Now, Some Good News..

For those of you who will understand. They put the repaired statue up again, in front of the newly consecrated (as of this fall) parish church the day before yesterday:

Pretty spiffy, eh? About time, finally..

 

 

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Song of the Day: John Hiatt, Welfare Music

This one's for Cousin Kristi & Uncle Bill,



And the f'n ucking United Sates (thus) Congress.

Las Letras:

She quit school when she was seventeen
Senator on TV calls her welfare queen
Used to be daddy's little girl
Now she needs help in this mean ol' world

Buys cassette tapes in the bargain bin
Loves Carlene Carter and Loretta Lynn
Tries to have fun on a Saturday night
Sunday mornin' don't shine too bright

It's that welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Takes two to make three but one ain't here
Still chasin' women and drinkin' beer
Says nobody understands how it feels
But that don't pay them monthly bills

Angry fat man on the radio
Wants to keep his taxes way down low
Says there oughta be a law
Angriest man you ever saw

Welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Baby dance circles on the floor
Round and round just like before
Baby fall down, baby get up
Baby needs a drink from a lovin' cup

And it's welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

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This Green Mountain Daybreak

desde la ventana de mi habitacion

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On Being from Boston: A Meditation Upon Patriot's Day

WBZ CBS News is finally reporting that they got the second suspect - "that knucklehead" (as the main announcer keeps calling him) who committed that bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday. 

I'm sitting here, welling with gladness. The tragedies of this week that those two fools perpetrated upon the people of my city have been the catalyst for a minor emotional restoration for me.  It's reawakened my dormant sense of passionate attachment to this place, New England, my home.  

I've been sitting here today thinking how Boston somehow oddly belongs to me, even though I've never lived there.  It's like this: when I am away from home, very few people know where Maine is.  Hardly anybody's heard of New England.  Foreigners tend not to know all that much about the States. I usually have a slight problem when people ask me, as they often do, what part of America I am from.  

My simple solution: I always tell them I am from Boston. Often that draws a blank, too.  At which point I just say that it's sorta like New York, only wicked awesome. That last part's impossible to translate into French or Spanish, so I'll interject the English then fudge translate (bien chouette, demasiado chido, algo y nada como esto..) No way they could possibly understand, it always makes me laugh. 

Sometimes I'll add another incomprehensible line about Boston being the hub around all known creation radiates (le centre autour qui orbite tout le reste de l'univers connu, el centro acerca todo el resto del universo orbita - just watch the linguistic ginsu master, how I roll).. I get on a slight comedic bend, and crack myself all up while the person who asked stares at me wondering what's wrong with the crazy damn gringo.

Anyway, I am somehow actually in fact from Boston. Because as anyone from Maine will tell you, going Down East is coming from Boston. That's how you go to get there from here, across the Gulf of Maine.  

What's more, we were once politically - until 1820 - part of Massachusetts. And to this day Boston's teams - the Sox, Patriots, Bruins, Celtics - are our teams. That's called belonging to something in your blood and guts. From the sea and soil. Blood, salt and dirt.. Family. Boston is our town. 


In my mind's eye I see the skyline of the city shimmering up from the inrushing tarmaced horizon of I 93 flowing toward us, the very first time my dad and mom took my brothers and me into the city back in 1980. We sat in the backseat of the stationwagon, I utterly entranced by the mystical majesty of those two clusters of towers thrusting high into the hazy summer sky.

Dad took us to Jacob Wurth's by Tufts, where he hung out in his graduate school days at B.U. The fat white shirted mustachioed German waiters kicking sawdust as they brought us our platonically delectable bratwurst and sauerkraut..

It was a love affair from the very beginning. All the graceful intimacy of the town, colonial class of Fennel Hall and the golden capitol dome, with the Aquarium & Old Ironsides hedging the Harbor throwing off briny mist, to Fenway and the Charles so storied, all democratically regal..

Which is merely to say the horror of the week has been unrolling across terrain I know. Places I often inhabit in my dreams.  Boyleston Street. Cambridge. Kenmore Square.  

I'm still riding this train, see, after all these years.. Florida could never keep me:

Tonight I again find myself patriotically emotional in ways I haven't been in years. The last decade has been very harsh on my patriotic feeling. I'm still ferociously patriotic. This country, this land, is my home. These are my people. My heart's not going anywhere, even if I happen to be physically abroad. But these past years my heart's become pretty well bruised and cynical. The love's intact, but the adolescent magic was gone. I've come to know too much, have been repeatedly disappointed.  

But now tonight, on Patriot's Day, the anniversary of the shot heard 'round the world, the old ferocious emotion floods back.  

They finally got that knucklehead.  

