THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

One path forward for the Roman Catholic Church to recover from the numerous revelations of child abuse by clergy and cover-up by those in authority might be for Pope Benedict to call for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

PLEASE PRAY...

...for Frank, who will have surgery tomorrow to remove a section of his colon because of repeated attacks of diverticulitis.

...for Tom (not my Tom) who will have surgery in a few days to remove a tumor on his brain.

O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and grant to your servants Frank and Tom the help of your power, that their sicknesses may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

UPDATE: Frank's surgery went very well. The doctors were able to do a laparoscopy.

JESUS IN LOVE - CHRIST'S PASSION

A queer version of Christ’s Passion is running in daily installments this week from Palm Sunday through Easter. Each daily post features a queer Christian painting and an excerpt from the novel Jesus in Love: At the Cross by Kittredge Cherry.

Today Jesus in Love Blog features our friend Doug Blanchard's painting "Jesus Enters the City". Doug (aka Counterlight) blogs at Counterlight's Peculiars.

HYDE PARK

 

When I visited my friend Ginnie in Connecticut, we rode to Hyde Park, the home of President Franklin Roosevelt. The gardens and grounds at Hyde Park are lovely. The picture above shows color from turning leaves. I understand why FDR said of Hyde Park:

"All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River"

 

Above is my friend Ginnie, sitting on one of the benches that are part of the bronze sculpture of Eleanor and Franklin that is outside the Visitor's Center. The figures are slightly larger than life-size, and I found them a bit spooky because, except for the color, they were quite life-like. Even when I look at the photos, I'm a little freaked out. Strange.

 

There I am. Franklin has his arm around me, which is really weird. Why would statues have such an effect on me?

 

Above is the main house at Hyde Park. The interior of the house includes little or nothing in the way of Eleanor's taste in its furnishings or decor. FDR's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt was a strong presence in the lives of Eleanor and FDR for many years of their marriage. Only after a long, gradual process were Eleanor and FDR able remove themselves from her influence.

Another post or two on our visit will follow.

IF WOMEN RULED THE WORLD - 2

 

 

 

 

Don't blame me. Blame Ann.

UPDATE: And blame Cathy, too, for asking to see the rest of pictures in the series.

AFTER PALM SUNDAY - 2007

 

Palmesel means palm donkey in German, but most often refers to a statue of Christ on a donkey. These statues were mounted on a wheeled platform and used in Palm Sunday processions.

I note that in the statue illustrated above, Jesus appears to have a receding hairline. Take heart all you guys who have less than a full, luxuriant growth of hair on your heads. Perhaps Jesus was one of you.

Sunday I missed going to church because I took the Katrina disaster tour, with Scout of First Draft as the tour guide. She knows her way around New Orleans, especially the devastated areas, like a native, although she lives in Wisconsin. It was a strange, but perhaps appropriate initiation into Holy Week.

So far, I have not yet adjusted to the compression of Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday into one Sunday. With this arrangement, we move from Jesus riding triumphant - albeit on a donkey, a lowly animal compared to a horse - with the crowds shouting "Hosanna in the highest!" and waving palm branches to an abrupt thrust into the Passion story and Holy Week.

I've just finished reading the Passion of Our Lord from Matthew's Gospel. Often when I'm reading something familiar, certain words will leap out to grab my attention, words that I have taken little note of in previous readings. Today the words were from Matthew 26:56, "Then all the disciples deserted him and fled."

How many times have I deserted Jesus and fled from him? More often than I'd like, I'm ashamed to say. Perhaps that's fertile ground for meditation during this Holy Week.

Note: Reposted with slight editing after Palm Sunday three years ago, the day after a group of us gutted a house in Gentilly in New Orleans under the auspices of ACORN, which is now defunct as an organization. A family now lives in the renovated house.

Photo from The Cloisters - A Medieval Art Museum in Fort Tyron Park, New York City.

