ABOUT THANKSGIVING

 

Alas... 

CHURCH OF ENGLAND VOTES NO TO WOMEN BISHOPS

Paul Owen at the Guardian live-blogging the debate at General Synod of the Church of England on a measure to allow women bishops:

That’s it. The Church of England has voted not to introduce female bishops – its biggest decision for 20 years.

It was a long day of debate, with over 100 speeches made and some points of view repeated a number of times. Broadly, speakers for the motion wanted women to be treated equally in the church and wanted Anglicans to set an example to the secular world in overcoming their differences. Those against felt the concept of female bishops could not be reconciled with scripture, and felt that compromise, for that reason, was not a Christian value.

Some on both sides felt the compromise measure before the General Synod – under which women would become bishops but could delegate authority to a male bishop if their parish requested it – meant the motion was fatally flawed. Others, such as Justin Welby, who will take over from Rowan Williams as Arch[b]ishop of Canterbury in the new year, said the compromise was “as good as we can get”. He urged the synod to vote for the motion. Earlier, Williams, also in favour, had said he wanted the world to look at the Church today and say: “That looks like Jesus Christ."

That’s it from me. Thanks for your comments.

How sad.

UPDATE: Thanks to Bishop Alan for the picture.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - BOBBY JINDAL

"If we want people to like us, we have to like them first."

There's truth in what you say, Governor.  My question for you is do you like us, us being the citizens of the state in which you serve as governor?  Louisiana is the name of the state way down in the South, remember?  Yes, I knew you would.  My next question is, if you like us, why are you so seldom here in Louisiana with the people of the state of which you are governor?

 

AUDUBON PARK GOES GREEN

NEW ORLEANS — Golfers at Audubon Park Golf course will be the first in the state to zip around bird-filled lagoons and Spanish moss-swathed live oaks in a fleet of entirely solar-powered carts.

The thin, lightweight black panels attached to the roofs of the 75 new carts are removable, said Audubon golf pro Stan Stopa, so that in another four or five years, (typically the lifespan of the carts), the solar panels can be attached to the next generation of carts.

Ben Nelson, managing partner of the dealership that sells the carts, said Audubon is the first course in the state to convert all its carts, and one of only a handful nationwide.

Brilliant.  The solar panels will pay for themselves over time and can be used on the next generation of golf carts.

Audubon Park Zoo has its own large compost heap of composed of droppings from herbivores, trimmings from shrubs and trees, and discards from food services in the park.  Once the material in the heap is "cooked", some of the compost is used in landscaping projects in the park, some goes into 40-pound bags labeled "ZooDoo Gold” and sold for $13, and bags of compost are given to local schools.

Not all the news coming out of Louisiana is bad.  Believe it or not, enlightened people reside in the state.

SURPRISE - SEX ABUSE SCANDAL NOT OVER

Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux [Roman Catholic] officials have said they had not heard reports of any predatory behavior by a former priest before a man came forward, accusing the priest of molesting him as an altar boy.

However, people who claim to have had sexual relationships with the Rev. Etienne LeBlanc said they felt preyed on by an authority figure who took advantage of them, even if they were not victims in the eyes of criminal law.

A civil suit against LeBlanc and the diocese, filed by Morgan City native Jared Ribardi, was settled last month, and LeBlanc, who couldn’t be reached for comment, has never been arrested under any criminal charges.

The alleged encounters happened at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Morgan City, which is part of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux. LeBlanc has also worked at Annunziata Catholic Church in Houma and is now retired.

Louis Aguirre, spokesman for the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, wrote a letter to The Courier and Daily Comet after the settlement, which was not disclosed.

The diocese “has not ever known of any alleged ‘predatory behavior’ by Father LeBlanc,” Aguirre wrote, referring to Ribardi’s attorney’s allegations that the diocese knew about his predatory sexual behavior for 25 years.

I'd heard the priest's name bandied about for years, and I remember when LeBlanc went on sabbatical in the 1980s, but I don't recall the reason given for his absence at the time.

Natchitoches resident Clayton Delery, 55, said he disagreed with that statement when he read it.

Delery said when he was 17 he met LeBlanc at Teens Encounter Christ, a retreat for high school students in Reserve. They became friends, and Delery would sometimes visit LeBlanc at his rectory in Reserve, where they had sex, Delery said.

Since Delery was 17, the sexual encounters were not illegal, but LeBlanc surely abused his position of power by having sex with a 17 year old member of his parish.  The diocese said the priest received counseling during the year 1986-1987 and was deemed fit by doctors to return to parish work.

The alleged sexual encounters between LeBlanc and Ribardi, which include accusations that LeBlanc forced Ribardi to perform oral sex, happened in the early 1990s when Ribardi was as young as 9 and as old as 14, according to his civil petition.

Apparently, the counseling the doctors thought worked so wonderfully well did not, after all, "take".

Others have stepped forward with further information on two other instances of alleged abuse of  persons who were college students at the time, who have since died, one by suicide and the other from AIDS.  So far as is known, the diocesan authorities were not told.  The family of the man who died of AIDS asked that he not be identified.