Not even news of Lindsay Grahm spouting the now all too trite quasi- fascist Republican idiocy assaulting our precious constitutional tradition of due process, once again whyping his nasty southern ass with the Bill of Rights, like those jack booted thugs have been compulsively for the past twelve years now can damp my happiness.  

How was it that I ever allied myself with those assholes, thinking that they were somehow pro-life?  Like they actually care about the unborn. Was I an idiot? Was there crack in our water supply back then? Why doesn't Lindsay and the rest of his gibbering cracker horde just succeed again, and leave us Yankees alone? Why was it we fought so damn hard to keep them last time?  I have no idea.

Whatever. My contempt for them knows no end. They call themselves patriots. Cretinous fuckers. Go fellate some more bankers. Put their plugs in your gobs like good little kept catamites. I have no more patience for your bullshit.

The people of Boston just put you all to shame. This week has been a minor epic, I felt like I was watching the boys form up on the green again, staring down Gage's thugs with calm defiance. 

No pathetic would-be terrorist is going to scare us. They only succeed if they terrorize us. They failed.  

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled..

The character of free men is defined in the conquest of fear, see.


Two hundred and thirty eight years ago today, on April 19th 1775, the people of New England faced down the forces of a foreign tyrant, and won our freedom.  

Tonight we triumphed once again.  God Bless Boston.  God Bless America.  



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Pictures of the Day: Mercy Sunday, National Shrine of Divine Mercy

I drove a couple hours south yesterday, down to the National Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  That's right where Massachusetts meets New York, about 20 minutes from the Vermont border.

It was cool and blustery, but there were 15-20,000 other pilgrims there with me. The crowd was heavily Latino, Pilipino and (this was a bit of a surprise to me) there were many black folk there as well.  Most of them were Haitian or Caribbean, but some were Afro-American as well. A good third of the people there were probably speaking Spanish or Tagalog. I was quite amused and pleased by all of it.

There was a mass in the afternoon, but I arrived late because - after departing not giving myself quite enough time - I got briefly lost (a difficult feat with a GPS, but I still somehow managed it) trying to find a gas station with diesel along the way, and then took well over a half hour to find parking and walk a half mile up the hill to the shrine. I arrived just in time for the consecration, and decided to spend an hour and a half in line to confess while mass concluded. There were a few hundred of us in line, so they came and gave us all communion while we waited, granting us dispensation to receive before confessing if we needed one. We were singing the Chaplet of Mercy as we stood there. It was beautiful.

There were over a dozen priests hearing confessions in Spanish and English, and (I thought this was great) one of them was the local bishop. My confessor was a Franciscan of Primitive Observance from Boston, who wear grey habits and scraggly beards (like the Friars of the Renewal, Fr. Groeschel's group) but are probably even more hard core.

(No, edit that, they are more hard core. Follow the link there - they have little to no web presence beyond their wikipedia page, which states that the Franciscans of Primitive Observance live a strict observance of the Rule of St. Francis. They do not carry money, and rely on the donations of individuals to pay for their needs. In their houses they do not utilize modern appliances and seek food door-to-door in the neighborhoods in which they live. The FPOs live a mixed contemplative and active life, spending considerable time in prayer each day in the chapel, as well as time in the community. The FPOs do not wish that details of their penitential life be widely known, living by the Lord's admonition to "pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" - Matthew 6:6.)

(Not mine, I stole this image from here.)

This fellow seemed very unimpressed by me at first, but I shot my mouth off in fine form, and he came around, stroking his beautiful beard, saying "hmm, I think that was a pretty good confession.." 

High flattery, that. I was pleased. I often wonder how it would be to confess to Christ himself, or one of the apostles, Augustine, Francis, Ignatius, Dominic or Padre Pio.. I got the next best thing, yesterday. That alone was worth the drive.

We were joking that with the wind and rain we were chalking time off purgatory whether we received the indulgence or not. One of the conditions of the indulgence is detachment from venial sin. I am not even sure what that means, precisely, and I've long since decided that I will be very happy if I am received into purgatory. I really do not understand why people used to be so obsessed with suffering there. I want that. To be there would be a great joy, because it means that you will see God. Right now, all this suspense and uncertainty is really terrible. To suffer for the sake of love is what we are meant for, and it is a beautiful thing.. I'm just too much of a sloth and coward to do it very well here. So, let me do it then. Please.

I never got to see the icon in the formal shrine, that charming gothic chapel that you can see in the image above here, because they had closed it by the time I'd confessed. You can see the line there filing into the chapel, there were thousands of people filing through after mass to venerate the icon.

I did spend a while in one of the tents they had set up for adoration, after they had removed the monstrance but had left an icon, though:

A truly great day. I'll be back there later this spring when there's less of a mob scene, to see the chapel.


