This is a gathering of material from previous posts on the saint.
We all love St. Francis, and most of us know a bit about him, too.
But as many have noted over the years, St. Francis is like Jesus in more ways than one. Like Jesus, he’s put to many uses by people with sometimes wildly varied agendas.
In general, though, we all agree that in essence, Francis of Assisi decided to follow Jesus by giving up material things and living with and for the poor, he really loved nature and he founded a religious order in order to spread his message.
There’s truth in that common portrait, but there are also distortions and gaps.
Francis didn’t have a plan. He did not set out to form a band of brothers – at all. His conversion was a personal one, and the life he lead for the first couple of years after it was the life of a penitent, pure and simple.
What was his conversion, exactly? This actually is a knottier problem than we assume. It wasn’t simply rejecting a life of relative wealth for a life lived in solidarity with the poor, through Christ. In fact, well, it doesn’t seem to be fundamentally about that at all.
Francis doesn’t say much about this at all himself. He refers to being “in his sins.” After his traumatic battle experiences, Christ drew him closer, he abandoned all for Christ, lived as a rather sketchy hermit-type penitent on the outskirts of Assisi, and then, in a crucial moment, encountered a leper.
As he describes it himself, lepers had been figures of particular horror to him when he was “in his sins.” But now, God intervened, converted him, and the leper became a person through whom Francis experienced peace and consolation.
Francis sought to do penance, live the Gospel and be a servant. He did not intend to draw followers, but did, and their initial way of life was simply living in this same way, only in community.
It wasn’t until their form of life was approved by Pope Innocent that preaching entered the picture – it was an element that the Pope threw into his approval. This was a surprise to Francis.
Okay, break time.
To me, this is most fascinating because, as I mentioned in the other blog post,when we read history, we often read it with the eyes of inevitability.
As in: everything unfolds according to intention and human plan. Just as it is with life in general, this is not the way history is, and it’s not the way the life of Francis was – well, not according to his plan. For he didn’t have one.
But this interesting turn of events shows how the Spirit shakes us up and turns us in a slightly different direction from where we thought we were going. It happened to Francis. He adapted, shakily and slowly. It happens to us.
Back to bullet points.
When you actually read Francis’ writings, you don’t see some things that you might expect. You don’t, for example, read a lot of directives about serving the poor. You don’t see any general condemnations of wealth. You don’t read a call for all people, everywhere, to live radically according to the evangelical counsels.
You do read these sorts of things – although not exactly – in the early guidelines for the friars and the few letters to fellow friars that have come down to us.
But surprisingly, it’s not what is emphasized by Francis himself. So what is?
Obedience.
When Francis wrote about Christ embracing poverty, what he speaks of is Christ descending from the glory of heaven and embracing mortal flesh – an act – the ultimate embrace of poverty – not just material poverty, but spiritual poverty – the ultimate act of obedience.
So, as Francis writes many times, his own call was to imitate Christ in this respect: to empty himself and become the lowly servant of all. To conquer everything that is the opposite: pride, self-regard, the desire for position or pleasure.
Francis wrote that the primary enemy in this battle is our “lower nature.” He wrote that the only thing we can claim for ourselves are our vices and all we have to boast about is Christ.
Francis also emphasized proper celebration and reception of the Eucharist – quite a bit. He had a lot to say about proper and worthy vessels and settings for the celebration of Mass. He was somewhat obsessed with respectful treatment of paper on which might be written the Divine Names or prayers. He prescribed how the friars were to pray the Office.
The early preaching of the Franciscans was in line with all of this, as well as other early medieval penitential preaching: the call to the laity to confess, receive the Eucharist worthily, and to turn from sin.
Praise God. Whatever the circumstances – and especially “bad” circumstances – praise God.
Accept persecution. It’s interesting that Francis routinely resisted church authorities affording his order any privileges or even writing them letters allowing them to preach in a certain vicinity. He felt that if they entered an area and were rejected, this was simply accepting the Cross of Christ, and should not be avoided.
Begging was not a core value for Francis, as we are often led to believe. He and his friars did manual labor. In the early days, begging was only allowed on behalf of sick and ailing brothers, and then only for things like food. No money, ever.
He really didn’t like telling people what to do. Well, my theory was that he actually did – what we know about his personality, pre-conversion, indicates that he was a born leader. Perhaps his post-conversion mode was not only an imitation of the Servant, but a recognition that his “lower nature” included a propensity to promote himself and direct others.
That said, Francis’ emphasis on servanthood meant that his writings don’t contain directions for others beyond what the Gospel says (repent/Eat the Bread of Life) unless he’s forced to – when composing a form of life and so on. This tension, along with ambiguities in the Franciscan life, made for a very interesting post-Francis history, along with problems during his own lifetime as well.
To me, Francis is a compelling spiritual figure not simply because he lived so radically, but, ironically, because the course of his life seems so normal.
Why?
Because he had a life. That life was disrupted, and the disruption changed him. Disoriented him. He found a re-orientation in Christ: he found the wellspring of forgiveness for his sins and the grace to conquer them (a lifetime struggle). His actions had consequences, most of which were totally unintended by him, and to which he had to adapt, as he sought to be obedient to God. His personality and gifts were well-equipped to deal with some of the new and changing circumstances in his life, and ill-equipped for others. He died, praising God.
