Tuesday, November 08, 2011

How the Movie "The Way" Might Have Lost its Way




For about twenty years I have been intrigued by the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a route that pilgrims have been walking for more than 1,000 years to the shrine of St. James the Apostle in Spain. I envied a fellow St. Ann choir member, Kerry McCarthy, a young professor of music at Duke, when I learned that she has walked portions of the camino more than once. Before one choir dinner towards the end of one summer, Kerry gave me one of the tiny silver scallop shells she'd brought back to give away as souvenirs. Scallop shells are a symbol of St. James, and they are traditionally worn by pilgrims along the camino.

About year later, I was visiting Kerry's good friends, Susan and John Altstatt while Kerry was on one of her summer treks along the camino, and the Altstatts showed me a video of Kerry at a fountain along the way that has two faucets, one for water and one for red wine. They had prearranged with Kerry a time when she would be there, and John had figured out a way to capture the video from a web cam over the fountain. So I got to see a grainy black and white snippet of Kerry walking up to that fountain halfway around the world and filling her cup with wine. That is as close I'll ever get to being there, I thought to myself, and I was glad to share vicariously in that bit of the pilgrim experience.*

When I heard about the recent independent movie about the Camino de Santiago, called The Way, I was eager to see it. Emilio Estevez wrote and directed and Martin Sheen, Estevez's father, starred in it. A couple of weeks ago, after I found out that it was on the last day of its theatrical run in the area, I rushed to see it that afternoon. When I had asked the ticket seller about the film on the way in, she told me she hadn't seen it, but she had been told by her friends that it was actually very good.

Sorry to have to say this, but I think it's actually only "pretty good." Like too much of literature and other art these days, this movie is episodic, much like I imagine walking the camino one step after another might be like as an experience. The movie is life-like, but a bit too much like life before it is worked by an artist into art. I was one of five people in the theater.

Since my main reason for seeing the movie was my interest in the pilgrimage, I loved seeing the shots of the road and the places the pilgrims frequent. It's a shame that the run in movie theaters is over, because those beautiful views could not have the same impact on the much-smaller home screen if you wanted to watch it after the movie comes out on DVD.

Aside from the cinematic glimpses of what it must be like to walk the camino, I also like the fact that except for the main characters, non-actors were used for the pilgrims and even a troupe of real gypsies was used to act in a central scene.

Otherwise, I'm disappointed to have to say I didn't get much enjoyment from the actors or the plot. The premise--of a father carrying the ashes of his son with him to complete the pilgrimage that the son had started before his death on his first night out--is interesting and touching.

I liked seeing the pilgrimage route. The scenes are beautiful. But I was left wondering why I felt so unsatisfied. I suspect that my feeling of "what's the point?" might be due to the fact director Estevez tried too hard to not be "religious" or hammer people over the head.

Estevez wanted to make a movie about "spirituality," and not "about religion." I think that might be his mistake. Christ said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no man comes to the Father except through me." Following Christ's teachings and participating in the Sacraments of the Church that is Christ's Body on this earth are the real way. The role of true religion is to tell us the way. Spirituality, as the word is used these days, is self-created religion. Because we are all so prone to self-deception, and because the devil is only too happy to help us rationalize evil as good, a vague spirituality without the guidance of authentic religious dogma cannot reliably lead to the Father, and it is not worth the vapor from which it is created.

Speaking of another kind of vapor, the penultimate scene with the swinging of the world's largest incense burner, the Botafumeiro, at the Pilgrim's Mass at the Cathedral of Santiago at Compostella is compelling. To give you an idea of how big the Botafumeiro is, it takes seven men to swing it. Here's a video that shows Pope Benedict XVI filling the incense burner and then watching it make its magnificent arcs as it swings through the cathedral.


This shot shows the Pope filling the thurible.



The thurible swings past the Pope



A bit of justifiable awe is in order as the thurible swings out over the congregation



Note the seven thurible swingers in the lower left of this photo!

At the end of the movie, The Way, we are supposed to assume that the characters have changed, but I found it hard to tell exactly how they'd changed. The Sheen character started smiling and laughing more as time went on, but he had been smiling and laughing with his golfing buddies back in Ventura CA USA, at the start of the movie during the scene in which Sheen had learned his son was dead.

In interviews, Sheen speaks about his character "getting in touch with his faith," but in the movie we only get a hint that the character might have been praying the rosary during the 500 mile hike ... When they finally arrived at the end of the pilgrimage at the cathedral, the religion-hating Irish writer cried, and the drug-using Dutchman dropped to his knees and then walked on his knees to the statue of St. James. But few other clues are given to what happened in these peoples hearts.

Two characters whose intentions for making the pilgrimage were to quit smoking and to lose weight, but they don't succeed. Why show us that?

And for another example, from the first night of Sheen's character's pilgrimage, we were tantalized by the sexy bad-girl confrontative personna of the woman pilgrim from Canada, but whatever attraction there may have been between her, Sheen, and and between her and the other two male main characters is never acknowledged or resolved. Her teasing confrontational attitude disappeared without us knowing why. And to my mind, some depiction of why none of the three men ever hit on her or why Sheen kept her at arm's length would have perhaps helped to make a real drama out of this movie.

Artistically, the movie is missing the arc of dramatic tension and resolution that is part of classical dramatic form. Estevez claimed in interviews that the movie is like the Wizard of Oz, but that movie had a climax and the characters grew and changed and obtained what they sought after they took the road to Oz, unlike this long, interesting, but ultimately unresolved pilgrimage through French Pyrenees and the northern part of Spain.



*The Wine Fountain was built in 1991 by a vendor and has the following messages: “We are pleased to invite you to drink in moderation. If you wish to take the wine with you, you will have to buy it.” “Pilgrim, if you wish to arrive at Santiago full of strength and vitality, have a drink of this great wine and make a toast to happiness.”

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Homemade Jam, Dorothy Sayers, Dante, and Decisive Choices

Blissful Moment. Eating a breakfast English muffin with chunky peanut butter and Rita Hey's plum jam, drinking Mystic Monk coffee with coconut milk, and reading Dorothy Sayer's introduction to Dante's Hell.




Sayers wrote: "We must ... be prepared, while we are reading Dante, to accept the Christian and Catholic view of ourselves as responsible rational beings. We must abandon any idea that we are the slaves of chance, or environment, or our subconscious; any vague notion that good and evil are merely relative terms, or that conduct and opinion do not really matter; any comfortable persuasion that, however shiftlessly we muddle through life, it will somehow or other all come right on the night. We must try to believe that man's will is free, that he can consciously exercise choice, and that his choice can be decisive to all eternity."