Today, incidentally, is the Annunciation. A significant feast in my mythic universe. I've got a bit that I'll post tomorrow on that. It needs a bit of polish, and I'm not really up to finishing it off it tonight.. Until tomorrow, then.  



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Loma Lane, c. 9 p.m., November 30th 2012.

A Beer Caught by the Light of the Moon..

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Listen to the Wicked Witch Cackle..

Now for a completely political post.

I've been thinking that one salient reason to vote Obama over Romney (who in virtually every other respect would probably govern more or less the same) is that I've thought that Obama is slightly less likely to attack Iran than the utterly neo con Romney.

I'll take the moderate neo con foreign policy of the Democrats over the insane jiggaboo neo con extremism thrown off by the Republicans in a heartbeat.

Abortion, bank and corporate servitude, health care reform, assaults on the Bill of Rights and human rights, ever burgeoning institutional militarism, all that, I think Romney and Obama will govern basically the same, because the president isn't really calling the shots anymore. The corporate elite are.

I've thought though that Obama is temperamentally less likely to do something totally idiotic in the Middle East and plunge us all off a cliff that could lead to WW III and the utter bankruptcy of our economy.

(Actually, as I think about it, Obama is probably preferable to Romney on taxes - he's less likely to cut them, more likely to raise them, if he could - and entitlement reform- I'm still naive enough to hope the Democrats really want to save and even extend to all Americans - read Gens X, Y & other future generations - Medicare and Social Security.. Both essential bastions of the Middle Class as we know it, economically.. But Obama's record has me wondering about that too, and while Romney talks libertarian smack, like most things he says I'm not at all sure he means it, and may in fact govern more moderately.  So who to trust when they're all lying and playing double games??  Obama seems moderately less oleaginous, a bit more sincere, than Romney, is all I can say..  But in the end that may mean very little, given the circumstances.)

Witness how he is blowing off Netanyahu, and refusing to meet with him.  That warms my heart.  It is exactly what Likud and the Israeli right deserve.  Exactly in keeping with our national interests.  And that is something that Romney would never do.

So I've been thinking that I might vote Obama for that reason, alone.  Because it is of utter importance that we never go gratuitously to war with Iran, in the absence of an egregious act of aggression by the Iranians.  

Then I see something like this:



This shows you just how corrupt and unified our governing class truly is.  How little the charade that is our political process matters.  The old man on the left is James Baker, former Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush.   The woman is of course Hilary R. Clinton, our current Secretary of State.

Listen to her laugh.  They're discussing a potential war that will make the Iraq boondoggle - which despite what everyone these days thinks, has come off exceptionally well, considering what could have, and yet still might happen there, precipitated by our meddling - look like tiddlywinks, the moderate act of colonial aggression it was.  

An unprovoked attack on Iran will not only discredit us utterly as a nation in the eyes of the world, shredding what moral authority we have left (and that really matters, because it makes people want to follow us, and imitate us) it could lead to global conflict, destabilizing the Gulf, Turkey, and Pakistan, possibly drawing in Russia.  It could not so hypothetically lead to WW III.

Even in a best case, it will cost trillions and kill hundreds of thousands.  More American troops will die in months than have in all the last ten years.  The impacts - political and economic - will be incalculable.

Jim and Hil of course know all this, and this type of talk is posturing to intimidate the Iranians.

Jim: "We oughta take them out."

Hil:  "Frankly, there are those who are saying the best thing that could happen to us is to be attacked by somebody.  It would unify us, it would legitimize the regime."

It would legitimize the regime?  The regime?  The US regime?  Or the Iranian? The editing here is unclear.  I think she means the latter.  I hope she means the latter.

The crazy thing is, it is no longer beyond thought that she could mean the former.

This is whichever way you cut it, utterly evil and irresponsible.  Loathsome.  And I'm just paranoid and cynical enough to believe them capable of "creating the conditions" necessary to provoke the Iranians and precipitate conflict.  I mean, it's not like they haven't done it before.  Jim and Hil are informed by a CIA/Rand Corp. Machiavellian calculus that only considers things in materialistic, economic terms.  It's all about the resources.  And Iran and the incipient Arab Shia revolt the Iranians are patrons of, sits on the jugular, threatening our Sunni Arab petrol client states. That's the real deal, the Israelis are secondary, but much more popular domestically, so they get all the propaganda airtime Stateside..

Enough.  I'm voting third party, is all I have to say.  Enough of this bullshit.  I hope everyone who reads this will consider following suit.

It's time for a change.