Yes, Francis was all about poverty. All about it. He was about the poverty of Christ, who was obedient and emptied himself.
Hardly anyone does, unfortunately. It’s too bad because there’s no reason to avoid them. They aren’t lengthy or dense, and you don’t have to pay to read them. You could read – not deeply, but you could do it – his entire corpus in part of an evening.
The bulk of what he left was addressed to his brothers, but since most of us are not Franciscans, I’ll excerpt from his Letter to the Faithful:
Of whose Father such was the will, that His Son, blest and glorious, whom He gave to us and who was born for us, would offer his very self through His own Blood as a Sacrifice and Victim upon the altar, not for His own sake, through whom all things were made (cf. Jn 1:3), but for the sake of our sins, leaving us an example, so that we may follow in his footsteps (cf 1 Pet 2:21). And He willed that all might be saved through Him and that we might receive Him with a pure heart and our own chaste body. But there are few, who want to receive Him and be saved by Him, though His yoke is sweet and His burden light (cf. Mt: 11:30). Those who do not want to taste how sweet the Lord is (cf. Ps 33:9) and love shadows more than the Light (Jn 3:19) not wanting to fulfill the commands of God, are cursed; concerning whom it is said through the prophet: “Cursed are they who turn away from Thy commands.” (Ps 118:21). But, o how blessed and blest are those who love God and who do as the Lord himself says in the Gospel: “Love the Lord thy God with your whole heart and with your whole mind and your neighbor as your very self (Mt 22:37.39).
Let us therefore love God and adore Him with a pure heart and a pure mind, since He Himself seeking above all has said: “True adorers will adore the Father in spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:23) For it is proper that all, who adore Him, adore Him in the spirit of truth (cf. Jn 4:24). And let us offer (lit.”speak to”) Him praises and prayer day and night (Ps 31:4) saying: “Our Father who art in Heaven” (Mt 6:9), since it is proper that we always pray and not fail to do what we might (Lk 18:1).
If indeed we should confess all our sins to a priest, let us also receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ from him. He who does not eat His Flesh and does not drink His Blood (cf. Jn 6:55.57), cannot enter into the Kingdom of God (Jn 3:5). However let him eat and drink worthily, since he who receives unworthily eats and drinks judgement for himself, and he does not dejudicate the Body of the Lord (1 Cor 11:29), that is he does not discern it. In addition let us bring forth fruits worthy of penance (Lk 3:8). And let us love our neighbors as our very selves (cf. Mt 22:39). And if one does not want to love them as his very self, at least he does not charge them with wicked things, but does good (to them).
Moreover let those who have received the power of judging others exercise it with mercy, just as they themselves wish to obtain mercy from the Lord. For there will be judgment without mercy for those who have not shown mercy (James 2:13). And so let us have charity and humility; and let us give alms, since this washes souls from the filth of their sins (cf. Tob 4:11; 12:9). For men lose everything, which they leave in this world; however they carry with them the wages of charity and the alms, which they gave, for which they will have from the Lord a gift and worthy recompense.
We should also fast and abstain from vices and sins (cf Sir 3:32) and from a superfluity of food and drink and we should be Catholics. We should also frequently visit churches and venerate the clerics and revere them, not only for their own sake, if they be sinners, but for the sake of their office and administration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which they sanctify upon the altar and receive and administer to others. And let us all know firmly, since no one can be saved, except through the words and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which the clerics speak, announce and minister. And only they should minister and not others. Moreover the religious especially, who have renounced the world, are bound to do more and greater things, but not to give up these (cf. Lk 11:42).
We should hold our bodies, with their vices and sins, in hatred, since the Lord says in the Gospel: “All wicked things, vices and sins, come forth from the heart.” (Mt 15:18-19) We should love our enemies and do good to them, who hold us in hatred (cf. Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27). We should also deny ourselves (cf. Mt 16:24) and place our bodies under the yoke of servitude and holy obedience, just as each one has promised the Lord. And no man is bound out of obedience to obey anyone in that, where crime or sin is committed. However to him whom obedience has been committed and whom is held to be greater, let him be as the lesser (Lk 22:26) and the servant of the other friars. And let him show and have mercy for each one of his brothers, as he would want done to himself, if he were in a similar case. Nor let him grow angry with a brother on account of the crime of a brother, but with all patience and humility let him kindly admonish and support him.
We should not be wise and prudent according to the flesh, but rather we should be simple, humble and pure. And let us hold our bodies in opprobrium and contempt, since on account of our own fault we are all wretched and putrid, fetid and worms, just as the Lord say through the prophet: “I am a worm and no man, the opprobium of men and the abject of the people.” (Ps 21:7) Let us never desire to be above others, but rather we should desire that upon all men and women, so long as they will have done these things and persevered even to the end, the Spirit of the Lord might rest (Is 11:2) and fashion in them His little dwelling and mansion (cf. Jn 14:23).
Why such a long excerpt? To give you a taste of what St. Francis was actually concerned about, which is perhaps not what we have been led to believe.
*****
SO…I decided to write a book trying to communicate this to kids. I worked, of course, with my friend Ann Engelhart, and the result is Adventures in Assisi, (link to Amazon, because it’s not on the Franciscan site, which means it’s out of print, but I don’t recall anyone ever telling us that. So…)
…. in which two contemporary children travel in Francis’ footsteps, confront their own need for greater charity and humility, and experience the fruit. It’s intended to be a discussion-starter, to get kids talking and thinking and praying about how they treat each other, and how they think about Christ in relationship to their own lives.
