thing that you don’t miss until you experience it and then realize how missed it was.  Hard to believe but we didn’t get down to Beachland until 2:30 today. We stuck like glue to the pool area although Steph not so much, as she did a bike ride and then a virtual indoor workou. I was lazy and clung to the loungers, trying to make up for last few days of too much activity.  

Thursday:

So, what goes up must come down. Steph’s political awakening and newfound enthusiasm got crushed by the weight of cruel reality. For one, the polls show Biden with a giant double-digit lead. For another Trump unilaterally pulled out of the stimulus package negotiations which makes him look like he was at fault.  Third, he decided not to do the next presidential debate. So all told it feels like Trump has thrown in the towel. 

We watched the VP debate last night and it went well at least. Very watchable, unlike the painful presidential one.  For one thing, Susan Page was 1000% better than Chris Walleye. And Kamala Harris was a poor debater.  One pundit said that Amy Kobuchar would’ve killed Pence in this debate but Biden went with Harris as VP pick because “diversity is strength!”  Even when it’s not. 

What goes up must come down for me too. I tried to extend the rental on our place but they said it’s rented out starting Saturday. So if my side trip to Savannah is going to take place it needs to either today or Friday. I really want to do some city sightseeing, walk those squares, and see cathedral where Flannery O’Connor went to Mass. But how to leave this beach, with its magnet of sand, sun, water and beer?

I’m a liberal Democrat when it comes to vacations - always want more! Never enough!  

Steph thought next time we do Hilton Head we could leave a day early and I could do Savannah.  So that’s definitely a possibility I hadn’t thought of.  But I just feel like this 2020 year has been without sightseeing and I feel the dearth.  It’s been since a weekend Chicago trip last July, only a year and three months, but it feels longer somehow. 

____

I feel the wistfulness of a fast-flung vacation. Absurdly fast this year. No doubt partially a function of age since time goes by faster as you get older so a week at age 20 feels like 2-3 days at my age.  Maybe also the lack of proper reverence for time, in not using it most profitably mentally and spiritually. Social media and news erodes the gains you make in that department.

This would’ve been an ideal 2-weeker given the creature comforts, the dogs (they make it more like home), and the thus far mere 2 days of prime-time weather.  I feel the miss, the miss of heat already.  It’s always tougher in October knowing this is the “last chance saloon” of vacations. Nothing afterward as far as the eye can see. The restlessness is surely the zephyr of God reminding me of the eternity that is placed in our hearts, of the futility of seeking natural means to quench supernatural ends. There are not enough beach days to fill me up. 

It does make me wonder at how irreplaceable it feels, being at the sea instead of just being at home on a summer’s day.  What is so special about this environ? The feel of camping out? The little canopy of shade, the cooler of beer, the wide open, treeless country, the lull of sea and caress of sea-winds?  

There is something special about the elements here that serve to focus one’s attention: the lapidary light, the massage of sun on skin, the aural sea, the blue band of water making the straightest line ever seen in nature against the horizon. It’s as primal as it gets. 

____

My workout today consisted of a 40-minute, 6-mile bike ride. Easy compared to the run-hells. Up North Seapines Dr. and around a winding path and then back via the beach. So I got a decent amount of beach ride and some tree paths.. Listened to Marshall opine about the Vatican 2 church (verdict: unfavorable). He is all Aquinas, all the time. 

Late to beach again, about 2:30.  Just hard to leave the sublime pool area. It’s more open and sunnier than our last Seapines place. In some ways, best of both worlds, beach and pool!  But only if pool is used only for a few morning hours, otherwise it steals from the stage largess, the ocean. 

Read some of novel about Savannah area called Minnow and another Low Country novel called Seagrass. The lush natural descriptions just make me want to live here. Imagining myself Walker Percy with a cigar at the pool and IPA at the beach.

We brought Max & Maris down to the beach but I needed to exercise so I almost immediately took Max back up and then did my bike ride. Maris stayed with us, as cool as a cucumber even as a parade of dogs passed by. Steph put up a tent-like structure to provide shade for her.  She’s laid in that shade all late afternoon, only picking up her head with a passing dog. Not a sound heard, nor a complaint raised. 