[h/t: Daniel @ Caelum et Terra]



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Church of San Francisco, Antigua Guatemala: May - June 2012

I've been scandalously derelict posting here. Not from lack of available material, but rather from being preoccupied with other things. As these coming two weeks are very likely the end of my time here, I am heretofore resolved to post daily, both material from Antigua and a few essays that I have had gestating for a while.

My current 90 day visa runs out on July 4th, which while I am going to get an extension, that date also is the day my parents plan on flying down to visit and join me upon a grand tour of the rest of the country. That will be the coda to my beautiful time in Guatemala, a interlude twixt this idle and my coming push south.

In any case, tonight I post some images I've taken the past two months of the wonderful church - el Templo de San Francisco - that is just across the street from my house here. It's a Franciscan mission that was established in the 16th century, and the building - though ruined repeatedly by earthquakes, and rebuilt many times over - is one of the oldest European structures in the Americas. The current facade dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, and is quite beautiful in a colonial baroque manner..

The tomb of the local saint, San Hermano Pedro, is off the front of the nave. The pilgrims flock here. There are many daily masses, all well assisted, and daily confessions heard for several hours every afternoon. There are fiestas with bands and hoardes of people every significant feast day (meaning several times a week) and the courtyard has some of the best cheap eats vendors in Antigua. There are about a dozen Franciscan priests and brothers here, and many other religious from various orders (the Missionaries of Charity I spotted were visting here, and there are currently three brothers from Fr. Groeschel's Friars of the Renewal from the Bronx hanging out here, too..) that frequent the place.

I needn't tell you that the grace of this church being found upon my doorstep (something that I had not planned, but like Antigua in every other sense just sort of happened to me) is one of the main reasons I have been here this long..

Because it, and the people who attend it, are beautiful. Look, see:

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I'll post some images of the interior (which cameras are putatively banned from, but I'll sneak a few of on the sly this coming week, anyhow) soon.

SS Francis, Hermano Pedro, and Our Lady of Poverty, pray for us.

 

 

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Location:8 Calle Oriente,Antigua Guatemala,Guatemala

 

Posted with Blogsy

The Apocalyptic Historian's Headstone: Catedral de San José, Antigua Guatemala, May 23, 2012

 

 

 

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Location:8 Calle Oriente,Antigua Guatemala,Guatemala

 

 

Song of the Day: 'Tit Galop Pour Mamou

Lyrics:

'Tit galop, 'tit galop pour Mamou!

J'ai vendu mon 'tit mulet pour quinze sous.
J'ai acheté du candi rouge pour les 'tits, du sucre et du café pour les vieux.

'Tit galop, 'tit galop pour Mamou!

J'ai vendu mon 'tit wagon pour quinze sous.
J'ai acheté du candi rouge pour les 'tits, une yard de ruban pour la vieille.

Canter, canter to Mamou!

I sold my little mule for fifteen cents.
I bought some red candy for the kids, some sugar and coffee for the old folks..

Canter, canter to Mamou!

I sold my little wagon for fifteen cents.
I bought some red candy for the kids, and a yard of ribbon for my wife.



(my sardonic lay lyrical exegegis: mamou = mammon.. whadya think of that reading? )




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Song of the Day: Tres Veces Mojado - A Wetback Three Times Over

Lyrics, with my translation:


Cuando me vine de mi tierra El Salvador

(When I came from my country El Salvador)

Con la intención de llegar a Estados Unidos

(With the intention of going to the United States)

Sabía que necesitaría más que valor

(I knew that I would need more than courage)

Sabía que a lo mejor quedaba en el camino

(I knew some of the best fall along the way)

Tres fronteras las que tuve que cruzar

([There are] three borders I had to cross)

Por tres países anduve indocumentado

(Through three countries I walked undocumented)

Tres veces tuve yo la vida que arriesgar

(Three times I took my life into my hands)

Por eso dicen que soy tres veces mojado

(Because of this they say that I am a wetback three times over)



En Guatemala y México cuando cruce

(In Guatemala and Mexico when I crossed)

Dos veces me salve me hicieran prisonero

(Twice I was saved, they took me prisoner)

El mismo idioma y el color les reflectioné

(I have the same language and color as they do)

Como es posible que me llamen extranjero

(How can they call me a foreigner?)



---

Spoken:

En Centroamérica dado su situación

(In Central America there exists a situation)

Tanto política como económicamente

(As much plitical as economic)

Ya para muchos no hay otra solución

(There are many who have no other option)

Que abandonar su patria tal vez para .

(But to leave their countries, sometimes forever.)

El mexicano da 2 pasos y ahí esta

(A Mexican takes two steps, and there they are)

Hoy lo echan y al siguiente día está de regreso.

(Today they expell him, and the next day he's back..)