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Part 2: Why It Takes Me Four Hours or More to Leave for Work in the Morning

The iMac is lagging about a minute behind in showing my keyboard input as usual. Time to finally get around to buying that new iMac, since the one I spent thousands on in 2004 is now obsolete. Now that the Lion OS is finally released and the new iMac is available, no more excuses. I'm going to buy the new iMac loaded in hope that I won't run out of memory or disk space in my lifetime. Today In the meantime, performance is dismal, and that's only one of the things that slows me down as I try to work on my myriad of tiny projects before I leave for work. I woke up at a 6:30, but here I am still sitting at 8:40, well past my goal of 8 a.m. arrival at work, yet again. P.S. Arrived at work at 10:15.

What did I do before leaving the house? I ask myself. Prayed a lot for and about my children. I unpacked the 2nd suitcase, did dishes (mostly Liberty's) from last night, found clean sheets to leave out for the bi-weekly visit by my cleaning lady, met her at the door, exchanged a kiss of greeting, and shared photos from my trip with her. Asked about her upcoming trip to Peru and marked on the calendar the date for her next visit.

Took some cool-washed clothes out of the washer, hung underwear, and started a load of darks. Filled the watering can while warming up the water to wash my face (takes a long time for the hot water to make its way to the bathroom sink, and I hate to waste the water, so I fill up the watering can while running the water and waiting for the warm). Watered orchids. Glued the head back into Jadis's clay sculpture where it had come loose. Worked on glueing the veil of my mask of Our Lady, and sketched in more details on the nose and eyes. Took a photo of both and uploaded them to Facebook.

Read an Ignatius press article. Ate a chunk of leftover meatloaf and a peanut butter and honey sandwich with my coffee while reading today's prayers in Magnificat. Packed blueberries and a banana to bring to work. Washed the breakfast dishes.

On Facebook, read a note from niece Mary, then posted about the the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, nicknamed the Tears of St. Lawrence, and posted the famous quote from St. Lawrence whose feast is today in the new calendar (I think I'm done on this side, you can turn me over). Called EWTN to update my credit card for my monthly donation. Read the Northside Neighborhood group digest. Looked up the date for the St. Philomena Mass at Five Wounds and marked the calendar. Finally after Irma came, I got dressed and left for work.

And so the time goes.

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Why It Takes Me Four or More Hours to Leave for Work in the Morning

Today I woke up at 5. Reasonable enough, since I'm still oriented towards East Coast time after my two-week vacation in Massachusetts ended on Saturday.

New resolution (old one actually, not actualized yet) is to get to work by 8.

I picked up a few things to put away from my suitcase (still unpacking). Then straightaway, I went to the computer, breaking another resolution.

Found a photo I took of a pastel painting I did at the Worcester Art Museum, brought it into Photoshop, couldn't make the clone tool work as usual, filled in an empty corner of the cropped photo with two colors lifted with the eye dropper and painted them in with the paintbrush tool. Posted the edited photo on Facebook.

Tried to make it my Profile picture but (probably because my MacOS version doesn't support the latest Flash), found that I couldn't.

Read the daily email digest from the Northside San Jose neighborhood group. Back to Facebook. Read some posts on my home page. Reassured those who had read my post about being stuck in the work parking lot last night with a dead battery that I got home safely. Tried to remove the tags identifying me on some unflattering photos is my niece Mary's photo album. :-) Couldn't do that either.

Remembered that Liberty attached the battery charger and I have to disconnect it and put back the battery cover before I leave for work.

Wrote a critique of Fr. Z's article about being persecuted by a NCR reporter [Ms. Z] and edited my text down trying to get it to stop being truncated at Facebook.

Wandered into the kitchen. Happy that my son, Liberty, did his dishes from yesterday. Mixed up makings for meatloaf tonight. Prepared a head of celery for snacking.

Back in my home office, I looked up recipes for fried polenta. Back in the kitchen, I cooked up some TJ's uncured beef bacon and slices of prepared polenta with onions and garlic, and olive oil.

Strained mold off TJ's maple syrup (never saw mold on maple syrup before).

Finally got a spiritual moment in by picking up a copy of Magnificat to read while eating. Read about St. Terese Benedicta of the Cross's feast day today in the new calendar,the readings for today's Mass, and two articles, one about the garish modernist cover painting of the Madonna in a garden and another about a painting about John the Baptist.

Back to my office, realized I should write the check for the parking ticket I got for using the cell phone while driving a few weeks ago. Remembered I have to call the man from the automatic gate company to schedule his repair, and to call the reupholsterer about the furniture wheels he ordered for me. The new floors are getting scratched by the Victorian furniture.

Wrote this. Oh, what time is it? 7:44. Looks like the dream of being at work at 8 is unreachable for yet another day.

Attention span, where art thou?

P.S. Now I've got to wash up from all that cooking and food prep, make the bed, get dressed and on my way. Note to self. Don't forget to call the gate guy. What happened to the gate opener? Write Liberty a note asking him. Give him the gate guy's phone numbers. Find the other note I wrote to Liberty about the glue that is missing that I was going to use to finish my Mary mask and glue Jadis's clay piece. Oh, and put a cool load in the wash, I'm running short on underwear. Do what I can to finish putting stuff away from the trip. Write and mail that check for the ticket. Call AT&T about the expiring credit card for autopay. ...

Monday, June 13, 2011

Only Goodness Gives Extras: Sherlock Holmes Is Transported by a Rose

In the rectory garden at St. Margaret Mary Church in Oakland

Last night, I was watching one of the Sherlock Holmes mystery shows from the 1980s that star the marvelous actor Jeremy Brett. To my surprise, right in the middle of investigating a case in a country house drawing room, the Sherlock Holmes character became entralled by a rose, and began for a few minutes to talk about religion (of all things!) and to ponder the generosity of Providence. Unexpected, to say the least.

In this scene, Sherlock Holmes, as written by Arthur Conan Doyle, showed a fine appreciation of how God's creation of flowers gives a clue that God's care for us goes beyond merely providing for our necessities.

Following is a description of the scene as I saw it, with quotes from the book.

Holmes's gaze was caught by the sight of a red rose in a vase. He picked the rose up, focused his intense attention on it, and exclaimed in a reverent tone, "'What a lovely thing a rose is.'"

"He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects."

"'There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,'" said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "'It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance.

"But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.'"
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty"

I found the above quote at Quotes from Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

And this You Tube clip shows the scene from the show, which omits some of the lines I quoted above from the book.