It’s silly how I want to put a “face with a book” as far as associate someone reading on the beach. Nosy. It’s like I can’t help but look up a book someone is reading on the beach. I suppose it’s akin to be obsessed with the books people have on their shelves when you’re there for a social gathering. 

A kite lazes in the middle distance; at the rainbow’s end of it slides a beach parasailer.  Not unlike the sun which is also parasailing down the west edge signaling my beer-lack and time-lack. Three ol’ black guys stroll by. Authentically black, I think, given one wears a mask and has white socks with his sandals. And he looks good doing it, thank you very much. Not many could pull it off. Another has a “black and gold” t-shirt which may refer to the New Orleans Saints given their colors. Or the Steelers. Blessedly apolitical, just jaunting on the hard-packed sand. 

Friday:

Low Sea Bike Rental rules. They said if bikes aren’t there when they come by they’ll come by later! So we snuck in a morning ride to escape the siren call of the native species (the leaf blowers). I ended up doing extended small rides, enjoying the sight of the Spanish moss hanging like tinsel on old oaks. Fountain froths of palms reminded me of summer vacations of yore, which lie still beneath my skin. Jeweled greens of jade rising up. The dizzying variety of plant life.  Calypso paths, needle laden. The in-suck of drink, the tableau of freedom amid the canopied wonders. Saw a dolphin leap, his whole body briefly airborne. 

This wealthy side of the island seems to require an army of worker bees: landscapers, bug guys, bike rental trucks, pool cleaners... Seems a never-ending chore to keep these properties pristine. 

Back pool-side, Steph gave me a float and I urged the dogs to join me in the water but no takers. Getting out, I felt a sharp pinch on my arm and there was a bee stuck to my skin, with the stinger still in there. I dug it out and a welt and painful itch started so now I’m wondering if I’ll be allergic to it and have to emergency care it. Oy. (Later: It swelled up like a weightlifter’s forearm but went away within 2-3 days.) 

So I tried to squeeze in another run but it was exhausting and probably would’ve been better to have skipped given all the stuff we have to do tonight to be ready for morning drive. Beach time came late, just after 3pm, where I finally had time to read - specifically Minnow, an atmospheric novel set in the area. The author had me at “pluff mud”. 

Song going thru my head is James Taylor’s “Up on the Roof” only it’s the ocean is what “puts on a show for free”.  

So another “Maxident” in the form of an escape. We had about 75% of the pool area fenced and I thought I could guard the 25% but he’s a really sharp dog and seems to have known this from last time and so shot right by me to freedom. I got him, a house or two away, so it was no sweat. One thing I know is the folly is to run towards him since that only motivates him to run away (and much faster). He may be smart but not smart enough to forgo the distractions (hmm...sounds like me) of bushes and dog smells nearby which cause him to stop and smell and thus for me to catch up. 

Vacation Fridays are a frantic - if fruitless - attempt to suck more out of the day than the day can hold. So I was trying to do a bike ride, go to the beach, float in the pool, even possibly hit Savannah.

My welt now is the size of a baseball.  My thought is you “ought to see the other guy” (the bee, now lying dead).

* - That song sticks in my head like glue. Similarly, I can’t see the biblical book of Baruch and not think: “Baruch, Baruch, Baruch is on fire...” to the tune of some godforsaken ‘80s tune. 

Chris Wallace Was the Worst One on the Debate Stage

So last night I endured the “presidential” debate, which was as disappointing as I’d feared. Biden had a pulse - which was his main hurdle to clear - and Trump decided to go for broke on the aggression front.  The president had nothing to lose in one sense since he’s significantly behind in the polls, but by interrupting constantly he didn’t give Biden the chance to make his own noose. 

But it’s certainly not in Trump’s nature to have a passive approach where you let your enemy die of his own accord rather than through your agency. Harder to take credit that way and Trump is nothing if not a “credit man”. So it was pretty much a done deal and went down the way it had to.

But it was a dismal show in part because Chris Wallace, supposedly of Fox News, curtsied before the liberal colleague courtiers at ABC/NBC/NYT/etc in his coddling of Biden. No elder abuse by Sir Wallace! Trump had to talk about his leaked taxes while Biden got a pass on potential sinecures for his son Hunter. 

