St. Katharine Drexel – March 3

Today is her memorial – March 3. You and your children can read about her in my Loyola Kids Book of Saints:

(Link goes to publisher’s website, not Amazon)

And learn all about her here. 

More March Saints:

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Today’s the feast of the Chair of St. Peter.

Last year, I was in Living Faith on that day. Here’s the devotion I wrote:

Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.

– 1 Peter 5:3

When I think about each of the important older people in my life (all deceased because I’m one of the older ones now), all are associated with a chair.

My father’s preferred spot was his desk chair in his study. My mother spent her days in her comfortable chair in the corner, surrounded by books. My great-aunt was not to be disturbed as she watched afternoon soap operas from her wingback chair. My grandfather had his leather-covered lounger, its arms dotted with holes burned by cigars.

From their chairs, they observed, they gathered, they taught and they provided a focus for the life around them. There was wisdom in those chairs.

I’m grateful for the gift of Peter, our rock. From his chair–the sign of a teacher–he and his successors gather and unify us in our focus on the One who called him–and all of us.

— 2 —

Tomorrow’s the feast of St. Polycarp:
He is in my Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints.  

—3–

Here’s Terry Teachout on Accessibility and its Discontents

I feel the same way, which is why I don’t have a smartphone. What’s more, I know that my ability to concentrate—to cut myself free from what I once called in this space the tentacles of dailiness—has been diminished by my use of Twitter and Facebook. Josef Pieper said it: “Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.” To be on line is the opposite of being still.

–4–

What does a conductor listen to as his country falls apart?

Here’s an interview with our Alabama Symphony conductor, Carlos Izcaray, who is Venezuelan:

At the top of his playlist? The turbulent “Symphony No. 10,” by Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

“This is a piece that was written just after the death of one of the worst tyrants in history, Stalin, and of course, Shostakovich had to endure many, many years under this regime,” Izcaray (@izcaray) tells Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd. “The movement … the second one, it’s got this militaristic, highly volcanic energy to it, that is very much attuned to the frustration that many of us Venezuelans feel. And if you listen to the end of the piece, there is hope at the end of the storm.”

That storm is a personal one for Izcaray. In 2004, he was kidnapped, detained and tortured by the Hugo Chávez regime.

“I went through very bad mistreatment of all sorts, physical and psychological, [I was] threatened to death,” says Izcaray, who also now conducts the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles. “And what I went through is what many people are going through now in Venezuela. We’re talking about students who are leading the marches, we’re talking about political prisoners.”

Izcaray’s detention caused him to spiral into a “depressive state.” But through music, he was slowly able to rebuild his life.

“I was going to have my big debut with the National Symphony Orchestra as a conductor. Everything was shattered,” Izcaray says. “But after a brief period of just darkness, my friends and my family, my father especially, brought music back to the equation for me. It was a way to heal — both literally and physically, because I had nerve damage in my arm. Playing the cello — I’m a cellist — so by playing music, I got better.

“I think that since then I’ve understood many of the layers that were, until then, not discovered by me — the power of music.”

Interview Highlights

On the Francis Poulenc composition “Four Motets on a Christmas Theme”

“This is a piece that, to me, every time I listen to it, I just — it’s like rediscovering the miracle that is music. It’s a spiritual peace, it’s just sheer beauty. I just think this piece elevates me to a different frequency. [It’s] hard to describe it, and it’s just a couple of minutes long. But I really think that Francis Poulenc captured the most intimate and profound elements of what it is to be a human being and this relationship with music.”

–5 —

Don’t forget Weird Catholic!

–6-

Son #2 continues to post film reviews several times a week.

Summer Interlude (Bergman)

1776

The Homeseman

Follow him on Twitter

 

–7–

Sexagesima Sunday this week:

 

I’ve created a Lent page here.

 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Follow Me

As I’ve mentioned several times, the Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories, published in 2017, presents Scripture to children and families in the way most Catholics encounter the Bible: through their placement in the liturgical year.

Generally. 

Because, as you know, there are going to be exceptions. But in general – for example – we hear the messianic prophecies of Isaiah during Advent. We hear account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert on the first Sunday of Lent. And somewhere in the beginning of Ordinary Time, we’ll hear this:

After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
Simon said in reply,
“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.”
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.