Es un lujo que no me puedo dar

(That's a luxury I do not have)

Sin que me maten o que me lleven preso...

(Without being killed or taken prisoner..)

---

Es lindo México pero cuanto sufrí

(Mexico is beautifiul, but how much have I suffered)

Atravesarlo sin papeles es muy duro

(To cross it withhout papers is very hard)

Los 5 mil kilómetros que recorrí

(5 thousand kilometers I have crossed)

Puedo decir que los recuerdo uno por uno.

(I can say that I remember every single one.)

Por Arizona me dijeron cruzaras

(They told me to cross in Arizona)

Y que me aviente por el medio del desierto..

(And then they abandoned me in the middle of the desert..)

Por suerte un mexicano al que llamaban Juan

(Luckily a Mexican named Juan)

Me dio la mano que si no estuviera muerto.

(Gave me a hand, so I am not dead.)

Ahora que al fin logre la legalización

(Now at last I seek legal status)

Lo que sufrí lo he recuperado con creces..

(I have recovered from all that I suffered in my crossings..)

A los mojados les dedico mi canción

(To all the wetbacks dedicate my song)

Y los que igual que yo son mojados tres veces..

(To those who like me are betbacks three times over..)


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Bruised Orange: O.J. Squeezed from the American Dream..

If I Have Anymore Faith in this Fu'k'd Up Country, It's Due to the Likes of John Prine..




Them Lyrics:

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley,
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley,
On a cold winter's morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow.

I heard sirens on the train track, howl naked gettin' nuder,
An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter,
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow..

You can gaze out the window get mad, gettin' madder,
Throw your hands in the air, sayin' "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know..

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter..
You become your own prisoner, as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow..

I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there..
I sat on a park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair
And my head shouted down to my heart, "you'd better look out below!"
Hey, it ain't such a long drop don't stammer don't stutter,
From the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter,
You'll carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go.

You can gaze out the window get mad, gettin' madder,
Throw your hands in the air, sayin' "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know..

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley,
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley,
On a cold winter's morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow.

I heard sirens on the train track, howl naked gettin' nuder,
An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter,
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow..

You can gaze out the window get mad, gettin' madder,
Throw your hands in the air, sayin' "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know..

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter..
You become your own prisoner, as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow..



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Ours is Not to Reason Why. Ours is But to Do and Die.

Studs Terkel: We're seated here, two old gaffers.  Me and Paul Tibbets, 89 years old, brigadier-general retired, in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where he has lived for many years.

Paul Tibbets: Hey, you've got to correct that. I'm only 87. You said 89.

ST: I know. See, I'm 90. So I got you beat by three years. Now we've had a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. I noticed as we sat in that restaurant, people passed by. They didn't know who you were. But once upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan, on a Sunday morning - August 6 1945 - and a bomb fell. It was the atomic bomb, the first ever. And that particular moment changed the whole world around. You were the pilot of that plane.

PT: Yes, I was the pilot.

ST: And the Enola Gay was named after...

PT: My mother. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles. When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the army air corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on, you're on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that.

[ellipsis]

ST: One big question. Since September 11, what are your thoughts? People talk about nukes, the hydrogen bomb.

PT: Let's put it this way. I don't know any more about these terrorists than you do, I know nothing. When they bombed the Trade Center I couldn't believe what was going on. We've fought many enemies at different times. But we knew who they were and where they were. These people, we don't know who they are or where they are. That's the point that bothers me. Because they're gonna strike again, I'll put money on it. And it's going to be damned dramatic. But they're gonna do it in their own sweet time. We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them.

ST: What about the bomb? Einstein said the world has changed since the atom was split.

PT: That's right. It has changed.

ST: And Oppenheimer knew that.

PT: Oppenheimer is dead. He did something for the world and people don't understand. And it is a free world.

ST: One last thing, when you hear people say, "Let's nuke 'em," "Let's nuke these people," what do you think?

PT: Oh, I wouldn't hesitate if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: "You've killed so many civilians." That's their tough luck for being there.

ST: By the way, I forgot to say Enola Gay was originally called number 82. How did your mother feel about having her name on it?

PT: Well, I can only tell you what my dad said. My mother never changed her expression very much about anything, whether it was serious or light, but when she'd get tickled, her stomach would jiggle. My dad said to me that when the telephone in Miami rang, my mother was quiet first. Then, when it was announced on the radio, he said: "You should have seen the old gal's belly jiggle on that one."

[source]

+++

Enola Gay, Are You Proud of Your Little Boy Today?