It seems to me Wallace is particularly keen on alternately displaying Beltway shallowness or liberal bias, exemplified by his woebegone initial questions:

1. Should Trump be nominating a justice this late in an election cycle? (Teenage girl silliness, another example of Wallace's capture by D.C. gossip and hysterics. “Oh, how dare Trump exercise the presidency all four years of his term!”) 

2. Obamacare, climate change, race.  (Lefties cheer! By choosing the questions you’re revealing your bias, your priorities.)

3. Covid-19, "why should Americans trust you?”  (Legit, I suppose, although it gives off the conceit that the president is a god who can repeal and replace natural disasters.) 

4. Crowd sizes at Trump campaign events as potential covid-spread. (Boring! That ship sailed when protests were given the green light.) 

5. Chris asks about the difference between a V-shaped recovery and a “K-shaped” one.  (Really? The dirty little secret is the economy is not something the president controls since we have a capitalistic system with something called “business cycles” and not a Communist command and control economy.)

6. Trump taxes, whereupon the Donald is asked if he only paid $750 last year. (Ad nauseam, another example of Wallace’s teenage girl shallowness, of being titilated by the fact that the tax code is stupid and trying to pin it on Trump.) 

The news division (not just opinion) of Fox News was intended and marketed to be the counter to PBS/NBC/ABC/CBS etc..., i.e. the fair and balanced alternative to slanted news.  And so it was - for awhile. By 2003, the pressure to present a more palatable face to liberal elites was enough to prompt the hire of Wallace who came from a 25+ year background in liberal news (Boston Globe/NBC/ABC) and was formed by those institutions. 

There’s an interesting parallel to this in justices on the Supreme Court where GOP-appointed justices are “supposed” to play it straight but there’s this ineluctable pull to the Left created by the hothouses of D.C. or New York.  And Wallace reminds me a bit of John Roberts, as far as being more interested in his reputation and that of his institution than in fairness.  

Policing By Strangers is the Problem

Good take on policing in a Gilbert article by Richard Vigilante recently:

___________________________________________________________________________________

 

Pat Exner has devoted his entire professional life to educating inner-city children. More than 90 percent of his are African American. In most years 100 percent of those who finish eighth grade at his elementary school go on to finish high school. Most graduate from four-year colleges.

 

Pat did not plan a career in education and certainly not among the poor. Thirty years ago he was headed to law school, when a priest, Fr. Greg Tolaas, changed his life.

 

“Put law school off for a year,” said Father. “Go down to Jamaica, where we help run a school, and teach the poor, you know, just for a year.”

 

A few weeks later Pat found himself in Jamaica. Hideous poverty, no text books, barely anything we’d recognize as a school. He did have a box of chalk.

 

Pat has been teaching the poor ever since.

 

Even more than most of us lately, Pat has been meditating on race and crime and police and gangs and the horrors we tolerate in our inner cities. As we were talking through the trauma of the last few weeks he told me a story.

 

“I was 17 years old. My buddies and I had gotten hold of some beers. We were down in the park drinking and not smart enough or sober enough to keep quiet. I’m like in mid-chug, when I hear a deep growl. ‘Exner! What the heck do you think you are doing!’

“It was Officer Dwight Alberry. He knew me. Even worse he knew my parents. And he dealt out the worst possible punishment. ‘Ok, here is what you are going to do. You are going to walk, not drive, home, right now. I will be right behind you. And then we are going to sit down with your parents and you are going to explain to them how you got this stupid. And you are not going to leave anything out because I’ll be listening.’”

And then Pat looked at me and said: “That’s what policing should be. And it all came down to one thing: Officer Alberry knew me and he knew my family. He was not a stranger.” Two years later they were playing on the same softball team.

 

I have no sympathy for gangs or local “leaders” of “autonomous zones” wielding AK 47s and Molotov cocktails. They are worse bullies than any cop. But they do have the germ of an idea, and it’s the right idea. G.K. Chesterton would have seen it.