So this narrative is in the section – surprise – “Ordinary Time.”

I’ve included the first and the last page, so you can also get a sense of how I wrote each story. (Click on the images for larger versions)

 

The bulk of it, of course, is just a retelling of the Scripture.

And then, after the narrative, I tie the Scripture into some aspect of Catholic faith and life – as you can see here, the role of the apostles in the Church, as well as the call to all of us to follow Christ. And each entry ends with a suggestion for thinking and conversation, as well as a prayer.

Presenting the Bible to children is not a simple task. I really think that in this – as is the case with so much catechesis – it’s a good idea to trust the experience and presence of the Spirit in the Church and organize our Scriptural catechesis according in line with that experience: putting the Psalms at the center of our daily prayer life with children – instead of constantly inviting them to make up their own prayers, or offering them our weak, pedantic efforts – as well as letting our Scripture reading be guided by how the Church lives with God’s Word. Yes, the contemporary lectionary has flaws – including selective editing of passages that make modern people uncomfortable – so, yes, it’s good to start with what’s in the lectionary, but then turn right to the Bible itself to get the whole picture. But even with that weakness, it’s far more sensible to use Scripture  – especially in catechesis and formation – according to the experience of the Body of Christ instead of presenting it as a handy personal guidebook to be cherry-picked according to my Feelings of the Day.

Go here for more information on the Loyola series, including this book.

 

 

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Today’s the feastday of St. Lawrence.

In 2016,  as part of our three weeks in Italy, we visited Ravenna.

There, in the Mausoleum of Gallia Placidia, is a wonderful mosaic of St. Lawrence. Above is my photograph, but you can find better ones elsewhere, such as this excellent site unpacking the iconography of St. Lawrence. 

 — 2 —

Tomorrow is St. Clare – I’ll point you to this older blog post of mine. An excerpt: 

The letters of St. Clare to Agnes of Prague. 

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: 

Inasmuch as this vision is the splendour of eternal glory (Heb 1:3), the brilliance of eternal light and the mirror without blemish (Wis 7:26), look upon that mirror each day, O queen and spouse of Jesus Christ, and continually study your face within it, so that you may adorn yourself within and without with beautiful robes and cover yourself with the flowers and garments of all the virtues, as becomes the daughter and most chaste bride of the Most High King. Indeed, blessed poverty, holy humility, and ineffable charity are reflected in that mirror, as, with the grace of God, you can contemplate them throughout the entire mirror.

Look at the parameters of this mirror, that is, the poverty of Him who was placed in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. O marvellous humility, O astonishing poverty! The King of the angels, the Lord of heaven and earth, is laid in a manger! Then, at the surface of the mirror, dwell on the holy humility, the blessed poverty, the untold labours and burdens which He endured for the redemption of all mankind. Then, in the depths of this same mirror, contemplate the ineffable charity which led Him to suffer on the wood of the cross and die thereon the most shameful kind of death. Therefore, that Mirror, suspended on the wood of the cross, urged those who passed by to consider it, saying: “All you who pass by the way, look and see if there is any suffering like My suffering!” (Lam 1:2). Let us answer Him with one voice and spirit, as He said: Remembering this over and over leaves my soul downcast within me (Lam 3:20)! From this moment, then, O queen of our heavenly King, let yourself be inflamed more strongly with the fervour of charity!

— 3 —

At the end of a week in which we think about the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, here’s related news from earlier in the summer: 

The places of “hidden” Christianity in Japan are the heritage of humanity. The UNESCO committee made its decision two days ago including 12 sites in Nagasaki and in the Amakusa region on its World listing. The places are symbols of the persecution perpetrated against Christians during the Edo period (1603-1867).

One of the sites recognized as a world heritage is the Oura Cathedral of Nagasaki, the oldest church in the country, already a national treasure. Built by two French missionaries of the Society of Foreign Missions in 1864 to honour the 26 Christian martyrs – 9 European and 16 Japanese – it is famous for an event that Pope Pius IX called a “miracle of the East”: after the inauguration, a group of people from the village of Urakami asked Fr. Petitjean – one of the two missionaries who built it – to be able to enter the church to “greet Mary”. They were “Kakure Kirishitans”, descendants of the first Japanese Christians forced into anonymity, and were followed by tens of thousands of underground Christians who came to the cathedral and resumed Christian practice.

