November 13, 2013
Sundry
Spectacular sunset on the way home from work today: massive, muscular
clouds surrounding streaming chords of color. Just the briefest of
glimpses possible since I was driving, but it felt important to
acknowledge it. As an Irish poem goes, “We wish to a new child / a
heart that can be beguiled by a flower.”
*
Bought my mom The Message: Catholic Ecumenical Version since she's ever confused by St. Paul's letters and I'm thinking that will help, even though it's a paraphrase and thus understandably frowned upon. It's amazing how the same verse, with the same meaning, can feel so different depending on how colloquial or formal the translation. It's all English and yet The Message sometimes makes me laugh, inappropriately, due to the informal language. Knox never does that. What I cannot know is how formal/informal the language sounded to the original listeners in the Greek or Hebrew. Of course languages change so fast that I suspect that for most of the past couple thousand years the language of the Bible has sounded slightly archaic and once it sounds fetchingly “other” and stylistically formal then it's hard to go back. Witness the KJV phenomenon.
*
Interesting comment on the Catholic Bibles blog:
*
There have been a lot news stories about the impending fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination and it's easy to see the killing as an unprovoked, senseless tragedy and wonder about what might have been had it not happened, especially in regards to Vietnam. One gets the feeling that if the motorcade had simply gone another way through Dallas bloodshed would've been avoided. But I'm not so sure.
Was the assassination unprovoked? Kennedy was reportedly bent on killing Fidel Castro. According to one book on the subject, this reckless foreign policy made the assassination appear likely. Certainly there would have been a lot of motivation for our leaders afterward to have tried to minimize Oswald's ties to Cuba and Russia as a face-saving measure, since they knew we couldn't risk a showdown with Cuba and thus the Soviet Union.
The phrase “lives by the sword, dies by the sword” came to mind and so I googled that with Kennedy's name and there's actually a book by that title with exactly that scenario, that Kennedy would've been killed by somebody sooner or later given all his (or the CIAs) persistent (and botched) attempts to kill Castro.
Certainly the whole U.S. practice of knocking off heads of state fell into disfavor immediately after the Kennedy assassination. Which is telling. There's the sense that we learned our lesson and even forty-some years later we refused to kill Saddam Hussein except in the context of a formally announced war.
It kind of makes the Kennedy myth less “romantic” given this feud with a leader of another country. Could the killing have been the rational act of a leader (Castro) who was trying to protect himself?
Patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. repeatedly told the young John Kennedy: “Can't you get it into your head that it's not important what you really are? The only important thing is what people think you are?” In that way Joe got his way. People think of JFK as a martyr whose death was as senseless as the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.
*
I was too young to remember the assassination, but my wife remembers it, even at two weeks shy of four years old. Says it might be her earliest memory. She was coming in from playing and saw her mom crying and, at the time, couldn't understand why she was crying about someone on tv. But she knew it was big.
I checked the weather records database for 11/22/63 in Columbus: high of 68. Clement weather for playing outdoors.
*
I feel that familiar post-baseball season malaise, a type of missing limb syndrome caused by the abrupt and final loss of that daily rhythm. The pure dailiness of baseball, with its scores and soap opera turns, is something I miss during the five long months without it. Other sports are sporadically interesting and frequently sporadic: pro basketball is the closest thing I suppose given the near dailiness of play but it's never been the same since LeBron left Cleveland. That was what drew me to pro basketball: the spectacle of a basketball genius available to be seen every day or three (since I'm in the Cleveland FoxSports television market). It's pretty hard to get used to Kenny G once you've heard Mozart.
*
Read more of the sobering Thomas Peters story. A saint in the making, and his wife of six months as well. I was struck dumb by how a priest said Peters' ministry was actually more effective now, to the extent Peters offers his suffers up.
Anyway, the Peters post was a useful reminder of how difficult some people have it and how easy I do. Today I was thinking about the Psalm that goes, very roughly, “I do not think about what is too deep for me, that which is beyond me.” In the past I've considered that meaning in my life to not try to imagine how the Trinity works, or how many will be saved, etc… But perhaps it could also mean I will not try to trod the paths of those who have experienced much greater pain than me, who have been asked to carry heavier crosses. Perhaps the “depth” that the Psalmist speaks can be thought of not only as the mysteries of God but the great mystery of suffering.
*
Tis the season: from First Things blog (Maureen M.):
*
Bought my mom The Message: Catholic Ecumenical Version since she's ever confused by St. Paul's letters and I'm thinking that will help, even though it's a paraphrase and thus understandably frowned upon. It's amazing how the same verse, with the same meaning, can feel so different depending on how colloquial or formal the translation. It's all English and yet The Message sometimes makes me laugh, inappropriately, due to the informal language. Knox never does that. What I cannot know is how formal/informal the language sounded to the original listeners in the Greek or Hebrew. Of course languages change so fast that I suspect that for most of the past couple thousand years the language of the Bible has sounded slightly archaic and once it sounds fetchingly “other” and stylistically formal then it's hard to go back. Witness the KJV phenomenon.
*
Interesting comment on the Catholic Bibles blog:
Do you think these 'themed' Bibles (like the “Social Justice Bible”) are really a good idea? It would certainly seem to question regard for the integrity of the text. It smacks a little of the 'medicine chest' approach of Gideons - go to page 80 if you're depressed etc. Coming from a Benedictine background I would certainly consider this approach as contrary to 'lectio'.
*
There have been a lot news stories about the impending fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination and it's easy to see the killing as an unprovoked, senseless tragedy and wonder about what might have been had it not happened, especially in regards to Vietnam. One gets the feeling that if the motorcade had simply gone another way through Dallas bloodshed would've been avoided. But I'm not so sure.
Was the assassination unprovoked? Kennedy was reportedly bent on killing Fidel Castro. According to one book on the subject, this reckless foreign policy made the assassination appear likely. Certainly there would have been a lot of motivation for our leaders afterward to have tried to minimize Oswald's ties to Cuba and Russia as a face-saving measure, since they knew we couldn't risk a showdown with Cuba and thus the Soviet Union.
The phrase “lives by the sword, dies by the sword” came to mind and so I googled that with Kennedy's name and there's actually a book by that title with exactly that scenario, that Kennedy would've been killed by somebody sooner or later given all his (or the CIAs) persistent (and botched) attempts to kill Castro.
Certainly the whole U.S. practice of knocking off heads of state fell into disfavor immediately after the Kennedy assassination. Which is telling. There's the sense that we learned our lesson and even forty-some years later we refused to kill Saddam Hussein except in the context of a formally announced war.
It kind of makes the Kennedy myth less “romantic” given this feud with a leader of another country. Could the killing have been the rational act of a leader (Castro) who was trying to protect himself?
Patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. repeatedly told the young John Kennedy: “Can't you get it into your head that it's not important what you really are? The only important thing is what people think you are?” In that way Joe got his way. People think of JFK as a martyr whose death was as senseless as the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.
*
I was too young to remember the assassination, but my wife remembers it, even at two weeks shy of four years old. Says it might be her earliest memory. She was coming in from playing and saw her mom crying and, at the time, couldn't understand why she was crying about someone on tv. But she knew it was big.
I checked the weather records database for 11/22/63 in Columbus: high of 68. Clement weather for playing outdoors.