This is from Daniel Larison at Caelum & Terra, posted today.  I quote it in full because I want to second everything he says there :

[ that post's address: http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/consequentialism-and-its-consequences/  ]

Every year around this time- the Feast of the Transfiguration and the commemoration of Hiroshima- I am again struck by the strange synchronicity of these things, and by the blasphemy that surrounded the atomic bomb.

They named the test site Trinity, and Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita when he witnessed the first test bomb, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”, managing double sacrilege, appropriating the Divine Name and divine power as well. And then they chose the Feast of the Transfiguration to destroy Hiroshima.

Did they do this knowingly? I don’t know, but the date could not be more appropriate: the first use of atomic weapons against humans became forever a sort of Satanic Transfiguration, with vast numbers of lives vaporized in the destructive blazing created light, a mockery of the life-giving uncreated Light that shone forth on the holy mountain.

I think, too, of the moral reasoning that went into the decision to bomb Hiroshima. It was nothing new; both sides had been waging war against civilians for a long while, all because they had adopted the principles of consequentialism, the idea that an act is measured by its effects for good or ill.

Such thinking comes natural to the natural man. To the spiritual man, though, this is an error that opens the door for every horror. One must begin with the objective order: there are some acts that are intrinsically evil, no matter what the circumstances. Christians can argue about the precise meaning of the commandment forbidding killing, but at the very least everyone should agree that if it means anything it means that it is always wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.

Of course, Americans, like everyone else, act like this is self-evident when they are the victims. After 9/11 Osama bin Ladin was called evil precisely because he violated this principle. However, when the situation is reversed, and it is Americans doing the killing, everything changes. We are justified because we had a good end in sight. Never mind that bin Ladin also considered his end- a godly world order- a good one. He even cited Hiroshima in justifying his own act. In the mind of bin Ladin, he and Harry Truman were morally equivalent. I agree, but note that bin Ladin killed a small fraction of those done in by Truman.

I am in Michigan this week, and by chance attended the Roman Mass at St Matthew’s in downtown Flint this morning. The priest, an elderly Augustinian friar, instead of commenting on the Gospel, offered some thoughts on the atomic bombings of Japan. He had been a missionary in Nagasaki a few years after the bomb was dropped there, in the most Catholic city in that nation.

He began by saying that he would not address the morality of the act, saying that it was “complex” and that there was a lot of disagreement about Truman’s decision. Instead he went on the tell heartbreaking stories of suffering among the Catholics he knew in Nagasaki.

True, he ended with a call for disarmament, but that a man who personally knew innocent Catholics who were victims of atomic weaponry could not say that this act- the deliberate killing of tens of thousands of civilians- was simply wrong made it clear in a new way to me just how deep the infection of consequentialism runs in American Catholics, who of all people should know better.

Amen.  Audrey Santo, pray for us. 

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Thoughts on Luke 6:24

[concerning this blog's heading]


So, the big news is that Standard and Poor's has downgraded U.S. Federal debt from AAA to AA+ .

Two notes on this:  first these are the same cretins who gave a AAA rating to bundled subprime mortgage debt, at the behest of their Wall Street masters.   They served them then, and they serve them now.

Second, that lower debt rating means the government is now going to be expected to pay higher interest rates on the debt.  This is how these bastards work: they downgrade your credit worthiness, and then charge you higher interest.  The poor are thus inevitably screwed by high interest rates (because they have less money to repay loans, so banksters charge them more to cover all those poor people who fail to repay..)

Note, the lower credit rating will make those who hold the debt more money.


I guess I should try to explain my thinking about this in a bit broader fashion..


Ever since I've been to Mexico and Egypt I've been in reaction to the extreme poverty that I saw in those two places.   I lived and taught in Mexico for a year in the mid- 90's in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican debt crisis and U.S. engineered bailout that devastated that country in the early nineties.  They paid me 16k dollars, and gave me Mexican socialized health care benefits to work at one of the best (read wealthiest) prep school systems in the country.   They paid "North Americans" (U.S. and Canadian citizens, never mind that Mexico is in North America too, they still called us Norte Americanos to distinguish us from citizens of los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, which is the official name of Mexico) there twice what they paid their Mexican staff, which was an uncomfortable reality..

The people living in dirt floored shacks with livestock, the crowds of kids flocking intersections begging while giving cars unsolicited windshield wipings in the brief interval between lights..

 I didn't know how to process any of that - there were so many aspects of that experience that blew my mind's capacity to process sanely that the economic subtexts were left unanalyzed for a long while..

My year in Egypt five years ago brought these economic realities all to my mind's fore.  Poverty there is if anything more extreme, and the landscape - both geographic and spiritual is far starker and more barren.


That extremity scarred me.  I came home radicalized.


It suddenly became very clear to me that we in the United Sates (deliberate "misspelling" there) are at the center of a global network of wealth acquisition.   A very highly tuned one.