I mean..it’s not hard to get kids to get into animals or Christmas creches. But St. Francis of Assisi was fundamentally about imitating Christ in his poverty of spirit, and I thought that aspect of the saint’s life was woefully underrepresented in Francis Kid Lit.
Are you getting ready for school? Catechists, homeschoolers and Catholic school teachers are. If you are of a mind to, please take a look at all the resources I have available for catechesis and formation.
If you really want to get strange looks, you could toss this out, something I’d forgotten about – that I have the pdf of De-Coding Da Vinci available for free here. Use as you like. All kidding aside, at the time, I thought that taking apart the hugely popular novel was a useful and engaging way to teach people about the origins of the Scriptural canon and some early Church history. Plus, it took me two weeks to write it, so not a bad use of time. Here you go.
Are you teaching religion to elementary age students? Friendship with Jesus, Be Saints, Bambinelli Sunday, Adventures in Assisi, The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints, The Loyola Kids’ Book of Heroes.
Can you help catechists, Catholic schools and parish programs? Consider gifting your parish, school or favorite catechist with copies of these books. Click on the covers for more information.
Again – even if catechesis isn’t something you are personally involved in, any catechist, parish school, library or program would welcome a donation as a beginning-of-the-year (no matter when it begins…) gift.
O’Connor’s work is important. Her life and spiritual witness is important as well.
For Flannery O’Connor, like all of us, had plans. Unlike many of us, perhaps, she also had a clear sense of her own gifts. As a very young woman, she set out to follow that path. She had fantastic opportunities at Iowa, made great connections and seemed to be on the road to success at a very young age. Wise Blood was accepted for publication when she was in her early 20s. She was in New York. She was starting to run in invigorating literary circles.
And then she got sick.
And she had to go back to her mother’s farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor’s story is a helpful and necessary corrective, it seems to me, of the current spiritual environment which privileges choice and health and seeks to baptize secular notions of success, achievement, and even beauty. What is missing from all of that is a cheerful acceptance of limitations and a faith that even within those limitations—only within those limitations—we are called to serve God.
Secondly, the association of the breaking through of the Holy Ghost with coldness. A chill. An enduring chill. There are a number of ways to look at it, since the “chill” is of course a reference to fever, but this morning I couldn’t stop thinking about Flannery’s continual argument against the modern expectation that “faith” is what brings us contentment and satisfaction. In the Gospel today, Jesus says Peace be with You. But that’s after the crucifixion, you know.
Also on Asbury’s mind- primary, really – was his mother. How he blamed her for his own failure as a would-be artist, and how what he wanted to do most of all was make her see this. To give her an enduring chill that would be the result of her awareness of what she had done to him.
He would hurt her, but that was just too bad. It was what was necessary, he determined, to get her to see things as they really are. Irony, of course, comes to rest on him in the end as the Holy Ghost descends.
So I read and talked about this story about parents, children, disappointment, blame, pride and being humbled.
Then I drove up to Knoxville, alone, thinking about Asbury, about that Holy Ghost, about peace be with you and doubt no longer.
I drove up to see my father’s house for the last time and sign the papers so someone new could live there now.
Tears?
Sadness that my father died six months ago, that my mother died eleven years ago, that my husband died three years ago. Sadness for my dad’s widow. But then tempered, as I stood there and surveyed the surrounding houses and realized that almost every person who lived in those houses when we first moved in, is also dead.
Remembering that forty years ago, my parents were exactly where I am now, watching the preceding generation begin to die off, absorbing their possessions, making sense of what they’d inherited – in every sense – and contemplating where to go from there.
There’s nothing unique about it. It’s called being human. Not existing for a very long time, being alive for a few minutes, and then being dead for another very long time.
And in that short time, we try. I’m not going to say “we try our best” because we don’t. It’s why we ask for mercy. Especially when we live our days under the delusion of self-sufficiency, placing our faith in ourselves and our poor, passing efforts, closed to grace…when we live like that…no, we’re not trying our best. We need it, that Divine Mercy. We need it, and as Asbury has to learn, we need it to give, not just to take. More
There is a priest in the story, the priest who brings the family (the Guizacs) to the farm, and then continues to visit Mrs. McIntyre. He is old and Irish, listens to Mrs. McIntyre’s complaints about her workers and the difficulties of her life with a nod and a raised eyebrow and then continues to talk to her about the teachings of the Church.
He is seen by the others as a doddering fool, talking about abstractions, not clued into the pressing issues of the moment, telling Mrs. McIntyre, for example, about what the Son of God has done, redeeming us, “as if he spoke of something that had happened yesterday in town….”
And at the end, as Mrs. McIntyre watches the black figure of the priest bend over a dead man ” slipping something into the crushed man’s mouth…” we see why he spoke of it that way.
It did happen yesterday in town. It happens today.
He’s here.
The priest, too, is the only character who recognizes transcendence. Every time he comes to the farm, he is transfixed by the peacocks (see the header on the blog today), a fascination the others think is just one more symptom of foolishness and “second childhood.”
You must be born again….