*
I feel that familiar post-baseball season malaise, a type of missing limb syndrome caused by the abrupt and final loss of that daily rhythm. The pure dailiness of baseball, with its scores and soap opera turns, is something I miss during the five long months without it. Other sports are sporadically interesting and frequently sporadic: pro basketball is the closest thing I suppose given the near dailiness of play but it's never been the same since LeBron left Cleveland. That was what drew me to pro basketball: the spectacle of a basketball genius available to be seen every day or three (since I'm in the Cleveland FoxSports television market). It's pretty hard to get used to Kenny G once you've heard Mozart.
*
Read more of the sobering Thomas Peters story. A saint in the making, and his wife of six months as well. I was struck dumb by how a priest said Peters' ministry was actually more effective now, to the extent Peters offers his suffers up.
Anyway, the Peters post was a useful reminder of how difficult some people have it and how easy I do. Today I was thinking about the Psalm that goes, very roughly, “I do not think about what is too deep for me, that which is beyond me.” In the past I've considered that meaning in my life to not try to imagine how the Trinity works, or how many will be saved, etc… But perhaps it could also mean I will not try to trod the paths of those who have experienced much greater pain than me, who have been asked to carry heavier crosses. Perhaps the “depth” that the Psalmist speaks can be thought of not only as the mysteries of God but the great mystery of suffering.
*
Tis the season: from First Things blog (Maureen M.):
Cajoling the dead is a pragmatic measure, pre-Christian counterpoint to a religious shudder. Yet it is not without a certain tenderness. It suffers an understanding that living and dead are bound together in defiance of extermination.
Christian trust in the communion of saints is a stream fed by more than one spring.
When You've Lost Thomas Sowell...
Interesting to see Thomas Sowell so directly criticize the tea party. He be a truth-teller:
Third parties have had an unbroken record of failure in American presidential politics. So it was refreshing to see in the tea party an insurgent movement, mainly of people who were not professional politicians, but who nevertheless had the good sense to see that their only chance of getting their ideals enacted into public policies was within one of the two major parties.
More important, the tea party was an insurgent movement that was not trying to impose some untried Utopia, but to restore the lost heritage of America that had been eroded, undermined or just plain sold out by professional politicians....
The tea party’s principles were clear. But their tactics can only be judged by the consequences.
Since the tea party sees itself as the conservative wing of the Republican Party, its supporters might want to consider what was said by an iconic conservative figure of the past, Edmund Burke: “Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavours.”
Fundamentally, rational means the ability to make a ratio — that is, to weigh one thing against another. Burke makes a key distinction between believing in a principle and weighing the likely consequences of taking a particular action to advance that principle...
The only question then is: was defunding Obamacare within their power? Most people outside the tea party recognized that defunding Obamacare was also beyond their power — and events confirmed that.
It was virtually inconceivable from the outset that the tea party could force the Democrats who controlled the Senate to pass the defunding bill, even if the tea party had the complete support of all Republican senators — much less pass it with a majority large enough to override President Barack Obama’s certain veto.
Therefore, was the tea party-led attempt to defund Obama-care something that met Burke’s standard of a “rational endeavour”?
With the chances of making a dent in Obamacare by trying to defund it being virtually zero, and the Republican Party’s chances of gaining power in either the 2014 or 2016 elections being reduced by the public’s backlash against that futile attempt, there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose.
However difficult it might be to repeal Obamacare after it gets up and running, the odds against repeal, after the 2014 and 2016 elections, are certainly no worse than the odds against defunding it in 2013. Winning those elections would improve the odds.
If the tea party made a tactical mistake, that is not necessarily fatal in politics. People can even learn from their mistakes — but only if they admit to themselves that they were mistaken. Whether the tea party can do that may determine not only its fate but the fate of an America that still needs the principles that brought tea party members together in the first place.
November 05, 2013
Liberal Folly
Pluperfect liberal mindset displayed by Zeke Emmanuel on Fox News Sunday: "gov't didn't cancel policies, companies did!" High-laire that he could miss that government action triggers responses.
That seems sort of the Original Sin of liberalism, the failure to anticipate that private entities will change arrangements in the face of government intervention. Just ask the Soviet Union how all their "Five Year Plans" went...
That seems sort of the Original Sin of liberalism, the failure to anticipate that private entities will change arrangements in the face of government intervention. Just ask the Soviet Union how all their "Five Year Plans" went...
November 04, 2013
Detroit I Hardly Knew Ye (a triplog)
Occasionally in the course of human events it becomes necessary to go to the Columbus Zoo for a series of off-site work meetings. I made Friday pain-free by taking the afternoon off and thus avoiding the team-building scavenger hunt. Instead my wife joined me at noon-thirty and we started off in a deli, talking to a spry 83-year old woman from Charleston, WV who tries to visit the Columbus Zoo three or four times a year. She's been to forty-nine states - just missing (by a whisker) the border of Arkansas. (My thought is if you're going to miss a state, Arkansas is a good one.) She vows to make it there one day and heartily recommends swimming to keep one young.
Steph and I then hurried to the Water's Edge Pavilion after lunch to join my group for some hands-on experience with animals. We encountered a leopard, a penguin and a bear cat ("walked into a bar..."), the latter the mascot of the University of Cincy. "They're in the mongoose family and smell like buttered popcorn or Fritos,” said the handler and indeed they do, but then so does our dog's paws.
Then we were off on our own, slipping out the back, Jack, making new plans Stan… Spent some time with the elephants, the tigers, a lioness. Also saw the kangaroos but their area was locked up. They can jump 25 feet high, which is nearly beyond my frame of reference. That's over two basketball hoops high.
Seeing animals so big, especially the tiger (our cat multiplied about a hundred times) and the elephants, surprises me anew in the way the ocean sometimes does: as an aspect of a limitless Creator. A breath of fresh air the way art often provides. The beautiful pattern on the back of one of the reptiles. The thickness of a python. The snake took me aback again, despite having seen it before. My mind must've constricted it - no pun intended - over time. I must have narrowed and thus circumscribed what is possible and this rendered me capable of surprise anew. That these animals are real and not cartoon figures was driven home. Their brethren are in the wild, as we speak.
SATURDAY:
My welcome to the Islamic Republic of Michigan (just a joke!) came via a huge mosque, seemingly a mirage transplanted from Saudi Arabia, just off I-75 north outside Toledo. A pristine and clarion building with the familiarly sharp-pointed minarets. The moment was reinforced when I turned on the radio and heard a station in Arabic. I listened uncomprehendingly for a minute until I realized it was an advertisement for “Mercy Cemetery”, identified as such by the only two words in English. There's some multiculturalism. Add to that the next station on the dial was in French, and it seems I wasn't in Kansas or Ohio anymore.
The sign welcoming me to the Detroit city limits was, appropriately, accompanied by a forest of factory smokestacks emitting white smoke as if announcing a myriad of Habemus Papams. (The Vatican should call on Detroit to help with their white smoke problem.) Often a stereotype is there for a reason, and this was no-bones Detroit: unpretentious to the max. A squat cylinder was painted red, white and blue and festooned with Motor City tackiness. I felt a bit of adrenalin, driving through a strange city that has the reputation of being Dresden, 1944. (Overblown by the media, of course, but still it's supposedly a moving train-wreck of a city, a city on the decline -- thus a sense of urgency: see it now or forever hold your peace -- a city where modern ruins are a major attraction and about which books and documentaries have been made.)
Through the miracle of Onstar I found my way to the hotel which was a series of six restored Victorian homes. It was almost like a bread and breakfast. I received a cardkey to the house and a room key. I made my way up and opened the door to a surprisingly large suite only to find an unidentifiable package of some sort on the bed. This was odd, I thought. Then I discovered an opened suit case and I realized – uh oh! – I was in someone else's room. Glad no one was in there and no one caught in a compromising position.
