Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 4)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)

Another one of friend Spartacus's enviable and emulable traits throughout the long course of our friendship has been his patience, his curiosity over what the other person has to say, his open mind, his empathy, his compassion.

I remember how, during one of my visits to his family's secure compound, I was working to explain to him why it is that time travel isn't a simple matter of stepping into (and out of) a machine, or getting klonged in the head by a crowbar, or even of hypnotizing oneself into an earlier era. The issue is that time is part of the very structure of the universe; to free yourself of its confines in order to pass at random through it... which requires you to step entirely outside of the universe: you have to manipulate and restructure the universe in order to meet your objective.

That makes stories of time travel, nearly every last one, tales of fantasy, and not of science fiction, unless you're using a craft or gizmo that that works through demonstrated scientific principles, and follows the laws of physics... as with, say, a vehicle that can travel at supraluminal speed, and why it can.

This is something I've given much thought (and some informal study) to, over the last few years, since I'm writing a novel that uses time travel... with the characters themselves debating these very points – and from the further perspective that at least one of them has very likely seen (and engaged in) a couple jaunts to the past... and doesn't understand it either. Spartacus had read a draft of two sections of that thick novel-in-the-works, and liked it, and made some keen suggestions I liked in turn, and which helped parts of the narrative.

So while I discussed this with him in his refectory, a few years ago, he sat across the table from me, smiling gently and politely, listening respectfully to every last word and illustration I offered up – and, I noticed, not getting a single bit of it, even while clearly willing to hear me out silently for a few more hours, with no objection or interruption. That was his patience... and his indulgent nature as well, which I've seen him use as well with his children (and wife) and mastiffs.

When not during those rare instances under each other's roof, we'd been in steady, very-regular touch via email, sharing (as I wrote earlier) each our latest adventures and experiences, photos artistic and of latest craft accomplishment, bits of verse and fiction and bawdy tale, rant and rave on politics (Repugnicants, Democraps, and their meek sheeple – throw 'em all out!), and so on. Typically, if several weeks had gone past without an e-missive, one of us would metaphorically peek into the other's window, and make sure all was well. In that way, his wife and I had seen him through a very bad (and rare) depressive trough; I'd walked him and his family through some grief over the passing of particularly dear and beloved animal companion... and he'd done the same as well, when I'd run into my own parallels of these personal moments of life-challenge.

So against the backdrop of pandemic and riot and social sickness, I received an email from him late in June of 2020; his kindly heart and nature came through readily (as well as a soupçon of Sicilian), as always:

From: "Spark" le Klaus [mailto:SpartaCuss@Yabbadoo.com]

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 6:51 PM

To: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]

Subject: Che pasa?

Hey guy, it’s been a while. Checking in to see if you’re alright.

Has your workplace instituted protective measures that instill some level of confidence in your safety?

Things are going well here.

We hope you and your family are well

Take care buddy!

It was good to hear from him, of course, and so I naturally had a response back to him just a bit later that evening... though (as usual) at length:

From: Gene

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:09 PM

To: Sparks

Subject: RE: Cheese pasta?

Sparkly, thanks for the tap at the door, and face at the window! All's okay here, overall. And your woodworking emails are impatiently drumming their fingers in my inbox, waiting for me to send an overdue and very interested reply.
 
The medical practice where I work shut down completely for the second half of March, then reopened in early April to severely curtailed hours and services, and just a handful of staffers (yours truly included). After a few weeks, as the number of new viral cases and deaths continued to drop, we went back to almost-normal hours, nearly-full staff, and resumption of most non-urgent services.
 
The past couple weeks have seen local restaurants partly opening their in-house (as opposed to outhouse?) dining... and I'm still not comfortable having a sit-down meal anywhere but home, let alone any other kind of gathering. Daughter One and I mutually punted our annual Fathers' Day dinner to July-plus for that very reason – she feels the same, and until just yesterday had been working entirely from her home since mid-March.
 
My older brother and I have been visiting our mother every weekend since that same point... through her bedroom window, or one of the emergency-exit doors/windows. She's been eating and drinking well, doesn't seem worried, depressed, or anxious (as I'd feared), and still asks some keen questions. Since last week, I've been able to drop off sealed, pre-wrapped brownies and milk shakes that can be wiped down with sanitizer before being served up to her, and help fatten her up further, which she still needs.
 
Her assisted-care facility has held daily Zoom teleconferences to keep their patients' family members up to date on all that's being done. The staff – from kitchen crew up to the director herself – has literally put its heart and soul into the cause of patient safety and health (and their own); twice in one teleconference, the director was in tears as she reported one of three virus-related deaths.
 