That passage struck me of course. Similarly, when I see flowers, I love their beauty so much that I glimpse God's beauty. It is a kind of shorthand for me to say it this way, that when I look at a rose I invariably feel that I am looking at the face of God.


When I was photographing these roses, a woman who hangs around St. Margaret Mary Church in Oakland stuck a Holy Card in the frame

Saturday, May 28, 2011

A World Where Culture Matters


I'm reading An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz, which is a collection of essays about the Nobel-prize-winning poet that was edited by Cynthia Haven.

I've come to know Cynthia Haven because she has written articles about the St. Ann Choir, and I also consider her one of the "Friends of the St. Ann Choir," which is a casually intersecting set of individuals who attend the Masses where the choir sings at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Palo Alto, go to the sung Sunday Vespers at the St. Ann Chapel where the choir started, and perhaps occasionally share in the good wines and good eating at the choir dinners.

Cynthia and I have had a couple of pleasant lunches together at an English tea room in San Carlos, and we see each other sometimes at choir-related events.


Cynthia's black hair appears red in the bright sunlight that streams through the tea room window

Cynthia currently writes for the Stanford News, and as a freelance journalist she has had her writings published in an impressive list of publications. In our encounters, I heard from time to time from her about how hard she was working on her job, her blog, and especially on compiling the book of essays, in what she has referred to in print as a "not always a kind process of herding contributors against a deadline gun."

A much-appreciated result of my contact with Cynthia in general and of my reading of these essays in particular is that a little window has been re-opened for me, a window into a world where culture matters.

In the other world I inhabit while working for computer companies in Silicon Valley, the type of intellectual achievement most of the people around me value is of the technological and wealth-making kind. I have greatly missed that other world, the world where cultural intelligence is important. I missed it so much that at one point, after I had spent 10 years writing system administration manuals at Sun Microsystems, I remember getting a crush on a young engineer in my group only because he had actually read a book. A work of literature. On his own. Without anyone making him do it.

"Oooh, Dave, you actually read John Updike!" she squealed, smitten.

But back to the main topic. Although Milosz was born in Lithuania, he is known and honored as a Polish poet. He grew up speaking Polish in a milieu where poets were perceived as prophets.

I had previously become impressed with the importance the Poles give to literature when I had read that Pope John Paul II opposed the Nazis as a young man by writing plays and performing them clandestinely with a theatre company. Can you imagine people of any other nationality doing such a thing and thinking that way? Can you imagine an American thinking that playwriting and performing could be seriously considered to be a form of resistance if an evil empire occupied our country?

Only a Pole ....

I was impressed.

In one of Haven's Stanford blogs, I found this quote from Canadian poet, Peter Dale Scott, who confirmed my sense of the difference between the Polish and American view of culture when he said, "... intimacy with Milosz reinforced a contrast I had already felt in Warsaw: of the contrast between Poland — a powerful culture with only a perilously established state – and America – a powerful state with only an incipient and perilously established culture."

My use of the words "Only a Pole..." " is a reference to the use of these same words (albeit in a denigrating sense) in the title of one of the essays from Haven's book. That essay tells about how after Milosz defected to Paris in 1951, a member of the U.S. State Department commented that only a Pole would have been so careless as to defect to France, rather than to the U.S., where he would have had a much better and safer life.

Milosz did end up in the U.S. eventually, then spent 30 years teaching at U Cal Berkeley, until the fall of the Iron Curtain enabled him to go back to Poland and to his native language.

From Haven's collection of essays, I learned that Milosz too has what now I think of as a typically Polish belief in the salvic power of poetry. In one of his poems he wrote, "What is poetry which does not save?"

I'm glad to have gained that glimpse back into that other world where the life of the intellect is valued so highly that the identity of the nation and of its citizens is perceived as dependent on what its poets and playwrights and other writers write.

That the inhabitants of that world are not deluded in their belief about the power of ideas is vividly illustrated by how much the intellectual support of Pope John Paul II and Czeslaw Milosz meant to the workers in the Solidarity movement who struggled for freedom in the shipyard in Gdansk. On the monument to the workers who lost their lives in that struggle, according to one writer, are "icons" of Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, and Czeslaw Milosz. And on the monument is a stanza from Milosz's poem "You Who Wronged": "Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date."

Postscript:
Let's remember there was also something, no not something, but Someone, Someone else at work in that victory over godless communism. I believe that if there truly is salvation in poetry, it must derive from the true source of salvation, Jesus Christ. Milosz wrote of the spirit that speaks through a poet. I submit that if that spirit is good, it is the spirit of God, the spirit of Truth. And I just know that the prayers by the Pope were as important as any other factor in the victory over the Communist state by the steelworkers.

Monument to the Fallen Workers in the Gdansk Shipyards, not to my taste but I understand and sympathize with the sentiment (What do you call that school of architecture, which seems to be the same school that shaped the also-ugly but inspiring Nowa Huta church?)

Sunday, May 22, 2011

First Comes Being and Then Comes Nothingness (Not!)


See below for my letter this morning (5/22/2011) to the Editor of Vanity Fair, where Christopher Hitchens is an editor and regular columnist.

Editors: Even if you don't print this email, will you please forward it to Christopher Hitchens?


From what I've read, Christopher Hitchens' take on the massive campaign to pray for his conversion seems to be that those who are praying for him expect that the prospect of death might drive him to accepting Christianity out of a craven fear of hell.

He seems to believe that to face death without capitulating to Christianity would a heroic act. In that, he echoes Jean Paul Satre's existentialist stance, that the atheist has to be brave enough to accept the doctrine that the universe and his own life within it is meaningless. First comes Being, and then comes Nothingness.

I am one of those who pray for Hitchens from time to time.

I want to explain that our prayers are not that he fold out of fear. But that he be given the gift of faith. And that he comes to what St. Paul wrote is the "surpassing knowledge" of God's love for him.

I was converted at 18 to the religion of atheism from Catholicism, convinced by the dynamic duo Satre and Simone de Beauvoir and by other atheists that religion was a crutch.

Then in my mid-30s, I was given the gift of faith, which led me back eventually to the Catholic Church. Somebody prayed for me, I could feel the prayers, and I am grateful for the effects. And so I want to pass it on, to Hitchens and anyone else who hasn't received such a priceless gift.

True religion is not a crutch, even though it is a comfort. I believe in Catholic doctrine because I tried on just about everything else there was to try, and the alternative belief systems are seriously flawed. For one example, it surely is illogical (and self-evidently ridiculous) to hold as an article of faith (as atheists do) that this universe that works according to marvelous laws and is filled with awesome wonders came into being somehow without any cause out of nothing.