The remains of the castle of Hara was also included in the UNESCO list.  It was one of the scenes of the Catholics revolt “Shimabara-Amakusa” (1637), as a result of which the persecution became harsher – and the village Sakitsu, in the prefecture of Kumamoto (Amakusa), where Christians continued to practice their faith in secret.

The UNESCO site on the sites.

— 4 —

What about a Latin Mass Schola…at San Quentin? 

Not only do we have 25 enthusiastic volunteers, all the men I spoke with, whether they joined the schola or not, are anxious to come and attend the Latin Mass on the 25^th of August.

For some, it will be a trip down memory lane to the music of their Catholic boyhoods. But for many of the young men present, it is a fresh chance to participate in the ancient rituals of the Church, to share the noble sacred beauty that is their heritage too.

“One young man told me that he felt the Holy Spirit buzzing in his soul while he joined the choir in some chanting during the concert. I was especially delighted to see that so many men want to learn Gregorian chant and classical sacred choral music, and help bring the Latin Mass to San Quentin,” said Rebekah Wu who directs the Benedict XVI Institute Schola and Teaching Choir.

After the closing prayer by Archbishop Cordileone, more than a dozen men came up to talk to the singers and to Father Cassian, the Contemplative of St. Joseph monk who is going to celebrate the first Traditional Latin Mass on August 25 at San Quentin.

As one of the prisoners put it to one of our singers: “I don’t want to be in here. But if I have to be in here, I want to be in here listening to music like that.”

“From the large turnout in the Chapel, it was clear that the men at San Quentin have a hunger for beauty and prayer.  The concert by the Benedict XVI Institute was clearly enjoyed by those who attended.  They also appreciated the support and presence of Archbishop Cordileone who has made it a point to visit the prison often.” Notes Fr. George Williams, SJ,  who is the Catholic Chaplain at San Quentin State Prison.

“I saw these men, who humanly speaking are in a dire situation that may seem hopeless, be lifted up to God by sacred beauty and given new hope,” Archbishop Cordileone told me afterwards. “They love to sing, and they worship well. So the response of the men to the invitation to form a Latin Mass schola was overwhelming but not surprising.”  He added: “The Benedict XVI Institute teaching choir is clearly fulfilling an important need in ordinary parishes but also for those at the margins of society.”

— 5 –

You may or may not have heard that Bishop Robert Barron’s Catholicism series is ten years old now, and in honor of that anniversary, Word on Fire is making the entire series available for viewing at no cost for the next week or so. You have to sign up to get a free pass, but here you go for that. 

(My humble contribution: contributing to the Pilgrimage Journal, which is intended to help young people connect with the content of the series.  

For the subsequent series, Pivotal Players, I wrote an prayer/meditation book that accompanies the first installment: Praying with the Pivotal Players. 

— 6 —

This article is on the Washington Post site, and therefore might be behind some sort of firewall for you. I don’t pay for the Post, but for some reason, the article was fully accessible…today. 

Buka Island in the South Pacific remains remote to this day, but it takes a dose of imagination to conjure up how far it was from anywhere 78 years ago. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange set out from Los Angeles in September 1940 on a 704-passenger ship that took them to New Zealand and on to Australia. Next came a 48-passenger ship that carried them to the Solomon Islands — which sticks in memory because two years after sisters’ passage, U.S. Marines stormed ashore on Guadalcanal.

They boarded a 23-ton sailing boat just off Guadalcanal that made several stops as it moved northwest to their final destination.

Their journey had taken three months.

“They were young, they were zealous, they were educated and they felt called to do this,” McNerney said. “I don’t think they had a clue about the war.”

A year and one day after their arrival, Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor.

During that year, as detailed in journal kept by Sister Hedda Jaeger, the four nuns — two teachers and two nurses — became deeply enmeshed in the village of Hanahan on Buka, where they helped to set up schools and give medical care.

After Pearl Harbor, Japanese attacks spread quickly across the South Pacific, and the Australian government ordered evacuation of everyone other than “female missionaries and nurses” on Dec. 17. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange politely replied “we will remain at our station.”

Within weeks, Japanese bombers were flying overhead and Sister Hedda wrote: “The natives are all very much concerned about our welfare, and some have even expressed the wish that they could give us their black skin so we could pass unseen. We do not know what the future holds for us.”