We still can't go into Mother's nursing home any further than the reception desk, and that's fine by me... and I'm not in a rush to see the doors thrown open and all kinds of virus vectors traipse in there. Out of a hundred-minus patients, nineteen contracted CoViD-19 – and staff clamped down immediately and extremely hard with closed doors to visitors, and with quarantines, strict and stringent sanitizing and PPEs and quarantines and isolation and repeated testings of all patients and staff... and lost no more than just those three patients to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the nursing home right around the corner here had at least 66 cases and some twenty deaths; another center down the road had over a hundred cases, and I don't know how many deaths... maybe several dozen.
 
All this has been stressful on the family. And some of the weight is beginning to lift; Mother's facility has just been designated covid-negative; the sixteen patients who'd had the virus (and not succumbed) have all recovered. Visits in person may start again within the next couple weeks, and under very strong limitations: outdoors only; staff-monitored social-distance, and limited to half an hour or less. I don't want us to rush into that, either... but it's one clear light of hope and of recovery in its much greater sense.
 
And the virus is still out there, so extreme patience and continued commitment to protecting lives are absolutely still called for. And I may be an asymptomatic carrier, for all I know; I do not want to be of danger to anyone.
 
One profoundly sad note for the family came in just a couple weeks ago. We got word stateside on the death of one of our German cousins on Mothers' Day (same holiday and date in Germany); she was in her still-young forties. This was not to the virus – as far as I can tell, the entire sprawling family has thus far not been directly affected/afflicted – but to diabetes; she passed away in her sleep.
 
She'd been fun company during my three visits to Germany, the first when she was a perky, merry little toddler of just two years. Her mother's heart – the biggest, deepest, and sweetest in all the family – must still be broken. For the last many days, I've been trying to pull together adequate words of consolation... and will have to let that struggle go, and just write what I can and send her sweet mother what my own lesser heart dictates, and then follow with photos from my and my dad's albums, and some more words and memories.

[Note: I later called my aunt, and heard her out in her grief and recovery, switching between German and English, and wishing I could be with her and my uncle's and their surviving daughters' reach.]

Times are still tough on all fronts, and in all areas... and also slowly improving. It's looking maybe-okay to peek above the trenches now – with helmets and masks on. I'm just not about to leap into no-man's-land with a soccer ball and an ammo-case full of wishful thinking, and am encouraging the same of everybody else right now.

 

Next worry: how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!

Regards,

A. Gene

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life; and those who find it are few. — Matthew 7:13-14

More shortly: Spartacus' reply would take a very unexpected, alarming tone, bordering on a stunningly cold rudeness.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 2)

(part 1 here)

I don't recall how much I discussed my forced 2016 electoral choice with friend Spartacus... and at the moment am not supremely inclined to search for that among our 24 years' worth of email. I'm sure we took up the subject, though in brief, and I explained that my moral and ethical commitment (not merely religious commitment) to the sanctity of human life had brought me to where I could no longer support any political person or effort that ran counter to protecting human life at all its stages, regardless of how much my heart still lay with the Democratic party overall.

Our friendship continued; we were bigger than any differences and outlooks. That's friends from the heart... and increasingly too rare in our world.

Some three years after the election, I got a call from my sister Alicia, even more state lines away from me than Spartacus. Cammie, a dear friend of my sister and her immediate family, had recently passed away from cancer. As executors of her will, Alicia and her husband Levi now found themselves with an extra car... would I like it?

I certainly would! My Honda PoC was shedding oil and parts faster than I could cram scant $$ back into it to keep it moving. The car they offered was a near-pristine 2009 model that had seen very little use during Cammie's exclusive ownership, only a scant 9,000 miles over ten-plus years. Per Cammie's estate, her car wouldn't be free – but the purchase amount my sister named put it in my astonished reach. (I learned later that other family members chipped in further... which was all the more touching.) I would just have to find my way over some 450-ish miles to pick it up.

The car wasn't ready just then for me to get it, fortunately granting me time to stack up more shekels, and make plans for its retrieval. And then, come Spring 2020, Alicia let me know I could now drive up for the car.

At that point, though, thanks to (supposedly) some Chinese lab or farmers' market, the entire country was completely locking down, to the point where interstate travel was nearly illegal. After shutting down for two weeks, the medical practice where I work had come open again (with many restrictions and limitations to keep patients and staff safe), and I was issued papers showing I could travel on behalf of the practice.

Yet travel was still too dangerous to one's health – the death rate was climbing exponentially, and no one was out of danger's reach. I received both doses of the Moderna vaccine, and worked more on the travel plans. And no matter how I mapped it, the only practical one-day route to Alicia and Levi's home was right through the center of one of the nation's two biggest viral-hotspot metropolitan regions (e.g., there'd been word of mass graves, in the news).