And here is the “irony.” Although steeped in Catholic faith and sensibilities, we know it is not ironic – but to the world’s eyes, it is. That the priest who expresses the mysteries in such matter-of-fact, “formulaic” ways, ways which even theologians today fret are not nuanced or postmodern enough, which they would like to dispense with in favor of…what, I am not sure, unless it is one more set of windy journal articles…this priest is, as I said, the only character who can recognize beauty and the transcendent reflected there. And the one who embodies Mercy.
Flannery O’Connor always said that she found the doctrines of the Church freeing – and this is what she means.
And the story ends:
Not many people remembered to come out to the country to see her except the old priest. He came regularly once a week with a bag of breadcrumbs and, after he had fed these to the peacock, he would come in and sit by the side of her bed and explain the doctrines of the Church.
Most of what O’Connor reviewed was non-fiction, and she did not like most of the fiction she did review – J.F. Powers, Paul Horgan and Julien Green being the unsurprising exceptions in the otherwise flowerly garden of pietistic fiction she endured.
The non-fiction choices are fascinating, although not a surprise to anyone familiar with the contents of O’Connor’s personal library and the scope of her reading we can discern from her letters. She was very concerned with the intellectual life of American Catholics and indeed saw what she was doing for the papers as in some way an act of charity in which readers might be encouraged to read beyond the pieties.
She was especially interested in Scripture, dismayed that Catholics did not read more of it, and quite interested in the Old Testament, especially the prophets. Again, perhaps not a surprise? She was, as is well-known, quite interested in Teilhard de Chardin, and reviewed a few books by Karl Barth, as well.
Robert Coles answered the question well when he wrote of O’Connor, “She is stalking pride.” For Flannery O’Connor, faith means essentially seeing the world as it is, which means through the Creator’s eyes. So lack of faith is a kind of blindness, and what brings on the refusal to embrace God’s vision — faith — is nothing but pride.
O’Connor’s characters are all afflicted by pride: Intellectual sons and daughters who live to set the world, primarily their ignorant parents, aright; social workers who neglect their own children, self-satisfied unthinking “good people” who rest easily in their own arrogance; the fiercely independent who will not submit their wills to God or anyone else if it kills them. And sometimes, it does.
The pride is so fierce, the blindness so dark, it takes an extreme event to shatter it, and here is the purpose of the violence. The violence that O’Connor’s characters experience, either as victims or as participants, shocks them into seeing that they are no better than the rest of the world, that they are poor, that they are in need of redemption, of the purifying purgatorial fire that is the breathtaking vision at the end of the story, “Revelation.”
The self-satisfied are attacked, those who fancy themselves as earthly saviors find themselves capable of great evil, intellectuals discover their ideas to be useless human constructs, and those bent on “freedom” find themselves left open to be controlled by evil.
What happens in her stories is often extreme, but O’Connor knew that the modern world’s blindness was so deeply engrained and habitual, extreme measures were required to startle us: “I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.” More
In April 1948, Wallace Stevens received a letter from a nun. Her name was Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn, and she was completing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin. It was their first correspondence, and she’d enclosed some notes on his poetry, for which he was thankful: “It is a relief to have a letter from someone that is interested in understanding.” His short response to her includes a curious personal admission: “I do seek a centre and expect to go on seeking it.”
In 1951, after a literary critic detected a sense of spiritual “nothingness” in his poetry, Stevens wrote Sister Bernetta with a clarification: “I am not an atheist although I do not believe to-day in the same God in whom I believed when I was a boy.” Considering the debate over Stevens’s deathbed conversion to Catholicism, his heartfelt letters to Sister Bernetta are tantalizing. What made the poet comfortable sending such honest thoughts from Hartford, Connecticut to Winona, Minnesota?
NOTE: If you really want a copy soon – I have them for sale at my online bookstore (price includes shipping) Email me at amywelborn60 AT gmail if you have a question or want to work out a deal of some sort. I have many copies of this, the Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories, the Prove It Bible and the Catholic Woman’s Book of Days on hand at the moment.
Advent is coming….not for a while, though, right? I’m thinking that since Christmas is on a Monday, this – December 3 – is the latest possible start for Advent.
But it’s not too early to order resources for Advent, of course. Most of these can still be ordered in bulk for parish or school, or just in single copies.
(BTW – I don’t make any $$ from the sales of these booklets. The way it works is that these kinds of materials are, for the most part, written as works-for-hire. You write it, you get paid a flat fee, and that’s it. I just …think what I’ve written is not terrible and hope my words might be helpful to someone out there…so I continue to spread the word!)
Last year, Liguori published daily devotions I wrote for both Lent and Easter. They publish new booklets by different authors every year, but mine are still available, both through Liguori and Amazon.
Agnes was the daughter of a king and espoused to the Emperor Frederick, who remarked famously upon news of her refusal of marriage to him, “If she had left me for a mortal man, I would have taken vengeance with the sword, but I cannot take offence because in preference to me she has chosen the King of Heaven.”
She entered the Poor Clares, and what makes the letters from Clare so interesting to me is the way that Clare plays on Agnes’ noble origins, using language and allusions that draw upon Agnes’ experience, but take her beyond it, as in this one.
There are no photographs allowed inside the Basilica of S. Chiara in Assisi, which is where the original San Damiano cross is now kept. Here’s Ann Engelhart’s lovely painting of the San Damiano cross from Adventures in Assisi.