 

In “The Napoleon of Notting Hill”, Chesterton imagines a country in which every neighborhood is a duchy, a quasi-independent fiefdom with its own regalia and traditions and putatively the power to control its own local affairs. Inevitably that power is challenged by the state and then ... well you’ll have to read it. I think it is his best novel.

The point is that it is a novel about self-government, a government in which the most important resources are not tax receipts but the human heart and the common sense that comes from what we actually hold in common with our neighbors, the common sense of Officer Alberry.

 

We have given up democracy for bureaucracy. We have replaced government of the people, by the people, and for the people, with occasional voting for we know not whom, who proceed to do we know not what, with most of the doing being done by civil servants we never chose and cannot dismiss, following not laws we have made but ‘regulations’ we never hear of until they are enforced upon on us.

 

Our neighborhoods are governed by strangers from far away, and some of those strangers are armed.

 

Yes, I know the statistics. I know most of what is said about police is unfair. Heather McDonald, the author of “The War on Cops”, which eviscerates the idea that police departments are systemically racist, is a friend of mine. I agree with her that racism is not the essential problem. And I believe that given the way police departments are organized, they probably do as good a job as could be reasonably expected.

But do they need to be organized as they are?

 

Imagine an autonomous zone idea, but minus the Molotov mixers and AK 47s. Imagine something more like Chesterton’s Notting Hill:

 

“A well-defined urban neighborhood, probably not less than a thousand families, but not as many as 5000. Everybody either knows everybody or knows somebody who knows them.”

 

The neighborhood has a local constabulary, patrolling the neighborhood on foot, greeting neighbors and shop keepers and picking up local gossip, hearing about local problems.

 

The patrolmen are not amateurs. They are professionals, trained at a police academy, employees of the municipal or state force. They are real cops; they can make arrests, issue summonses, all that. But they all understand that getting to know the neighbors is at the core of their job.

 

Now here is the key point—the patrolmen do not report to downtown. They report to a local official, let’s call him the Sheriff, elected by the families of the neighborhood. If the neighborhood needs other police services—detectives or what not—the sheriff can call them in from the state or municipal police. That is how subsidiarity works.

 

This is a police force actually governed by the neighborhood. If there is a scandal, it is a local scandal. If there is police brutality, or police laxity, it is on the sheriff and the community that chose the sheriff. If bad officers are not removed, that’s the sheriff ’s problem at election time.

 

Should the patrolmen be armed?

 

Not our job to decide. The neighborhood decides, either by referendum or by delegating that decision to the sheriff. The consequences of arming the police, or not, lie with the community.

 

What about drugs? It is often contended that drug arrests are a major source of friction between the police and urban neighborhoods.

 

Let the neighborhood decide. Kicking drug laws up to the Feds has been a disaster. Trying to stop the traffic ‘at the source,’ we engage in para military operations around the globe, shifting the trade to ever more vicious and violent characters who gather ever greater profits into ever bloodier hands. And the drugs keep coming.

 

Making drugs a local problem would likely mean more officers taking more teens home to their parents to explain how they got so stupid. The drug trade would not pay enough to buy ammunition for the AKs.

 

Self-government is not a trick to push political responsibility back to the neighborhood and avoid rioting—or make riots seem ridiculous, though it would do that. Self-government is both a product and a source of community. It depends not on docile subjects and strict enforcers but on citizens.

 

Not merely the riots, but the entire current political crisis, a crisis more likely to pull us apart than any we have seen since the civil war, comes down to this: We have allowed ourselves to be governed by strangers until we have become strangers to each other.”

Haunted Baltimore

Remembering last year’s trip to Baltimore, in the glory daze of pre-corona... (aka fun with black and white): 

Ten Second Guide to Current News

Your 10-Second Guide to the News Today: 

1. Trump accused of disparaging fallen soldiers. (Who could possibly care what Trump thinks? Unless he’s your husband or father.)

2. Trump said Sarah Sanders should take one for the team. (Now that’s funny!) 

3. Tom Seaver died. (God rest his soul!) 

4. Pelosi faux pas. (Power begets power: she can do as she wills because she’s untouchable in her district, which is because she’s powerful.) 