It also would take me within rental-car honking-distance of Spartacus's tight-locked compound. He and I discussed this via email, but concluded, first, that the trip wasn't worth the risk to health; and, second, that it would not be safe for me to stop by, either – not for me, nor for his wife and kids. In fact, he very understandably and very strongly advised me against making the trip at all; I agreed – he has a good sense for practical and realistic matters. I'm more prone to wishful thinking, and more than once he's been the perfect litmus strip.

Over the next few months, things slowly began to lighten up, in terms of transportation and socially-distant interactions. Early on, my mother's nursing home had suspended all visits with family members – wisely; among its 100 or so patients, nineteen had caught and died from the virus. Administration there been very strict, and that had kept their patients' losses low... whereas another facility just a block from my and my mother's home had lost nearly seventy patients.

Mother's nursing home had limited the family interactions to virtual visits via Zoom, and visiting/chatting from outdoors, through the patients' windows, for a few minutes. We did both, mostly through Mother's window: brother Sarge and our other sister Mew, and some of the grandchildren, made avail of the opportunity, really lifting (Grand)Mother's spirit... and probably also that of the hard-working, PPE-laden staff assisting and sometimes translating.

Mother and I were both born just outside a colonial-era city... and Alicia and her family live just a few miles away from there. So in mid-July, a week after Mother's birthday, I let her know (through the window) that I would be driving up there the following weekend, to the city she (and I) had always loved, and wanted to return to. I saw her eyes grow really wide as she lay there in her bed: clearly she was pleased with the news, and agreed when I told her I wished she could come along with me. But I'd show her the car as soon as I'd get back, and we could drive right up there once it was completely safe.

Resting there in bed after her lunch, Mother's mood and focus on us were very good; the nurse/aide assisting us through Mother's window showed Sarge and me the book Mother had been reading the last couple days: Motherhood Is Murder, something right up the alley of her crime-story-loving maternal heart! So I'd be out of town that next weekend, not able to make my usual visit, though Sarge (and likely some other family members) would happily fill in and keep her entertained... and vice-versa.

I scheduled that next Friday and Monday off from work; I'd planned out ever step of my itinerary, including a one-night layover with Alicia and her family, before about-facing behind the wheel of new(er) car, with rental vehicle contractually dropped off. Interstate transport restrictions had been largely lifted, and I deemed I could make the trip safely with masks, prudence, inflexible social distance, thanatophobic caution, and a thick supply of sanitizing lotion and wipes... all of which I had in abundance.

I wouldn't detour en route and visit Spartacus's fortress, much though I'd like to see and BS with him again, and his family. So I didn't let him know I'd nonetheless be in their neighborhood, just en passant – what would be the point? I had a feel as well that he would regard the long drive as unwise, bordering on foolishly (even suicidally) stupid. He may well have been right... though, for the record, let me state that I did survive, returned with the car (RIP, Cammie; and thanks, Alicia), never contracting so much as a sniffle twixt Alicia's home and mine.

More later...

Pro Patria

Memorial Day, here in the U.S. (and among expats just about everywhere else), is a day set aside to honor fellow Americans who have fought and died in defense of this country. Any family that's been here for as little as a single generation may well have someone who's worn a military uniform, and been buried in one.

My father was born in Germany on the eve of the "thirteen years of madness", as he called it, of World War II; his oldest son – my brother – retired from the USMC, having joined in 1986, seen action in Desert Storm and, twenty-some years later, served as well in Iraq.

He's still living (and regularly twisting my arm for the next 5K- and 10-K run), so we'll set him and his service aside to honor on Veterans' Day – his, and many, many other members of this family who live, have lived, in the United States.

On my mother's side of the family, her great-grandparents – her father's grandparents – came stateside from Ireland directly, and via Nova Scotia. This was the 1840s; they weren't fleeing the potato famine (County Leitrim didn't raise that crop… I think), but rather as Catholics rejecting the requirement they pay taxes to support the (Anglican) Church of Ireland.

They settled in quickly, joining with some French immigrants, sinking deep roots in the greater-Boston area of Massachusetts, and finding work in factories, stores, the clergy… and in military service. And some of these never came back home to Massachusetts, New Jersey, and further domestic homes-sweet-homes.

Today – long overdue – I salute them, family all, whose American blood, poured out around the world, has served this country. They gave up their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor – most especially their lives – in so doing, with eyes open: stepping up in the full spirit of that last sentence of the American Declaration of Independence.