And….the first week almost done. Driving to and from school has happened several times. I am loathe to say too much about that because, I admit, I’m superstitious. Or, as I prefer to say it, I believe there is wisdom and truth in old adages like “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
So all I’ll say is that for me, my level of tension has decreased as the week as progressed. The fact that the new anti-texting-while-driving law took effect on 8/1 has helped. Not that I don’t see people still studying their phones on the road, but I’m hoping those numbers will, indeed, decrease and the risk to others decrease as well.
Speaking of Alabama….this is for you, in case you need to be amused. I guess it’s basically the same crew that does SEC Shorts – I don’t care a wit about football, but I find any kind of subculture – including fandom – fascinating, and always enjoy some precision satire and observation. These are hit and miss, but when they’re on, they’re really funny.
So they’re doing these. Some are weaker than others in both writing and acting, but my favorites are:
It’s just fun because they’re filmed in Birmingham, and the sights and sounds are familiar – there’s one about the challenge of eating healthy in the south that has a snip of the guy running in the park, distracted by an ice cream truck, which is very funny because he’s in Railroad Park where there’s always an ice cream song driving the world mad with its tunes….
Also – in one of the videos, “Things you never hear people saying in the South” – there’s reference to a wedding being scheduled on a football weekend. A few years ago, when I was living in the front-porch neighborhood (still missed – but we just needed a different space…), I was walking and overheard a woman talking on the phone on her front porch very loudly:
“Okay, I know the game will be on, but no, I am not putting a TV in the room during the reception. There’s sports bars down the street – you all can just leave and go down there if you want….”
This is a site to which I used to refer readers all the time: Aid to the Church in Need. It’s a good place to find projects to help and also provides helpful insight into the life of the Church around the world.
Edited – I miscopied the template and have been skipping #5 – thanks for noticing!!
Homeschooling is slowly getting rolling. We had a friend over on one day, and have had various other appointments, but next week looks clear. We’ve gotten going on math, and yesterday, he had his first good morning of “unschooling” – that is just reading and talking, and then recording what he’d read about. This won’t be a “comprehensive” education, but it will be…something.
The Jungle: It was my older son’s summer reading, so I joined in…the fun. Well.
On one level, it’s an “easy” read (for most of the book), because Sinclair was a journalist and tended to get right to the point and had great descriptive skills. It didn’t hurt that what he was describing was so vivid and visceral and the story of unrelenting misery so compelling, if…unrelenting.
For those of you who don’t know, The Jungle was the fruit of a couple of months Sinclair spent in Chicago in the early 20th century, examining the meatpacking industry and the lives of the immigrant workers in that industry. The focus of the story is an extended Lithuanian family and the young man who marries into that family, named Jurgis.
It’s all pretty devastating. The slaughterhouses and packing facilities are brutal and filthy. The workers’ lives are miserable and that misery is unrelenting. It’s all described quite vividly and, spoiler alert: No, things don’t get better. It’s just one thing after another.
Sinclair has a point in this, though. He was a strong socialist, and while most people associated The Jungle with the story told about the industry and the resultant formation of the FDA as a result of the outcry raised by the book, Sinclair’s main intention was to raise sympathy for the workers. He was always a little distressed that the social activism inspired by the book was focused on the industry rather than the fundamental equation of American capitalism of the time – as he saw it – that made workers nothing more than cogs in a machine (or pigs on a killing line) for the purpose of enriching a relatively few.
It’s a mostly interesting book – until the last sixth, or so, when Jurgis discovers socialism and does so mostly by listening to speeches. Speeches that we are privileged to share in, also. Page. After page. After page. Thousands of words of socialist uplift, Comrade.
It’s important and interesting to encounter even that part of the book, in my mind, because of the spiritual associations. Jurgis experiences no less than a spiritual conversion that gives his life a transcendent meaning and binds him to others.
But still….it’s very boring.
As a whole, though, a book worth reading, even for young people. I quibble with a lot of school assignments, but I think this was a good choice as an introduction to the study, this year, of the second half of American history and literature. It vividly brings you into another world and lays out issues that gather up the promises of the first half of history that you studied last year then sets them in this new situation and demands you answer the question, What now?
And, oh my heavens, speaking of immigration and American hopes and dreams – on a more positive note – if this article has passed your various newsfeeds by, take a look and catch up. And then, if you’re like me, make the decision (again!) to stop the griping, be grateful, and jump back into this life business full-tilt, creating and giving what you can:
In 1956, blood spilled as Hungarians revolted against Soviet control. Hideg and his wife, a pianist, risked execution as they fled Budapest under cover of darkness. They sneaked past Russian infantry and escaped first to Austria and then New York City in early 1957. Hideg got a job as a janitor, and after work he’d race to Birdland and other Manhattan jazz clubs to see his heroes.
In 1961, he and his wife loaded up their old DeSoto and headed west, flat broke, stopping at bars along the way to play for food and gas money, Hollywood or bust….
….“I did not come to this country to be a burden on the state,” says Hideg, who has resisted signing up for many entitlements available to seniors.
He chose the musician’s life, he says, and has no regrets. If he has a message for others, Hideg tells me, it’s that doing something you love will serve you well. And another thing: Don’t hesitate to ask friends for help if you need it.