5. NBC Sports POD (Pious and Overly Devotional) intro to “controversial” song “My Old Kentucky Home” (vomit-inducing) 

6. Report finds that 93% of the time protests are peaceful. (Report finds that 93% of the time I don’t commit arson or loot. Yay me!) 

7. Shelby Steele comments on the grifters and the white guilt industrial complex (Anyone know a way to profit from WGIC, maybe futures contract?) 

8. Pro Athletes striking on account of a stranger resisting arrest: (Monopolies have their privileges.) 

9. Looting breaks out in Minneapolis again. (Fire sale, literally.) 

10. Media puts thumb, arm, legs, head on the scale. (“You elected Donald Trump so that’s why you can’t have nice things, like fairness in journalism.”) 

11. Black MBA students get professor placed on leave due to their mental health issues. (Sharpening business acumen using WGIC.) 

12. BLM: (Black-led organization necessary to remind itself that black lives matter given level of black-on-black crime.)

Risk Assessment from a Germaphobe

Who knew churchgoing could be so complicated?  I need a slide rule and a Geiger counter. Or something like that. It’s all very complicated. 

My sense is that fervent churches tend to make room for Covid, alas. Faith beats fear. 

Went to a Byzantine church today and they make limited concessions to the virus. Communion on the tongue only; I went up hoping I could receive in the hand but priest said “that’s not how we do it here” so I put my hands down and received on tongue. 

No ventilation, just A/C, and the liturgy is not shortened in recognition of that - over 1 hour when I rolled. 

Finally, everybody sings. A lot. Over half the service. Which makes corona happy. 

On the bright side there was a limited congregation (around 40) and appropriate spacing. Still, feels riskier than St. Margaret’s but then I’m no epidemiologist. 

St. Margaret’s: 

Back door open for ventilation. Crowd of about 80, socially distanced. Masks worn. Communion on hand only. A 45 minute liturgy. Limited congregation singing. 

Byzantine: 

No ventilation. Crowd of about 40, socially distanced. 3/4ths are masked. Communion on tongue only. 1 hour liturgy. Congregation singing. 

And of course the improved spiritual benefit of the Byzantine ought to outweigh the increased risk, which adds another layer of complexity to it.

Today’s hashtag is: #OverthinkingThings.

Disuniting

Interesting to hear this on Federalist Radio Hour pod of Spencer Klavan and Emily Jashinsky:

SK: “We conservatives think if we can argue ‘this doesn’t make any sense’ it will be effective...[But] nonsense is the point. Saying ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is a tactic to put [conservatives] on the back foot...I think there’s a point at which you say, ‘I’m not going to be able to argue you out of this crazy nonsense..the better thing to do is to offer people something truer and better and to offer it in a way that will play in the media landscape. That’s a really hard thing, to feed truth into Twitter, into social media.” 

EJ: “It is true that logic is not the way to win this battle, which is part of a larger culture war, about something so much deeper and bigger than one election...If we can’t rely on saying, ‘There are obviously two distinct biological sexes’, what is the pathway forward?” 

They speak my language. There’s certainly no reason to reason with political opponents anymore. It’s a hopeless cause wrapped in a despairing void. 

And from latest National Review, a review of Arthur Schlesinger’s 1991 book “Disuniting”: 

Schlesinger opens by observing that the Cold War is over and new wars have begun: not over ideology but over those old standbys: race, ethnicity, and tribe. As he proceeds, he quotes Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist who lived from 1930 to 2013. (It was he who wrote Things Fall Apart, whose title is borrowed from Yeats.) The greatest weakness of the Nigerians, Achebe said, is “their inability to face grave threats as one people instead of as competing religious and ethnic interests.”

For his part, and discussing America, Schlesinger warns that “the contemporary sanctification of the group threatens the old idea of a coherent society” — a society never based on race, ethnicity, or religion, but on “a common adherence to ideals of democracy and human rights.”

What Schlesinger wants to know is, “Will the center hold? Or will the melting pot give way to the Tower of Babel?” 