Here’s  a link to the published diaries of one of the sisters. 

— 7 —

I have several earlier posts this week – on Better Call Saul, on the first day of school, on a couple of saints. Scroll/click back for those posts.

And don’t forget The Loyola Kids Book of Signs and Symbols.

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.

Also – my son has been releasing collections of short stories over the summer. He’s currently prepping his first (published) novel, The Battle of Lake Erie: One Young American’s Adventure in the War of 1812.  Check it out!

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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7 Quick Takes

 — 1 —

Happy Friday! Happy third-to-the-last Friday of Lent!

In case you missed it, last weekend, my 13-year old and I had a few days in New Orleans. Blog posts about the trip are here,  here, here and here.

 

 

(And, as always, on Instagram)

— 2 —

The next journey will be coming up in a bit more than a week. I’ll set the stage and open the curtain a bit by explaining that my older son’s spring break is…Holy Week. This ticks me off big time. Catholic schools having spring break during Holy Week? Please.

The reason given being – around here at least – is that the Catholic schools follow the public school calendars most of the time. So many people have children in both systems, I suppose there would be too many complaints to do it any other way.

(The glitch in the argument, in my mind, is that there are several large colleges in and around Birmingham, all big employers, and I think they’re all on Spring Break this week, causing, I’ll presume intra-family hassles of one sort or another.)

Anyway, when I first realized this, I went all hard core and said to myself…we are staying in town and we are going to All the Liturgies, and what is more, they are serving at All The Liturgies.

But then…

I revisited thoughts I’ve been having over the past few years, thoughts which centered on the desire to spend Holy Week somewhere where they actually do Holy Week in a big, public way.

So we’re doing that.

(Hint: We’re not crossing any time zones in any substantial way….)

 

 

—3–

Speaking of holy days and such, tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. Check out this post on what I’ve written about St. Patrick, or if you don’t want to bother, just click here for my entry on him from the Loyola Kids Book of Saints and here for my chapter on the Lorica from The Words We Pray.

(I love this art – but then I love most vintage Catholic line art – from a book, The Rhymed Life of St. Patrick  by Irish writer Katharine Tynan.

And of course, this leads me to tediously remind you that if you are looking for Easter gifts, I’ve written several books that might be of interest – for children, young adults, women and even new Catholics. Keep them in mind for Easter, as well as the upcoming Sacramental Season:

Signed copies of some titles available here. 

–4––

Here’s a wonderful story:

 

 

Developer Gene Dub has donated an entire four-storey building to give homes to some of the estimated 100 pregnant woman who find themselves homeless in Edmonton each year.

He heard about the need on a radio show, then thought about what he could do.

“I just happened to have a building,” said the local developer, speaking Thursday after his gift was celebrated at the 2018 housing awards. 

Dub specializes in rehabilitating historic buildings. This one, the old Grand Manor Hotel, was built in 1913 near 98 Street and 108 Avenue. He bought it eight years ago, renovating it and continuing to rent it as low-income housing. The 18 studios and one-bedroom units were renting for about $500.

It’s a gift worth $3 million. 

Capital Region Housing had been looking at buying the building last summer, said Greg Dewling, executive director. But finances are tight.

Then Dub phoned him up.

He said: “‘Do you think you could make it work if I donated the building?’” Dewling recalled with a laugh. 

Yes, that would work just fine.

 

 

–5 —

Erin Shaw Street is a local Birmingham writer, active in many areas and platforms. She wrote this fantastic, brave, moving essay on the second anniversary of her sobriety:

I don’t remember many details of the conversation. The alcohol had wrecked me, drinks from after parties and my sad after party of one. Years of drinking to self-medicate, drinking to try to keep up with what the world told me to be, drinking for energy (I know), drinking to cope with physical pain and anxiety. This was not about “fun” and hadn’t been in a long while. Dehydrated and shaky, Sondra walked me along the edges of the Colorado River. She was a mother too, and a seamstress. I think she said something about vintage lace. I said things like:

“But you don’t know what I’ve done.”

She assured me that this world was filled with people who had done all the things I had done, and then some. And that there was actually a way to move through this life healed from those mistakes. She shared because she had been there. She had stopped drinking and stayed stopped and done the work to look her past in the eye and it did not kill her.