I hoofed it back to the office and they realized their error and gave me the right room and key. This room was much smaller but still pleasantly adorned with windows and a view of autumnal trees and a picture book Victorian mansion across the street with no less than five decorative pointy spikes scattered across the roofs, like the kind you saw on German WWI helmets.
It was now 3:30 so I headed towards the Detroit Institute of the Arts, which would be closing at the tender hour of five. Reports of the Christie's auction house checking out the wares helped motivate this trip. The bankrupt city wouldn't sell its treasures, would it?
But first I couldn't resist crossing busy Woodward Ave and walking through the Detroit Public Library. As is often the case with old public libraries, the glaring difference between the old wings and newer ones is pronounced and damning to modernity. The '70s-style wood-paneled new wing looked like a failure of imagination or money or both. The old part was soaring architecture of the type we rarely see anymore with large mural-size art and beautifully-tiled ceilings. Isn't there something impressive about how in previous centuries they cared not only about the walls and floors but ceilings? There's a quality of design then that seems to eerily parallel our moral and social decline. Art imitating life. The new wing looks more like a high school hallway or an institution of incarceration, those two being roughly the same.
On one of the main billboard near the entrance there were flyers for coming events and exhibitions. One was honoring the Emancipation Proclamation, and the other was a call to join “The Bookmunchers Club”. “Come chew on a good book!” it said, adding that “Anyone in grades 3-5 is welcome.” They are beginning with Bud not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis and pictured a black man with a suitcase outside of what looked to be a factory. It didn't seem geared to grades 3-5 to me.
Around 4:15 I made it to the art museum and talked the guy at the front desk to let me in gratis since there was less than an hour left. He seemed non-committal until I mentioned I'd be back tomorrow. “You're on the honor system,” he said.
I walked past and immediately was struck by the pleasant indoor courtyard beneath me where you could have coffee or a snack. Definitely thought I'd have to hit that the next day, and visions of a bold roast coffee and iPad writing instrument danced in my head.
Then into the wondrous gallery of medieval Christian art. The works of Fra Angelico are stunning, a marvel. He paints like an angel indeed.
Saw an effigy carved perhaps in the 1300s of a dead German soldier. He probably would've been on his way to or from a crusade. They did carvings like this to commemorate the dead, to remember to pray for their soul. Now we cremate, leaving not even a tombstone to remember us by. Timely message on All Souls' Day. I thought about how odd that this image of a man, now dead for almost a thousand years, was once alive on earth with flesh like mine, and I thought about how much responsibility we have in our brief sojourn.
These medieval carvings, including those of saints or our Blessed Mother, have incredible detail and nuance of expression. The intelligence and knowingness of the sculptor comes through and I couldn't help but think about the seeming dichotomy between a people who were backward in ways medical and hygienic, but who were capable of feats of such devotional art and wisdom. It brings home again how little scientific advances and better sanitation have changed our innate nature. It's hard to feel superior to prior generations when you see what they were capable of in terms of art, architecture, writing, music, saintliness. There was also part of a Gothic cathedral on display and I was drawn to the holy water font and I put my hand in the dry font and imagined all the hands, now long in their grave, who put their hands in that same font to bless themselves.
Later I happened across what I immediately christened in my mind as the tomb of the unknown saint. It was a reliquary of a saint's bone, the saint being unknown, and so I prayed briefly to him or her. Saw the benches from a convent of the 1500s, labeled “Nuns Sat Here”.
It's odd how art like this can alter your perspective of things that you've read about a million times. There was a scene of Jesus at the garden of Gethsamene, and he is praying that the cup be taken away from him, and just with the juxtaposition of many sleeping apostles in the painting you get the feeling that part of Our Lord's human reluctance was due to the poor support he was getting from those for whom he would be dying. I'd always imagined the scene was completely and solely motivated by the understandable desire to avoid the unimaginable pain and humiliation of crucifixion.
After the museum closed I jogged down Woodward to see what might be worth seeing. Came across my first ruin: the former Caribbean and American Bar and Grill, now marked with the cryptic graffiti “Vote NOBE! NCP”. I put my face through a cracked window and saw a ruined staircase, ala the ruins of the Titanic on the ocean floor. I then wondered what sort of asbestos and other bad things I was breathing in and recoiled.
Walked by an old Catholic Church that might've been defunct. It's always a bad sign when the front door is locked despite there being a Mass going on (in this case 5:15 Saturday night). I would hate to miss Mass again today after missing on All Saints' Day, although admittedly the latter wasn't my fault. Our priest was jet-lagged after a trip to Italy, went to bed at 2pm and woke up at 7:30 for our 7pm Mass! That's the first time I went to Mass and there was no priest to be had.
*
Later at the inn, watched a bit of the Detroit City Council on the boob tube. (Sad, I know.) Boringly low-key. No drama, just a carefully coifed black man at the head, ticking off agenda items calmly. Certainly you'd never know the city was bankrupt. When public was allowed to speak at end I thought: “here come the fireworks!” But nada.
SUNDAY:
Breakfast at the main house: scrambled eggs, fruit, banana and peanut butter on banana bread. Some bacon or sausage would've been nice but hey the price was right. Killed some time reading in the pleasant Victorian drawing room with the quiet tick of the grandfather clock. Killed more time reading the Detroit Free Press, Sunday edition, on Kindle. Felt like I'd experienced a surfeit of journalism of late. The hotel provides free WSJ, NY Times and USA Today but not a local paper. Too much bad local news? Scares off tourists?
Then to 10am Mass, an adventure to be sure. Bad mass alert! Liturgically sensitive readers forewarned. Old Romanesque church built in the 1800s, the liturgy was full of surprises. First off, the church had an interesting layout: chairs were arranged in two large sections: up front around the altar and in back around a lectern. Everyone was sitting in the circle in the back and so I copped a seat there. Mass was late beginning; turned out the priest, a Capuchin, was late due to road construction (an exit was closed). He was young, thin and wore tennis shoes under his green robe.
A more eccentric place you'd be hard pressed to find. The main cross up front was two crossed planks with words on pieces of paper pasted to it: words like “racism”, “mental illness”, “loneliness”.
People were talking like it was a social event, and one elderly black woman came over and said I looked so much like so-and-so, and of course I had no idea who so-and-so was, much less was a I member of that family. An elderly gentlemen in front of me was exposing a distressing amount of the cleft of his butt.
Finally Mass started with a boom: a full drum/electric guitar set roared to life. This all felt like a cross between the non-denominational Vineyard service, a black Pentecostal one and the Catholic Mass. One black guy in back, wearing a baseball cap, would erupt with loud “Alleluia's” and “Amens” at irregular intervals and was quite startling. You don't normally hear a loud “Amen” during the first reading. He had large 3'by3' pads under his feet in front of his chair so that he could stomp without either hurting his legs or making as much noise.
There was so much to take in that I was a bit overwhelmed. One of the bigger surprises was how after the creed, everyone got up, gathered their coats and appeared to be leaving. Turns out it was a mass migration (no pun intended) to the altar! One lady came by, surely seeing my bewilderment at Mass being apparently over and when I asked what was going on she said that they like to “change things up” and move.
The homily was about St. Martin de Porres, whose feast is tomorrow. Zaccheus got a quick mention at the end, but you could tell the Capuchin had a heart for St. Martin, saying that he was at his grave in Ecuador five years ago, a flat marble grave that pilgrims lay on and grasp the rings at the front of it.