UPDATE: Doorman-Priest quotes from The Last Week by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan on the competing processions into Jerusalem by Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

STRESSBUSTERS

 

 

 

 

Now keep this smile on and have a great the rest of the day!!


May be used tomorrow, too.

Thanks to Doug.

"NINE LIVES" - DAN BAUM

 

An email to me from Dan Baum, the author of Nine Lives:

You were kind to write to me years ago about my daily New Orleans blog on the New Yorker website. I wanted to let you know that my book, "Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans" is being released today in paperback. It got blushingly good reviews when it was published in hardcover last year; you can read them here. If you liked "New Orleans Journal," I think you'll enjoy "Nine Lives."

Indeed, the reviews of the book are blushingly good. Here's a sampling:

The New York Times, February 18, 2009: “Nine Lives may be this young year’s most artful and emotionally resonating nonfiction book so far, and for that, to Mr. Baum, a belated New Year’s toast.”

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 11, 2009. “One of the most moving -- and riveting -- books ever written about the rich and complicated life we live here.”
People Magazine, February 13, 2009: “Brilliantly reported. . . . Compassionate and clear-eyed. . . “

Time, February 19, 2009: “With all that has been written about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, few writers have been able to capture the essence of New Orleans as skillfully as Baum.”

The Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2009: Dan Baum's extraordinary book . . . resembles a vast Victorian novel in its many-sided evocation of an entire world -- worlds, actually. . . .

The New York Times Book Review, February 22, 2009: “A splendid book. . . . Crowded with memorable characters. Baum continually serves up wonderful detail and phrasing.” (A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.”)

The Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana), February 15, 2009: “One of the finest books to be written about Hurricane Katrina and its effect on New Orleans waited the longest to come out, most likely because of the immense research involved. But it's worth the wait.”

The Washington Post, March 1, 2009: “(Baum’s) technique brings to mind Robert Altman's film ‘Nashville’ . . . . He adroitly moves his subjects through parades, prison, divorces, sex changes, fancy balls and gun brawls.”

Surely enough to cause Dan's face to turn fiery red.

I purchased the hardcover version of Nine Lives some time ago, and I am now about three quarters through reading the book. As I told Dan in email:

I love the book, and I am quite willing to give it publicity....I didn't want to write a post until I had got at least part way through the book. I would have bought "Nine Lives" just for the introduction, because you "get" New Orleans and New Orleanians.

Not everyone "gets" New Orleans, not even folks born and bred in the city. I have friends who moved after Katrina and the federal flood and never looked back. Not that I blame them for moving, because having your house flood more than once is enough to cause one to wish never to have the experience again. I left New Orleans over 50 years ago, and I still look back with longing to the city of my birth, childhood, teen years, and college years. I will never get over moving away. But enough about me! I'm supposed to be selling Dan's book.

From the introduction to Nine Lives:

That New Orleans is like no place else in America goes way beyond the food, music, and architecture. New Orleanians don't even understand such fundamentals as time and money the way other the way other Americans do. The future, for example: while the rest of Americans famously dream and scheme and chase the horizon, New Orleanians are masters at the lost art of living in the moment. If we're doing okay this minute, goes the logic - enjoying one another's company, keeping cool, and maybe having something good to eat - of what earthly importance is tomorrow or next week? Given the fragility of life, why even count on getting there? New Orleanians are notoriously late showing up, if they show up at all, because by and large they don't keep calendars. Calendars are tools for managing the future, and in New Orleans the future doesn't exist.

And ain't that the truth? Grandpère and I have been at odds over money and time for nearly 49 years. We settle for truces, but we have never signed a peace treaty.

From Rebecca Wright, originally from Thibodaux, a character in the book:

Cousins showed up often from Thibodaux, looking for a better life in the city. Ronald [Rebecca's adopted son] knew times when five or ten might be packed into the house, covering the living room floor like dead soldiers, standing around the table at mealtimes, spooning up Mama's rice and gravy, and talking in plantation accents that struck his ear like music. They'd tell of hog killings, alligators as long as Cadillacs, and hot pones sticky with molasses. Everybody would be shouting and laughing until Rebecca, standing over the stove with her spatula, hushed them all by snapping, "When I die, do not bring me back to that place."