“He’s not a shy guy, but it’s not easy for him” to accept money, says Hideg’s longtime buddy Laszlo Cser, a retired musician and L.A. City College professor. “Lately he’s more willing to go along.”
Louis Kabok, a local bass player who knew Hideg in Hungary, fled at about the same time. He says his friend’s high spirits in the face of hardship and advancing age don’t appear to be an act.
“To tell you the truth, I never met another person in my life who has his kind of attitude,” says Kabok. “He just has an idea of the way he wants to live his life, and he’s doing it.”
Indeed, for all his troubles, Hideg glows. His silver hair is as thick as his Hungarian accent. His grin is young, timeless and broad, the grin of a man who’s in on a secret.
Whatever day it is, the weekend is coming soon, and Hideg lives for Friday and Saturday.
He can’t bang the skins in the quiet environs of his apartment building, so every Saturday, he stays drummer fit with a two-hour workout at Stein on Vine in Hollywood, the legendary music shop where he jams with gray-bearded buddies and it’s the 1950s all over again.
In the video attached to the story – worth a few minutes of your time – Mr. Hideg says, “I live alone…and I don’t have a family. But I am not lonely because I have my friends, I have God, I have my drums….when I play, I concentrate on the music. I don’t care about anything else…”
This post is part of a linkup – regular readers will be familiar with this material, but to new readers…it’s new!
This week’s #DiverseKidLit linkup coordinates nicely with the October 4 feastday of St. Francis of Assisi – the subject of my own book that I’m bringing into the linkup.
Adventures in Assisi, published in 2014, is the story of St. Francis told through the experiences of two contemporary children.
As the author of many books for children and young adults in the Catholic market, I have always been struck by the lack of diversity in the imagery in most books in this market, especially striking since most Catholic children are not of European descent are do, in fact live in or have ancestry from Latin American, Africa and Asia. My illustrator and I knew from the beginning that our book about St. Francis would feature children who reflected this diversity.
As it happens, Ann Engelhart, the water color artist with whom I work on my books, is part of a large family of German and Irish descent which, in her generation of siblings, reflects this even broader diversity as well – her sisters-in-law include women from Africa and India. The models she used for the children in our book are one of her nephews and a friend of his from school whose parents are African and Italian.
That would be today. It was pretty crazy, and I was tempted at points to be irritated that I was not “getting anything done.”
But of course I was getting it done. I was seeing new things, reflecting upon them, and encountering interesting people. All life, all fodder, all worth taking in.
It started with chickens.
I’m part of a small group that purchases free-range organic tuxedo-wearing, non-smoking, teetotling chickens from a farm about an hour north of here. We take turns with the once-a-month pickup. I was scheduled to go in October, but the September driver fell ill, so we switched. It’s all for the best. I’ll be starting the last stages of the next Big Project at that point, and I won’t want to take a day to drive to Hartselle, Alabama to get chickens at that stage in the process, I’m sure.
Last year when it was my turn, my homeschooler and I went up, but we got a late start and so didn’t have time to see anything else that might be in the neighborhood. This year, even though I’m sadly on my own, I decided to try to get away earlier and see the sights. What sights could there be, you ask?
Well, Hartselle has a cute little main street filled with antique shops and few cafes – I’m guessing it’s postioned itself as an afternoon antiquing destination for folks from Huntsville – or even those driving down to the Gulf Coast on 65.
The green storefront marks a pool hall. When I walked by the open door early afternoon on a Thursday, there were quite a few older fellows in there, shooting pool and sitting along the wall, watching.
What interested me most of all was Hartselle’s most well-known son, whom I’d just read about the night before – William Bradford Huie. Huie, born in Hartselle, returned to live there later in life and is buried there, and was a fairly well-known and sometimes controversial journalist and novelist of the mid-20th century. He graduated from the University of Alabama, and then went to write for magazines like Look and Colliers and served as editor of the American Mercury, H.L. Mencken’s magazine.
Huie had an infallible eye for an important story, and in 1955, this instinct led him to one of the most controversial pieces of his career. In August of that year, 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black youth from Chicago, was murdered in the Mississippi Delta in retaliation for his alleged sexual advances toward a white woman. His killers, two white half-brothers, were acquitted by an all-white jury. Shortly after their acquittal, Huie, with the financial backing of Look magazine, paid the two men for their story, in which they admitted to the murder, a controversial practice sometimes derided as “checkbook journalism.” The Till case set the tone for much of the remainder of Huie’s career, which gravitated to race-related crimes and some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement, including the murders of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer (Three Lives for Mississippi), as well as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (He Slew the Dreamer). In both cases, Huie claimed to have paid sources, including Martin Luther King’s accused assassin, James Earl Ray, for their stories, a practice for which he was frequently criticized.
In 1957, Huie moved back to Alabama to live full-time and continued to work as a freelance writer for the rest of his life. Ruth Huie died in 1973, and in 1977 he married his second wife, Martha Hunt Robertson ofGuntersville. His work on race-related crimes and his frequent and outspoken criticism ofGovernorGeorge Wallace made him a continuing source of controversy, and although he was a commercial success, he was not always popular among his fellow Alabamians. In 1967, Huie’s public outspokenness led to a much-publicized
His most well-known books are, I’d say, the novel The Americanization of Emily (made into a film starring Julie Andrews and James Garner) and the nonfiction The Execution of Private Slovik – which tells the story of the only American WWII deserter to be executed, and which was made into a made-for-TV movie starting Martin Sheen.