As a parting thought, I wonder if Christopher knows that there is a Catholic holy card you can buy for 25 cents at this web site. A jpeg of the holy card back and front is attached to this email.

The Christopher means "Christ Bearer." I pray that with the love and prayers of many people who pray for him as one who despitefully uses us, may it be so.

Roseanne Sullivan

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Hospice Care: Back Door to Euthanasia?

A friend's husband died yesterday at home, the day after a visiting hospice nurse announced that he would die in a day or two. Let's call him Bill.

Bill's do-it-yourselver family had decided to bypass the funeral home. His body was washed by his wife and the hospice nurse and is "resting comfortably on a mattress on the dining room table."

I don't have a problem with the home viewing. I think it's great actually. I would do that myself, if I had someone die at home and the help I needed to pull it off.

But I do have a problem with how he died.

At the web page set up for Bill at CaringBridge.org, I was disturbed to see today that the wife's closest friend commented how happy she was that Bill's sufferings were "shortened."

That set off a red alert for me.

For a long time, I have suspected that hospice routines are often euthanasia in disguise.

And so I googled "hospice euthanasia."

One account I came across occurred in a hospice (not in home care). A newly-admitted man (I'll call him Joseph) had a bedsore and was eating the day he was admitted. They would not give Joseph antibiotics to continue to treat his bed sore and refused to give him food or water (ostensibly to prevent aspiration). And without medical necessity, according to the RN who was a friend of the family and present at the bedside, they started giving him large doses of morphine.

When the wife protested that her husband had eaten breakfast on the day he was admitted without any problem and she saw no reason why he would not be allowed to eat, the hospice nurse told the wife that she [the wife] just didn't get it, her husband was going to die in three days. She callously said this in the man's presence.

The RN who wrote the article reported that the hospice nurse's confidence in her prediction was due to long practice. The hospice nurse knew that three days was about how long it takes a person to die of dehydration after they start terminal sedation.

Reading this, I recalled that the hospice nurse at my friend Bill's home predicted Bill's death in a day or two. I now suspect she was able to do so because it's all part of the normal hospice procedure. She too knows how long it takes a person to die of dehydration. Bill had been taking a lot of morphine for quite some time. He had gotten a head start with the dehydration since he hadn't been able to drink water for days. He was already starving, since he hadn't been able to eat for weeks, and he was skin and bones.

When I wrote an email a few days ago to his wife and asked about tube feeding, because it might make him more comfortable (it could provide water along with the nourishment), she replie, "No feeding tube. Bill is dying, and neither of us cares to prolong the process any longer than necessary."

The truth about dying is that our lives and our deaths are in the hands of God. He made us and we live and die according to His will. To take our own lives is called suicide. To take another person's life is murder. The 10 Commandments are still in effect whether we believe in them or not.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Royal Wedding Thoughts


The failed marriage of virgin Diana to non-virgin, non-faithful Charles is being used as an example of why people should have sex before they marry. In reality, Charles' love for Camilla, which included adultery with her, a married woman, while he was a married man, was the much more likely cause of the failure of his marriage to Diana.
The virginity of both parties would have increased the chances of real love to develop between the two. As Diana said, there were three people in her marriage. On the other hand, the cohabitation of Kate and William is no guarantee of the success of their marriage, and to my mind may very well contribute to the possibility of its failure.


I remember a Playboy survey in the 1970s that surprised the magazine no end. People who had one partner only and who waited until marriage to have intercourse reported a much higher degree of satisfaction than people who had multiple partners and didn't wait.

But Charles was the only partner in his marriage to Diana who didn't wait. Charles had been encouraged by his Uncle Montbatten to play the field before he picked a suitable virgin to marry. Charles' playing around (in other words, fornication) led him to a unsuitable bond with Camilla, who was not considered suitable for a king's wife (for good reason, I say). When Charles went away on a trip, Camilla accepted that he wouldn't marry her, and she married someone else, but the connection continued because Charles and she were hooked on each other.

Because of this kind of powerful bond that often forms whether or not you want it, my advice to non-believers in traditional morality, and to scoffers against sexual self-control--just for practical reasons--is, "Do not have intercourse with someone you wouldn't marry. You may become attached in a way you don't want." I have known and heard of many, many people who have spent years attached to partners who they knew from the start they didn't want to marry. They say that breaking up is hard to do, for a good reason.

We play with the force of marital love, which is from God and is life-giving, while separating it from its real fruition and completion. And we and suffer many ills as a result, just as little children would do if they gorged on sweets for the pleasure of it day after day instead of real food for the nourishment of it, until they got sick.

I am sorry for girls like Kate who give themselves away to men like William. They have to use contraception as part of the modern courtship, that's a given. So they are locked for years into what I call "guy sex," intercourse with enforced sterility and intimacy without unconditional love. And they live with dread of the possibility of pregnancy during those times of no-commitment, and they experience great pressure to abort any "by-product of conception" that might arrive unwanted on the scene. Women wait for years in "relationship" limbo, making an awful gamble, in hopes the man will make a commitment to them. I don't know how women can routinely bear these risks.

They called her "Waity Katie."

At least one school friend reported that Kate was a virgin when she met William. Kate was dedicated to William for years until he broke up with her, and she admitted during one of their engagement interviews that the break-up was very hard on her, even though they got back together after a couple of months.

As one commenter said, Kate got her Handsome Prince in the end, but many girls like her do not. Then they have to begin the search again, with the odds mounting against them and their biological clocks ticking.

Just by chance, I only just now read a 40 something journalist's article on her sorrow about not having kids, which included her life history of one uncommitted "relationship" after another. By the time she found someone to father children with her, she was around 40, and then had two miscarriages. That "relationship" broke up too. Her story is not at all uncommon.

I think of women like that journalist as "relics," like widows, but with no status. Relics of the guy-sex revolution. Nothing to show for all the love and years of their lives that they gave, nobody to recognize the griefs associated with the series of attachments that ended like little deaths, without the permission of society to mourn.

I suspect that Kate has some wounds from the long wait before the breakup, the breakup itself, and then the added long time that passed before William's proposal, wounds which may not be healed by the marriage. And those wounds added to other getting off on the wrong foot aspects of a marriage that was embarked upon in a state of rebellion against God's plan for marriage may lead to much unhappiness between them as time goes by.




The woman across the table from me gushed, "Charles and Camilla have suffered so much. They deserve to be happy together after all these years." Surprised, I retorted, "They should be doing penance for adultery." We never met before that night, and she hasn't much liked me since. At one point, she told me "we are not of the same kidney." Indeed.