Also would I like a smoothie?

That is what I remember: we walked, talked, and drank smoothies. She told me there was a way to get better, but I’d have to do the work and find community. The sun made my head hurt even more, and I stumbled back into the hotel and slept again, embarrassed to find my coworkers. They tracked down my phone, and a kind Uber driver returned it. He was deaf — I remember this, and I was struck by his act of kindness. He didn’t have to do that. Maybe the world was good. But first, to get through hell.

–— 6 —

Watched: The Maltese Falcon.  

We are about to (finally) cut the satellite cord, and so I was scrolling through the movies I’ve dvr’d from TCM, trying to get at least a few watched. Images from The Maltese Falcon popped up and the 16-year old requested that we watch that one (I’d been moving towards On the Waterfront) because “it has the fat guy in it.”

(Sydney Greenstreet – we’d watched Casablanca a few weeks back.)

I hadn’t seen it in many years, and while, of course, it’s a great movie, it’s also just so slightly marred (in a very tiny way) by deep proclamations of love between Bogart and Mary Astor after 36 hours of acquaintance. It really makes no sense – unless impassioned I love you! after a day are really code for, Yeah, they had sex when she went to his apartment that night. 

— 7 —

Reading: Jane Eyre. 

Never read it before (in my own defense I was an insufferable Thomas Hardy teenage reader back in the day) and am thoroughly enjoying it. It’s a very fast read, and really interesting from a theological/spiritual perspective, which I’ll explore more once I finish it.

In Our Time on the novel. 

 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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First Communion Season

It’s that time of year….First Communions…Confirmations…Mother’s Day…Graduation…

I can help. 

(I have most of these on hand, and you can purchase them through me. If it’s on the bookstore site, I have it. Or just go to your local Catholic bookstore or online portal).

First Communion:

 

The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints

The Loyola Kids’ Book of Heroes

Be Saints!

Friendship with Jesus (not available through my bookstore at the moment)

Adventures in Assisi

Confirmation/Graduation:

Any of the Prove It books.

The Prove It Catholic Teen Bible

The How to Book of the Mass

New Catholic? Inquirer?

The How to Book of the Mass

The Words We Pray

Praying with the Pivotal Players

Mother’s Day

The Catholic Woman’s Book of Days

End of Year Teacher/Catechist Gifts

Any of the above…..

 

 

 

 

 

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Holy Week Resources

A quick reminder:

• More on all of these here. 
• The Bible study I did for Loyola on the Passion in Matthew’s Gospel is available for Kindle – so you could grab it right now and use it for the week.
• Kris McGregor of Discerning Hearts  and KVSS radio has been using The Power of the Cross for daily Lent podcasts.  You can listen here.   The book is out of print – used copies (not cheap) are available here, but you can also download a free (pdf) copy here. 
• The How To Book of the Mass would be a great gift for a new Catholic.  You can get it here (or probably any Catholic bookstore). I also have copies for sale from by bookstore – the old cover, but same material. 
• The Words We Pray might also be a nice gift. More on that one here. 

• Easter Gifts and First Communion gifts? Got you covered.  Buy from me here or just poke around at your favorite Catholic bookstore on online retailer. 

 

 

 

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Tomorrow’s St. Anthony of Padua’s feast day – check out the entry I wrote on St. Anthony in The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints here at the Loyola website.  It’s like a free trial!

St. Anthony’s Basilica in Padua.  Fall 2012.

— 2 —

Today, youngest son and I took a brief afternoon journey to a small town about 20 miles south of here.  There was an easy walking trail I’d heard about, and we had business on the south end of Birmingham, so we’d do a loop of sorts.

The trail was short and flat and developed, but it ran next to and around a creek, so that was nice. What was even better was that we saw:

• a beaver working on his dam. From a distance, but no doubt that’s who it was and what he was doing.
• a rabbit swimming across the creek.

Wait, what?  That’s what we said.  But it was unmistakably, a rabbit, who hopped out of the woods on one side, dove in and swam steadily across to the other. Who knew?

Well, lots of people probably, since it was, I’d assume, a swamp rabbit – the largest rabbit species in the Southeast and, as I remembered later, responsible for dragging Jimmy Carter down even further back in 1979.