His first cousin said she was going to testify at Ribardi’s trial. The woman, who asked to be unnamed because her identity would reveal her cousin’s, said he confessed on his deathbed to her that he had a sexual relationship with a priest while he was a college student.

“Later in life, it disturbed him greatly. ... As he was dying, he displayed anger toward the Catholic Church and would not accept the sacraments,” or Last Rites, she said.

I'm not sure why LeBlanc is referred to as an ex-priest in the article.  A retired priest is still a priest, not an ex-priest.  Was LeBlanc defrocked?  I doubt it.

UPDATE: I spoke to the reporter who wrote the story, and she clarified that she meant retired priest, rather than ex-priest.    

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY FROM TREMÉ

Davina Lambreaux (Edwina Findley), in the Tremé HBO series, asks her brother Delmond (Rob Brown) for help with their father, Albert (Clarke Peters), who wants to stay in his ruined neighborhood in New Orleans three months after Katrina and the federal flood. Delmond, a musician, says he can't help.

DELMOND: I’ve got gigs.

DAVINA: We all got gigs, Delmond. Life is a goddamn gig.

The series is marvelous.  We don't have HBO, so I'm only now watching the beginning episodes on DVD.  More about the series later.  Lots of quotable dialogue...some probably not suitable for my family friendly blog, but we'll see.

LOVE STORY

I will seek and find you.

I shall take you to bed and have my way with you.

I will make you ache, shake and sweat until you moan and groan.

I will make you beg for mercy, beg for me to stop.

I will exhaust you to the point that you will be relieved when I'm finished with you.

And, when I am finished, you will be weak for days.

All my love,

The Flu

Now get your mind out of the gutter, and go get your flu shot!

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL

 

The U.S. Coast Guard was searching Friday for two workers missing after a fire erupted on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, sending an ominous black plume of smoke into the air reminiscent of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion that transformed the oil industry and life along the coast.

The fire, begun while workers were using a torch to cut an oil line, critically injured at least four workers who had burns over much of their bodies.

The images were eerily similar to the massive oil leak that killed 11 workers and took months to bring under control. It came a day after BP agreed to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the 2010 spill and pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties.

Only two workers missing and four badly burned this time, which is a heavy price to pay for our voracious appetites for oil and gas.  During the campaign, Republicans mocked President Obama for investing in clean energy.

Still, the accident was a vivid reminder of the dangerous business of offshore drilling and the risk it poses to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem and shoreline.

A sheen of oil about a half-mile long and 200 yards wide was reported on the Gulf surface, but officials believe it came from residual oil on the platform.

“It’s not going to be an uncontrolled discharge from everything we’re getting right now,” Coast Guard Capt. Ed Cubanski said.

We can only hope the drilling disaster will not worsen and pray the missing will be found safe and the injured will heal.  The platform, which is 25 miles SE of Grand Isle, LA, is owned by Houston-based Black Elk Energy.  We shall see.

The mocking Republicans remain in denial about climate change which will result in further violent weather, extreme weather, and rising ocean levels.  Even now, a bi-partisan group of senators urge Obama to proceed with the Keystone XL pipeline.  When will we ever learn?

UPDATE: The US Coast Guard has called off the search for the missing; one body has been found.

POST-ELECTION WISDOM OF BOBBY JINDAL

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,”Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”
....

If he does consider a White House run, his analysis Monday suggests he’s aligning himself with an emerging school of thought on the right that GOP’s consecutive White House defeats can’t merely be solved by passing an immigration reform bill and appealing more directly to nonwhites. Jindal, a Brown Graduate and Rhodes Scholar, is already a favorite of conservative intellectuals and his assessment that Republican difficulties owe as much to economics as demographics will be well-received by right-leaning thinkers.

Jindal is the purest of opportunists. Romney is dead as a politician, and Jindal has ambitions, so he dismisses him. If the Republicans need the support of brown people to win, Jindal is brown, the man in waiting, so to speak. He has the charisma of a door post, and he is a dismal failure as governor. In my opinion, he will not go far as a national candidate.

The governor may talk a good talk, but before Republicans latch on to him as their savior, they should educate themselves on the wreck the governor has made of the State of Louisiana.  If he had an infinite amount of time, rather than the two terms allowed him, I believe Jindal would privatize every state institution.  The budget is in deep deficit, but his only solution is cut, cut, cut.  The governor will not entertain any suggestion at all to raise taxes of any kind to fill the gap in his own state.  He governs like a dictator, and the supine Louisiana legislature goes along in fear and dread of the force of opposition from the tea party conservatives who are seem to be the majority of voters in the state.  By many measures of quality of life, Louisiana places at or near the bottom in the good stuff and at or near the top in the bad stuff. As the saying goes, "TBTG for Mississippi".

As Louisiana  debuts one of the nation’s most extensive private-school voucher programs, deep divides persist over who should be accountable for ferreting out academic failure and financial abuse: the government or parents.
....

About 5,600 students and 119 private schools will participate in Louisiana’s new statewide voucher program this fall.

But wait!