I had to smile — or did I more like grimace? — when reading Schlesinger on higher education: “The situation in our universities, I am confident, will soon right itself once the great silent majority of professors cry ‘enough’ and challenge what they know to be voguish blather.” I think Professor Schlesinger, 30 years later, would find himself still waiting...   

He also gives us this killer — and ungainsayable — sentence: “It is ironic that what the multiculturalists began as a joyous celebration of diversity ends as a grim crusade for conformity.”

Miami of Yore

This time of year always makes me think of Oxford, and on the campus of Miami there is a granite tablet with words dancing like Scripture on it: 

Trees of Miami, beautiful trees! 

What do you brood in your reveries?... 

Truth - remembrance - youth: of these 

You brood in your ancient reveries. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for unconventionals, like Thoreau, golfer Mac O’Grady, and the author of those words, Percy MacKaye. 

The latter held forth as “poet in residence” at Miami University exactly a century ago. How romantic  a notion to have a poet in residence? The university built him a cabin and there’s a picture of it amid the woods and snow looking very 19th century, like Walden cabin in Bishop woods. It was razed by the late ‘30s but his words live on, on that granite slab. 

The poet was hardly a magnet to students but I would expect nothing less. No poet is honored in his own country: 

“His first studio open house brought on a headache, his wife pressing cold cloths to his brow while a dozen students sat stiff and still in the firelight....They found the poet distantly friendly, with a basket of red apples on the table. While they munched apples and watched the fire, he read some stanzas from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.” 

Sounds like a happenin’ time to me. 

Not unreasonably the poet was drawn to the further removed, the remote folkways and hollows of Appalachia. “I can see Appalachia from here” he might’ve quipped, being just a score and twenty miles away.

_____

Speaking of days of yore, interesting to read of Charles Dickens’s 1842 trip through Ohio.  He went from Cincy to Columbus to Sandusky, staying at the Golden Lamb in Lebanon, still extant. I want to stay there sometime. 

Found online: 

“From Columbus to Tiffin, Ohio, the road was not macadamized...[tree stumps served as the roadway]. 

'He didn't like the sort of assertive nature of the American character, which I think is still with us,' said Jerome, who has studied Dickens' travels. 'And, of course, in Ohio, he was in the wilderness.'

The author of Oliver Twist (1837) and A Christmas Carol (1843) approved of Cincinnati but put down small towns such as Sandusky. He was grudging in his comments about Columbus.

'It is the seat of the state legislature of Ohio, and lays claim, in consequence, to some consideration and importance,’ Dickens wrote in American Notes (1842)."

Put More Jewish in Catholic High Schools

The great Amy Welborn recommended an article on the state of Catholic high school education and, as is so often the case, I read one article (or part of it!) and then have to track down some parallel line of thinking. I thought I’d do some research on what I could find about a couple of elite Catholic schools in Cincinnati that my nieces attended. (It's surprisingly hard to find a website that gives the culture of a given Catholic high school; for colleges it seems much easier.) 

Perhaps it is to be expected and always was so, but if you want a grim view of how unimportant Catholicism seems to be to Catholic school students, one could scarcely find a better example than reading the student reviews of their schools on Niche website. 

My “research”, flawed and anecdotal though it may be, found that the selling point of the 200+ reviews of the schools are: sports and academics, rinse and repeat. And absolutely career-focused. Yes the Niche commenters are self-selected and don’t represent those more religiously motivated. For comparison’s sake, I found this comment almost immediately regarding a random Jewish high school (TVT Community School):

“TVT was my first real in depth exposure to Judaism. I learned hebrew and judaica from teachers that genuinely cared about making sure students got the most out of every lesson possible.”

Another a bit farther down:

“I have learned many morals at TVT and have been given the opportunity to learn from some of the best teachers in their fields... The Jewish values stressed everyday makes this school welcoming, and gives us a desire to continue our Jewish practices beyond high school. one flaw, however, is the Hebrew department. The work in this class is often tedious and does not truly help teach the important words needed to go to have a conversation.”

Meanwhile, a typical and telling review of priorities: “Ask anyone familiar with Saint U. Academy, and they'll tell you that we take 2 things very seriously: academics and the sisterhood.” 

