LITTLE LORD WILLARD

How little Lord Willard aspires to rule!
So proudly attended the plutocrat school
with Dad’s reputation and money in hand,
sharp pencils and spreadsheets assembled a band
of legal and fiscal finaglers supreme
to pillage and plunder and finance his dream;
outsourcing, bankruptcy and capital gain
with zero concern and a cold hard disdain
for regular workers, producers of goods
on low or lost wages destroyed neighborhoods,
called stealing “creating”, insisted on stealth
to cover the truth of raw arrogant wealth
despising “other,” not so clever as their own
at gaming the system, reaping seed once sown
with intent to encourage the average
to strive, help the poor to rise, not leverage
the risk of vultures too greedy even to wait
for the maimed to expire their hunger to sate.
With ambition not limited by conscience,
Lord Willard, now Mitt, purchased the governance
of an unlikely state full of blue Democrats,
“fixed” the budget with fees, a no tax technocrat
without learning the first rule political:
voters are people, not trends or cyclical
losses deleted with the click of a mouse,
a lesson critical to win the White House.
Public service not mentioned in this current
election, but Mitt, demoted to servant
might just be the ticket to inject something
humble into his bubble of pretending
his elitist view is best for a country
of equals humoring his kind, the fake gentry.

(Marthe G. Walsh - September 2012)

Marthe calls the poem doggerel.  I call it Romney to a T. 

SCATTER GARDEN AT ST JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Julie Green carving the cross

Residents will soon have a new way to remember their deceased loves ones in Thibodaux.

St. John’s Episcopal Church on Jackson Street is putting the finishing touches on a scatter garden, which will eventually be home to countless cremated ashes.

“We want it to be a place where you can come visit your ancestors who are there,” said the Rev. Ron Clingenpeel, priest in charge for St. John’s, which dates back to 1843. “It is a place where one can encounter God, holiness and a real sense of peace in their lives, knowing this is where their loved ones are.”

The scatter garden will be a space where families can spread the ashes of their loved ones and go to remember them in the following years, Clingenpeel said.

The cross that will stand in the scatter garden is beautiful.  Julie, a parishioner, is a true artist, and her carving is a work of art.  And what a fine idea to have the scatter garden at St John's.

Enclosure walls of the future scatter garden

The grounds of the scatter garden are unfinished. All that's complete are the brick wall segments that will define the garden area.

My family knows of my wish to be cremated...not yet, of course,...but I had not decided where I wanted my ashes scattered.  I knew I did not want them placed in a container on the mantlepiece, and with the advent of the scatter garden, my decision was easy.

UPDATE: The intention is to scatter the ashes, but if family and friends of the deceased would prefer burial of the ashes in a biodegradable container, then that will be an alternative.  Of course, the garden will be made beautiful with landscaping. 

JESUS HAD A WIFE?

Everyone else has, so I suppose I must talk about Jesus' wife.

Speculation that Jesus Christ might have married is an ancient one and, however often theologians and historians throw cold water over the idea, it will keep cropping up - most notably in recent years as a key element in the plot of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. No one would take that particular novel as gospel, but now a historian from the Harvard Divinity School has come up with what may – just – be the first ever reference to Jesus mentioning a wife.

The fragment of fourth-century Coptic writing on a rectangular piece of faded papyrus no more than eight centimetres by four contains eight lines written in black ink apparently including the words: "Jesus said to them, 'My wife …'" Far from being the start of a music-hall joke, the extract continues: "she will be able to be my disciple," before being cut off.

Karen L King, the Hollis professor of divinity – the oldest endowed academic chair in the US – who made the discovery, told the New York Times: "These words can mean nothing else."

All right then, the words can mean nothing else, but are the words true?  Professor King, the Coptic scholar, decidedly does not go that far.  The fragment is intriguing, and if it's provenance is verified, it will be of great interest to scholars and many others, but it will not prove Dan Brown is right.

What would it mean to me if it could be proved that Jesus had a wife?  I would not be shocked, nor would my faith be in any way affected.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Oxford professor and historian of Christianity, says, "Bloggers beware – it's not what you think."  But what do I think?  I don't really have an opinion.  I'm far behind others in blogging about the discovery of the papyrus.

MITT'S MAMA GIVES AWAY THE GAME

I was gonna post a music video, but...

Lenore Romney really believes in George Romney.

"He was a refugee from Mexico.  He was on relief - welfare relief - for the first years of his life.  But this great country gave him opportunities." 

I don't know about you, but it seems to me the son of George and Lenore Romney, Mitt Romney, wants to deny people the kind of opportunity this country gave to his own father when he came to the US from Mexico.

NPR has further information on the Romney family and their travels back and forth between the US and Mexico.

