St. Martin de Porres – November 3

I repeat this post yearly – as I’ve said, readers come and go here, so why not?

It’s one of my favorite posts, along with, of course, the Gallery. 

New for 2022: St. Martin de Porres from the church of San Diego in Guanajuato, Mexico:

With Pope Pius X behind him, for some reason…

I love that the first saint we remember in a specific way after All Saints’ Day is St. Martin. He’s a strong reminder of what discipleship is: as followers of Christ, our call is to live like this – in deepest communion with Christ, risking all, bringing the love and mercy of Christ not only to all we meet, but, to extent our station in life permits it, to those outside, abroad, and outcast.

Civil governmental and social and cultural structures can enhance that or put up obstacles. That doesn’t change anything about how we’re called to meet our day, every day – like Martin and all the saints.

We’ll start with the  July 1962 issue of Ebony and read about the canonization:

(Click on image for a larger version, or just go to the archives site and read it there.)

Complete with sweet mid-century ads!

(Honestly, those back issues of Ebony…don’t know about you, but they put me at great risk of rabbit-hole exploring..fascinating. So be warned.)

From John XXIII’s homily at the canonization:

The example of Martin’s life is ample evidence that we can strive for holiness and salvation as Christ Jesus has shown us: first, by loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind; and second, by loving our neighbours as ourselves.

When Martin had come to realize that Christ Jesus suffered for us and that He carried our sins in his body on the cross, he would meditate with remarkable ardour and affection about Christ on the cross. Whenever he would contemplate Christ’s terrible torture he would be reduced to tears. He had an exceptional love for the great sacrament of the Eucharist and often spent long hours in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. His desire was to receive the sacrament in communion as often as he could.

Saint Martin, always obedient and inspired by his divine teacher, dealt with his brothers with that profound love which comes from pure faith and humility of spirit. He loved men because he honestly looked on them as God’s children and as his own brothers and sisters. Such was his humility that he loved them even more than himself and considered them to be better and more righteous than he was.

He excused the faults of others. He forgave the bitterest injuries, convinced that he deserved much severer punishments on account of his own sins. He tried with all his might to redeem the guilty; lovingly he comforted the sick; he provided food, clothing and medicine for the poor; he helped, as best he could, farm laborers and Negroes, as well as mulattoes, who were looked upon at that time as akin to slaves: thus he deserved to be called by the name the people gave him: ‘Martin the Charitable.’

The virtuous example and even the conversation of this saintly man exerted a powerful influence in drawing men to religion. It is remarkable how even today his influence can still call us toward the things of heaven.  Sad to say, not all of us understand these spiritual values as well as we should, nor do we give them a proper place in our lives. Many of us, in fact, strongly attracted by sin, may look upon these values as of little moment, even something of a nuisance, or we ignore them altogether. It is deeply rewarding for men striving for salvation to follow in Christ’s footsteps and to obey God’s commandments. If only everyone could learn this lesson from the example that Martin gave us.

From 2012 at the New Liturgical Movement blog, a post on a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the canonization, in Lima

I’ve written in the past about artist Jean Charlot. Among many other things, he illustrated a biography of St. Martin de Porres:

Oh. And let’s end with some Mary Lou Williams – jazz artist, Catholic.

Some background:

Suitable for the day, but I much prefer her Anima Christi

Last, and certainly least…he’s in the Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints – first page here

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A night at the opera

Coming to you from Whole Foods….

Well, for the first time on this trip, I’m staying at a place with less-than optimal internet, which is ironic since this is the most expensive place in which I’ve stayed (which is not saying a whole lot, but still. It’s in a somewhat chi-chi part of town and the owner has the rental casita on a booster from the main house. Even if I plant myself right next to the contraption, photos still don’t load. Let’s see if Whole Foods comes through.)

Update: It did.

(And you wonder – why not just wait until tomorrow? Because I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow – I may not have internet all day, at all – and I don’t want a huge backload of this type of writing. I have other things I need/want to do when I get home.)

Saturday morning was my last morning in the lovely, perfect Tiny House outside of Abiquiu, New Mexico. Here’s the listing – it’s not on the normal rental sites, but on a site geared more towards campers. Hipcamp features campsites, yes, but also lists lodgings that are perhaps on campsites (yurts, cabins, treehouses) and spots like this. It’s also on VRBO. I do believe that the gentleman who owns the property built the house and probably designed it as well. It’s cunning, smart, and cozy – and as you can see, the location can’t be beat.

Good-bye Tiny House!

I cleaned up, packed up and headed out to Mass.

Where?

Here.

As I mentioned somewhere – perhaps it was on Instagram – I’d discovered a couple of days before that since this parish, now St. Thomas the Apostle, was originally founded as St. Rose of Lima in the colonial period, her feastday (which was Monday) is celebrated with a fiesta, that begins with Mass in the ruins of the original mission.

Not something I’m going to miss, amiright?

There were probably 75 people there, mostly Hispanic. The Mass was in English, with all music in Spanish and the Agnus Dei in Latin. The priest was Vietnamese. It was a lovely Mass, in a beautiful, moving setting.