From Hartselle, Alabama!
Appropriately enough, the library is named after him.
And it houses an exhibit on his life and work – the “archives.” The library is in a former bank building so these archives are…in the old vault. I want my life to be memorialized in a bank vault, for sure.
— 4 —
And then I got the chickens.
And then I saw the IronMan.
He’s probably over a hundred years old and was forged as an advertisement for VegeCal – an Alabama-produced liver tonic with 12% alcohol content.
Raced back to town, delivered chickens, got one kid, dropped him at piano, raced to another school to get two more, took them home, then back to piano to get the first one, back home..cooked dinner. Yes, cooked– I had prepared some bacon this morning and made Spaghetti Carbonara – once you do the bacon, it takes 15 minutes – and then it was back out to the Homewood Library to see…
Ben is the author illustrator of so many charming picture books and graphic novels. Zita the Space Girl has just been optioned for film. Ben’s on tour mostly promoting his new graphic novel Mighty Jack, and he also read his very fun picture book Nobody Likes a Goblin. He had spoken at a couple of schools today and was doing this library session before moving on to Wichita – go see him if you are there! It was great to meet him and have my 12-year old who carries around many stories in his head hear a different take on the creative process.
And…in my haste, I didn’t get any photos. Unbelievable. Well, here are the books I bought and that Ben signed…
I have three adult children. They live in different parts of the country and have very different lives and schedules. One is married with a child and does data analysis (I think). One is in law school. The oldest works in television. I don’t think they communicate on a daily basis.
But here’s what happens with intriguing frequency.
One of them calls me to talk. About 75% of the time, either another one will call right after I’m finished with the first one, or the call waiting from them will start beeping in the middle of the first call. And once that’s over, there’s another very high probability that the third one – whichever one is left – will call me within two or three hours.
I cannot tell you how many times that’s happened. It’s so strange.
A bit of a post on mental trip prep, but first…drat.
I had said I would be planning out loud, so here we go with the first instance of plans called into question by new information.
I have been all about Ferrara’s palio for the last weekend of May. Hooray for hundreds-year old tradition, color, medieval pageantry and horse and donkey races. Fun!
Oh, and the Corpus Domini celebration in Orvieto. Just a small thing.
(The corporal is preserved in the duomo in Orvieto, which is why it is the main pilgrimage site for the miracle)
What. To. Do.
The Ferrara accommodations are totally refundable. Bolsena is an area I had been looking to visit right after Rome – Bolsena, Orvieto, Pitigliano, the Saturnia baths, various Etruscan things…but that would be the week after Corpus Domini. It would be quite possible to just stay an extra two days in Bologna, absorb some Ferrara vibes, see Ravenna, and then go down to this area for the feast….but is it such a big deal that it would be difficult to find accomodations, to get to the place..navigate? Looks pretty crowded. Probably. I don’t know. Darn it! I was liking this early Lent/ Easter thing until now.
What I will probably do – unless one of you has an inside track and some insight – is just hope that Ferrara won’t forget Corpus Domini among all the palio celebrations, and we’ll see some flower tapestries and a serious procession anyway – I have checked if any towns in Emilio-Romagna have well-known infiorata, but the only ones I can find are monasteries that are really not close to where we will be.
Anyway….
So…my prep work? Which is obviously inadequate and a sham?
Well, in terms of general travel research for the areas we’re visiting, an embarrasing number of hours spent on travel discussion boards – mostly TripAdvisor, Slow Travel and Fodor’s. General websites are okay, but I find discussion boards to be by far the most valuable, as you can follow the questions that real people are asking, get current information and search according to your own particular interest. Like last year when we were going to be spending a day in Vegas and I panicked over the “porn slappers” I had read stood on the streets handing out cards with explicit photos advertising escort services.
I mean, it’s really useful to be able to narrow the discussion down and see what Real People are Really Saying about Porn Slappers Today.
(Answer: Yes, they are there. Yes, it’s very sad because they looked to be mostly middle-aged Latino immigrants, male and female, illegal, I’d imagine. No, they didn’t hand any cards to us, the boys didn’t even notice them, and there were too damn many people on the sidewalk for them to even notice the cards under their feet. And I still hated Vegas.)
Books:
I’m of the view that guidebook companies should just abandon their sections on accommodations and restaurants – who even bothers with getting that information from even a year-old book anymore rather than online? But they’re still valuable, of course, in just showing you the sites. Right now, what I’m perusing are the Blue Guide: Northern Italywhich I bought a few years ago for our Milan trip (it includes Emilia-Romagna) and DK guides. I checked out Secret Tuscany from the library – it was interesting, and I might check it out again before we leave and take some notes. I have the Oxford Archaelogical Guide to Rome which I’ve used in the past.
I’m more interested in educating myself on history and culture. I’m rereading Morton’s A Traveler in Italy, which is so wonderful. I’m reading A Traveler’s History of Italy. Over the next few weeks I’ll be reading up on my Medicis and other Renaissance points, as well as art history – mostly to help me help the boys.