Andrew Kaczynski at BuzzFeed posted the video on YouTube. 

ULTIMATE FANTASY

Ask any man what a woman's ultimate fantasy is and they will tell you:  to have two men at once.

According to a recent sociological study this is actually true for most women.

Most men, however, do not realize that, in this fantasy, one man is cooking and the other is cleaning.


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

Ain't THAT the truth?

MY FAVORITE BISHOP DOES IT AGAIN...

Bishop George Packard giving a quick lesson in peaceful civil disobedience at Occupy Wall St. He was arrested minutes later.

...gets arrested. But he didn't mean to. It just sort of happened.  The Occupy Faith group of 30+ gathered, but then others joined them.

So we practiced--all 500 of us by now--right there in that space by first all sitting down. It went well and as I led this exercise I thought I couldn't abandon them if it came to a later action. OWS asked us to lead the procession to the NYPD checkpoint and we did. It was there you could access to the Stock Exchange. Once there we sat down and the arrests began. That was about 8 AM..
...

As we reached 200 in that holding cell we whistled "Battle Hymn of the Republic", one fellow composed two rap songs (I'd rather stand up proudly in jail than spend my life on my knees!). We sang a few more protest songs throughout the day. In two instances of creativity the plastic water cooler and garbage can were inverted and becoming an ersatz drumming circle a la Blue Man Group. When an officer took those things away because of noise with, "these are for you to clean up in here." To which we chanted, "We are here to clean up out there! Never try to match one liners with Occupiers. In one corner an affinity discussion group convened while some began "silent meditation" in another section.

Read George's entire post titled, "It's Better in Jail."

What frightens Mayor Bloomberg so - especially as the Occupy protests were declared by Andrew Ross Dorkin to have "fizzled" in the "Newspaper of Record"? 

It will be an asterisk in the history books, if it gets a mention at all.

Why then the fear and heavy NYPD presence and the heavy-handed tactics with the protestors?

You laugh or you cry at ABC News coverage of the protests and of Bishop George's arrest:

At times it seemed the mass of the protest was made up more by the media covering the event than by anyone with a political agenda. A pink-frocked "bishop" protester arrested by police was surrounded by a media scrum so dense the police came to break up the knot of humanity.

The pink-frocked "bishop" with scare quotes?   You have to wonder if the reporters asked any questions before they wrote the article...you know, the way investigative reporters are supposed to do.

Thank you, members of Occupy Faith for standing with the protestors.  Thanks for all you do.

FROM JOHN'S GOSPEL READING TODAY

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 

Many of us want to see Jesus.  In Matthew's Gospel Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats.  The righteous ask:

“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

If we want to see Jesus, we just have to look around.

WHAT ABOUT THE 1ST AMENDMENT?

In the early morning hours Monday, Occupy Wall Street activists marked the first anniversary of the movement by protesting in the financial district. Hundreds gathered on Water Street and hundreds more in Zuccotti Park, the birth place of the movement, before marching through Lower Manhattan, occasionally pausing to occupy intersections and protest financial institutions like Chase and Bank of America.

It was one of the largest turnouts since the early days of Occupy, but Monday was also exceptional because of the high arrest figures. More than 180 [later reports say over 200] people, including journalists, were arrested, and in at least some of these cases, the police were arresting individuals arbitrarily and without cause.

What about the First Amendment to the Constitution?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

From what I've heard, the members of the NYPD who abridged the freedoms of the Occupiers should be under arrest.  Of course, the police were only taking orders from Mayor Bloomberg, who also should be under arrest for violating the the rights of the people who assembled and the press who covered the gatherings, some of whom were taken into custody.  A few people who just happened to be in the vicinity, who were not part of the protest, were caught up in the NYPD's zeal to make arrests.

To say “Occupy is dead” is to misunderstand everything about the movement. Occupy can’t die as long as the dire conditions that inspired the creation of the movement continue to exist. 
....

And protesters are quick to point out that it’s only been a year, and the timeline of any social justice movement is long. Perhaps “Occupy” will evolve into a different kind of movement under an entirely different banner, but the spirit that first served as a catalyst lives on.

And the protestors are correct.  It's much too premature to begin funeral preparations for Occupy.  The movement is still alive, and Occupy or something like it will go on.

When I first went to the website of The Nation, I was asked to subscribe to the digital edition for the price of $9.50, and I closed the ad, and they let me in anyway, but after this fine article by Allison Kilkenny, I'm reconsidering buying a subscription.  The NYT continues to ask, but I won't be subscribing.   

I AM THE 47%

Hey Mitt!  We are legion.

ABOUT ROMNEY'S 47%

From Tax Foundation.

From Real Clear Politics.

The charts speak for themselves.  Thanks to Paul (A.) for the link to the top chart.