I was standing in the back, and there were probably twenty people behind and around me.

Followed by a procession – not Eucharistic, but with images of St. Rose and the Blessed Virgin – into town. It was escorted by folks on horseback and the fire department. It’s about a two mile journey, and I wasn’t going to walk it, so while I waited, I headed down to the Chamo River for a bit of a break.

The procession arrived – my position was from the parking lot of the famed Bode’s General Store – which is the main shopping stop in Abiquiu.

Up to the fiesta. The church, St. Thomas was open, so of course I took a look. As you can see, it’s peppered with images of both St. Thomas and St. Rose.

I understand the mayordomo is a common role in churches down here. Don’t you think it’s a good idea to have an official parish mayordomo instead of the unofficial jockeying for the spot that’s inevitable anyway?

To cap off an already very interesting morning, I discovered that the O’Keefe house and studio was doing special tours from 1-3. Abiquiu residents were free, and non-residents were asked to give a suggested $20 donation, which would then go to benefit the church. I’m in!

It was not the full tour, of course – more of a walk through with a docent, who gave the basics, but didn’t go in depth. I didn’t get any photo of her studio because there were a few people in there already. But I did get photos of her perfect mid-century mod sitting room – the rocks on her window sill are just part of O’Keefe’s rock collection, which she enjoyed rearranging and studying. The black door is a subject she painted quite a bit.

The setting is….unbelievable. And yes, inspiring.

And remember, it’s just around the corner from the Penitente Morada.

Time to hit the road south to Santa Fe. I stopped in Romero’s fruit stand to pick up some chile powder and some chili-sprinkled dried fruit, then kept going. My rental wouldn’t be ready until 4, so I continued to the Plaza, walked around a bit, got my bearings, saw the Cathedral exterior, where folks were arriving for Mass. Then back up to the rental, through clothes in the washing machine, and then….to the opera!

This was the last night of the season for the Santa Fe Opera, which is performed, of course, in this quite stunning setting, open to the west, so the setting sun provides a backdrop for at least part of the evening, and then twinkling lights for the rest. It’s a gorgeous place.

As I considered attending this performance, I noted that tickets were somewhat scarce, and of course, not cheap. I was willing to pay a couple hundred bucks for the tickets, but then read somewhere about standing room tickets – for $15. How to get them? It’s not on the website. Are they available just on the day? Is it a lottery? What’s up? So, I did the radical thing – called the box office.

“Oh, you can buy them now, over the phone,” she said.

Well, that’s a done deal, then.

There are maybe two dozen standing room spaces, and understand this is not a Globe Groundlings situation where you’re just standing in a crowd. There’s a designated area all along the back of the Orchestra seats – the mixing board is in the middle – with stands on which you can lean, and which also have the little translation screens. Really – I would definitely do it again.

I’m especially glad that I only paid $15 because…wow, this production was not good. This review expresses my reaction in a much more knowledgeable way than I could manage. It just did not work, although the second act was better than the first.

But you know what? It was 12 minutes from my rental, and hearing the singing and the music in that setting for that price is not something I’m going to complain about.

Fancy tailgating, pre-performance talk, the corner of my SRO stand, and the setting. The big head behind the screen is for the Barber of Seville, which....I probably should have tried to see instead…

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The Ultimate Stabat Mater Website

It’s Friday – the day of the week that we remember Jesus’ Passion and Death – not just during Lent, of course, but year round.

Doing some research, I discovered the Ultimate Stabat Mater website. I really don’t know how I had not run across it before:

Hans van der Velden started collecting Stabat Maters in 1992. After five years, when he owned about 40 Stabat Mater CDs, his partner Hannie van Osnabrugge created the Ultimate Stabat Mater Website with FrontPage.

The site contained all his notes on the composer, the composition, the original Latin text, and the translations. Hans continued his search for Stabat Maters, and regularly updated the site with new composers and translations.

Via the website Hans came into contact with music lovers, musicians, and composers from all over the world who provided him with new information about compositions and translations. The Stabat Mater collection became one of his passions. In his own words:

When I realised, one day, that I owned several CDs with a musical setting of the Stabat Mater I decided to start a real collection. The Spectrum Muziek Lexicon by Theo Willemze named some 15 composers, so this should be not too difficult. It appeared, however, that the number was substantially larger. I now know about some 600 composers, who, (fortunately), have not all been recorded on CD yet. Still, a substantial fraction has been released on CD and my collection grew rapidly. Beside this list of my collection of CDs I have made another list of composers, who as far as I know have not yet been recorded on CD (more than 400).

A collection invites comparing, and that is what I do. I analyse the text and note the differences, as it appears that several variations of the Stabat Mater poem exist. I listen to the music and I try to present the results in an easily surveyable way. This comparison is handicapped by the fact, that, in the field of musical theories, I am illiterate and not even able to read music. Therefore, many of the opinions in this area come from the accompanying CD-inserts. Besides that, I try to give an impression of what I heard. This is, in effect, a question of sense and sensibility. I give a description in words, coloured of course by my own taste, and I give a graphical representation of the piece ..