The woman who spoke was a convert to Catholicism, so I was surprised at her tolerance for the affair of the couple under discussion. To her mind, all seemed to be justified under the name of "love."

Where do you start to explain the facts to someone like that? First of all, the C&C relationship started with fornication. After Camilla married, it continued with adultery. And when Charles married, their continued affair was based on betrayal on both sides to their marriage vows. If Camilla's marriage was valid in the eyes of the Church, her divorce did not end the marriage. "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." She would still be married in the eyes of God to Parker Bowles.

When the widowed Charles "married" the divorced Camilla in a civil ceremony, it was not a valid marriage. Even if the Parker Bowles marriage wasn't valid, a civil ceremony does not a valid marriage make.

To unpack my remark that they should be doing penance, I meant that whatever they would have to suffer because their love is invalid should be offered up as penance for their sins. Because they cannot validly marry, they are obliged to live chastely separately, and purify themselves, in preparation for the judgment we all have to face after death. That is what is meant by making amends. They cannot undo the betrayals of their spouses or take away Diana's hurt about not being loved, but they can accept their own sufferings as partial recompense for the harm they have done. That would be the Christian way to go.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Royal Wedding Thoughts

The failed marriage of virgin Diana to non-virgin, non-faithful Charles is being used as an example of why people should have sex before they marry. In reality, Charles' love for Camilla, which included adultery with her, a married woman, while he was a married man, was the much more likely cause of the failure of his marriage to Diana.

The virginity of both parties would have increased the chances of real love to develop between the two. As Diana said, there were three people in her marriage. On the other hand, the cohabitation of Kate and William is no guarantee of the success of their marriage, and to my mind may very well contribute to the possibility of its failure.


I remember a Playboy survey in the 1970s that surprised the magazine no end. People who had one partner only and who waited until marriage to have intercourse reported a much higher degree of satisfaction than people who had multiple partners and didn't wait.

But Charles was the only partner in his marriage to Diana who didn't wait. Charles had been encouraged by his Uncle Montbatten to play the field before he picked a suitable virgin to marry. Charles' playing around (in other words, fornication) led him to a unsuitable bond with Camilla, who was not considered suitable for a king's wife (for good reason, I say). When Charles went away on a trip, Camilla accepted that he wouldn't marry her, and she married someone else, but the connection continued because Charles and she were hooked on each other.

Because of this kind of powerful bond that often forms whether or not you want it, my advice to non-believers in traditional morality, and to scoffers against sexual self-control--just for practical reasons--is, "Do not have intercourse with someone you wouldn't marry. You may become attached in a way you don't want." I have known and heard of many, many people who have spent years attached to partners who they knew from the start they didn't want to marry. They say that breaking up is hard to do, for a good reason.

We play with the force of marital love, which is from God and is life-giving, while separating it from its real fruition and completion. And we and suffer many ills as a result, just as little children would do if they gorged on sweets for the pleasure of it day after day instead of real food for the nourishment of it, until they got sick.

I am sorry for girls like Kate who give themselves away to men like William. They have to use contraception as part of the modern courtship, that's a given. So they are locked for years into what I call "guy sex," intercourse with enforced sterility and intimacy without unconditional love. And they live with dread of the possibility of pregnancy during those times of no-commitment, and they experience great pressure to abort any "by-product of conception" that might arrive unwanted on the scene. Women wait for years in "relationship" limbo, making an awful gamble, in hopes the man will make a commitment to them. I don't know how women can routinely bear these risks.

They called her "Waitey Katie."

At least one school friend reported that Kate was a virgin when she met William. Kate was dedicated to William for years until he broke up with her, and she admitted during one of their engagement interviews that the break-up was very hard on her, even though they got back together after a couple of months.

As one commenter said, Kate got her Handsome Prince in the end, but many girls like her do not. Then they have to begin the search again, with the odds mounting against them and their biological clocks ticking.

Just by chance, I only just now read a 40 something journalist's article on her sorrow about not having kids, which included a life history of one uncommitted "relationship" after another. By the time she found someone to father children with her, she was around 40, and then had two miscarriages. That "relationship" broke up too. Her story is not at all uncommon.

I think of women like that journalist as "relics," like widows, but with no status. Relics of the guy-sex revolution. Nothing to show for all the love and years of their lives that they gave, nobody to recognize the griefs associated with the series of attachments that ended like little deaths, without the permission of society to mourn.

I suspect that Kate has some wounds from the long wait before the breakup, the breakup itself, and then the added long time that passed before William's proposal, wounds which may not be healed by the marriage. And those wounds added to other getting off on the wrong foot aspects of a marriage that was embarked upon in a state of rebellion against God's plan for marriage may lead to much unhappiness between them as time goes by.




The woman across the table from me gushed, "Charles and Camilla have suffered so much. They deserve to be happy together after all these years." Surprised, I retorted, "They should be doing penance for adultery." We never met before that night, and she hasn't much liked me since. At one point, she told me "we are not of the same kidney." Indeed.

I was surrounded by Catholics at that dinner table, current and former members of the Gregorian chant choir that I sang with, except for the husband of the woman who spoke so sympathetically about the Charles and Camilla "relationship." The husband was a member of a group who attended choir dinners in the unofficial status of "choir friend." The wife, let's call her Miriam, had dropped out of the choir years before, but would sing at Vespers from time to time. She was a converted Jew, and since I knew she was a Catholic now, I was surprised at her tolerance for the couple under discussion. All seemed to be justified to her mind under the name of "love."

But then, I have seen the same lack of good Catholic formation in the sprinkling of converts that started out as choir members and became believers. But that's another story. Maybe it's due to the fact that people who love the traditional music of the Church but who are selective about the Church's doctrines and moral teachings attrack converts who become Catholics in their image.

Where do you start to explain the facts to someone like that? First of all, the C&C relationship started with fornication. After she married, it continued with adultery. And when he married, their continued affair was based on betrayal on both sides to their marriage vows. If Camilla's marriage was valid in the eyes of the Church, her divorce did not end the marriage. "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." She would still be married in the eyes of God to Parker Bowles.

When the widowed Charles "married" the divorced Camilla in a civil ceremony, it was not a valid marriage. Even if the Parker Bowles marriage wasn't valid, a civil ceremony does not a valid marriage make.

To unpack my remark that they should be doing penance, I meant that whatever they would have to suffer because their love is invalid should be better offered up as penance for their sins. Because they cannot validly marry, they are obliged to live chastely separately, and purify themselves, in preparation for the judgment we all have to face after death. That is what is meant by making amendment. They cannot undo the betrayals of their spouses or take away Diana's hurt about not being loved, but they can accept their own sufferings as partial recompense for the harm they have done. That would be the Catholic way to go.

