'NO MAN'S LAND' - ERIC BOGLE

And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

It's a song that was written about the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France. In 1976, my wife and I went to three or four of these military cemeteries and saw all the young soldiers buried there. —Eric Bogle

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - TO HONOR THE FALLEN

Let us honor the fallen in our wars by caring well for the survivors, the wounded in body, mind, and spirit, the healthy, and the families of the military, both of those who have died and those who still live.

IN MEMORIAM - MAY 2012

Arlington National Cemetery

Memorial Day in the United States is a day of remembrance of those in all our wars who gave everything in the service of their country. We honor them for their courage and dedication to duty. We extend our sympathy to their families and friends, whether the loss is recent or from long times past. We stand with you. We mourn with you.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. Micah 4:1-4

Lord God, Almighty and Everlasting Father, we pray for all those who have died in wars. We pray the they may rest in peace in the perpetual light of your love. We pray for your blessing upon the families and friends of all those who have died in service to their country. Console them for their aching loss. Bring them healing of body, mind, and spirit. Give them strength and courage to go forward, and Lord God, above all else, give them your peace that passes understanding to keep their minds and hearts.

Below is the faded bumper sticker that I put on my car in 2003 after the start of the war in Iraq. Originally, the top letters were bright yellow, and the bottom letters were bright blue and red.

The war in Afghanistan began in 2001.


Image at the head of the post from Wikipedia.

Reposted from last year with some editing.

For additional reading, I recommend to you Charles Pierce's Memorial Day post.  A short excerpt is below, but do read it all.

Now, for the veterans of the two wars of the past decade, we're giving them all kinds of favors and goodies and public applause, and maybe even a parade or two, overcompensating our brains out, but, ultimately, what does all the applause mean at the end of the day? We are apparently fine with two more years of vets coming home from Afghanistan, from a war that 60 percent of us say we oppose. But we support The Troops. Will we become a more skeptical nation the next time a bunch of messianic fantasts concoct a war out of lies? Perhaps, but we support The Troops. Will we tax ourselves sufficiently to pay for what it costs to care for the people we send to one endless war and one war based on lies? Well, geez, we'll have to think about that, but we support The Troops.

STORM IN THE HOLY SEE

Paolo Gabriele riding in front of the pope

 An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that the pope's own butler had been arrested after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment.

The pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, allegedly did it...stole the documents.

The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked Vatican documents detailing power struggles, political intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. It peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI's own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff's No. 2.

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the president of the Vatican Bank, aka the Institute for Religious Works (I am not joking!) was fired.  Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the bank said you can't make this stuff up.  As the Fonz would say, "Heeeeey!"

The Vatileaks scandal began in January when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi broadcast letters from the former No. 2 Vatican administrator to the pope in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's U.S. ambassador.

Sooo, the former No 2 man is now exiled to the U.S., the equivalent of Siberia to Vatican insiders, and the present No. 2 man in the Vatican, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, is in hot water.

Bertone, 77, has been blamed for a series of gaffes and management problems that have plagued Benedict's papacy and, according to the leaked documents, generated a not inconsiderable amount of ill will directed at him from other Vatican officials.

Can't the pope trust anyone?  Perhaps the butler did not realize he was playing with the big boys.  According to the Vatican spokesman, Msgr Federico Lombardi, Paolo is in detention in the Vatican and is being investigated.

I hope I've got the complicated story more or less right, as it's not easy to follow.  Read the article, and correct me if I've made mistakes.

Meanwhile back in Siberia - er - the U.S., the Roman Catholic bishops are moving ahead to deprive their female employees of health insurance coverage for birth control.

Picture from Wikipedia.

Thanks to all who sent me links to the story of the shenanigans in the Vatican.      

    

BRAVO REPLACEMENTS LIMITED!

Bob Page, chairman of Replacements Limitted is a man of great courage.

In the months leading up to North Carolina’s vote this month to ban gay marriage, most of the state’s business leaders were conspicuously silent. While some executives spoke out against it as individuals, not one Fortune 500 company based in North Carolina, including Bank of America, Duke Energy, VF Corporation and Lowe’s, opposed it. 

But one company did: Replacements Limited, which sells silver, china and glassware, and is based in Greensboro. Its founder and chairman, Bob Page, is gay. The company lobbied legislators, contributed money to causes supporting gay marriage, rented a billboard along the interstate near its headquarters, and sold T-shirts at its showroom. Its experience may explain why no other for-profit company followed its example. 

The response was swift and ugly. Phone calls and emails poured in from people saying they would never do business with the company again.  The numbers of responses in support of the company's efforts against the bill were much smaller.

Andrew Spainhour, general counsel for the company, who spearheaded the opposition to the ban on gay marriage, said he is concerned for Bob Page's safety.

“Bob has been absolutely fearless in the face of that,” Mr. Spainhour said. “It’s a North Carolina that exists but that I don’t recognize. There are two North Carolinas: the progressive cities and college towns, and places where there are no openly gay people.”
....

Mr. Page, 67, said he didn’t like politics and wasn’t “extreme,” or “in your face” about being gay. But, he added: “I just refuse to hide. I did that way too many years and it’s just not healthy.”