When Hans died on December 28^th, 2005, he possessed  211 different  Stabat Mater compositions on CD. The final composition he added was by the Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki. After his death, his spouse continued collecting Stabat Mater compositions and managing the site.

The YouTube Channel

The Instagram Page

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The Revenge of the Blogs

I tell you, it’s coming.

I’ve been telling you for years, when it comes to social media, put not your trust in princes.

This has nothing to do with political preferences, but with other issues I’ve been contemplating, in my usual haphazard way, for years, and which I’ll set down later today.

Here.

Not in an Instagram or Facebook post. Not on Twitter. Not on a podcast or a YouTube video.

Here.

Yes, this space is prone to censorship and deplatforming as well. We’ve seen it. One of the best “Gender Critical” (i.e. anti-trans movement) blogs was completely removed from WordPress a couple of years ago. Including the archives, I believe. Google owns Blogger. You know what that means.

But for the moment, this is what it’s always been. Mostly mine.

For the moment, at least.

Update: How strange, but appropriate to see news, right after posting this, that Kathy Shaidle, pioneering blogger, both in general and in the Catholic arena, has died:

Following a tedious rendezvous with ovarian cancer, Kathy Shaidle has died, wishing she’d spent more time at the office.

Her tombstone reads: GET OFF MY LAWN! 

She is relieved she won’t have to update her LinkedIn profile, shave her legs, or hear “Creep” by Radiohead ever again. Some may even be jealous that she’s getting out of enduring a Biden presidency. 

Kathy was a writer, author, columnist and blogging pioneer, as proud of her first book’s Governor General’s Award nomination as of her stint as “Ed Anger” for the Weekly World News. A target for “cancel” culture before the term was coined, she was denounced by all the best people, sometimes for contradictory reasons

 

---

We’ll start easy.

So this happened.

(Ladder next to piano is part of our very professional setup for the remote piano lessons. Guitar is his own purchase with his organ-playing money.)

Someone was giving it away. Saw it on (okay….I know…shut up) FB Marketplace. As it happens, the family lives just a few houses down from our house before this one – just a couple of miles away. No way we could transport it ourselves, so I figured paying someone to move it + free fully operational organ (- one key, as you can see below) still = pretty good deal.

And for the record, these small organs from the 60’s and 70’s are items which, these days, you can really only give away. They have zero resale value. In fact, one organist discussion board I read said that the benches have more resale value than the instrument themselves – and yes, it’s a nice looking bench.

Organ Guy is delighted. It only has one octave of pedals, which makes it less than optimal for home practice for church pieces, but at least he can work with the manuals. And he’s having fun doing it. I had wondered before getting it, if it was really worth it, considering that he has a pretty nice digital keyboard already, but I can already see that yes, it’s different, with other, good reasons to decide to spend time with it, rather than the new shiny keyboard.

He remains noncommittal on a music career, but he does enjoy it, spends a lot of time practicing and then fooling around with various instruments, so as far as I’m concerned it’s money well spent.

Actually, my goal is for him to fill our house with sounds like this.

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7 Quick Takes from Grand Tetons…

—1 —

Oh, I should mention – for those of you who only check in for these takes – since last we spoke, I’ve driven to Kansas, flown back home and then flown out here…to….Wyoming!

Previous posts here and here. 

Yes, bears have been seen.

— 2 —

Friday night:

Sitting here doing laundry – two whole days worth, but it filled the machine – and catching up here. Thanks, wi-fi (not available in the cabins)

Remember: videos can be found on Instagram. On the day of, in Stories, many kept in posts. 

First, a Covid-era traveling report. This will be adjusted, I’m sure, as we move on, but here’s what I’m observing. Very busy. The flight to Jackson was full. Jackson last night was packed out, restaurants to (adjusted) capacity. Every NPS campground is full. I’m sure the other lodgings are sold out, although I will say I didn’t reserve these accomodations until a month ago, and there were still vacancies then. But there are just a lot of campers – and of course, there are always are out here, but considering the number of rental campers I’m seeing, the numbers are even higher than normal. Why? Because people, first, want to GET OUT. They have kids who are doing remote learning so why not? And camping strikes people, I’m guessing, as more hygienic than staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. You camp, make your own food, and hike outdoors? Covid can’t touch this. Or at least has a much lesser chance.

Just got the clothes in the dryer, so on to today.

— 3 —

Up quite early to get down to Jenny Lake, about a half hour’s drive. It’s a super popular spot because well, it’s beautiful, and there are a number of interesting hikes that begin in that area. The Internet advised me to get there early because the parking lot fills up and the line for the boat shuttle across the lake gets long.

So, we were indeed out of the cabin by 7 and on that boat at 7:30. There weren’t many cars in the parking lot and we just walked right on the boat, but by the time we drove away around noon, the parking lot was full and folks were parking on the road.

I’ll mention that at 7:30 am, there was a line of cars waiting to get into the campground, though.

So, across the lovely lake in that early chill with the absolutely gorgeous mountains as a backdrop. I’m really glad we did this hike, not only because, well, it was a good hike, but because it gave us a chance to actually see the Grand Tetons – up close, visibility was fine, but as the day progressed, from any greater distance, the smoke from all those fires in the West continued to obscure them.