Monday, May 02, 2011

A Few Posts About Lilacs and Forsythia from my Facebook Page

March 28, 2011: Lilacs and Forsythia, Out of Their Element, Like Me

On the green strip between my sidewalk and the street are two lilac bushes and a forsythia bush that are each only about 40" tall after about six years. The lilacs don't thrive in this hostile environment where it just doesn't get cold enough for them, and once again they are putting out just a few small purple blossoms. The forsythia is cheering me too with a few yellow flowers. Both the forsythia and lilacs remind me of home in Massachusetts on this chilly rainy California spring day.

Last year about this time we were burying my aunt in West Roxbury, MA and St. Joseph's cemetery fence was lined by bright golden forsythia. I have been in that cemetery many times as a child visiting my father's and grandparents' grave with my family, but I never was there in forsythia time before. The effect of the forsythia in beautiful contrast with the tall pine trees that surround the cemetery was lovely to see.

Even though nothing else was blooming yet, I was delighted to see forsythia was abundant in one yard after another as I drove around.

And I remember bright summer days in Fargo where the alleys behind all the neat houses were lined with an abundant richness of blossoming purple and white lilac bushes.


As I back the car quickly down the driveway after an ordeal of late nights and stressful days at work, a glimpse of those bushes brings me a nostalgia rush and puts a totally spontaneous smile on my tired face, before I back out onto the street and head for the freeway.

April 5 Post
The daffodils have come and gone, but I brought a vase full of lilacs and a sprig of forsythia to my cube yesterday. This is the first year my lilacs have been big enough to have that wonderful lilac fragrance. All day at work, I was living part in 2011 and part in other lilac springtimes of my life because of how scent is such a powerful evoker of memories.

John Michael Hey said we should call it "Loaded Sunday"

Today I read a blog from a friend whose son dances in a troupe of Morris dancers. They danced yesterday for May Day in a commemoration of pagan May pole dances, which is held in a small town in Massachusetts every year. Small children come to the town common wearing flowers in their hair and dance with the ribbons tied to the May pole. It must be cute. But.

My May day was loaded in a Catholic liturgical sense. This year May 1 fell on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, plus it was Dominica in Albis, the day that newly baptized take off their white robes, plus it is Divine Mercy Sunday, a great feast of God's tender love for us, plus it was the day Pope John Paul II was beatified. (I started planning to go to Rome to be there, but my boss said there was too much work for me to take the time off.)

Liturgically it's the beginning of the month dedicated to the Virgin Mary. So there was a procession around the block with torches, and incense and lots of little boy acolytes in black cassocks and white albs and Canon Moreau in a biretta and a white and blue cope with an image of Mary on the back. They crowned two statues of Our Lady with flowers and sang songs, such as:

O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today!

Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May.

Bring flowers of the rarest

bring blossoms the fairest,

from garden and woodland and hillside and dale;

our full hearts are swelling,

our glad voices telling

the praise of the loveliest flower of the vale!

I remember and like the song from singing it at May processions at Notre Dame Academy in Roxbury, Mass., in my childhood. But there are those who think of it as one of the exemplary manifestations of sappy church music from before Vatican II. One holder of this opinion is my friend, Chris Garton-Zavesky, father of five boys, teacher, and composer, and member of my schola. Chris fumed about how it much it sounds like a carousel song, as we drank coffee in the break room after Mass. His oldest son, Nicholas, must have heard this tune from his father before (so to speak), since he was able to chime in with Chris' sing-song parody. Chris says that the song cries out for a new setting, one that would truly honor Our Mother in Heaven. I think Chris will be the one to do it too, in his copious spare time.

One humorous note is that I overheard someone telling one of Chris's sons, one of the acolytes, that he had given the wrong cope to Fr. Moreau. It was the short one, made expressly for tiny 84 year old Fr. Otellello. But I hadn't noticed it looking odd at all, myself.

May processions and popularity contests. I remember the year my two blond, blue-eyed sisters and my blond, blue-eyed cousin the same age were picked to be in the May procession, while dark-haired somber me was not. It wouldn't have bothered me much except for my sister Martha's gloating. She had her blond goddess self-importance nailed, down to the mockery of those less exalted, even at six years of age. Ah, but I loved the procession anyway on that sunny spring day, as the chosen girls processed to the statue in their white First Communion dresses wearing flower crowns, and I sang my heart out to my heavenly mother with everyone else. It boggles my mind to realize now that those devout sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in their black and white habits within 15 years would have thrown away their habits, and would be doing liturgical dances wearing pants suits, and throwing bad pottery instead of teaching school. Ah, but that's another story.

And here is another one. Lilacs bloom in May in Massachusetts, so one time when my mother was coming to visit us at my aunt and uncle's house after years when I didn't see her, I made a May altar in the bedroom where she was going to sleep with me. On a card table decorated with lavender crepe paper, I put a plaster statue of Our Lady (I wish I had it now), and a vase of lilac and white lilacs from bushes in the back yard. As it turned out, when she came, she said it was very nice, but she was allergic to lilacs. So out they went.

Sometime about 15 years ago, it pained me to hear my cousins and uncle, in their unsentimental way, had ripped out the lilac bushes. To me, they were the glory of that old tar paper sided house in Hyde Park.

It's because I miss lilacs so much out here in California, where they only grow with a struggle. And the little bushes I do have bloomed early in April and the blossoms are now spent.

Friday, January 14, 2011

My Last Christmastide Letter: 2011: The Year 2010 in Review

At the St. Ann choir’s post-Vespers New Year’s Eve party, after a couple of glasses of sparkling wine, I started telling the few friends still sitting around after midnight that every time I tried to start my yearly Christmastide letter, I could only think of woeful things. We had buried Joe Scaroni, one of the choir friends, that day with a Requiem Mass and chant at his grave side, so that sad event was also naturally on my mind.

I said, “All kinds of people I know are dying and getting sick, and it’s getting to me. That’s not the kind of thing you write about in a holiday letter.” “I’d read that!” Kerry said. “I’d read it too,” said Susan. “Write it!” they both chimed in together.

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Joe Scaroni RIP
2007 Sancta Lucia Party

I was struck again at Joe’s funeral how much we need the Requiem Mass so we can be mourned properly, and properly prayed for. We need our friends to petition on our behalf for God’s mercy and comfort and for the forgiveness of our sins. Let’s put an end to premature canonizations at “celebrations” that don’t recognize the solemn judgment that takes place at death! If you hear I am dead some day, please remind Liberty to arrange a sung Traditional Latin Requiem Mass for me. Tell him to check if the St. Ann choir and my current schola would be available to sing. No balloons, eulogies or slide shows during the Mass, please. Save them for the funeral lunch. I also want 30 days of Gregorian Masses. I’ve got a lot to be purified from.