Like Rebecca, I want my ashes in New Orleans. I haven't decided where yet. Perhaps my ashes could join my sister Gayle's ashes in City Park, where we spent so much time as kids. But once again, this is about Dan's book. See how easily I drift into telling stories?

Nine Lives tells the stories of ordinary and not so ordinary people from New Orleans before Katrina and after. In Dan's words:

These stories come to the reader through two filters. The sensibilities, emotions, and memories of the nine principal characters color them most of all. They all sat for many hours of interviews, unpacking their innermost moments for a stranger, with nothing to gain but the very New Orleanian pleasure of storytelling. Although I supplemented those interviews by talking to many of my characters' friends, relatives, and associates, I chose to recount these nine people's lives from their own points of view. They invited me into their heads and hearts, so that seemed the best place from which to tell their stories.

So. If you're looking for something good to read and think you might like to read about other quirky and wonderful (blushing) people like me, consider buying Dan Baum's Nine Lives.

HAITI - LEST WE FORGET - 2

My friend Georgianne Nienaber made her way to devastated Haiti to write about the plight of the people there. She has written eloquently in The Huffington Post about the desperate and dangerous situation of the people of Congo. And now she is on the story in Haiti.

From The Huffington Post:

What should the mainstream media do when the guy who identified the H1N1 outbreak in Mexico and was a key player and founder of ARGUS, a global detection and tracking system for the early detection of biological events, says Haiti is facing a serious gap in preparedness, early warning, and rapid response regarding pediatric diarrheal disease? If they are doing their homework, they talk to him and other epidemiologists and doctors in the field who say that the big NGOs and the United Nations are fudging the facts about their accomplishments.
....

As [Jim] Wilson reports on his website, and contrary to what the United Nations and Care International have reported , about safe drinking water and sanitation in the IDP camps, the opposite is true.

This man is telling the truth. I was there. So was my physician husband, and what we witnessed is beyond the pale. Hand washing is non-existent and raw sewage is flowing throughout the camps. Walk anywhere with peril. Human feces are everywhere, even in the ruins of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. Open sewer grates serve as pit toilets. At the risk of providing too much information, I abandoned my shoes because they had become too saturated with human waste picked up in the camps.
....

The cat may already be out of the bag. My husband saw and identified cases of infant diarrhea on March 12 in a camp of 5500 outside of Petionville. Here is some raw video of the conditions on that day. When we returned seven days later, a small Irish NGO, HAVEN, was trying to build latrines, but you can imagine what the surrounding grounds were like with 5500 people having no sanitation facilities.
....

Ordinarily, I would have been on top of Dr. Wilson's request immediately, but I was incapable. Why? I had picked up the disease myself and have spent the last two days and eight hours of that time with constant bouts of simultaneous diarrhea and vomiting. It was the worst illness I have ever experienced in years of traveling and I can only imagine what it is like for a baby, let alone an adult, to sleep in the rain and mud at night, have no shelter under a blazing sun and 90 plus degrees, and no hope of feeling better. I had access to the best antibiotics and palliative care, including rehydration that is not available to these people. Infants can die within 24 hours of contracting this disease.

The rainy season has not even begun yet.

As Dr. Wilson says, "Complacency is a dangerous state of mind."

Read the entire article and watch the video at HP. The situation in Haiti remains dire. We must not permit our interest and our concern for our neighbors to the south to flag. We must continue to offer our help.

Want to help? Here's the link to Praecipio International, "a non-profit organization that tracks disease outbreaks globally, [and] is planning to re-deploy to Haiti to assist in curbing unfolding infectious disease crises as the rainy season begins." You can donate at their website.

IF WOMEN RULED THE WORLD

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Ann.