The petitions were extremely interactive. About a dozen people asked for prayers, including some gut-wrenching stories of cancer and terminal illness. Two for relatives going through “rehabilitation”.
Now settled in the new seat, I was game for whatever could be thrown at me. Oddly, there was no offertory collection from what I could see although a guy in front of me had an envelope in his hand. Naturally at the “Our Father” everyone held hands, and since there wasn't anyone to my immediate right or left it was a long stretch for me. Then came the Sign of Peace and you can't imagine it. Pandemonium. It was like intermission at a play but more boisterous. Everyone got up and shook everybody else's hand. I didn't move from my chair and still shook at least twenty hands. It went on like this for about ten minutes.
The responses to liturgical prayers weren't according to Hoyle either. No “and with your spirits”, but “and also with you”, although sometimes “amen” was the response. There appeared to be a lively variety although you could tell their hearts weren't much in the responses anyway.
The rousing “Amen!” played with electric guitar and drums was surreally jarring coming right after the somber eucharistic prayer. The mix of the popular and the sacred was sort of whiplash-inducing.
Eventually the “Lamb of God” was sung, albeit over commotion and talking. Then Communion. And then, without announcement, people just starting coming up to the priest and to other folks and meeting one-on-one. I've seen this before at the Vineyard, where people ask others to pray over them, so this wasn't unfamiliar. If I hadn't been to a Vineyard service I'm sure this would've completely and utterly confused me.
I headed out while the individual pray-ers were doing their thing. You can certainly see the catholicity of the Catholic Church in a place like this. And I think I shook the hand of Snoop Dogg.
Steph and I then hurried to the Water's Edge Pavilion after lunch to join my group for some hands-on experience with animals. We encountered a leopard, a penguin and a bear cat ("walked into a bar..."), the latter the mascot of the University of Cincy. "They're in the mongoose family and smell like buttered popcorn or Fritos,” said the handler and indeed they do, but then so does our dog's paws.
Then we were off on our own, slipping out the back, Jack, making new plans Stan… Spent some time with the elephants, the tigers, a lioness. Also saw the kangaroos but their area was locked up. They can jump 25 feet high, which is nearly beyond my frame of reference. That's over two basketball hoops high.
 |
| Actual real "live" ruin! |
SATURDAY:
My welcome to the Islamic Republic of Michigan (just a joke!) came via a huge mosque, seemingly a mirage transplanted from Saudi Arabia, just off I-75 north outside Toledo. A pristine and clarion building with the familiarly sharp-pointed minarets. The moment was reinforced when I turned on the radio and heard a station in Arabic. I listened uncomprehendingly for a minute until I realized it was an advertisement for “Mercy Cemetery”, identified as such by the only two words in English. There's some multiculturalism. Add to that the next station on the dial was in French, and it seems I wasn't in Kansas or Ohio anymore.
The sign welcoming me to the Detroit city limits was, appropriately, accompanied by a forest of factory smokestacks emitting white smoke as if announcing a myriad of Habemus Papams. (The Vatican should call on Detroit to help with their white smoke problem.) Often a stereotype is there for a reason, and this was no-bones Detroit: unpretentious to the max. A squat cylinder was painted red, white and blue and festooned with Motor City tackiness. I felt a bit of adrenalin, driving through a strange city that has the reputation of being Dresden, 1944. (Overblown by the media, of course, but still it's supposedly a moving train-wreck of a city, a city on the decline -- thus a sense of urgency: see it now or forever hold your peace -- a city where modern ruins are a major attraction and about which books and documentaries have been made.)
Through the miracle of Onstar I found my way to the hotel which was a series of six restored Victorian homes. It was almost like a bread and breakfast. I received a cardkey to the house and a room key. I made my way up and opened the door to a surprisingly large suite only to find an unidentifiable package of some sort on the bed. This was odd, I thought. Then I discovered an opened suit case and I realized – uh oh! – I was in someone else's room. Glad no one was in there and no one caught in a compromising position.
I hoofed it back to the office and they realized their error and gave me the right room and key. This room was much smaller but still pleasantly adorned with windows and a view of autumnal trees and a picture book Victorian mansion across the street with no less than five decorative pointy spikes scattered across the roofs, like the kind you saw on German WWI helmets.
It was now 3:30 so I headed towards the Detroit Institute of the Arts, which would be closing at the tender hour of five. Reports of the Christie's auction house checking out the wares helped motivate this trip. The bankrupt city wouldn't sell its treasures, would it?
But first I couldn't resist crossing busy Woodward Ave and walking through the Detroit Public Library. As is often the case with old public libraries, the glaring difference between the old wings and newer ones is pronounced and damning to modernity. The '70s-style wood-paneled new wing looked like a failure of imagination or money or both. The old part was soaring architecture of the type we rarely see anymore with large mural-size art and beautifully-tiled ceilings. Isn't there something impressive about how in previous centuries they cared not only about the walls and floors but ceilings? There's a quality of design then that seems to eerily parallel our moral and social decline. Art imitating life. The new wing looks more like a high school hallway or an institution of incarceration, those two being roughly the same.
On one of the main billboard near the entrance there were flyers for coming events and exhibitions. One was honoring the Emancipation Proclamation, and the other was a call to join “The Bookmunchers Club”. “Come chew on a good book!” it said, adding that “Anyone in grades 3-5 is welcome.” They are beginning with Bud not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis and pictured a black man with a suitcase outside of what looked to be a factory. It didn't seem geared to grades 3-5 to me.
Around 4:15 I made it to the art museum and talked the guy at the front desk to let me in gratis since there was less than an hour left. He seemed non-committal until I mentioned I'd be back tomorrow. “You're on the honor system,” he said.
I walked past and immediately was struck by the pleasant indoor courtyard beneath me where you could have coffee or a snack. Definitely thought I'd have to hit that the next day, and visions of a bold roast coffee and iPad writing instrument danced in my head.
Then into the wondrous gallery of medieval Christian art. The works of Fra Angelico are stunning, a marvel. He paints like an angel indeed.
Saw an effigy carved perhaps in the 1300s of a dead German soldier. He probably would've been on his way to or from a crusade. They did carvings like this to commemorate the dead, to remember to pray for their soul. Now we cremate, leaving not even a tombstone to remember us by. Timely message on All Souls' Day. I thought about how odd that this image of a man, now dead for almost a thousand years, was once alive on earth with flesh like mine, and I thought about how much responsibility we have in our brief sojourn.
These medieval carvings, including those of saints or our Blessed Mother, have incredible detail and nuance of expression. The intelligence and knowingness of the sculptor comes through and I couldn't help but think about the seeming dichotomy between a people who were backward in ways medical and hygienic, but who were capable of feats of such devotional art and wisdom. It brings home again how little scientific advances and better sanitation have changed our innate nature. It's hard to feel superior to prior generations when you see what they were capable of in terms of art, architecture, writing, music, saintliness. There was also part of a Gothic cathedral on display and I was drawn to the holy water font and I put my hand in the dry font and imagined all the hands, now long in their grave, who put their hands in that same font to bless themselves.
Later I happened across what I immediately christened in my mind as the tomb of the unknown saint. It was a reliquary of a saint's bone, the saint being unknown, and so I prayed briefly to him or her. Saw the benches from a convent of the 1500s, labeled “Nuns Sat Here”.