As a related aside: My friend Marie Perez’ brother-in-law, Jose, told me recently that many cultures have sin eaters, who eat the sins of the deceased when they eat the funeral lunch. Jose and I decided jokingly that between us we’d have enough sins to feed a village.

In February, the choir lost Brian Howard. I never knew until after his death that he held a notable place in computer history, having been the 32nd engineer hired by Apple. A memorial at npr.org included the photo to the far left, of Brian at Apple in 1987 and it claimed that without Brian, there would have been no Mac. The right photo is of Brian at a Santa Lucia party thrown by choir friends in 2007, with his wife, Lynn Toribara, who is another choir member, and his mother-in-law. His hat is a clue that cancer treatments had already taken a toll on his hair. The author of the NPR remembrance of Brian wrote “Even in his last days, when he came home from the hospital after many years of cancer treatments, he still had a sense of humor. When asked if he needed anything he replied, "I could use some hair."
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Then in April, I lost my dear Aunt Peggy who helped raise me, and another choir member, Nancy Ritter, died.

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Above L: Nancy Ritter, who gave free singing lessons to the choir. 2nd from L: Aunt Peggy’s grave. 3rd from L: Me and sister Martha. R: forsythia

I was disturbed because the choir wanted to sing a Requiem Mass for Nancy, but the family put them off. And then my poor aunt did not have a funeral Mass either, even though she was Catholic and attended Mass every Sunday no matter what. At the last minute the priest (in the beret above) from the Most Precious Blood church across the street from the funeral home in Hyde Park, MA was brought in to say a few words, for which I am very thankful.

I’ve visited that same grave in Jamaica Plain all my life. It is where my father was buried after his premature death at 33 in 1947 when I was two. And his mother and father, Grandma and Grandpa Sullivan, are buried there also. On that April day this year when we buried my aunt, I was in that cemetery for the first time during one of the brief few weeks of the year when forsythia hedges bloom with all their golden cheeriness along the graveyard fences at the base of the tall evergreens that also line the properties. Forsythias were there and everywhere in Massachusetts, in almost every yard we passed. But not here; in San Jose, I have my single wan forsythia, which struggles in the uncongenial climate and sends out a few small yellow flowers to trumpet the arrival of Spring on a few branches each year.

When I came home, I sponsored a Requiem Mass for my aunt at Five Wounds, my schola and friends sang, Doug Seitz located a shrouded catafalque to stand in for her body, Canon Moreau incensed and prayed for her with all the rites the Church provides, and it was a great comfort to me. We went to Marie’s restaurant, Casa Vicky for our funeral repast.
Below L to R: shrouded catafalque, Canon Moreau with Dominic Seitz incensing; Fr. Moreau and Doug Seitz at the altar; Lorentz and Emy Nilsen receiving communion; Michael Hey, Chris Garton-Zavesky, John Hey, David Webb, Cecilia Pesquiera, Rita Hey, Chris Jasper, and Philippe Pebay came (some directly from work) to sing the Requiem Mass.

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Another shock this year was that my ex-brother in law Marv Miller died December 13, shortly after I heard he was ill, following another ex-brother-in-law, Jay Daly, who died suddenly the year before.

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L to R: Marv 6, George (my ex-husband) 2, in 1943; Marv, George in 1944; Me, my newly wedded husband, George, Marv, a Methodist minister, performed the ceremony, in 1969; George, Marv, Ted; George, Marv, Betty, in 198x? Visiting the folks in Fargo for Christmas after the divorces.

My friends Bruce Sweetser and his wife Denali Delmar are facing Bruce’s surgery tomorrow for pancreatic cancer, the fastest killer with the lowest survival rate of all cancers. Mary Rose Garych, a sweet college student who I met at a CMAA colloquium about three years ago, was stricken with a mysterious illness that has sapped her strength for months. Those of us who care about her were getting occasional updates from her mother on Facebook. And the list of diminishments goes on.

I haven’t seen my daughter for years, and I’m heartsick about that. I had been following her writings and photos at her “Health Exhibitionist” blog and Facebook page, which was my only contact with her for years, when suddenly a handsome young man appeared in her photos. Even more suddenly, soon after that they were engaged, and she had changed from being someone who never wanted children to wanting one with all her heart. She had even picked Grace as a name for a daughter. She started going to a church. She veered within a few months from eating only raw fruits and vegetables to eating raw and cooked meat. She reached out to me, gave me her phone number and address, which I haven’t had for a few years, and I was full of cautious dreadful hope.

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And then just as quickly as it was sketched, the whole beautiful picture washed away like a sidewalk chalk painting after a sudden rain. Her husband to be was gone, my contact with her was closed off. All the traumas of all the ways my hopes have been raised and dashed since she ran away in 1989 came down on me.

Another great pity is that Liberty’s back did not recover after the surgery about which we had such hopes last year. He is still in a lot of pain in his back, his hips, his feet, and his legs, so bad he often walks around groaning. He hasn’t worked for three years now.

Can’t forget this big loss. This past September, a year after my schola starting singing a weekly Mass at the Five Wounds Portuguese National Church (only 3 min. from my home), we had to give up our 9:30 time slot. For that lovely year, a large energetic community of traditional Mass lovers and their often-large families got together for Mass at that gorgeous church building that was a perfect setting for the TLM. And we socialized afterwards for hours every Sunday. Many of us also attended Mass and pot-lucked together many Wednesday nights in the rectory garden, after the pastor, Fr. Donald Morgan, learned how to say the Latin Mass too and started saying a low Mass himself once a week. I was thrilled because I felt like I was part of the Catholic family I had so long idealized about having. A few special times, like Father’s Day and Easter, several of us gathered at my house.
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L-R: I asked everybody to pose with hands folded, but we did honestly pray grace before we dived into the food. Fr. Morgan, Michael Hey, Philippe Pebay, Rita Hey, Clotilde Pebay, Carole Pebay, and Emy Nilsen at Vesper’s rehearsal after the meal was ended, while the children played nicely.