• Emile Joseph Drach, 1844-1862: (His oldest sister was my grandfather's grandmother.) Right around his eighteenth birthday, Emile Drach enlisted in the Thirty-First Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, K Company, to serve and preserve the Union. By December he was on the front lines in Louisiana, where he was killed; as related at a blog put up to honor the regiment:

On December 10, a detachment led by 1st Lt. Nelson F. Bond of Ware was ordered to relieve part of a Maine company at Desert (pron. Des Sair) Station on the Jackson railroad. […] [A] much larger Confederate force appeared before the cooking fires were even blazing. Part of the unit took cover and fired at the rebels, but only half had serviceable guns, as the others had been soaked when a canoe overturned on the outward journey. After some of Bond’s men were wounded, it became apparent that the situation was hopeless, and he ordered the rest to scatter and try to make their way back to safety. […] Emil Drach (pron. Drake) was instantly killed, the first member of the 31st to die in combat. Three quite detailed narratives of this action survive, and each gives a noticeably different account of how Drach died.

In the hundred-fifty-five years since Emile's untimely death, at least a dozen members of the greater family have been named "Emile Joseph" in his honor, including my grandfather, his oldest son, and his oldest son in turn.

• Michael Leonard, ~1871-1898: (A daughter of one of his paternal aunts married my grandmother's youngest brother.) He was killed in the Spanish-American War; he was the son of Irish immigrants, and just seventeen years old.
• Joseph Simpson, 1884-1918~: (He was my grandmother's oldest brother.) He died in (or about) 1918 from the effects of poisonous gas in World War I… a notorious theater for chemical weaponry.
• Donald Vautrinot, 1919-1942: (His grandmother was Emile's oldest sister.) He joined the Army Air Corps in 1940, and was captured by the Japanese at Bataan in the Philippines. As a prisoner of war, he was one of sixty to eighty thousand captives forced to march/walk over sixty tortuous miles to a prison camp. Unlike over five hundred fellow Americans, he survived the march; he died in the prison camp. The forced march has been ruled a war crime.
• George F. Brandt, Jr., 1923-1944: (I'm still drawing out his line; he's a cousin in turn of one of my genealogist cousins – her great-grandmother and mine were sisters, and were nieces of Emile Joseph Drach.) He was a USAAF staff sergeant stationed in the Mediterranean; in a book on her/our extended family, my cousin records that he was "[l]ost when his plane (a B-25) went down in a lake in Italy". An Italian website adds that the plane "exploded in flight, and crashed into Lake Lesina, north of Foggia. None of the occupants survived." (esplose in volo e precipitò nel lago di Lesina a nord di Foggia. Nessuno degli occupanti sopravvisse)
• John August Breder, Jr., ~1924-1944: (His great-grandfather's brother married Emile's oldest sister.) He died  in the Philippines from wounds received at the Battle of Leyte; he was about age twenty – barely two years older than Emile.

My title here comes from one of the verses in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology… in counterpoint.

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.

When I felt the bullet enter my heart

I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail

For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,

Instead of running away and joining the army.

Rather a thousand times the county jail

Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,

And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria".

What do they mean, anyway?

I don't have the least suspicion that any of the half-dozen courageous men listed above (and there are plenty more) would rather have sat in the county jail than given their all for their home and families.

Treasuring – and Treasure IN – Your Family

Heh; one of the fringe benefits of a having a blog with no readers is that nobody notices when you're away for a while. If I had an ego worth noting, that plain fact would wound it. Yet, instead, for me it means… no pressure to crank out copy.

These last few weeks have seen me happily busy at copying and translating information on my family's history… making me, essentially, your average, armchair, genial genealogist, I suppose. Till just the last couple days, my attention's been entirely on my father's side of the tree, scaling the huge 400-plus-page resource of a volume Dad's cousin – a real, lifelong genealogist – printed privately in Germany in 1989.

There aren't too many skeletons in the closet (I might tell you sometime, though, about an ancestor whose brother murdered their sister and widowed mother… on Hallowe'en, 1601). There aren't any blindingly great saints, either – mostly just plain folks, as plain folks say… but there are still touching stories.

For instance, there's the sad note that in 1784, one young Johanna was killed when the carriage she was riding in overturned. She was not quite twenty-four, and engaged to be married. There are mothers dying young, babies buried, sons gone off to war and never returning.

One sweet story recounts how in 1684, her hometown burning down, teenaged Sophie was robbed of a treasured little prayer-book by a soldier (hired to guard, not plunder?). Unsurprisingly, the soldier had no use for it, so he gave the book to his commanding officer. The officer, in turn, gave it to his brother, a (Lutheran) seminary-student. Shortly after his appointment as pastor, he was visiting a more-veteran minister, whose widowed daughter was there with her two children. The daughter was astonished to recognize the book – she was Sophie, of course, some years older now. And the next June, she and the new pastor married… and she got her book back, too.

There are lighter-hearted moments as well, of course. The genealogist's German is very dry, strictly factual, delineates basic details and moves on. He almost never steps in with a personal note, other than in two or three instances when he's sharing his recollection of his grandmother and grandfather.

I mentioned here, years ago, his moan over a church official who'd used the church's seventeenth-century registry book's pages (with their irreplaceable information on births and baptisms and weddings and so on)… to light his pipe.