It's odd how art like this can alter your perspective of things that you've read about a million times. There was a scene of Jesus at the garden of Gethsamene, and he is praying that the cup be taken away from him, and just with the juxtaposition of many sleeping apostles in the painting you get the feeling that part of Our Lord's human reluctance was due to the poor support he was getting from those for whom he would be dying. I'd always imagined the scene was completely and solely motivated by the understandable desire to avoid the unimaginable pain and humiliation of crucifixion.
After the museum closed I jogged down Woodward to see what might be worth seeing. Came across my first ruin: the former Caribbean and American Bar and Grill, now marked with the cryptic graffiti “Vote NOBE! NCP”. I put my face through a cracked window and saw a ruined staircase, ala the ruins of the Titanic on the ocean floor. I then wondered what sort of asbestos and other bad things I was breathing in and recoiled.
Walked by an old Catholic Church that might've been defunct. It's always a bad sign when the front door is locked despite there being a Mass going on (in this case 5:15 Saturday night). I would hate to miss Mass again today after missing on All Saints' Day, although admittedly the latter wasn't my fault. Our priest was jet-lagged after a trip to Italy, went to bed at 2pm and woke up at 7:30 for our 7pm Mass! That's the first time I went to Mass and there was no priest to be had.
*
Later at the inn, watched a bit of the Detroit City Council on the boob tube. (Sad, I know.) Boringly low-key. No drama, just a carefully coifed black man at the head, ticking off agenda items calmly. Certainly you'd never know the city was bankrupt. When public was allowed to speak at end I thought: “here come the fireworks!” But nada.
SUNDAY:
Breakfast at the main house: scrambled eggs, fruit, banana and peanut butter on banana bread. Some bacon or sausage would've been nice but hey the price was right. Killed some time reading in the pleasant Victorian drawing room with the quiet tick of the grandfather clock. Killed more time reading the Detroit Free Press, Sunday edition, on Kindle. Felt like I'd experienced a surfeit of journalism of late. The hotel provides free WSJ, NY Times and USA Today but not a local paper. Too much bad local news? Scares off tourists?
Then to 10am Mass, an adventure to be sure. Bad mass alert! Liturgically sensitive readers forewarned. Old Romanesque church built in the 1800s, the liturgy was full of surprises. First off, the church had an interesting layout: chairs were arranged in two large sections: up front around the altar and in back around a lectern. Everyone was sitting in the circle in the back and so I copped a seat there. Mass was late beginning; turned out the priest, a Capuchin, was late due to road construction (an exit was closed). He was young, thin and wore tennis shoes under his green robe.
A more eccentric place you'd be hard pressed to find. The main cross up front was two crossed planks with words on pieces of paper pasted to it: words like “racism”, “mental illness”, “loneliness”.
People were talking like it was a social event, and one elderly black woman came over and said I looked so much like so-and-so, and of course I had no idea who so-and-so was, much less was a I member of that family. An elderly gentlemen in front of me was exposing a distressing amount of the cleft of his butt.
Finally Mass started with a boom: a full drum/electric guitar set roared to life. This all felt like a cross between the non-denominational Vineyard service, a black Pentecostal one and the Catholic Mass. One black guy in back, wearing a baseball cap, would erupt with loud “Alleluia's” and “Amens” at irregular intervals and was quite startling. You don't normally hear a loud “Amen” during the first reading. He had large 3'by3' pads under his feet in front of his chair so that he could stomp without either hurting his legs or making as much noise.
There was so much to take in that I was a bit overwhelmed. One of the bigger surprises was how after the creed, everyone got up, gathered their coats and appeared to be leaving. Turns out it was a mass migration (no pun intended) to the altar! One lady came by, surely seeing my bewilderment at Mass being apparently over and when I asked what was going on she said that they like to “change things up” and move.
The homily was about St. Martin de Porres, whose feast is tomorrow. Zaccheus got a quick mention at the end, but you could tell the Capuchin had a heart for St. Martin, saying that he was at his grave in Ecuador five years ago, a flat marble grave that pilgrims lay on and grasp the rings at the front of it.
The petitions were extremely interactive. About a dozen people asked for prayers, including some gut-wrenching stories of cancer and terminal illness. Two for relatives going through “rehabilitation”.
Now settled in the new seat, I was game for whatever could be thrown at me. Oddly, there was no offertory collection from what I could see although a guy in front of me had an envelope in his hand. Naturally at the “Our Father” everyone held hands, and since there wasn't anyone to my immediate right or left it was a long stretch for me. Then came the Sign of Peace and you can't imagine it. Pandemonium. It was like intermission at a play but more boisterous. Everyone got up and shook everybody else's hand. I didn't move from my chair and still shook at least twenty hands. It went on like this for about ten minutes.
The responses to liturgical prayers weren't according to Hoyle either. No “and with your spirits”, but “and also with you”, although sometimes “amen” was the response. There appeared to be a lively variety although you could tell their hearts weren't much in the responses anyway.
The rousing “Amen!” played with electric guitar and drums was surreally jarring coming right after the somber eucharistic prayer. The mix of the popular and the sacred was sort of whiplash-inducing.
Eventually the “Lamb of God” was sung, albeit over commotion and talking. Then Communion. And then, without announcement, people just starting coming up to the priest and to other folks and meeting one-on-one. I've seen this before at the Vineyard, where people ask others to pray over them, so this wasn't unfamiliar. If I hadn't been to a Vineyard service I'm sure this would've completely and utterly confused me.
I headed out while the individual pray-ers were doing their thing. You can certainly see the catholicity of the Catholic Church in a place like this. And I think I shook the hand of Snoop Dogg.
October 31, 2013
Trucker Studies
Link here...
Warning: Driving a truck for a living can be hazardous to your health — if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, researchers say....They had a hunch that truck drivers might be vulnerable, because previous studies had suggested that long-term exposure to the kind of “whole-body vibration” endured by men working with heavy equipment could increase prostate-cancer risk.It’s unclear why this would be, but one possibility is that the vibration prompts the body to produce more testosterone, which is a known risk factor for prostate cancer.
Now I don't know nuthin' about truckin' or prostrate cancer, but what I always wonder about with studies like these is whether they take into account that there's some self-selection going on, that likely men with higher testosterone levels go into trucking or other heavy equipment work.
Surely - surely! - they've thought of that but they don't mention it in the article which is another reason to be skeptical. Or are they not allowed to think that because that would be "politically incorrect" for reasons unclear?
Surely - surely! - they've thought of that but they don't mention it in the article which is another reason to be skeptical. Or are they not allowed to think that because that would be "politically incorrect" for reasons unclear?
October 30, 2013
The War on Us
From American Catholic:
It seems a kind of sickness, this need for safety so pronounced that we spy our friendly leaders like Germany's Merkel. I think something in our national psyche went haywire after 9/11.
It's a ridiculously trivial example, but this past summer I headed to a local metro park (paid for with our tax dollars) for a little kayaking and snorkeling in the lake. There was a "no swimming" sign, of course, but I figured that was to cover themselves legally in the case of drowning. I was in a secluded area for just a few minutes, looking at some yellow fish and a fine-looking turtle the size of my palm. I was spotted by a couple park rangers who raced over like I was a four-alarm fire they intended to put out, and I expected a good chewing out. I was ready to take my verbal lumps.
"Were you swimming?"
"Yes, just a bit."
Then, instead of a warning they said, "have you got identification?"
This was unexpected. Identification for swimming? What kind of police state are we running here?
"Nope." I said.
"Meet us at your vehicle," one of them huffed.