For another example of some good clean Catholic fun, the day before my birthday, on Oct. 2, Canon Moreau organized a Mass on Angel Island for the feast of the Guardian Angels. The Fillii Mariae Boy Scouts sailed out to the beautiful little island in San Francisco Bay, and many of us took the ferry. We then hiked together with the scouts bearing vestments, altar cloths, torches, candlesticks, and all the other Mass accoutrements about six miles to celebrate Mass in the seldom used chapel. At one point when we were climbing the hundred plus log stairs to the road we needed to take, one friend, Emy Nilsen, noticed I was having trouble keeping up. She coached me in LaMaze breathing, and rubbed my back, and after much huffing and labor :-) and laughter, and amazement at her kindness, I too made it to the top. That was my most challenging hike after my last foot surgery in 2009. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

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L-R: Pagaduans, Nilsens, Garton-Zaveskys, Rita Hey, and me at the ferry dock. Servers process out after Mass. Canon Moreau and altar servers outside the chapel after Mass.

After we left Five Wounds, that feeling of belonging pretty much evaporated too. Some of the group go to Oakland or Sacramento for indult TLMs, some go to non-official churches in Los Gatos and San Jose. My schola is once again down to a scant few of us singing at the cramped Oratory, where there is not much room to socialize after Mass.

The fact is that intimations of mortality are staring me smack dab in the face and scaring me, and I am sorrowing about the deaths and other losses. I don’t mean to add this as an afterthought, but at the very least as a Catholic, I know I can offer my sorrows up to God for my own and others’ salvation. Even though we know that death is not the end, but the beginning, enduring the sorrow in the mean time is hard. But it is a comfort to know that all the pain isn’t wasted.

After Liberty and I saw the latest of the three movies based on the Chronicles of Narnia, I reread all the stories. I was re-inspired by the end of The Last Battle. Narnia is destroyed, but Aslan leads his friends into a more beautiful land, a Platonic ideal of Narnia, constantly calling back to them to follow him up to higher mountain ranges, range after range, to more and more exquisite vistas, exhorting them, “Further up, and further in.” So maybe I should adopt that as my motto. “Further up and further in.”

Enough morosity already (morosity is a new word I made up this year). But before I completely leave the negatives, I have to mention once again that keeping up my old Victorian continues to be a drag. But at least in this one instance, I won’t bore you with the details. On to some of the good stuff. I still have my job! I love my company, Data Domain, which still retains a lot of its appealing integrity after the EMC acquisition. I am doing course development, learning new things and liking it, in spite of too many nights and weekends to meet tough deadlines.

My last previous hike before Angel Island, was the Walk for Life in San Francisco last January. After about two or three miles, I opted for the sag wagon that day. I had my camera along to take photos along the route after responding to a request for a volunteer by Immaculate Heart radio, but then I couldn’t find them at the specified meet-up place, and never could quite figure how they might use photos on the radio. :-). I took hundreds of photos that day. There was quite a bit of rain, thousands of walkers, and quite a variety of umbrellas. The city was lovely to visit, as usual.
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L to R: A delegation from Paris, “Twin Cities for Life.” An apt quote from Dr. Seuss, “A person’s a person, no matter how small. Priests stage L. Bishop Cordileone, Oakland, R.

After all the bad news, when I started trying to cull the best photos from this past year, I started remembering the good news: I continued sponsoring my Godchild, Guadalupe in Mexico, taking intermittent Latin classes with St. Ann choir friends. I made up my mind to go to the beach (my happy place) more often this year, and I succeeded. I took a couple of Sunday drives down to Santa Cruz alone and took photos. And Liberty took me there for my birthday on Oct 3. A couple who had so much firewood piled up that it looked like they had cut down a tree came up and told us they had been there all day and were leaving and asked if we would like their fire. Would we! Then a woman came over and asked us if she could share the fire. When she heard it was my birthday, she left the fire’s glow for a few minutes, and came back with a violin (and a small tent). I don’t play well she said, and then played a squawky Happy Birthday to me. That was a oddly charming way to bring in my 65th year, with a gift fire and rendering of Happy Birthday by a violinist who lives in her car.
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Even more charming were trips I took with Louise Gordon and her three boys to Pescadero and Sunset beaches on other days. Louise and her husband Simon and their sons have been good friends for quite some time now. When my company has an event to which I can invite relatives, I bring them. One of the middle shots below shows all of us packed into their van on a trip to an EMC-sponsored event at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.
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On Candlemas I attended the Jesuit profession of Father Paul Mariani at Mission Santa Clara and photographed the event. (Above R.) I also met his father and mother and attended a talk and reading by his father, Paul Mariani, Sr. poet and biographer, about wonderful Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Below are photos taken during a visit from niece Susan and grand-niece Gizelle and Memorial Day weekend at Lake Tahoe with them and Liberty, which included a paddlewheel boat ride and a chance to chat and sketch with a Mark Twain imitator.
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The other most memorable family visit was Thanksgiving week with Liberty at a lake house I rented in Massachusetts to spend time with my sisters, Martha and Joe-anne, nieces Eowyn, Mary, and Susan, and their children, with views of beautiful sunsets and sunrises, somehow visible from the same picture window.
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Other shots from other pleasant memories are scattered around this page. See if you can match the captions.

___ Cynthia Haven, biographer, poet, blogger, Stanford journalist and choir friend, and I breakfasted together twice on crumpets, rumpledethump, clotted cream, and tea at the San Carlos English Tearoom.
___One night working late I created an anti-affirming illustrated poem on my whiteboard. “This is not a rose. This is not my nose. This is how the time goes. This is not how the palm tree bows when the wind blows.”
___ Sketch of Jadis, started with watercolor pencil, continued with Photoshop.
___ Marie Perez, friend and owner of Casa Vicky restaurant, dropped by (she is a dear person, gives me tamales for Christmas; we do quite a bit together).
___ Grandnephew Cole became interested in the Catholic Church, so I took Cole, his dad, Jeff, and Jeff’s girlfriend, Kimberly, to a Latin Mass in Holy Family Church in a vineyard in Oakville.
___ Fr. Jeff Keyes, pastor of St. Edward Church in Newark, CA, was the only other member of the wannabe Dead Theologians society who showed up at the first and last meeting.
___ The eclipse of the moon, shot by Liberty; he claims it should be titled “Too lazy to put up a tripod.”
___ Ice plant from a stop along the way on one of the beach trips (why do they call it ice plant?).
___ Rebecca Mohun, youngest daughter, Elizabeth, and I attended a Latin Mass in an ersatz Italian castle at a vineyard called Castello De Amorosa.
___ Sunset over Lake Wauschecum in Sterling, MA.
___ Ex-sister-in-law and good friend Linda Mrnak (Marv’s original [and to my mind only wife]) got her 5 minutes of YouTube fame when a local TV show featured members of the Oakland Symphony Choir, proving that 72 is quite attractive (on some people that is).