Tonight I read Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa which could have done as a long magazine article, but then it wouldn’t have been encased in a quirky package like this:
It’s a good, easy read that explains the historical and cultural context of the campanile, not as much on the technical side of the construction, dispenses with the Galileo myth and gives good detail on the attempts to stabilize the structure – the most recent being, it seems, successful, and which involved not propping the tower up as others had attempted, but rather removing soil from under the higher end. No bibliography, though, which is irritating.
(Interesting note about the 1902 collapse of the campanile next to St. Mark’s in Venice, a structure which looked from the outside to be much more sound. Photos of the collapse actually exist because the cracks in the tower were noted, then observed to grow until finally no one could deny what was about to happen, the square was cleared, and cameras brought for the moment. You can the before, during and after photos here.)
As for their prep:
They, of course, know the itinerary. I’ve showed them the accomodations we have so far, gone over maps. I’ve scattered books around and on slow evenings we’ll leaf through some of them. We watched Gladiator and will do some other movies. Spartacus, maybe? Just to get us in the spirit of things. The other night, we watched the Rick Steves’ shows on Italian hill towns and Florence. Yes, Rick Steves is mocked and even reviled in some quarters. I mock him. But his programs are a decent intro to the areas, even though his voice really gets on their nerves and frankly puzzles them. Hah.
So yes, I am tempted to be an anti-Rick Steves snob myself, but when that creeps up on me, I must always remember this story.
Flashback to that first trip, back in 2006. We’d landed in Rome, it was the afternoon, and we gave up trying to keep everyone awake until evening. It was just too much. They were all napping, but I had a phone call to make to an acquaintance, and this was pre-internationally-capable cell phones, at least for us. (I actually did some work on that trip – I spoke a couple of times, had an interview, and we had a wonderful long lunch with a bunch of interesting Rome-based Catholic journalists). I left them all in the apartment on the Borgo Vittorio, and went to find a pay phone. Well, first I bought a phone card, as you did then. And perhaps still do. Then I found the phone and for the LIFE OF ME could not figure out how to use the card/phone combo. I mean…I just couldn’t. Nothing happened. So I got back to the apartment and told Mike, no I hadn’t made the call because I couldn’t figure out the damn phone. He flipped open Rick Steves’ book and pointed (in triumph, because I had been dissing RS, while he’d been studying his books) to one of those little drawings he has – that shows exactly how to use the cards (you had to tear off the corner). And that’s what Rick Steves is great for – he and his crew understand what is going to trip you up and confuse you and just tell you how to manage in a very practical way.
Oh, back to prep. I have a couple of Great Courses – I bought them two years ago on sale – they are very good. We’ve watched some in the past, but over the next couple of weeks we will pick them up again and watch the lectures on some of the iconic Roman buildings.
Blogfodder first. I hate linking to – hell I hate reading the Huffington Post, partly because it’s mostly boring predictable liberal agitprop but mostly because they don’t pay writers for providing content that makes the website money.
Simplicity Parenting encourages keeping fewer toys so children engage more deeply with the ones they have. Payne describes the four pillars of excess as having too much stuff, too many choices, too much information and too much speed.
When children are overwhelmed they lose the precious down time they need to explore, reflect and release tension. Too many choices erodes happiness, robbing kids of the gift of boredom which encourages creativity and self-directed learning.
It’s a useful argument to have handy: “You’re bored? Good. I’m just here to help. You’re welcome.”
True story: 11-year old just showed me a drawing of a space scene he’d done, describing the moment as “A cross between The Far Side and Mister Roberts.”
(The theme being the character in the drawing feeling left out of the action and feeling a yearning to be involved in distant battles and adventures. The Far Side cartoon involved a wolf in the middle of a forest holding a desk job, apparently.)
Very few Daily Homeschool Reports, I know. School has certainly happened, but every day has been truncated by afternoon activities – some of our own design, like walking the trail behind the local Jewish Community Center – and some involving other homeschoolers. Park Day, Gym Day, etc. Too nice to stay inside.
— 4 —
The most notable thing we’ve done this week is read and discuss half of The Red Pony.I had never read it, but I have to say that I am being blown away by the depth of discussion this slim book is inspiring. It is a tough book in some respects, but also a very good starting point for a young reader to dive deeply into motifs, themes and so on. It is probably all but impossible to teach in a classroom now, even the young teens who could be ready for it, considering that it involves death and sorrow and other triggers.
Hey, guys, I will be at the Catholic Library Association/National Catholic Education Association meetings in San Diego on March 29-30. I am for sure signing books at the OSV booth Tuesday at 2, and hopefully will be at one or two other publishers’ as well. If you are going to be there or have an educator friend who will, please tell them to say hello!
A couple of years ago, we visited the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. There’s a tour there, during which you can peer through windows and see lots and lots of paper money being collected and sorted. At the end, you take away a little plastic bag full of shredded bills, once “worth” something, now “worth” nothing.
The copies I’m selling right now will be signed by both Ann & me. Not that a kid cares, but if we have them, might as well sign them, right?
(And I can personalize the sig – just go to the proper place on the order form or let me know what you want via email. amywelborn60 – at- gmail – dot – com.)
Go here to order.
Below are some images that Ann made for a presentation – the pictures are from Adventure in Assisi. Ann lives in the NYC area, and if you are interested in having her come to your school or parish, here’s her website and contact information.
with an infiorata– a carpet of flowers arranged in intricate designs and pictures. There are a few large celebrations, 
Blue Guide: Northern Italy 
Charlotte was Both 