I kayaked back to my vehicle and found the red carpet was all laid out for me. The flashing lights of the park ranger vehicle were on, another vehicle as well, and four rangers were there in case I attempted to flee after the dastardly crime of swimming in a lake.
The head ranger dude came up and demanded identification, which I had in my truck and produced.
After five minutes of running my record and examining my emails via the Park Ranger database's connectivity with the National Security Agency, I was free to go. (The latter a joke. I think.)
Increasingly many Americans, most, but not all, conservative and/or religious, are being treated as enemies to be subdued by their own government. Angelo M. Codevilla in a brilliant post at the Library of Liberty and Law faces the issue squarely:It does seem like there's an unseemly aggressiveness of government at all levels. I'm amazed and disheartened by the militarization of non-military government entities and there's a new level of surveillance even at the most local of levels.
Increasingly, the US government’s many police forces (often state and local ones as well) operate militarily and are trained to treat ordinary citizens as enemies. At the same time, the people from whom the government personnel take their cues routinely describe those who differ from them socially and politically as illegitimate, criminal, even terrorists. Though these developments have separate roots, the post-9/11 state of no-win war against anonymous enemies has given them momentum. The longer it goes on, the more they converge and set in motion a spiral of civil strife all too well known in history, a spiral ever more difficult to stop short of civil war. Even now ordinary Americans are liable to being disadvantaged, hurt or even killed by their government as never before.
It seems a kind of sickness, this need for safety so pronounced that we spy our friendly leaders like Germany's Merkel. I think something in our national psyche went haywire after 9/11.
It's a ridiculously trivial example, but this past summer I headed to a local metro park (paid for with our tax dollars) for a little kayaking and snorkeling in the lake. There was a "no swimming" sign, of course, but I figured that was to cover themselves legally in the case of drowning. I was in a secluded area for just a few minutes, looking at some yellow fish and a fine-looking turtle the size of my palm. I was spotted by a couple park rangers who raced over like I was a four-alarm fire they intended to put out, and I expected a good chewing out. I was ready to take my verbal lumps.
"Were you swimming?"
"Yes, just a bit."
Then, instead of a warning they said, "have you got identification?"
This was unexpected. Identification for swimming? What kind of police state are we running here?
"Nope." I said.
"Meet us at your vehicle," one of them huffed.
I kayaked back to my vehicle and found the red carpet was all laid out for me. The flashing lights of the park ranger vehicle were on, another vehicle as well, and four rangers were there in case I attempted to flee after the dastardly crime of swimming in a lake.
The head ranger dude came up and demanded identification, which I had in my truck and produced.
After five minutes of running my record and examining my emails via the Park Ranger database's connectivity with the National Security Agency, I was free to go. (The latter a joke. I think.)
October 28, 2013
Stars in Their Courses
From the book of Baruch (“One biblical scholar has summed up this book as 'spirituality for displaced persons.' Isn't that what we need right now?” - William Griffith):
“Stars twinkle and blink and seem quite happy in his company. When he calls, they say, 'We're already here,' blinking and twinkling with joy at the one who made them.” - The Message
“Joyfully the stars shine out, keeping the watches he has appointed, answer when he calls their muster-roll, and offer their glad radiance to him who fashioned them.” - Knox
“the stars shine joyfully at their posts; when he calls them, they answer, ‘Here we are’; they shine to delight their Creator.” - New JerusalemFound via a Daria Sockey post:
This past Saturday's first reading from the Office of Readings (Baruch3:9-15) again delighted me with words about the stars:
He...before whom the stars at their postsIt's like something out of a child's fairy tale, transforming these vast balls of burning gas into a persons, and friendly ones at that. In fact it transforms them into children eager to please their Father.
shine and rejoice;
When He calls them,
they answer, "Here we are!"
shining with joy for their Maker.
This verse puts me in mind of two things. First, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader it is revealed that the stars of Narnia are rational beings, who after their long lives in the heavens may come to live down on earth.
Second, I think of medieval theology, which explains that the movement of the stars and the planets is supervised by the angels: that God delegates some of his ongoing work in holding all creation together to his mightiest servants. One can read these words and picture the angels, joyful in doing the work God has given them, shouting out their nightly greetings to their Creator.
Third, every created thing, rational or non-rational, animate or inanimate, truly does offer praise to its creator simply by doing that which it was created to do. So this scripture verse reminds me of how blessed are the stars, how happy they would be if they were rational, because they do fulfill God's will perfectly. In this we might well envy them.
Then, I read today's (Sunday's) second reading from the OOR, where St. Clement's letter to the Corinthians takes up the topic of order and obedience in nature.
By his direction the heavens are in motion, and they are subject to him in peace. Day and night fulfill the course he has established without interfering with each other. The sun, the moon and the choirs of stars revolve in harmony at his command in their appointed paths without deviation.
Google Self-Indulgence Alert
A minor thing, but symbolic of something larger I think.
Today the Google homepage features "Edith Head's 116 Birthday". I'd never heard of her but apparently she's a fashion designer (I searched via Bing to avoid giving Google the satisfaction).
Google used to avoid adorning their page with their pet people and issues, but a lack of self-restraint, so prominent these days, has shown itself over the past few years.
How long before C-Span will lose its aura of non-partisanship and almost preternatural lack of self-indulgence? I assume when Brian Lamb dies.
Today the Google homepage features "Edith Head's 116 Birthday". I'd never heard of her but apparently she's a fashion designer (I searched via Bing to avoid giving Google the satisfaction).
Google used to avoid adorning their page with their pet people and issues, but a lack of self-restraint, so prominent these days, has shown itself over the past few years.
How long before C-Span will lose its aura of non-partisanship and almost preternatural lack of self-indulgence? I assume when Brian Lamb dies.
Prices...1955 and Now
My sister recently forwarded me one of those nostalgia-twinged emails about the high cost of 1955 living (high to them). Inflation since 1955 results in things costing about 11 times more now and it was interesting to see what was over the rate of inflation and what wasn't.
Food, auto, postage stamps, hamburgers all came in at or under the rate of inflation (and surprisingly, gasoline isn't too far off).
Cigarettes, baseball salaries, hotel room, day at the hospital and haircuts have have all soared, some astronomically. (I was especially aggrieved at hotel room costs.)
American are spending less on essentials but with far less savings to show for it (and what's interesting on the housing side is houses are so much bigger than in 1973):
Food, auto, postage stamps, hamburgers all came in at or under the rate of inflation (and surprisingly, gasoline isn't too far off).
Cigarettes, baseball salaries, hotel room, day at the hospital and haircuts have have all soared, some astronomically. (I was especially aggrieved at hotel room costs.)
Week's worth of groceries was $10 ($110)Politicians talk about the woes of the middle class (without doing much) but the data below seems to suggest that we're much better off than in 1973, or would be without debt payments.
New Car $2,000 ($22K)
Cigarettes: 20cents a pack ($2.20)
Stamp: 7 cents (77 cents)
Min Wage: $1 ($11)
Gas: 20 cents ($2.20)
Highest paid baseball player: $50K ($550K)
Hamburger McDonald's = 15 cents ($1.65)
Hotel room = $2.00 a night ($22)
Day in Hospital = $15 ($165)
Haircut = 30 cents ($3.30)
American are spending less on essentials but with far less savings to show for it (and what's interesting on the housing side is houses are so much bigger than in 1973):
By Walter HamiltonThe average person spends 81.2 percent of his or her post-tax income on food, housing and other expenses, according to ConvergEx Group, a New York brokerage.
