BREAKING THE RULES OF CIVILITY

Here's the book: Rules of Civility.  My friend, to whom I lend many books, insisted that I read her copy, because she liked it so much.  My books are always returned in the same condition they go out to her, even the old, yellowed paperback mysteries, which she is now reading, as she finds my choices of fiction not cheery enough.



One evening, as I read the very first book that I ever borrowed from my friend, I spilled half a glass of wine on it...my one and only glass of wine, I hasten to add, which I did not even get to finish.  I take care of  books, my own and especially those that belong to others, but the book is ruined, though not for reading, as I went on to finish the story.  I will buy another copy to return to my friend. 

 See?  The book is quite a mess.  The jacket came through the wine spill best of all.  From the front, except for a bit of stickiness, you'd never know the accident happened.  The inside is another story.

What about the contents of the book?  Spoiler alert!  I enjoyed it in a quick-read sort of way.  The author, Amor Towles, "is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan", and this is his first novel.   He writes in the voice of the narrator, who is a young woman in her twenties throughout the book, except for fast-forwards in the beginning and end.

The real story begins in the late 1930s, with the young people crashing parties at grand mansions on Long Island, and my first thought was, "Ah, here we are in Gatsby land," and we were, but the author is not Fitzgerald.  Towles writes well enough, but, curiously to me, he often uses British spelling and expressions, which perhaps is the way people from the right families and the right schools and universities spoke and wrote in the 1930s.  The protagonist, Kate (Katya), who is from an immigrant family in Brooklyn, and did not attend the right schools, works her way up from the secretarial pool to a high-powered job at a glossy magazine and marries a man from the right family, schools, etc.  The reviewer at the New York Times, Liesl Schillinger, liked the book better than I did.  I once read a good many books of this sort, but time is short, and now when I read, I want to sink my teeth into something more solid.

And now off to order another copy of the book.

'ROMNEY MITT, THE DEMON BARBER OF WALL STREET'

The latest from Roy Zimmerman.  The make-up....




Thanks to Paul (A.).

SORRY STUDENTS - NO HEALTH INSURANCE FOR YOU

From Laura Bassett at Huff Post Politics:

Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic institution in Ohio, has decided to drop its entire student health insurance plan as of the fall semester 2012 because of the new federal rule requiring contraception coverage under most employee and student health policies.
....

The announcement is somewhat misleading. Under the new rule, Franciscan University would not have to pay for any student's contraception. The administration carved out an exemption for religious organizations, including Catholic schools, that would require the insurance company itself to pay for the insured's birth control coverage "directly and separately." Nonprofit schools that don't currently cover birth control can also qualify for a one-year transition period to comply with the new requirement. 

Will the university provide health insurance for their employees?  Or are all the university employees celibate and not in need of coverage for contraceptives?   I checked the website, and not all the faculty are Franciscans.

You'd think the administration would be forced to hand out the contraceptives themselves, but there are so many degrees of separation between the powers of the institution and the actual dispensing of the contraceptives that they appear ridiculous.  They strive for a kind of purity which is impossible to achieve and live in the world.  This from a church that found it acceptable to have a policy of covering up child abuse for decades.  It is a puzzlement.

Let's get this straight: That the students at Franciscan University will not have health insurance is not the doing of the president but rather of the authorities in the Roman Catholic Church.

NACC RESOLUTION FILED AT TEC GENERAL CONVENTION 2012

D007 TOPIC:

Response to the Anglican Covenant

PROPOSER
Russell, The Rev. Cn. Susan
 

ENDORSED BY

Hopkins, The Very Rev. Michael; Lee, Ms. Lelanda

SPONSORED BY

Buchanan, The Rev. Susan; Engstrom, The Very Rev. Marilyn; Gracey, Mr. R. Stephen; Hart, Mr. Christopher; Kandt, Mrs. Pamela; Leigh , Ms. Robyn; Moore, The Rev. Stephen; Russell, The Rev.Michael; Shaw, The Rev. Lee; Williams, Ms.Sandra; Bronson Sweigert, The Rev. Cynthia

RESOLUTION TEXT

Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 77th General Conventiongive thanks to all who have worked to increase understanding and strengthen relationships among the churches of the Anglican Communion; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention reaffirm the commitment of this church to the fellowship of autonomous national and regional churches that is the Anglican Communion; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention recognizes that sister churches of the Anglican Communion are properly drawn together by bonds of affection,  in the common mission of the gospel, and by consultation withoutcoercion or intimidation; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention, having prayerfully considered the merits of the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant and believing said agreement to be contrary to Anglican ecclesiology and tradition and to the best interests of the Anglican Communion, respectfully decline to adopt the same; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention call upon the leaders of The Episcopal Church at every level to seek opportunities to reach out to strengthen and restore relationships between this church and sister churches of the Communion.

EXPLANATION

Churches of the Anglican Communion have been asked to adopt the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant. The suggestion for such an agreement was made in the 2004 Windsor Report, which recommended "theadoption by the churches of the Communion of a common Anglican Covenant which would make explicit andforceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between churches of the Communion."

The Windsor Report was produced at the request of Primates upset with the impending consecration of GeneRobinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and the promulgation of a liturgy for the blessing of same-sex unions bythe Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Archbishop Drexel Gomez, of the Anglican Province of the West Indies, was entrusted with leading thedevelopment of the first draft of a covenant. This same Archbishop Gomez was one of the editors of "To Mendthe Net", a collection of essays dating from 2001 and advocating enhancing the power of the Anglican Primates to deter, inter alia, the ordination of women and "active homosexuals," as well as the blessing of same-sexunions. Archbishop Gomez's punitive agenda remains evident in the final draft of the proposed Covenant.