— 4 —

We hiked up to Inspiration Point, and then continued on the Cascade Canyon trail. We didn’t go the whole way – we made the judgment call at 10 that we’d been going for two hours, which meant (we are geniuses!) it would be two hours back, and we didn’t really want to finish up much later than noon. I’m guessing we did about 2/3 of the trail. I’m glad we went early because the numbers of folks meeting us going forward as we were returning was staggering, with probably half of them stopping to ask some version of , “See any cool animals up ahead?”

Answer was “no” because the cool animal we’d seen was at the beginning of the hike – this guy.

But no bears out there today.

— 5 –

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous hike. The author of a book on Grand Teton hiking that I’d read said in his opinion, the Hermitage Point trail we did yesterday was the best in the park, and that I can’t figure out. That was nothing compared to this, with soaring mountains on either side,  walking above a rapidly coursing creek, studying the snow packs melting into streams.

— 6 –

Then to Dornan’s for lunch – a good (according to my son) Buffalo burger. Some conversation about doing a float down the Snake River – in other words, something that involved sitting rather than walking – but there was little interest. So we drove instead. Drove to check out the famed “Mormon Row” – a frequently photographed site (picturesque barn with the Tetons in the background) and then something I was curious about – the Gros Ventre Landslide site – in 1925, a massive rockslide occurred, and there’s a spot with information and access to walk around the tumbled rocks a bit. According to this: Open.

Nope. We drove out there and the site was cordoned off. I’m guessing it is because they are about to resurface the very potholed road. That was too bad, but the good thing was that you can see the gaping hole in the mountain anyway. So that wasn’t a wasted twenty minutes by any means.

Then back for a rest, then out again – first stopping to buy sandwiches at the general store, then to Signal Mountain, with an overlook to the east (lots of land) and west (Lake Jackson.) It was nice, although, again – the smoke-shrouded mountain had a certain effect, but not the optimal effect.

— 7 —

However – two sites made the trip even more special. First was the sunset. Unfortunately, none of our photography could capture it. While this picture is sort of nice, what you should know is that in Real Life, the sun and its reflection on the lake were equally brilliant shades of orange. It was one of the more stunning sites I’ve seen.

And then, near the bottom of the hill…this fellow. Calmly munching, ignoring us all. Which is good. No complaints there.

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

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7 Quick Takes

—1 —

Well, here we are. Just a few days until the Return. The Return to College. For a few months, we hope, and not just for a few weeks, as College Guy pessimistically predicts. As I keep saying, I’m optimistic.

We’ll see.

School for the other one is slowly picking up speed – to be interrupted by travel next week, to be sure, but getting a little more organized nonetheless. This week has seen meetings with Algebra 2 and Latin tutors as well as a piano lesson. We talked over plans for literature and history study. Looked at photos posted by the private high school most of his friends attend, saw all the images of people in single file in masks looking at each other from behind plexiglass in the lunchroom, and if there were any lingering questions, they were answered. “We’re good. Thanks.”

— 2 —

There’s been a bit of blogging this past week. Here’s a review of a novel called Followers and another of a novel, which I liked quite a bit, called Nothing to See Here. 

All done on a new laptop. I have a desktop, which is my preference for working, but I needed a new laptop – for a couple of years I’d been depending on a Chromebook we’d had to buy for Son #4’s high school career – and I hate Chromebooks. I mean, just hate. I love small laptops – that’s not the issue. The issue is the dependence on the cloud and the Internet and Google and all of that. And the fact that if you forget your passwords, it just might wipe the device of all local data on it – which happened to me last summer in Spain after I’d written a short piece for the Catholic Herald, but before I’d sent it in.  Cue new scene with me sitting on the floor in a hotel room in Caceres, Spain at 6 am, fuming (and worse) attempting to reconstruct and rewrite.

Plus, we needed a better, more dependable machine for Kid #5’s academics, such as they are. We don’t do a lot of screen stuff, and no remote classes of any sort, but you never know. Might as well have something decent, just in case.

Anyway, new computers are sweet.

— 3 —

I mentioned before that my book sales, like everyone else’s, have been impacted by this virus and responses to it – namely, no big gift-giving binges around Easter and the Spring Sacramental Season. But, as I noted, since mid-May, sales have been slowly but steadily edging back up. It’s really interesting. I’m still behind last year, but every week since mid-May, sales this year have topped the equivalent week last year, sometimes more than doubling the number of units sold.  The Loyola Kids Book of Heroes is now even with total sales from the same period last year (by the measure I have access to through Amazon Author portal – which doesn’t record all sales.). I think parishes that didn’t have big First Communion or Confirmation celebrations when they normally do have been having them in smaller batches through the summer, and people have purchased gifts for that – and then you throw in the increase in people doing homeschooling, and there you go.

So, yeah, if you know anyone who’s interested or in need of good titles for homeschooling catechism for children or young people, do consider pointing them my way –here’s a link to the Loyola Kids Books and here’s a link to the Prove It titles for teens. 