That’s down from the 85 percent that Americans shelled out for mandatory and discretionary items in 1973.
“In short,” the report says, “spending — and saving — among American consumers is changing, and not necessarily for the better.”
The U.S. savings rate is a fraction of what it used to be: 4.6 percent today versus 13 percent four decades ago, according to the report.
“Where are we putting the extra money? Not into retirement accounts, stocks or bonds, clearly,” the report says.
In 1973, according to ConvergEx, the average American had post-tax income of $9,700. Annual spending was $8,270, or 85 percent of income.
Income has risen to about $63,000 today, but per-person expenditures average only 81.2 percent.
October 24, 2013
Poetry Corner
Thomas DeFreitas writes vivid poems:
America, As Promised
Team-building exercises, twister and cribbage,
touch football near the shady picnic tables,
hangman in the breakroom, coffee-gossip,
Biff and Marty playing Trivial Pursuit.
Individual couples therapy, your midlife crisis
solved for the fee of ninety bucks an hour:
roving eye, boudoir stare, those cocktails of
opportunity, wedding band in jacket pocket.
Pilates and Yoga and Zen dentristry
(what is the sound of one tooth decaying?),
lesbian ergonomics! fundamentalist feng shui!
O proselytizing peepshow pleaser, brace me
after the fourth Glenlivet; O gender-neutral
apostle of fairness, incentivize me to groupify!
*
The Red Line
I should have written it down, the one about
the fetishist in the subway, with a metric converter
and several hectograms of lechery in his lunchbox.
It's gonna be a tough commute, said the T cop
who pronounced "Ashmont" to rhyme with "parchment."
Stand behind the yellow line. If you see any lubricious
activity, alert an MBTA official. We are experiencing
moderate delays in service. The next train to Alewife
is now arriving. Brogues, clogs, flip-flops, wedges,
heels, flats, sandals, sneakers on the escalator.
A drunk on the platform, counting the riders' toes,
lapses into metatarsal reverie, fueled by cheap gin.
For plaintive yearnings or exultations, call
(617) 222-3200. Tomorrow the T will operate
on a Saturday schedule. Don't forget your personal
longings. Thank you for riding the MBTA.
*
Sweet airheads of Enlightenment, forsooth,
bandy progressive nostrums, put bright stickers
on their hybrid's bumper, "End This Endless War!"
and "Re-elect Dronestrike in 2012!"
Insufferable twerps of Tolerance politely
abort veracity in the fourth trimester,
execute beauty over a mocha frappuccino,
terminate freedom for everyone except...
The Terrain of Sørland
Nice to read a physical book sometimes, especially one so handsome as the Salinger oral biography. Reading about him invariably reminds me of my old high school English teacher who loved Salinger.Mr. R. seems a puzzlement to me in part because I wonder how he came to such appreciation for an author who wrote books about the modern malaise and the themes of alienation and suicide. He seems so … mentally healthy and with such a superficially uneventful life that you'd think he'd never experienced any sort of darkness. He was sort of a Renaissance man. He coached football - how many Salinger lovers have ever coached football and thus dealt with some of the biggest miscreants, high school boys, on the planet? He's a man of mystery to me, and I envy those classmates who had long discussions about literature with him. I was insensible to symbolism.
Through the miracle of Facebook I learned he has four children, two of which don't share their FB posts. One daughter, a beautiful blonde with his high cheek bones and patrician nose, is married to a U.S. Marine and lives in Japan. She conventionally loves fashion, the Reds, the Bengals. Big on the military as expected. His other daughter is outspokenly political, a libertarian keen on gay rights despite not being gay herself given her marriage and kids. Or maybe not big on gay rights so much as gays not living in the closet. It does seem that Mr. R's deep belief in tolerance was passed on to that daughter even if religious values don't seem immediately evident. (It's not stalking, it's writerly research. Don't judge!)
*
Learned Billy Collins has a new book of poetry out today and I'm sorely tempted to purchase it, especially given there's a poem titled “Catholicism”. Probably negatively oriented but ….
Read some of Fox's Pagans and Christians and I was surprised to learn that the word “pagan” was apparently given to the pagans by Christians and originally meant “civilian” because they weren't enlisted by Baptism and soldiering for Christ against the forces of Satan. As the author says, it's an interesting view of the mindset of early Christians. The concept of the “Church Militant” has a long history.
Impossible not to buy a collection of William F. Buckley's essays on Kindle for $1.99 or Ron Rash's highly praised, award-winning short stories set in Appalachia for $2.99. My interest in Buckley has waned since his death and since reading his son's rather unsavory memoir, but $1.99 is practically the price of a cup of coffee so it's sort of insurance in case I feel a Buckley revival coming on.
*
Went to Ireland one July, the chilliest and rainiest July I'd ever experienced. Partially ameliorated by the sweetness of the Irish, who repeatedly and humbly apologized for it. I kind of miss olde Ireland, the slight foreignness that was so fetching. As the narrator of the novel My Struggle puts it:
"And it’s these small divergences, these small differences that are almost familiar, almost the same, yet aren’t, that I find so unbelievably attractive.”
"I’ve always felt that attraction,” I continued. “Not for India or Burma or Africa, the big differences, that has never interested me. But Japan, for example. Not Tokyo or the cities, but the rural areas in Japan, the small coastal towns. Have you seen how similar the landscape is to ours in Norway? But the culture, their houses and their customs, are totally alien, totally incomprehensible. Or Maine in the USA? Have you seen the coast there? The terrain is so similar to Sørland, but everything man-made is American.
October 23, 2013
Musing from a Coffee Joint
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| This just in: I Love Coffee |
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| Hipster outside the window |
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| With camera editing filter added |
Not too terribly much writing lately. Perhaps due to the lack of sunspiration, the lack of light felt on mornings and eves, or simply not enough reading – which is the Fertile Crescent of writerly inspiration. Heather King said recently that her reading and walking activities generate her posts. She was rather sharp about what a burden email correspondence seems to be for her. It seemed a vent but then she tried to turn it all around by saying that's what we're here for, to be leaned upon by others. Still, it's pretty surprising her “blogesty”. And I'm also a bit surprised that this Bobby takes starting a blog so seriously, as if blogging hasn't already jumped the shark and as if it already wasn't as easy as rolling off a log. (Although admittedly his query about how to gain readers is understandable.)
*
Web-searched for Rush Limbaugh's view of the government shutdown. It's interesting how Ann Coulter, a bomb-thrower, hasn't put herself in the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh camp. She was okay with raising the debt ceiling, loves Sen. Mitch McConnell, and reiterates that Republicans are only ½ of one of three branches of government.
*
The lack of self-restraint among all of us now is pandemic, but what's interesting is that it seems to play itself in politics as not having to think about strategy but simply, like the charge of the light brigade, run up and die. We don't have to apologize for being strategically wrong nor do we have to ever settle for less than exactly what they want. You see it in some of the strategy of pro-life groups where bills are sent up to legislatures that pretend Roe v. Wade never happened. Incrementalism is dead, or at least has been discredited, but then the NRA is the most successful lobby group in history and has a take-no-prisoners attitude and that zealously guards against the slippery slope.
It feels like all of this started with Judge Bork when Democrats scorched earth in preventing his nomination. Gentlemanliness be damned. The levers of power are being exploited ever so ruthlessly and it's not unlike how markets function: inefficiencies are taken note of and exploited. Politics has become capitalism by other means and the once Senate rubber stamps on presidential Supreme Court picks, the filibuster, and the debt ceiling are the“inefficiencies”. It used to be that just because you could do something didn't mean you should, but now in everything we do we're seen as fools if we don't exploit loopholes and/or opponent weakness.