He – the genealogist, not the smoker – also grumbled of another pastor (1740s-70s) whose handwriting in his church's registry-book was "the most terrible of all pastors'". Have you seen eighteenth-century German handwriting? Here's a sample:

 

…and that's fairly clearly written. Classic German script quickly begins to look like so much Pitman or Cyrillic… brother! My father's papers include a good number of pages just as indecipherable… so my heart's with our late genealogist – badly-written German has got be keeping a lot of Augenärzte in business.

Anyway, I wanted to get back to the topic of rationalism here, after a look also at neoliberal capitalism… so let me wrap up this detour (arguably, not too tightly).

Right in time for St. Patrick's Day Friday, I began at last to dig into and outline information from my mother's side of the family, based on info sent her by her cousin some years ago. And, begorrah, there are the Irish she's always been understandably proud of. They came over to the U.S. in the 1840s (and some several decades earlier), one group tarrying awhile in Nova Scotia, and others landing directly in New York and Massachusetts.

What a find!

So I spent two days writing up a 20-plus-page document, summarizing about seven generations of that Irish / French / Scottish side, and drawing up a nicely colored Excel-based family tree for us more visual folks, and sent them over to sister Alicia, who – years ago – had herself drafted a tree, with Mother's help, as a school project. She'd asked me to look for it, and I saw it once in Mother's papers a while back, but lost it; it's still there, but till it rises to the top again… these two documents will tide her over nicely.

I'd gotten into Mother's papers in the first place, just a few weeks ago, when our (other) sister Mew asked me to track down her baby photos from mumble years ago. It was in the two-week process of going through (and organizing) Mother's letters and photos and articles, that I found her cousin's genealogical work – and baby Mew's photo.

That had become important, because – as of less than a month ago – Mew is now a grandmother, and our mother a great-grandmother… and, yep, baby Leila at a few days old looks just like her grandmother did.

I first got to translating my dad's family-history book because no one else in this family, on this side of the Atlantic, can read and understand German (American-born Mother being the other exception) – and there was stuff in that book that deserved not to be bound up (pardon the pun) in that book, but released and shared with the rest of the family; be treasured.

Well, the same is true of my mother's own trove. Here's Hubert Humphrey photographed from maybe a dozen feet away; there's grinning WWII Pacific-Theater ace Joe Foss (probably) in leather cap and flight jacket. There's Eleanor Roosevelt at a local DuPont wedding…

Mother had taken the Humphrey photo in the sixties, and years earlier interviewed then-young senator JFK, among many paths boldly crossed in her long journalism career. Her oldest of three brothers (all since deceased), flyboy colleague of airman Joe, took the Foss and Roosevelt pictures. Much, much later, their brother, Xavier, wrote up a fun recollection of that event… and, with at least two different takes of the then- First Lady, that writeup's in Mother's papers.

So I pulled a copy out of her files, and brought it to her this evening to read before bedtime; she was totally engrossed in the recollection when I left.

It's never too late, and never too soon, to take the treasure out of the dusty chests, bring it into the light of day and cool of evening, and enjoy it. Blow off the dust; share the wealth – that's the real reason it's there.

Putting the Pall in Politics

One of the most profound changes my life has seen, during the "missing years" while I was away from this blog –

Hold that thought; just a moment.

Life is what happens to you while you're while you're busy making other plans.

– John Lennon

Okay.

One of those most profound changes is manifested in how I voted this past November: against Hillary.

Yes, I the registered Democrat, and straight party-ticket voter, did otherwise this go 'round. I sent a note around the family – all of us quite left of center, some especially so… except retired Marine oldest brother Sarge.

I wasn't blaring a trumpet, but rather seeking to forestall long conversations over the then-upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. I was going to say that my aim was to spike everyone's guns… but it's possible I actually stepped right into the family crosshairs. Certainly youngest sister Alicia had the very strong glare for me when she and family came down from New England.

From: Dr. Richard "Childe" Schildt
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 9:36 PM
To: A. Gene Childe
Cc: Sarge; Mew; Alicia; Shellie; Pauli
Subject: Re: FW: More From There!

Hi Gene,

How are you and mother taking the election results?

Emma and I are very bummed out.

Lots of Love,

-- Your Bro Doc

 

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 10:22 PM
To: DocRich@WayWayOut.com
Cc: Sarge; Mew; Alicia
Subject: RE: Putting the Pall in Politics

Yo, Bro!

I'm not sure how closely Mother's followed the election, so I tried not to load too much of it onto her – she's been watching some CNN, and I've been trying to give her some background. I'm not sure she's all that interested either. And you know… I haven't asked her; I just realized that.