Today: St. Maximilian Kolbe. In the Loyola Kids Book of Saints.

 

— 4 —

From William Newton:

One of the most famous works of art rescued from the Nazis by the Monuments Men is, of course, “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”, more commonly known as “The Ghent Altarpiece”, a 15th-century masterpiece by the Van Eyck brothers that resides in St. Bravo’s Cathedral in the Belgian city of Ghent. Readers will recall that recently, a number of ill-informed commentators and meme-makers criticized the recent cleaning and restoration of the piece, because the face of the Lamb came out looking more humanoid and less lamb-like. After an exhaustive review, experts from the University of Antwerp and the National Gallery of Art have concluded that the Van Eycks did, in fact, intend to have the Lamb – who symbolizes Christ Himself – display the (to modern eyes) slightly disturbing face that we see gazing out at us now. It may be a late Medieval convention with respect to how to portray animals, since similar faces appear among the horses in one of the other panels of the altarpiece, or it may be that one or both of the Van Eycks intentionally wanted to have the viewer thrown a bit off-balance when praying or meditating before the image.

— 5 –

I meant, but forgot to mention last week, that the Cathedral parish held a celebration on August 2, bringing the traditional way of celebrating Our Lady of the Snows from St. Mary Major in Rome down here to Birmingham. That is – letting white rose petals fall from the ceiling.

More here.

 

(And yes, the Cathedral has been having Mass with full ceremony since April/May – no congregational singing, every other pew roped off, etc., but a full music program – you can see the orders of worship here.)

This next Sunday’s Mass, for example– Viadana’s Missa l’Hora Passa. 

— 6 —

From the New Yorker, on two new biographies of Poulenc:

Both accounts undermine the popular image of Poulenc—carefully cultivated by the man himself—as the epitome of Parisian suavity and ebullience. He was, in fact, a turbulent, even tortured character: sometimes arrogant, sometimes self-castigating, sometimes lovable, sometimes impossible. That complexity only adds to the interest of the music. The critic Claude Rostand famously commented that Poulenc was a combination of “moine et voyou”—monk and rogue. Many of the composer’s works fall cleanly into one category or the other, but some of the strongest fuse the two personalities in one. The Organ Concerto (1938) interlaces brimstone dissonances with rollicking fairground strains. The Gloria (1959-60) exudes an almost scandalous joy, as if a crowd of drunken angels were dancing down the boulevards.

— 7 —

My son watched all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. All of them. Here’s his ranking. 

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

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Followers and Loads of Kudzu

I read two novels this week – in print! Thank you, libraries!

The first, Blackwood , by Michael Farris Smith, is a Southern Gothic type novel that didn’t quite work for me.  The central, driving tension did: how we cope with what we have done and what we have failed to do – and what has been done to us. Basically (and I’ll say it outright, since it’s the opening scene of the book) – a man, who, as a boy, witnessed his father’s last moments of life, a suicide. (But I’ll hold something back here, since its reveal is a good, jolting shock) – He spends his life wondering about his own role and bearing wounds of childhood trauma that even precedes his father’s death.

And I’ll say, that the way in which all of this circles around at the end is, indeed, grace-filled and redemptive, and even surprisingly so.

But the other part of the story is gothic, haunted, creepy, with kudzu as the metaphor and strange, damaged, damaging people doing strange deeds under the vines. Life is being choked out, the doings are hidden, and, it seems, nothing short of burning it all down will rid the world of the evil.

I mean, okay. And it was pretty readable, albeit sad, but the Gothic-ness was a little labored for me.

So let’s move on to Followers, which was more interesting, but flawed as well.

Here, we jump between time zones, so to speak: the recent past (2015/6) and the future (2051). In the recent past, we focus on Orla and Floss – one aspiring writer, stuck on a celebrity blog who believes she can and will do better and more, and the other an aspiring celebrity with all of the self-regard and conniving that aspiring celebrities generally have. And so, they join forces in order to reach those planets of fame and fortune.

In the future, we have Marlow, who has been raised in a place called Constellation, which is essentially a 24-hour Land of Social Media, where everyone’s lives are lived online, so to speak, in front of millions of followers.

Somewhere in between the two eras was a mysterious (for most of the book) disaster referred to as “The Spill” – which seemed to have wiped out the internet and the means of communication and information sharing that we know today, and the reaction to which scared everyone off the Internet,  which then allowed the government to step in and take control of it all. The Spill and the aftermath also made devices as we know them today, obsolete – replacing them with “Devices” that are implanted in the wrist and feed everything – thoughts, information, images – directly to the brain, confusing the individual as to what he or she is generating and what’s coming from outside.

Pretty complicated, but it mostly works, although I felt it was a bit long. Author Megan Angelo casts a healthy critical eye over the power of social media and the Internet, and what it does to us as individuals and the kind of culture it builds and supports.

Ellis thought so, too. “Hold on!” he said, waving his hands. “Save it, Mar. This is your authentic reaction to becoming a mother. You’ve gotta share it with your followers.” He opened the bathroom door and prodded her out, to where she could be seen. 