Despite protestations to the contrary, the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant attempts to create acentralized authority that would constrain the self-governance of The Episcopal Church and other churches of the Communion. This unacceptable inhibits Communion churches from pursuing the gospel mission as they discern it.

The Church of England has already declined to adopt the Anglican Communion Covenant. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines has indicated that they will not support the Covenant, andthe rejection of the Covenant by the Tikanga Maori of the Anglican Church in Aoteroa, New Zealand andPolynesia renders it virtually certain that those churches will also decline to adopt.

The deficiencies of the proposed Covenant would lead to an Anglican Communion further divided rather thanmore unified. Declining to adopt the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant not only avoids permanent,institutionalized division, it opens the way for new opportunites to build relationships across differencesthrough bonds of affection, by participation in the common mission of the gospel, and by consultation without coercion or intimidation.

GOD'S JUDGMENT IS LOVE

We have already been judged by God, and the nature of that judgment is that it is a judgment of love. In God’s judgment we need saving and we are worth saving, and we cannot do it ourselves. In God’s judgment we need to be rescued.

-Br. David Vryhof
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Bro John Anthony posted in St. Cuthbert's Cottage

LADY MONDEGREEN

To the left is Lady Mondegreen, who does not exist.  Her Ladyship corrects us with the original words that were misheard as her name and brought her into existence as explained below. Click on the picture for the larger view.

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.
....

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O'Moray". She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". Wright explained the need for a new term:

The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.

How this all came about is that last night I posted on Facebook the video below, 'Bad Moon Rising' by Creedence Clearwater Revival, with the headling, 'DON'T GO AROUND TONIGHT!'  My friend PJ was the first to comment with, "Theeeere's a bathroom on the right!" (Somebody had to say it.)  Yes, somebody surely had to say it.  My other friend susan s., would have said it if she had commented first (but she didn't).





Then I mentioned my memory of my first Mondegreen, which is from the 'Hail Mary', 'Blessed art thou amongst swimmin', and blessed is the fruit of thy wound, Jesus.'

Then Padre Mickey chimed in with his, "Bringing in the Sheets".

If you care to leave your personal Mondegreens in a comment, your favorite misunderstandings from your own experience, well, I'd really like that.
  

OCCUPY AND BLOGGER'S BLOCK

The two iconic churches, Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, pictured to the left, and St Paul's Cathedral in The City of London, pictured below, have been much on my mind for the past several days.  The famous churches are coincidentally(?) located in the financial districts of the two great cities.  What I've thought of is the face-off between the churches and the Occupy groups in both cities. After a period of time, the authorities in the churches decided that the Occupiers had to go, and the groups were forcibly removed.  The right choice for the churches, to come down on the side of the 99%, seemed stark and obvious to me, but both chose to move against the Occupiers.  These are churches, for heaven's sake, the Body of Christ.

Occupied Bishop George Packard, a retired bishop in the Episcopal Church, gets it.  He joined the Occupiers and has been arrested twice in connection with Occupy protests.

Giles Fraser, former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, gets it, too.  He resigned his position when the authorities in the church decided to remove Occupy London protestors by force from the grounds around the cathedral.  He now serves as priest-in-charge at St Mary's Newington, a parish in one of the poorer neighborhoods in South London.

The Occupy movement is by no means finished.  Just because the groups are not occupying parks and squares in their tents or marching in protests every day does not mean that they have disappeared.  Disdain for the elite and their absorption in prospering themselves and their near total disregard for the common good will not go away.

Now that this post is written, perhaps I'll be able to move on to other subjects besides the 'Story of the Day'...not that there's anything wrong with the stories, because if I didn't like them, I would not post them.   


Photo of Trinity from Wikipedia.
Photo of St Paul's from Cathedral & History.

UPDATE: An Occupy.com Profile: Bishop Packard

STORY OF THE DAY

wears long, floaty stuff so she doesn't 
forget that she's really only connected to 
the earth by the very tips of her toes

From StoryPeople.

STORY OF THE DAY - HINDSIGHT

I didn't listen to her because she was my 
mother & wouldn't know anything until 
I was much older.

From StoryPeople.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

BATEAUX DE BOIS FESTIVAL

Yesterday the Friends for Traditional Louisiana Boat Building sponsored the first Bateaux de Bois Festival in Lockport, Louisiana, which was a grand success. The weather forecast showed an 80% chance of rain on Saturday. Friday was a total washout, and it seemed that Saturday would be more of the same. The organizers, including Grandpère, were mired in gloom.

But Saturday morning arrived with patches of sunlight, and the weather outlook was much improved, although rain was still in the forecast but not until the afternoon.  The rains didn't come until the around 1:30 pm, and by then a good many of the activities had already taken place.  The museum building and several sturdy tents made it possible for people to stay around.  


When my son, daughter-in-law, and I arrived at the festival, and GP saw us, he choked up because he was so pleased with the number of people who showed up.  He's quite emotional, but I was happy for him and the other organizers who worked so hard planning and making the festival come together.  The purpose was to call attention to and raise funds for the Center for Traditional Louisiana Boat Building.

Above is Grandpère being interviewed by a local television station.



The two beautiful girls on the right are my granddaughter and the daughter of a friend of ours.

Left is one of the bands that played at the festival.  This one, as you see, is a one-man band.

Couples doing a Cajun jitterbug dance pictured on the right.

The festival raised several thousand dollars for the boat center, which operates on a shoestring.  The museum is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, staffed by Grandpère (Tom Butler) and one other faithful volunteer.

Click here for another post about the center.