We (this "we" includes all American citizens, no matter how much money they have) are all the beneficiaries of this system due to the fact that our leadership - the men of money and power in places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago and Miami (and so forth) - are the architects of this system.   Further, our military is the "praetorian guard" (so to speak) of this class, who deploys American military force in such a way as to guarantee its integrity.


They will, and have, done anything necessary to maintain this flow of wealth toward themselves.


Now, I could say we will do anything necessary, because let's be perfectly clear here, anyone who supported either Iraq war, or the violent execution of the Cold War in places like Nicaragua or Vietnam (or any of the dozens of other places where that war became hot) is morally complicit in this system.


That's to say all of us, practically speaking, are guilty of advocating (which is tantamount to using) violence to maintain our bourgeois lifestyles.

To include myself.


Now, what we are witnessing - to put it clearly, in bald terms - in this global recession and all the "retrenchments" and "debt crises" - is the acceleration of the extent of debt servitude to the point that the masters of this system are now applying the same tactics of debt warfare that they have used against third world countries and their populations (so as to essentially enslave them with poverty, and then exploit their labor - and usually much more importantly - their natural resources ) to what until now we've called the First World.

Note that the "Second World" was the Communist Block.  Now that that threat and alternative to the Neo-Liberal Capitalist order has been removed, they are going for the jugular.   There is no socialist threat anymore to keep them in line.  It's been subverted.  They no longer have to share the wealth for fear that the masses will have them for lunch.

They are prescribing the same program for their First World populaces as they once did only for Third World satrapies.   The government will be reduced to the point that it exists to guarantee contracts, and protect the rights of the wealthy.  Courts, perhaps prisons.  Police, armies, maybe.  They can buy even those things, and privatize even the law.   And that's what they are doing, right in front of our bovine eyes.

Note I'm not bullshitting you or making this up.  I'm not babbling crazy.   They've come out and said it very clearly.  Google Milton Freedman, Grover Norquist, libertarian economics.  These people have said there should be no public sphere, or only a minimal one, meaning that everything should be owned by someone.  What they mean is that everything, and everyone that they deign to allow live will be owned (their time and services bought) by them.  And that "them" is a very small number of people.

They do not care about anyone except themselves.  They want to be rich, powerful - and ultimately transcendent - masters of the universe.  They will do whatever they need to to achieve this.  

I'm going to talk about this "transcendence" I think "they" hope for some more on the blog these coming weeks.


Now though, I'll conclude by saying this:

One of the main reasons I am a Catholic is that Catholicism is to my mind one of the very few coherent epistemologies and anthropologies that resoundingly rejects their worldview.

Islam is, incidentally, perhaps another one.

To be a Catholic is believe in the sacredness of every human person, even the poor, even the idiotic..

Even, note, the evil fascistic rich man.   Even he deserves a dignified trial before he is thrown in jail.


Justice, which is Mercy Himself, demands it.



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Gnostic Propaganda & The Hive Mind: You Are a Zombie, But No Worries: Everything Tastes Like Chicken When Raw.

I've refrained from commenting on the charade taking place in Washington these last few weeks..

Or rather decades..

Because it's all too depressing, and I almost don't care about what I think about it, so why should I share it with you?  

Expect you to care, when I barely do?  

All pruny bathing in cynicism, here.    You are stupid.  You are stupid.  You are stupid.

Well, you know, whatever, right? 


All the discourse coming out of D.C. about default and all that is pure bullshit, cynical even for Washington and our "opinion making" elite.   Ever since the Iraq invasion I've been marking their lies and propaganda.   At first  I was shocked and incredulous, then for a while I was paranoid.

Now, I'm bemused verging into indifferent.   Still, I'll shake myself free of torpor to see if anyone cares to have a conversation.    I'll just make a few quick salient points to the void.   If anyone cares, you have my email address, or can leave a comment or whatever else may please you.


Study these two images:

This debt that the government creates is mostly held by Americans.   Some 70% - that's seventy  percent - of the debt is held by federal social security, military or civil pension funds, and our own investor class.  That's to say that the interest on the public debt for the most part enriches American citizens and corporations.


This means that the tax revenues being used to service the debt goes to major capitalists,  to private investors.  A default preventing the service of this debt would mean Daddy War Bucks might lose his free money stream.  Not gonna happen, as in not ever.  The warmachine and the banksters will get their lucre.  There will be no default that keeps their bloody paws from grubbing in the public till, believe me you.


There may come a point where there is a default that reorganizes the debt that could screw foreign interests, but barring war or some other major catastrophe I doubt even that. 