It’s about the hunger to influence, to matter in a big way, to feel important, and to do so by getting people interested in you or your narrative. I think the novel does a good job of exploring this in an imaginative way, skewering what highly merits being skewered, but there’s a missing piece. The focus is on characters who hunger for the influence –  but just as interesting to me is what makes that possible: the hunger to be influenced. What drives, not just those who want followers, but the followers themselves. That’s the other part of the dynamic and it could use some skewering, too.

But for the most part, Followers is a pretty entertaining, sharp look at the power of the Internet and social media, and how stupid it all is, and how, in the end, it distances us from the Real – as in this really quite beautiful and true passage:

Where could Marlow possibly be, besides, where she’d been told to go?

Here. Here, cutting through choppy, silt-filled water, away from all of them and closer to the truth. Marlow had been taught that being watched put food on the table, that there wasn’t a better way to live. But she had seen, on the sidewalks of New York, all the happy nobodies — people whose days weren’t built around lengthening the trail of attention spans floating behind them. They were paunchy and muttering and somehow more alive, and they made Marlow feel sorry for Floss and Ellis, with their endless performing, and Honey, with her army of dark-hearted disciples. They might have had all the followers, but they were never finished chasing.

Marlow was done being looked at. Now she was doing the looking, and finally seeing things differently. She found, in the sunrise, all the colors the pills had kept from her for years: a shade of orange she loved. A yellow that reminded her of when it was her favorite. A pink that might have been fine after all. She was hearing something, too, in the space her device used to fill: a brand-new voice inside her head, telling her to keep going. 

She leaned over the boat’s railing, into the spray, and listened to the voice. She was almost positive it sounded like herself. 

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Well, here we are, just about one week and counting from, we hope, The Return to College. Out of five classes, all but one will be (as far as we can tell) face-to-face, and I don’t mind paying for that.

What a ride.

So, next week: Hopefully get his old car sold (anyone in Alabama want a 2006 Mazda Miata?) get serious about lists and shopping and such. I’m not anxious about it because he’ll have a car with him and in case he needs toothpaste, he can just pop out to Wal-Mart and…go get some. There isn’t that concern to Buy All The Things because he won’t be able to restock for weeks or months.

But we do want to get most of the stuff before we go. Added to the usual this year: Masks? Check. Sanitizer? Check. Thermometer? Check. Etc. He has all of this textbooks. He’ll be in a single room, so no roommate concerns, and that also lessens the Pandemic Prevention Pressure.

— 2 —

I’m in Living Faith today. Here ’tis. 

Before this – here. 

— 3 —

My new favorite Twitter account. Language alert, blah, blah, blah.

 — 4 —

Working hard here, every day. Process?

In the evening, take a look at the material to be written about the next day. Read any unfamiliar Scripture passages. Let it simmer.

Get up the next morning, first thing revise the two or three chunks written the day before. Then write two-three new chunks.

Done by 10 am, usually.

Onward!

— 5 —

In case you missed it earlier this week:

I’ll Fly Away – The Sister Servants from Sister Servants on Vimeo.

Learn more about the Sister Servants here. 

 

— 6–

Here’s a really excellent article on Hemingway and O’Connor, turning on the imagery of blood and yes, bulls. It’s very, very good. 

It is also noteworthy here that Mrs. May is described as being “pierced”—that word associated with suffering and with the cross—and that the piercing coincides with a kind or rapture or “ecstasy,” a word whose Greek root means “to stand outside of oneself” and suggests a transcendence of self. O’Connor’s heroine is cast as a modern-day version of Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstasy, who is pierced, in the midst of her visionary rapture, by a visiting angel.

Along similar lines, Hemingway associates the violence of the bullring with ecstasy, particularly the faena—the final third of the bullfight wherein the matador performs his capework with the bull before killing him. In Death in the Afternoon he writes of this rapture, describing the faena as a ritual

That takes a man out of himself and makes him feel immortal while it is proceeding, that gives him an ecstasy, that is, while momentary, as profound as any religious ecstasy; moving all the people in the ring together . . . in a growing ecstasy of ordered, formal, passionate, increasing disregard for death (206-207).

The ecstasy O’Connor and Hemingway describe—and that Bernini depicts— is the culmination of intense bodily sensation leading to enlightenment of the soul. The natural leads to the supernatural. Time becomes one with eternity. Suffering is redeemed. It is mystical, transcendent, and deeply Catholic.

The uses of violence by both Hemingway and O’Connor remind us of the reality human life is grounded in: we are all living “on the verge of eternity” (O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, 114), and the way we conduct our lives in the here and now has a spiritual dimension. Violence reminds us of our unceasing proximity to death, and this knowledge can serve as a conduit to grace.

 

— 7 —

Tomorrow? St. Dominic, here in the Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints.  Only a page is available  online, so here it is. He’s in “Saints are people who teach us new ways to pray” section.