Which could be said of 99.9% of good non-Catholic high schools in the country. 

Another comment: “The girls who go there only care about materialism.” 

Which could be said of 99.9%....

The only review that seems to mentions religious does so concerning increased knowledge of others rather than her own: “I have been exposed to many different culture and religions in my time at Saint U. I have visited with various religious leaders of different practices and become familiar with foreign cultures.” 

 Niece K’s school doesn't rate any better:

“[The school's] beliefs tend to be more liberal than other traditional Catholic high schools in the area.” 

“I have loved the clubs here so much. Especially the gay straight alliance.”

“They are also very open to new clubs and offer things such as LGBT awareness club, multicultural club, interfaith club, etc.” 

“I’ve never heard of a Catholic/private school quite like mine. We even have a LGBTQ+ and Support club.”

Which again, you can find at any high school. Great, just great.

Thoughts on the Origin of the Assumption

So today’s the Assumption and I always hunger for more knowledge on why it’s August 15th. Seems random but also in a way very appropriate: this is the harvest season extraordinare.  Peaches, tomatoes, you name it.  And so there’s the image of Mary being “harvested” by God, a picture of the good wheat going to Heaven. No tares in her. 

The origins are murky, except that by the 7th century it was celebrated. Wikipedia mentions that it seems to have been a Christianization of an earlier harvest festival, but also points to the possibility of the goddess Isis having a birthdate nearby (Aug 12) and Christianizing that pagan day. Which is appropriate given today is Mary’s birthday in Heaven. 

I certainly don’t see anything wrong with that given that no one but Protestant apologists think Catholics worship Mary. (It’s akin to how only “woke” radicals think that black lives don’t matter to whites. Both of the following are “the sky is blue” statements for the vast majority of people: “black lives matter” and “Mary is not God” so in both cases there’s no need for whites or Catholics to feel defensive.)

Interestingly, in Ancient Rome, “the religious meaning of all Roman festivals was being forgotten or ignored even as the customs continued.”  The belief in the pagan gods was strong in Rome in, say, 1000BC but by 200AD the meaning had drained if the customs continued.  I think we’ve seen a similar thing with Christian feasts like St Patrick’s Day and St. Valentine’s Day, which are very light on religious meaning even if the customs continued. They could stand be re-Christianized. 

Wikipedia goes on to say: “In some cases, these customs became part of the combined classical and Christian culture of the Early Middle Ages.” Also:

This holiday, which has been celebrated since the fourth century CE, is a Christianization of an earlier harvest festival and, in many parts of Europe, is known as the Feast of Our Lady of the Harvest. For centuries celebrations were held in the honor of the goddess Isis of the Sea, who was born on this day according to mythology. With the coming of Christianity church leaders decided that the easiest way to handle this pagan ritual was to simply change it into a Christian holiday, hence the introduction of Assumption Day came forth...It is around the Roman Lychnapsia, or lamp-lit festival, that celebrated Isis's own birth on August 12.

Festivals of Isis and other polytheistic deities were celebrated throughout the fourth century CE, despite the growth of Christianity in that era and the persecution of pagans that intensified toward the end of the century. The Isia was celebrated at least as late as 417 CE, and the Navigium Isidis lasted well into the sixth century.

___ 

I’m no fan of Taylor Marshall, but he makes an interesting point that you had to protect Mary by not saying too much about her in NT writings lest she experience persecution:

Cases have been made that Galatians and 1 Peter are basically tracts on baptism...I believe that the New Testament speaks of the mysteries of the faith in clouded language on account of the fierce persecution that Christians received from both the Jews and the Romans.  Mary would have been revered, but to speak of her openly would have placed her danger.

___

Elsewhere, Amy Welborn often says things that uncomfortably hit too close to home.  She talks about how the emphasis on works of charity didn’t originate since Vatican II:

“No, Catholics did not get the message about faith-charity-justice since Vatican II. In fact, it was the opposite: charity was at the core of faith. People took Jesus in Matthew 25 at his word.