Myself, I took a page from Father Jake Hujus's book and… it probably will come as a shock to most of the family, but I voted against Hillary. I'm not an American who happens to be Catholic, but rather a Catholic who's an American. So I refused, and will always refuse now, to vote for any candidate who's for abortion (and there are other hot potatoes I'm going to try keep in the oven).

Hillary has more political experience and chops than any candidate to top the national slate since at least George B., Sr. – even more than her husband did 24 years ago. But her stance on human rights – specifically, for one, the rights of the very youngest humans, beginning with their Constitutional right to life – was the dealbreaker; ditto the Democratic Party's platform plank on that issue.

Life is precious, and a gift… not an inconvenience.

Hillary is also on record as intending to take on the Catholic Church and undermine it, and she supports the stupid and unconstitutional HHS mandate that requires nuns pay for birth control, for example. I was not about to squander my vote on a further nonstarter like that. Her putatively Catholic running mate at best gives lip service to what the Church has always taught from the very beginning; that's scandalous, and also not worth my checkmark. His "values" were clearly available to the highest bidder… essentially political (and spiritual) prostitution.

I haven't turned conservative, though I've found my faith has brought me to embrace a wide range of traditional values, while I watch our culture slide toward the abyss. Some of what some moderate conservatives hold fast to means that they can sometimes see eye-to-eye with me, and that we have some common ground. But I don't cozy up to the NRA; I despise them and their objectives and their influence. I'm deeply opposed to tax breaks and political breaks to larger corporations and so called trickle-down economics, which woefully failed over thirty years ago. I think the mass expulsion of illegal aliens is heartless. And so on.

Trump is a total jerk, embarrassment, caricature, and tons worse. And I'm deeply troubled by what the next four years will be like, unless sometime very soon he quits or falls into a coma, and his VP takes over.

I'm deeply troubled by the character and incompetence of this incoming president… and I just heard he's pulled in Chris Christie, of all people, to help with staffing (and some Bush Jr. and Romney cronies). I hope that's not a harbinger of things to come, though I wouldn't be greatly surprised if it is. If his administration is able to do effective, culturally positive things – e.g., Supreme Court, and some social policies – to slow our downward moral spiral, then the upcoming rough ride will have at least some pluses about it.

And I won't have the blood of any children on my ballot, and on my hands, and on my conscience.

Regards,

Gene

God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress. Thus we do not fear, though the Earth be shaken and mountains plunge into the depths of the sea. — Psalm 46:2-3

 

And this weekend, Brazil-raised friend Senhora N. Fermeira and I batted that around a touch further.

 

From: Senhora
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 6:00 PM
To: A. Gene Childe
Subject: Re: Tap, Tap, Tap...

How are you doing? Are job prospects improving under Trump? Going to be an interesting four years.

Prayers and grace to you, N

Do not fight the thing in detail: turn from it. Look ONLY at your Lord. Sing. Read. Work

 

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 8:49 PM
To: N.Fermeira@Calvino.br
Cc: N.Fermeira@YabbaDoo.com
Subject: RE: Chew to Life

Ms. N., it's great to hear from you!

For myself… uh, guilty bite to the lip here. Since late October, it's been too easy to rest on the severance, and not apply myself to… applying.

Even having voted for Mike Pence for VP, I really don't like the president who shared his ticket… yet some of what he's been doing this week looks good. (E.g., today he signed off on a lifetime ban on former U.S.-government employees' lobbying for other countries.) And I especially like the defunding of Planned Barrenhood, and the high-profile, proactive position he and Pence and their administration have taken in pro-life, anti-abortion issues. I still dread what his chumminess with big-buck executives might yield for every(wo)man and the environment… but saving the lives of some three thousand babies a day, well, trumps even those issues.

Have a great rest-of-the-weekend, you and kid and kitties; hugs and kisses to all from me and fluff-faced Maude!

Regards,

Senhor Gene

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for, and evidence of things not seen. Because of it, the ancients were well attested. — Hebrews 11:1-2

More tomorrow… although as some days wind down, I think about Bill Murray's line in "Groundhog Day", and snicker: "What if there isn't a tomorrow? There wasn't one today!"

Easter, Sacrifice, and the Suffering Servant

The workings and events of the very first Easter pivoted on the cold betrayal of Jesus by one of his closest chosen followers. In his homily over EWTN yesterday, Father Joseph Mary, MFVA, addressed an ongoing, present-day betrayal of a different – yet parallel – kind. He began by quoting a recent article by the conservative Catholic author and commentator George Weigel... whom I like as long as he's not writing on politics, but instead less controversially steering through matters of recent Church history; he's particularly noted for his well-written, wide-ranging biography of our late former pontiff, the Venerable John Paul II, who passed away five years ago tomorrow. Father said:

Recently George Weigel wrote an article, and he said this in the beginning of his article:

"The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers, to rape by uncles, to kidnapping and sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child's mother – thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture.[...]