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Tuesday

Had a very strange, unusual experience yesterday. Encapsulated in this Instagram story:

No, I’m not going anywhere, except to Atlanta to take people to the airport. But it does mean a few days of (I hope) great productivity. What it doesn’t mean is a trip to Ikea on that Atlanta journey, since the hints I’ve read online indicate that there’s a considerable wait just to get into the store, which just reopened about ten days ago. Forget that. Let’s digest:

Writing: I have something due on July 20. Haven’t started writing it yet. Hopefully over the next week I’ll get it about half done as well as get myself in a sort of groove, so that once people return, the hard part of framing and envisioning will be done and I can just write a few hundred words in between music practices and food prep and other shenanigans.

I am putting up a chapter a day to the novel I wrote about here. Two up so far, one more coming later today.

I’ll be in Living Faith on Sunday. You’ll be able to see it here. 

A lot of my book sales are seasonal, specifically– Christmas and then Easter/First Communion/Confirmation related. I don’t have access to book sales from the various publishers that publish my books, but I do have some metric that Amazon provides authors. I don’t think it’s just Amazon sales, but I’m not sure. Anyway, not surprisingly, compared to previous years, this spring’s sales have been laughably miniscule. Totally expected. Shrug. The interesting thing, though, is that over the past two weeks, there’s been a rather dramatic uptick. Not at the typical height of April/May, but about four times as high as a normal June.

First Communions are back, baby!

Listening:  As reported, we have moved on from Brahms, Haydn and Prokofiev(you can listen here to the entire playlist – it’s public now – and he got “Excellents” from all three judges in the competition) to Gershwin (the big three Preludes plus Novelette in Fourths and Debussy’s First Arabesque. That’s the summer playlist, with him beginning to tackle the entire Moonlight Sonata as his big project for next year. Plus, I think the teacher is wanting him to do some Chopin Etude.

Watching: A bit of a blip in movie watching, as work schedules, hanging out with friends and a new video game have interfered. After Hobson’s Choice, we stayed in England and took in the Ealing comedy The Man in the White Suit. 

A low-key satire about human beings’ response to innovation and change. Alec Guinness portrays an unassuming yet committed young scientist who is trying to invent an indestructible fabric. He seems to succeed, but the initially-welcomed development is soon understood to have repercussions for almost everyone – from the big business tycoons to labor. It’s a movie about persistence, creativity, resistance to change and yes, my favorite theme, unintended consequences. Not as hilarious as The Lavender Hill Mob or quite as dark as Kind Hearts and Coronets,  but a gem of a film.

We watched in on the Kanopy platform via the library, and followed it withthis Buster Keaton short,also on Kanopy.

Reading:  Wandering about the internet, searching through book blogging and reading sites, I happened upon this entry focusing on a mid-century novelist who apparently penned relatively short, sharp and dark books. I’m sold. I picked up The Girl on the Via Flaminia  – reviewed here, and read it in an evening.

(My main go-to for books like this, the Internet Archive, has been hit with legal action restricting what books it can make available for borrowing – books that you could borrow for a week or more are now only available for an hour. Hopefully they can get that straightened out soon. I discovered that this was available via Hoopla from my local library. It seems to me that Hoopla’s holdings have greatly expanded since the last time I checked, before Covid.)

I enjoyed it very much, although, you know, it wasn’t a laugh riot or anything. Set in Rome during the last stages of the Second World War, it’s about an American soldier who attempts an arrangement with a young Italian woman. A step above prostitution, in his mind, but is it really? Aside from the interesting landscape of wartime Rome, it confronts us with important questions about victory, defeat and occupation – and the impact of these Important Events on ordinary people, who simply want to live their lives.

I’ll be reading more of him.

Now I’m reading The Boarding House by William Trevor, which I also borrowed digitally from Hoopla. It’s quite a strange book. I started it last week and gave up after twenty pages, but then returned to last night. I’ll stick with it this time.

Cooking: Three major recent successes:

Madeleines. They were Son #4’s favorite bakery good from France years ago, and it just occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that I should try to make them. Ordered a pan for the purpose, and followed this recipe – success! The recipe is correct though – these are not items that keep. They really are only good the first day.

These ribs. I ended up marinating them for almost three days (kept meaning to cook them, but life interfered). Delicious. Excellent. And yes, the Chinese cooking wine does make a difference. (Obtained, along with the ribs, from our local mega-Asian grocery store. $2.99 a bottle.)

A bone-in ribeye cooked via this method – the reverse sear.This is the second time I’ve done this, and I’m sold. Yes, I splurged on a higher cut of steak (when you’re only buying one, and you do it once a month….go ahead), so that makes a difference, but this method really does produce a wonderfully juicy steak, no resting required.

Now…no cooking for a week!

 

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7 Quick Takes

—1 —

One outing this week: to Noccacula Falls, which is in Gadsden, about an hour away. It’s off I-59, which is the interstate you’d take if you were going from here to Chattanooga or Knoxville.

We’d been several years ago – so long, Kid #5 had no recollection of it. (Kid #4 was working). That time, however, I think we just did a brief stop on our way somewhere else and just looked at the falls from above – we didn’t venture down on the Gorge trail, which allows you to go behind the falls.

We did this time.

A very nice day. The weather’s been really pleasant this week – lows in the actual low 60’s, which is quite unusual and surely won’t last.