*
Last night was intrigued by offer of magazines in exchange for Delta Skymiles. Since I'll likely never use the Skymiles, this was like free magazines. Ended up going with a year of the Economist, a weekly, over the Wall Street Journal because the Journal is print and digital and it's simply unconscionable to have to bend over and pick up that print newspaper every single day. Don't need that much news in my life anyway given how much negativity there is inherent in it. So likely a good decision although Sports Illustrated was tempting as well. Could wish there as a Catholic mag in the bunch but they're going for the largest possible audience obviously.
*
Trying a new coffee shop in the Short North. Ordered an “ordo verde”, whatever that is. Sort of like the ordo novus? Tastes like coffee though. Bittersweet, from Honduras. Music a bit distracting but got a window seat. One Line Coffee is the joint, or perhaps I should say one line coffee as the sign says. Cummings reference?
*
We've had a “disposable culture”, a throwaway mentality, for decades now but it really seems to have hit the fan of late. It's one thing to have to replace a car every eight or ten years, but with technological gadgets like computers, smart phones and e-readers, the associated companies seem to expect you to re-buy every year. That's planned obsolesce to a pretty high degree. Of course you don't have to replace your Apple gadgets, for example, but the software apps won't long be supported under old operating systems, and Apple won't support old operating systems indefinitely. With the Amazon Kindle, the improvements since 2008 have been significant enough for me, at least, to continue to go the replacement route (helped by selling the previous Kindle to third parties along the way, so at least there's some measure of recycling going on).
On one hand, I find this very unsettling. I don't like the fact that I can't buy a quality device that will last for decades as you can with a decent wristwatch or a physical book. There is a permanence to these latter objects that feels consoling both in terms of their familiarity and stability and in the lower ongoing price in purchasing once instead of having future claims on income due to technological improvements.
But on the other hand any notion of “permanence” and “material goods” is oxymoronic and a fantasy. Loyalty needs to be directed to God and people, not to physical objects. To treat objects as though they are other than useful, temporary tools is to arguably treat them with more deference than deserved.
*
This just in: Pope Francis getting criticized by SSPX is like Soviets criticizing the U.S. during the Cold War. So difficult it must be for the strict orthodox or the strict liberal to stay within the far-stretched Roman fisherman's net! We tend towards our tendencies, no deep thought there grin.
Cardinal Ratzinger could sure throw a zinger every now and then:
The shepherds of the Church not only find themselves exposed today to the accusation that they still hold fast to the methods of the Inquisition and try to strangle the Spirit by the repressive power of their office; they are, at the same time, attacked by the voice of the faithful, who accuse them more and more loudly of being mute and cowardly watchdogs that stand idly by under the pressure of liberal publicity while the Faith is being sold piecemeal for the dish of pottage of being recognized as “modern”. An important scholar, who is likewise a thoughtful and intelligent Christian, recently reduced this protest to an unforgettable formula. He writes: “A more or less lengthy visit to a Catholic bookstore does not encourage one to pray with the psalmist: ‘You will reveal the path of life to me.’ Not only does one quickly discover there that Jesus did not turn water into wine, but one also gains insight into the art of turning wine into water.
October 22, 2013
Mexico Hearts Canada
Interesting link on how various countries perceive other countries.
It's interesting to me that while Mexico doesn't have much use for us, Canada gets a thumbs up. There's also some of "like likes like" going on - we like Australia and Great Britain, while Mexico likes Spain.
It's interesting to me that while Mexico doesn't have much use for us, Canada gets a thumbs up. There's also some of "like likes like" going on - we like Australia and Great Britain, while Mexico likes Spain.
October 11, 2013
A Two-Hour Tour
Yesterday I headed, if a bit tensely, towards German Village for my annual afternoon there. Wasn't sure it would be worth it since I didn't much feel like fighting the traffic and figuring out where to park, no small task in a place blanketed with permit-only parking. Eventually I found a legal spot - or so I hoped - set off on bike southward.
Oh what a genteel and comely place is German Village on a sunny fall day! The beautiful old red brick, the winsome gardens, the European flavor. Even a whimsical statue (a life-sized lass bent over tending a garden). It was tourism on the cheap and it makes me wonder why I don't go there more than once a year. Hassle factor I'm sure, despite it being only five minutes from work. It's the sort of place one could spend a day there, and there was a tour bus in evidence - which only drives home the fact that we least often tour our own nests. I could imagine a day spent walking the tree-lined cobblestone streets, going to St. Mary's ever-open church, eating at one of the many fine German restaurants, and finding a joint to sip a beer. I had to laugh that even the laundromat for heaven's sake, was a sight to behold with tasteful art on the wall, tall ceilings and a European feel. Real cities have a way of making the mundane seem special, although admittedly the most mundane part of NYC, the subway, is perfectly uninspiring.
I rode past Schiller Park, past a young Germanic-looking gal with a child, and ended up eventually reaching a dead end at Bruck Street (only highway-like Parsons Avenue and High Street continue south). Serendipitously, I stumbled on “Guinness on Innis”, the new headquarters of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The neighborhood looks iffy at best and there are a lot of vacant lots around. A big sign on the door announcing the place is alarmed, which seems a good plan in this neighborhood. How far the once proud club has fallen from those heady late '90s days when all the young and hip gathered at St. Patrick's social hall and drank in honor of the church's namesake! A more sober pastor put a stop to it, leider, even as club membership nosedived in favor of the Shamrock Club.
Felt more relaxed after the ride and even better when I entered Heaven on earth, St. Mary's Church. Spent a half-hour there praying belated morning lit of hours and then a needful rosary. Built in 1865, the church still retains charms that soothe, such as the large and beautiful script “Ave Maria - Gratia Plena” over the altar. Beautiful art and a wonderful message and the only other time I'd witnessed words in a church design that had such impact was in St. Peter's in Rome where the Latin for Peter's designation as the rock and foundation rings so memorably. On the ceiling here at St. Mary's there are all those “bitte fur uns”'s, aided by somewhat cryptic pictographs. I'd thought the “pray for us” would apply to different saints, but all the pictographs turned out to be symbols of Mary, such as Mystical Rose, Morningstar, Ark of the Covenant, House of Gold. There is something otherworldly about that place of worship; I think it's made even more special by the fact that I'm only there when it's quiet and I'm alone (more or less - there were ladies from the tour group making the rounds). I picked up a flyer with information about the church even though I'm wondering if ignorance might've been better. I kind of liked the mystery of those strange pictograph paintings and wondering what a golden house had to do with praying for us. It made it more “other”.
_-_ceiling,_Litany_of_Mary,_Vessel_of_Honor.jpg) |
| "Bitte fur uns" |
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| Craftsman restoring altar |
After that golden half-hour I headed to the famous bookshop with “32 rooms of books”. The downside to that bookstore is that every room has it's only song playing over individual stereo speakers. I don't like music in a bookstore - it's distracting. One room had Irish drinking songs playing and I lingered in there even though I didn't like the books. Another room had unappealing music but I liked the books.
Didn't buy anything though I was tempted by a couple tasty morsels: the new biography of J.D. Salinger (there's nothing more charismatic than a recluse in an age that worships celebrity), and a book called “The Novel Cure” which rather ingeniously devotes a page or two to classic novels for any need.
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