My evolving theory on how that changed during the course of the 20th century involves socio-economic factors: as in, with greater general prosperity and mobility, human beings were more able to segregate themselves and therefore shut themselves off from those in need and create little worlds where they could pretend they didn’t exist and the growth of ‘Real Faith = Me Following My Heart and I’m going to Heaven Anyway‘ instead of ‘Real Faith=Me Following Jesus’ Commands Or Else.‘

Eureka Moment

I was checking the evil empire (Facebook, although Google is far more evil) and saw the quote below by a local priest and experienced a moment of enlightenment.  He said, in part: 

“I was musing on the mentality of our country at the moment that, ‘You are not valuable unless people around you say you are valuable.’ Abortion is the lived expression of this idea. It is the ‘you have no value until I say’ put into action... HUMANS cannot convey existential worth. That only comes from God. We either recognize it or fail. [U.S. society is failing]."

Wow, that’s a key that unlocks a few locks in a post-Christian society. 

It helps explain the “sky is blue” slogan “Black Lives Matter”, which I'd considered either a thought-terminating cliche or a vacuous truth in service of the political - but could it also mean what it says and be a plea by blacks to be seen as valuable by other humans? (Although in the spirit of both/and, it’s also brilliant slogan because it can politically imply a huge swath from police reform to reparations to Marxism.) 

Fr.’s post also explains weird frequencies in pop culture like how on the TV series “Hannah” the despair the grown characters feel at not be wanted by their mothers, or given up by them, is a decent expression of human idolatry in a world without consciousness of God. 

John Denver’s 1977 Letter to Me

I’ll never forget John Denver’s reply to my letter.  I was an innocent kid and I'd asked him if the rumors were true that he used illegal drugs (marijuana).

He replied, “don’t let what you think about me get in the way of the value the music has for you.” At the time I thought it a cop-out, a non-answer, but I appreciate it anew all the time now and see the wisdom of it.

And his thoughts are certainly “contra the times” nowadays during our cancel culture, where professors, writers, public figures (and 15th century explorers) are deemed unworthy because of past bad deeds or thoughts.

Denver might’ve been my first experience of disappointment with a figure I esteemed but hardly the last. Now everybody and their brother has disappointed me: the U.S. voters, the FBI, CDC, Ireland, early Catholic bloggers who left the Faith, B. MacFarlane Jr., Cardinal McCarrick, Eric Gill, Herman Melville, Pope Francis (a very truncated list).

Part of it is that when I was a kid I had a disproportionate respect for adults, thinking them marvels of competency and goodness (at least compared to kids). I had a much more benign view of human nature back then before the disappointments. It’s not that I hadn’t learned much history, although I certainly could’ve learned a lot more, but I somehow felt that the era I lived in was different. I think it’s similar to how people who participate in a booming stock market feel "this time is different” even though all the indicators say the market should fall as it had in the past under similar conditions.

I felt it also because I’d come to political and religious awareness under the gauzy time of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. I read about the Medici popes but JP2 was not them, not even close, nor could the cardinal electors have been of the same quality to have elected JP2. I saw Communism fall, the Evil Empire gone. I saw the Reds win back-to-back World Series’s. I saw no U.S. wars or draft between 1975 and 1990. I could perhaps be forgiven for thinking I was living in a time when the era of “bad history” was gone.

But history comes back with a vengeance as does human nature. I knew intellectually that human nature doesn’t change and that people don’t get better with progress, but just didn’t have quite enough experience with it to bring it home.

Then came 9/11. And Bush’s wars. And Barack Obama. And the sudden conviction that half of cardinals are gay and that the gay mafia runs the Church. And that Pope Francis was coming to Make Catholicism Protestant Again (like in the early ‘70s). And of course the whole sordid tale of greed, sex, and corruption in the Church was beyond dispiriting.

But John Denver’s comment has stood the test of time. The value of the Catholic Church lay not in her hierarchy! “Don’t let the message of the gospel be lost by the actions of her members,” he might’ve said. Don’t let the appreciation of great books be lost if the writer was a horrible individual in his/her private life. Don’t let the value we feel for any artist be lost by the worst part of themselves. Don’t let the value we ought feel for our neighbor be lost by the positions they take or their actions. Easy to say, hard to do. Especially for an INSJ’r.