"Hofstra University professor Carol Shakeshaft reports that six to ten percent of public-school students have been molested in recent years – some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, two percent of sex-abuse offenders were Catholic priests – a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, but seems to have virtually disappeared.[...]

"Yet in a pattern exemplifying the dog's behavior in Proverbs 26:11 [he "returns to his vomit"], the sexual-abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today. That the vast majority of the abuse cases in the United States took place decades ago is of no consequence to this storyline. For the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down – and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy."

This past Palm Sunday, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York – at the conclusion of the Palm Sunday Mass, ...asked the congregation to sit for a couple minutes of patience, and then he said:

"The somberness of Holy Week is intensified for Catholics this year... [by a] tidal wave of headlines about abuse of minors by some few priests, this time in Ireland, Germany, and a rerun of an old story from Wisconsin.[...]

"What deepens the sadness now is the unrelenting insinuations against the Holy Father himself, as certain sources seem frenzied to implicate the man who, perhaps more than anyone else, has been the leader in purification, reform, and renewal that the Church so needs.

"The 'Sunday Mass is hardly the place to document the inaccuracy, bias, and hyperbole of such aspersions, but...' it is 'the time for Catholics to pray for Benedict our Pope'."

(The congregation responded with twenty seconds of applause.)

"No one has been more vigorous in cleansing the Church of the effects of this sickening sin than the man we now call Pope Benedict XVI. [And] That he is responsible for '[t]he dramatic progress...' made by the Church, which 'could never have happened without the insistence and support of the very man [who's] now being daily crowned with thorns by groundless innuendo.

"Does the Church and her Pastor, Pope Benedict XVI, need intense scrutiny and just criticism for tragic horrors long past?

"Yes! He himself has asked for it, encouraging complete honesty, [and] at the same time expressing contrition, and urging a thorough cleansing.

"All we ask is that it be fair, and that the Catholic Church not be singled out for a horror that has cursed every culture, religion, organization, institution, school, agency, and family in the world."

Peter Kreeft, a convert to the Catholic faith – speaking of one of the reasons for becoming Catholic – said it is the opposition to the Church; that the Church, he said, is like a steel ball in the stomach: it refuses to be assimilated. And so that's why we will find, in every age, opposition to the Church.

The Lord said: "Do not be surprised to find that the world hates you, because it has hated Me before you. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you."

And we can think of some of the calumny that was directed toward our Lord Himself. In the Gospels, we find that he was accused of being possessed, of casting out demons by [the power of] the prince of demons. Others accused Him of being a glutton; some said he was a drunkard; He went to His death being called a "blasphemer"; some suggested He was a suicidal man who was going to kill Himself.

So we think of all these accusations that our Lord endured, and we should not be surprised that the Church – His [mystical] body – would also endure calumny. Not that She is not in need of purification – of course; She is made up of sinners; She is always in need of purification. But let us be fair, that there's no organization in the world that's not in need of cleansing and purification, and especially of this horrible atrocity of the abuse of children.

And faithful priests, who so generously and sacrificially give themselves for the good of others: like our Lord, they too must defend what is true against the present relentless media attacks – for the sake of the flock, lest they be discouraged. Yet there's always an element, for any priest, of victimhood, of joining Jesus in Isaiah's prophetic vision of Him in the [Suffering-]Servant Song we listened to this week.

And today we heard from Isaiah, Chapter 50: "I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting." And on Friday, from Isaiah 53: "Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth." Also from today's Psalm [reading], 69: "The insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me."

And so there will always be an element of victimhood, for the ministerial priest, but also for all of us – for all of us, who are members of the Body of Christ in being faithful to Christ. We, too, are going to endure some of the things that our Lord endured – in a less intense way than our Lord did (He is exemplar for all of us; He a model for all of us), but nonetheless the Church Herself is going to share in some of this too. And it shouldn't really be such a surprise to us that at times we endure these things.

Peter Kreeft, again, says that this was one of the reasons that brought him into the Church, that he was always opposed, like a steel ball in the stomach of the world that refused to be assimilated.

And we can ask the question, "What can we do, now, to protect vulnerable children?" Not just dredging up things decades-old – of course, it's necessary for the Church to endure that for purification. But what can we do now?

The media is [sic] often at the forefront of being that instrument which is bringing these very things about. Because the media really should be that instrument that is helping to ennoble man, to help him to grow in virtue: virtues like fidelity, loyalty, generosity, charity, chastity, courtesy, respect, reverence. Purity is a reverence: it's a reverence, Dietrich von Hildebrandt says, for the other; a reverence for God; it's a reverence for ourselves.