At the same time, he said: “I’m always concerned I will hurt our business. I know we have lost business. But I don’t have a board or shareholders I have to answer to. My life is not about money.”

Over the years, I'd purchased a good many missing pieces of china and flatware from Replacements, and their merchandize and service was first rate.  I hope the company will quickly gain far more customers than they've lost.

Read the rest of Bob Page's bittersweet story.

T-P THE BELL TOLLS FOR THEE

Since Thursday, I've been trying to write the story of the death knell sounded for the Times-Picayune, the 175 year old newspaper that serves New Orleans.  Oh, the powers say that they will produce a paper version three days a week, but they're just prolonging the agony, because the paper version will die, and I believe it's quite probable that the online version will eventually wither and die.  I hate to make such a statement in the face of the staff members who will not not lose their jobs in the cuts, but I believe it to be true.  So, New Orleans will be the largest city in the country without a daily newspaper.  How special.

The online version, produced by NOLA.com is pathetic.  The search function is useless, so I go to Google to search for articles on the NOLA website.  We subscribe to the paper version, and I cannot imagine reading the online version in it's present form.

The Times-Picayune won two Pulitzers, including the prestigious Public Service award, for its coverage of Katrina. The paper was forced to evacuate its offices and publish online for three days. As the only major newspaper in the city, it was heralded as the most vital source of information for besieged residents.

No matter.  The once proud newspaper is going, going, gone, and I am grieving.  I grew up with the Times-Picayune, and I've read the paper as long as I've lived in Louisiana, with a only a three year hiatus when we lived in Mobile, Alabama, many years ago.

I'll let Athenae at First Draft, who has worked as a journalist for a good many years, speak for me.  She lives in Chicago, and she cares!

Paywalls have nothing to do with what happened to the Times-Picayune. I saw a lot of carping last week about "how many people bitching about this on the Internet actually subscribe" and whatnot, as though commenting on Twitter was itself an act destructive to Noble Print. I saw a lot of whinging about how "people don't read" anymore. I saw a lot of eulogizing about newspapers being a dying form, as if the Times-Picayune wasn't profitable.

Make no mistake here: The Times-Picayune is not the victim of the Freedom Loving Internet or changing times or reading habits of the young'uns or anything other than a rapacious corporate desire for profit over the public good, and that's a problem that afflicted journalism long before the Internet came into being. Speaking as someone who worked in newspapers when we went from cut-and-paste to actual computer layout, who saw two newspapers create their very first web sites, both before and after the same problem existed: The people in charge were greedy, venal, lazy and stupid, and liked playing with matches.

They liked fudging circulation numbers and screwing up distribution routes, undermining newsroom budgets when they weren't outright stealing. They liked telling reporters there was no money for journalism while buying drinks for their parties. They liked firing people who had been in place too long, hiring young cheap college grads, and then telling the older folks still left that it was the younger folks' fault for taking a job that was offered to them. They liked changing what was covered from one day to the next. They liked letting minimum-wagers "sell" their subscriptions and they liked delivering so inconsistently that even if people wanted the paper, they couldn't find or get it.

And they could get away with all this because even with TV and radio, they were still the dominant form, and there was enough money to cover up all but the most catastrophic of their mistakes. When the dot-com bubble burst and American manufacturing went into a death spiral and the economy started to tank, the money started to dry up and people started seeing fire where before there'd only been smoke.

The idea of that "industry" (really a disparate collection of corporations that have no incentive to cooperate in any way and in fact share little beyond a medium) "swallowing hard" and coming to one conclusion about improving itself is impractical at best, even if you believe paywalls are the answer. Any smart companies will let the stupid, greedy ones burn, and paywalls or no, the stupid greedy ones will end up as charcoal because this isn't about form, it's about managing money and mission, and these people suck at that and have no incentive to change. What incentive is there, when you can gut a company and walk away with millions?

Forever and ever.  Amen.

Photo at top from Wikipedia.

Thanks to Steve Buttry via Paul (A.) for the picture of the Times-Picayune T-shirt.

LISTENING FOR THE FUTURE (MASCULINE)

I'm on my way to the future, he said & I 
said, But you're just sitting there 
listening & he smiled & said, It's harder 
than you'd think with all the noise 
everyone else is making.

From StoryPeople.

WAXING CRESCENT MOON

Amber crescent moon
Hangs in west-southwestern sky
Pure delight for me

JB

Yes, I am moonstruck.

Picture from Earth/Sky.

THERE'S JOY IN THE LAND...

...also concern and trepidation for some members that St David's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, will be amongst the first in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas to perform same-sex blessings. 

The Rev David Boyd, rector:

Jesus friended us all before Facebook was popular.

Amen.

H/T to Ann Fontaine at The Lead.

PUNOGRAPHY

I changed my iPod name to Titanic. It's syncing now.

When chemists die, they barium.

 Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

 I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Than it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity . I can't put it down.

 I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a Type-O.

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

Class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's no pop quiz.

Energizer battery arrested. Charged with battery.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it!

Did you hear about the cross eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?

I apologize.  These puns are the wurst.   And how about this naughty cartoon?  I don't have the nerve to publish it here.