Despite [Superintentendant John] White’s own assertions about the importance of accountability to the voucher program, he has chosen not to hold voucher schools to the same standards. Private schools receiving vouchers will be able to continue receiving tax money previously earmarked for public schools–more than $8,000 per pupil–while scoring in the F range.

Yes, that’s right, an F. Private schools can score an F and continue receiving public funding.

And no change in policy appears on the horizon.

Nearly 1,000 rank-and-file state employees have lost their jobs since July, bringing the total to nearly 3,200 since Gov. Bobby Jindal took office in 2008, according to a Civil Service report.

The State Civil Service on Tuesday reported 967 state employee layoffs for the first four months of the state fiscal year. The number exceeds the 957 employees losing their jobs in all of fiscal year 2010-11, according to the report.

The Civil Service totals do not include the announced reduction of 1,500 state employees planned for Jan. 21 throughout the LSU public hospital system.

The reductions have occurred as Jindal moved many traditional government functions to the private sector, particularly in the health care arena.

Budget cuts have led to additional reductions in the state workforce.

This in the midst of a recession.

Census data released Thursday indicates poverty levels in Louisiana have continued to climb while household incomes declined in the last year, making the state one of the poorest in the nation.

But while more people are finding themselves mired in poverty unemployment levels have slowly been ticking down — a trend officials say they find perplexing.

Reports from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey say the median, or midpoint, household income in Louisiana declined 4.7 percent from $43,804 in 2010 to $41,734 in 2011.

Additionally, reports say the number of people in poverty increased from 18.7 percent in 2010 to 20.4 percent in 2011, a 1.7 percent increase. According to the data, the New Orleans metro area, which includes Metairie and Kenner, is among the 10 metropolitan areas in the United States with the highest percent of people living in poverty.

Perhaps not so perplexing if one considers that the jobs created are mainly shit jobs that do not lift working people out of poverty.

Louisiana’s physicians are complaining about “the lack of detail and preparation” as LSU embarks on budget cuts that affect training programs for the state’s future physicians.

“We have created another tsunami or Hurricane Katrina-type condition in regard to graduate medical education in the state,” said Dr. Andy Blalock, the Louisiana State Medical Society president.

Blalock warned Monday that the state’s “best and brightest” current and future medical students and physicians in training would leave or not come at all amid the tumult.

LSU medical school statistics show that 70 percent of those who do their physician training in Louisiana continue to practice in the state. Each physician practice means $2 million to the state’s economy, Blalock said.

Translation: there was no plan.  The Jindal administration makes it up as they go along.

The national agency that accredits graduate medical education programs is pressing LSU officials for information on their plans to revamp physician training programs.

The inquiry from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, called ACGME, came in response to publicized comments by LSU System Executive Vice President Frank Opelka about a redesign of LSU hospitals’ clinics, which would affect “Graduate Medical Education.” GME is the name for programs that train physicians.

Whoops!  Jindal's hasty and ill-planned (no plan) move to privatize the operations of several state-owned hospitals risks loss of accreditation for the graduate medical programs at Louisiana State University, the state's flagship university.  Oh well.  Our Ivy-League and Oxford-educated governor surely must know what he's doing.

While other Republican governors are starting to back away from their opposition to implementing a key part of President Obama's health care law, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday that he's not reconsidering.

"We are not implementing the exchange," Jindal said in a phone interview on Tuesday night.
....

If state governments do not agree to set up an exchange, the law says that the federal government will step in and do it.

So what's the point of Jindal's decision to opt out?  To keep his hands from being soiled by the touch of "socialism"?

Bobby never gives interviews to the local media, only condescending to speak to the national media.  I'm guessing it's because the locals know more, and their questions are likely to probe deeper than he'd care to answer, and, of course, the media here doesn't give him the national exposure he so craves.  Since Jindal was elected, he's seldom home in Louisiana, as he's been all around the country campaigning for "other candidates".   Now that the election is over, the governor will perform his duties as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, which I expect will require him to be out of state as much as ever.  Jindal often says he's not looking for a job since he has the best job in the world, but those of us in Louisiana wonder why he's seldom here working at his job.

WEDDING BAND WOES

When we married 51 years ago, I wore a plain wide wedding band similar to the ring pictured on the left. Many years later I developed a rash under the ring, which surprised me because I thought no one was allergic to gold.  After asking around, I was told that the rash was probably from one of the alloy metals in the ring, the most likely culprit being nickel.  Though it saddened me, I had to stop wearing the ring.

 

As a replacement I bought a thin gold band similar to the ring on the right, with the thought that it might not cause a rash, and indeed it did not. It wasn't the same as wearing the original ring, but it served its purpose for many years.

Then the other night I noticed that the knuckle on my ring finger hurt and was enlarged from arthritis.  Yikes!  I thought I'd better get the ring off before it had to be cut off.  It was a struggle, but I finally was able to work the ring off.

Now what do I do?  Shall I buy a larger ring to fit over the enlarged knuckle but will fit loosely at the base of my finger or just give up the idea of wearing a ring?  I lean toward the idea of no ring.

Sigh...I really love the original.

UPDATE: The wedding band on a chain "close to my heart".