This is what the media ideally should do, and what EWTN is striving to do: to inculcate virtue; to ennoble man, to help him to reach his potential, which is the good for the individual, and for the society as a whole.

But instead the media often feeds [sic] what is worse to man, and then reports that they have been shocked that people have been influenced. Freedom of speech, yes, but not without responsibility for the consequences that one sets in motion. We just can't say or do everything or propagate it through the media without some responsibility for the consequences this is going to have in influencing people – and particularly the young.

So, what are we doing now, what are we doing today, to protect our vulnerable children? The Church is at the forefront of this as well, as She always has this concern for the faithful; She is the largest charitable organization in the world, including helping vulnerable children.

Last night I went to the US Department of Education's website, their office for Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and the title of this article was about human trafficking: "Human Trafficking in the United States: a Fact Sheet for Schools", referring to it as a modern-day slavery.

And it says: "What Is the Extent of Human Trafficking in the United States?" And it answers:

"Contrary to a common assumption, human trafficking is not just a problem in other countries. Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and some U.S. territories. Victims of human trafficking can be children or adults, U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, male or female.

"According to U.S. government estimates, thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked to the United States for the purposes of sexual- and labor exploitation... primarily for sexual servitude.

"Trafficking can involve school-age children – particularly those not living with their parents.

"Sex traffickers target children because of their vulnerability and gullibility."

The U.S. State Department in [its] Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009, estimates fifty thousand people are trafficked into and transited through the U.S. annually as sex-slaves, domestics, garment- or agricultural slaves; largely from Mexico [and] east Asia, but also other countries as well. And then, it is also reported that up to two million people worldwide are victims of this trafficking, primarily women and children.

So what are we doing now about abuse? This is what is important.

There is the International Catholic Migration Commission, founded in 1951 by Pope Pius XII – then to help migrants and refugees, and now [also to help] trafficked persons. It has helped to resettle 900,000 refugees; this group is often called upon by the United Nations and different governments to contribute her expertise in helping refugees. Because there's where we find children at their most vulnerable: when they're refugees, and often without an accompanying adult to help them and to protect them and to guide them.

They're among the most vulnerable people on earth: they arrive at refugee camps alone, scared, and at times abused and exploited. Through the Safe Passages Program, the USCCB/MRS (so this is the Bishops' outreach), children traveling without adult relatives and without legal travel documents are provided a safe haven, [and] receive appropriate child-welfare standards of care; it works with more than thirty diocesan offices.

There is, on the Bishops' website, the coalition of Catholic organizations against human trafficking, some twenty groups: to provide safe haven for such people; conducting prevention projects; providing national training; meeting with government officials.

What are we doing, now? That is the question that is most important and most pressing for our young, vulnerable children today. The Catholic Church is at the forefront of seeing this both in our own cleansing and evaluation, but also in assisting those that are most vulnerable today.

Finally, I'd like to close with a quotation from Louis Lavelle, who was a prisoner of war during World War I, and a French philosopher. And he speaks about the grace of hatred. He says:

"No one realizes his life alone, but only through the mediation of others. I need the reassurance and help of friends, but I need men's hatred too. It tests me; forces me to become aware of my limitations; to grow, to perform a work of ceaseless self-purification. It makes me more faithful to myself, protects me from all temptations to take the easy way to 'success'. It compels me to fall back on what is deepest, most secret, and most spiritual in me, where those who hate me are powerless to hurt, where they meet no object into which to fix their claws, and nothing they can destroy. They recognize in us someone who has begun to be sufficient unto himself. The world hates all those who are not of the world; it hates all those who have access to another world, in which public opinion counts for nothing. For here, every individual is sufficient unto himself; in this world, reality is interior, and invisible; appearances melt away; public opinion has no weight."

Winter Wonderland

Here in this part of the eastern US, we're close enough to the nation's largest concentration of year-'round hot air, that it's unusual to see snow so early in December. But this morning we had just that – not enough to endanger even the most foolish of drivers, but enough to beautifully enhance the Advent/Christmastide ambiance.

So I stepped out onto the deck, ignoring the baying mastiff next door, and was able to get a shot or two toward a nice panorama… when the batteries gave out. Oh, well; here's one of two photos – and you almost can see that snow's falling.

Yes, those nice pines are just outside our fence; there's a great linear park running for several blocks here, and almost any season it's beautiful.

Followup: and, eventually, a familiar name stopped by and commented:

phosphoro6 Feb 17, 2010

sup gene, been waiting for you to come back >.> <.<

This time I responded pretty quickly:

AgingChild Feb 17, 2010

Heh-heh; so have I. The formatting options WordPress offered seem to have evaporated, and I can't set postings up the way I want to, so it's been easier of late to ignore the impulse. But, yes, I've got lots to say, and wouldn't mind blowing the dust off the soapbox. We'll see…