— 3 —

So there was that, and various small fish and a very large beetle, mimosas, reminders of the grist mill that once stood in the area, and very many bugs. It was a good walk, giving us a chance to see and learn of a few new things.

Before heading back north, we stopped at a new (to us) gourmet popsicle shop called Frios (similar to Birmingham’s own Steel City Pops) – my son had a salted caramel and I had a fantastic spicy pineapple.  The fellow in the shop said, after hearing where we were from, “That’s a long way to come to take a walk.”  I said, not really. It’s a new place, and we like to go new places and see new things.

Like swamp rabbits.

What we would have missed by just sitting around the house….

— 4 —

We watched Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman last night.  The ten-year old enjoyed it – especially the scenes with the monkey, not surprisingly.  There’s also a lengthy scene in the “Municipal Plunge” – an indoor swimming pool – which was interesting to me partly because I’m always studying this kind of stuff in movies from an historical perspective – to see how men and women dressed and interacted in such venues almost ninety years ago.  Anyway, in that scene, Keaton must cope with the awkwardness of losing his swimming trunks, and my son remarked, “You know, when they have a swimming pool scene in a movie, that always happens.  Always.” 

(Pro-tip, if you have cable.  About once a month, if I think about it, I go through a couple of weeks’ worth of the Turner Classic Movies schedule, and DVR the heck out of it. At any given time, we have about twenty good movies on tap. I do the same with nature shows.)

— 5 —

I don’t believe related the chipmunk story.

About three days before we left for the Wild West Trip, I awoke one morning to the sounds of scratching on a screen.  I am functionally blind without my contacts, so I couldn’t see across the room to the source of the sound, which kept on coming from the direction of an almost wall-length set of transom windows (50’s house) about over five feet from the floor.  The scratches kept coming.  I thought perhaps a bird was outside, or had started to nest out there..or something. I put in my contacts.

There was a chipmunk sitting on the ledge of the window.

Inside. 

My room.

When my mother was a little younger than I am now, she was bitten by a chipmunk.  We were looking at what would become our family’s own 50’s era home in Knoxville at the time. She peered into a trash can outside, and saw a chipmunk stranded at the bottom.  Why she didn’t just tip the can over and let it out, I’ll never know.  But instead, she reached down to rescue it by hand, and of course the terrified thing bit her.

And didn’t let go.

They had to put a lighted match to its nose to make it release her finger, but done in a way that it could immediately be trapped in some sort of container and taken to the hospital and tested for rabies.

(Which it didn’t have.)

And here I was, forty years later, confronting yet another chipmunk in another mid-century home. At eye level this time, though.

What to do?

First I tried to shoo it into a trash can (wait…..), but it just leapt off the ledge, used my desk chair as a spring board, and then took off out of my room.

I’m almost certain I saw it race into the first open door available, which would have been the hall closet – the boys’ bedroom doors were already closed, so no worries there.

When the boys woke up, I told them about it, and they immediately exchanged meaningful glances, the younger triumphant, the older one huffily abashed.

“I TOLD YOU I SAW A CHIPMUNK!” 

It seems the day before, the younger son had sworn that a chipmunk had jumped out from among a jumble of books on his bedroom floor.  He told his brother, but his brother scoffed and said it must have been a bug or he was seeing things.

So the next thing was to try to get it out.  Since I was sure it was in the closet, we set up an elaborate walled pathway that would lead from the closet to the back patio door.

(We discussed just putting the snake in there for a day, but ultimately decided against it.)

The moment came.  I pushed the door open, we braced ourselves…..

Nothing.

I poked around the closet with a broom handle, pushed blankets aside…nothing. I removed everything from the closet…nothing.

As I said, this was a couple of days before our trip, so since I wasn’t going to spend any more time searching, we just had to trust that it had escaped some other way, and that we wouldn’t return to the stench of death upon our return.

(We didn’t.)

— 6 —

As I wrote earlier, my younger son and I went to Atlanta this past week.  I forgot to post this photo, which is of an art installation on the first floor of the museum, viewed from the winding stairwell. It’s called “Utah Sky,” after the name of the paint color of the sky, and it’s Asian-inspired, but it reminds me of my beloved Mexican oilcloth more than anything.

— 7 —

Current reads:

Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians

The Wapshot Chronicle.

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