For video, go to Instagram.

— 2 —

Movies this week:

Master and Commander – none of us had ever seen it before. A great movie, quite rousing, must have been spectacular on the big screen. It’s a real shame no more were ever made.

But…speaking of Russell Crowe…have you seen the trailer for his new movie? It looks ridiculously insane. 

And he looks…different.

— 3 —

Then Hobson’s Choice. What a wonderful movie. I’d seen it long ago, when – perhaps a few of you remember – some PBS stations would run Janus Films on Saturday nights. Anyway, although some regular television stations ran older films late night or on weekends and the networks still broadcast made-for-theater movies (NBC Monday Night at the Movies!), what they showed was very mainstream, of course. By the time I was in high school, cable had come into our world – WTBS and WGN mostly, in those early days, and they showed movies. But never any art house or foreign films.

So….those Saturday night Janus Films on the Knoxville PBS stations …that was where I first saw Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, The Four Hundred Blows, M,  La Strada, Metropolis and so many others.

Here’s a contemporary article about PBS purchasing the rights to broadcast these films. 

And yes, Janus Films still exists as a rightsholder and distributor.

— 4 —

And oh yes, Hobson’s Choice. The only place it was streaming was through HBOMax, so I grabbed a 7-day free trial (remind me to cancel it on Tuesday, will you?) and got it rolling.

Based on an early 20th century play, starring Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie and John Mills and of course directed by David Lean, it’s a marvelous, easy comedy with a strong female lead and a charming love story based, initially, not on passion or even initially much attraction – but built on mutual respect (and, okay,  a little fear) and partnership. John Mills bracing himself for his wedding night – and the transformation that comes the morning after – is very funny and illustrative of how to express true things about sex and marriage in subtle, artful – and comedic – ways.

 

— 5 –

Next movies? Not sure. We only have a couple of days before people head off for a little visit to family, so we must choose wisely. I’m leaning towards The Man in the White Suit and Wages of Fear. 

Quite a change, isn’t it, from forty years ago, when, besides those Janus Films, the best we could get was a commercial-laden, chopped up showing of His Girl Friday on a Saturday afternoon.

— 6 —

 

The cover of the edition that’s in my memory from my parents’ shelves.

Over this past week, I read Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene for the first time. There won’t be another time. It’s definitely my least favorite Greene, although, being a Greene, it’s not an unpleasant read. I suppose I prefer my Greene with a bit more politics and a little less wacky female character. A couple of passages worth remembering:

I met my Aunt August for the first time in more than half a century at my mother’s funeral. My mother was approaching eighty-six when she died, and my aunt was some eleven or twelve years younger. I had retired from the bank two years before with an adequate pension and a silver handshake. There had been a take-over by the Westminster and my branch was considered redundant. Everyone thought me lucky, but I found it difficult to occupy my time. I have never married, I have always lived quietly, and, apart from my interest in dahlias, I have no hobby. For those reasons I found myself agreeably excited by my mother’s funeral.

 

“Are you really a Roman Catholic?’ I asked my aunt with interest.

She replied promptly and seriously, ‘Yes, my dear, only I just don’t believe in all the things they believe in.’ ”

 

“But surely you must have despised the man after all he had done to you?“
We were crossing the long aqueduct through the lagoons which leads to Venice-Mestre, but there were no signs of the beautiful city, only tall chimneys with pale gas flames hardly visible in the late-afternoon sunlight. I was not expecting my aunt’s outburst.
She turned on me with real fury as though I were a child who had carelessly broken some vase she had cherished over the years for its beauty and the memories it contained. “I despise no one,” she said, “no one. Regret your own actions, if you like that kind of wallowing self-pity, but never, never despise. Never presume yours is a better morality.”

 

In the act of creation there is always, it seems, an awful selfishness. So Dickens’s wife and mistress had to suffer so that dickens could make his novels and his fortune. At least a bank manager’s money is not so tainted by egotism. Mine was not a destructive profession. A bank manager doesn’t leave a trail of the martyred behind him.

And then, what sums up the entire book, beginning with a childhood memory:

I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement and the Deuil du Roy Albert.

(The last is a reference to a dahlia that had not flourished under his care, and had therefore been a source of disappointment to him.)

— 7 —

Today is the solemnity of  the Sacred Heart of Jesus

In a time and culture in which hardly any of us understand what love actually is, in which dehumanizing hate and contempt dominate public discourse, a daily prayer (you can find some here) focused simply on love might just have surprising power.

In a church culture which often reflects contemporary values that emphasize achievement and self-actualization and fulfillment by doing the Next Big Amazing Thing in Your Very Big Amazing Life, a daily prayer centered on opening ourselves to sharing the love pouring forth from the heart of Jesus in just ordinary ways might provide a welcome refocus as we get our bearings for summer.

Here are the pages on the Sacred Heart from The Loyola Kids Book of Catholic Signs and Symbols. 

Click on each image for a larger version.

More about the book – and the others in the series – here. 

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Tomorrow (June 20) is the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin:

From The Loyola Kids Book of Catholic Signs and Symbols. 

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