That's right.  Think about the scam, now.  Seriously.   You're stupid, but still.  Think about it:  TARP "bails out" the banks and major investment funds and insurance companies who deliberately created a bubble to run our economy into the ground.

Then, they demand that the government create public debt to "save the economy."   That public debt is then bought by the same private investor class who created the crisis.

They simultaneously demand that taxes on their investment and corporate income be abolished, thereby guaranteeing a sophisticated genus of debt bondage for the idiotic American public.

The wars feed the corporate contractors and the public debt simultaneously, as well.   Money goes from the public to the rich. 


The debt - no matter whether accrued by war or bailout - always constitutes a massive transfer of wealth toward our investor class, the wealthy, and the currently retired.


The very people who own and watch FOX News and read The National Review and profess to hate that house servant Obama.

The very people who say they hate the government are using it to rape the middle class.  Especially the future middle class, which will eventually be subsumed into the global working class (aka "proletariat") when it becomes feasible to pay the average American what they pay the sweat shop workers in Asia or immigrant labor here.   That day is coming, and even though most Americans are stupid they still feel it looming, which is why they are so mindlessly restive.  

The middle class being for the most part  catatonic, in a trance state where they blame the government for the mess,  not seeing that the government is the only agency that they have any real direct influence over, and is the only means of breaking the critical mass that monopolistic capital left alone always ultimately achieves, in which it draws all wealth to itself through interest on debt, and then enslaves all labor at a subsistence wage.

The zombies do not see that we have allowed our government and public discourse to be co- opted and utterly corrupted by the adepts of the rich.    


That's right.  I said it.


Enjoy your chicken.



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Now is the Winter of Our Discontent Made Glorious Summer..

We, determined to prove villainous and hate the idle pleasures of these days, plots have laid, inductions dangerous, by drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, set in deadly hate one against the other: subtle, false and treacherous.


All I can say is to repeat what I've already said: we deserve what we are going to get.




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Pictures of the Past Week: St. Augustine Area

So, not only have I not posted a daily image like I vowed I would, I have not posted at all in over a week.

I've been in the St. Augustine area, on the north east coast of Florida this week, and have been in a very introverted mood.  Maybe even slightly depressed.   I've been enjoying my travels here quite a bit, though, and have seen some interesting things.

I just went through all the images I took, and pulled out a bunch that I like, that give a bit of a taste of what I've seen.   An incoherent photo essay of my last weeks wanderings..

I have a few film reviews and other things that I may post the next few days.  One thing I recommit to doing is posting images of my meander this coming week..

Driving through the Floridian Jungle..

 I came upon this Great Oak in the Jungle, called the "Fairchild Oak" after the botanist who introduced soybeans to North America.   This tree is 2,000 - that's *two thousand* - years old, and is clearly cared for by the Eledrhrim.

Emma in that Jungle.

 This is the ruin of a great sugar mill built near the Atlantic coast in the Jungle in 1831 by the Bulow brothers.   It was burnt later that decade by the Seminoles, during the second of the three Seminole Wars that were fought in Florida before the Civil War.

I then drove up coastal A1A to Saint Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the United States.   There is a Catholic shrine, Our Lady of La Leche,  on the shore where the Spanish settlers landed, where there is this great cross:

It is a beautiful, but very touristed old city.  I spent two days there, and enjoyed the place anyway, despite the difficult parking.

Psalm 26:8

I've decided that I'm going to start a series in imitation of Daniel Nichols at Caelem & Terra featuring the churches and shrines I visit.  I may even steal his hache tag "the glory of thy house" which is taken from Psalm 26.   I noticed that that verse was on the side of the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, which is nearby that great cross by the sea.  The shrine was built in the 16th Century by the settlers, and while it has been destroyed several times by hurricanes or fire, it has always been rebuilt.

There's an outdoor path there lined with the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin,  the first of which is the Presentation, or the Prophecy of Simeon.  It's the only of the seven that I considered a happy sad sorrow, in that if I received such a prophecy concerning my child, I would be both terrified and glad.  The reliefs are beautiful, as you can see:

 I also went to mass Sunday at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, which is the primal parish of the United States.   The present building dates from the 19th Century, and is very beautiful:

This beautiful shrine to Blessed Augustine is on the nave of the basilica:

There is also a great Spanish colonial era- fort there, called the Castillo de San Marcos, now a National Park:

 I also made a pilgrimage to a small Greek shrine in the city, devoted to Saint Photios.  I spent several hours talking with the caretaker Fernando (in picture below, tending the candles) who is a Colombian convert from Rome.  I bought five icons from their shop there, and promptly lost the bag on the way back to the car.  Such losses are never accidents, I only hope that they be found to good use..

 That's the latest from Florida.   I'll blog more faithfully these coming weeks, so stay posted..



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