Lex Anteinternet: Earth Day, 2024. Native to this place.
Lex Anteinternet: Earth Day, 2024. Native to this place.:
Today is Earth Day, 2024.
Earth Day, 2024. Native to this place.
We have become a more juvenile culture. We have become a childish "me, me, me" culture with fifteen-second attention spans. The global village that television was supposed to bring is less a village than a playground...Little attempt is made to pass on our cultural inheritance, and our moral and religious traditions are neglected except in the shallow "family values" arguments.
Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place
Today is Earth Day, 2024.
In "Red State", which now means more than it used to as the Reds in the Red States are supporting the Russian effort to conquer Ukraine, and hence are aligned with what the old Reds would have wanted, it's not going to mean all that much. I don't expect there to be much in the way of civil observances.
I saw a quote by somebody whose comments I wouldn't normally consider, that being Noam Chomsky, in which he asserted that a certain class of people who are perceived (not necessarily accurately) as something beyond evil, as they're putting all of humanity in jeopardy for a "few dollars" when they already have far more than they need. That is almost certainly unfair. Rather, like so much else in human nature, mobilizing people to act contrary to their habits is just very hard. And some people will resist any concept that those habits are harmful in any fashion.
Perhaps, therefore, a bitter argument is on what people love. People will sacrifice for that, and here such sacrifices as may be needed on various issues are likely temporary ones.
Of course, a lot of that gets back to education, and in this highly polarized time in which we live, which is in part because we're hearing that changes are coming, and we don't like them, and we've been joined by people here locally recently who have a concept of the local formed by too many hours in front of the television and too few in reality. We'll have to tackle that. That'll be tough, right now, but a lot of that just involves speaking the truth.
While it has that beating a horse aspect to it, another thing we can't help but noting, and have before, is that an incredible amount of resistance to things that would help overall society are opposed by those who are lashed to their employments in nearly irrevocable ways. In this fashion, the society that's actually the one most likely to be able to preserver on changed in some fashions are localist and distributist ones. Chomsky may think that what he is noting is somehow uniquely tied to certain large industries, but in reality the entire corporate capitalist one, which of course he is no fan of, as well as socialist ones, which he is, are driven by concepts of absolute scale and growth. That's a systematic culture that's very hard to overcome and on a local scale, when people are confronted with it, they'll rarely acknowledge that their opposition is based on something that's overall contrary to what they otherwise espouse. We see that locally right now, where there are many residents opposed to a local gravel pit, who otherwise no doubt make their livings from the extractive industries.
But I'd note that this hasn't always been the case here. It was much less so before the influx of outsiders who stayed after the most recent booms. And that too gives us some hope, as the people who are of here and from here, like people of and from anywhere they're actually from, will in fact act for the place.
Related threads:
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 64th Edition. Things authentic and important.
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 64th Edition. Things ...:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 64th Edition. Things authentic and important.
Why there?
On Saturday, March 30, Pro Hamas protestors interrupted the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
Why St. Patrick's?
For the same reason, most likely, that LGBTQ+ figures had a protesting funeral there recently. People are drawn to Catholic places, as they're real, and therefore attention is paid to them.
Why her?
Courtney Love, in an interview with Standard, stated; "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist."
This followed Billie Eilish criticizing, sort of anonymously, "wasteful artists" who put out multiple vinyl editions, an apparent softball for sustainability. She later said her comments weren't directed at Swift.
Hmmm. . .
Why are these chanteuses dissing Taylor?
I don't really know, but I will note that Love commenting on who is important and interesting in laughable. Is Love "important" or "interesting"? If she is, she might be interesting as she's the late wife of the tragic Curt Cobane, whom I don't find to have been particularly important, but certainly tragic. And for Eilish, she's sort of a teenage train wreck who probably needs to get over her weird diet and flipping between hiding her form and flaunting it.
Taylor is interesting because she's a musical success. I don't like her music, which I find to be juvenile, but I will note that appearance wise she's a throwback almost to the 1940s, and appears to have gained success while being basically normal in every fashion.
Culturally, therefore, she might be sort of important in a way.
Love, and Eilish, on the other hand, might be fairly unimportant in every sense. Musically, right now, it's hard to see what actually is important. Whoever they are, they aren't in pop music.
Indeed, much of society seems to be grasping for the authentic and important right now, without much out there in the culture offering it.
Appearances
Back in November, I posted this item:
What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.
Since that time, this trend locally has noticeably increased. It's really remarkable.
For whatever reason, I'm a student of people, so I take notice of what they wear. I'm probably in a minority of sorts that way. What people wear at Mass is a common topic in Cyber Catholic circles, but the recent turn towards the conservative amongst young, white, female Catholic parishioners is really remarkable. It's a real rejection of the cultural norm of our era.
Indeed, very recently, even amongst those young women who were part of this group, there's suddenly a change. One young woman who is routinely at Mass with her family on Sundays, and who typically showed a lot of shoulder (no, there's no problem with that) is now covering up hugely. Something's changed. It doesn't, however, carry over to Hispanic or Native American young women, both of whom continue to dress the way they have. Hispanics have always dressed very conservatively at Mass, but not in a trad fashion. They're keeping on keeping on with that.
News, real news but in a rumor fashion, leaked out recently that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Byzantine Church is looking at putting in a mission in Casper, which would be a mission of a mission. I don't know how many Ukrainian Catholics there may be in town, but I'll bet it's a tiny number. I also bet that the mission church that's thinking of establishing a mission here, which is out of Cody, serves a mostly non-Eastern Rite community.
Something is going on there too. At a time at which some in the Latin Rite seem focused on a topic that's frankly jumped the shark, by and large, and which is really a matter of European culture, not biology, the young and rank and file in the pews seem to be moving on.
Becoming a parody of yourself
One of the risks of taking the long reach for something is that you can end up actually becoming unauthentic in your quest for authenticity.
I'm reminded of Courtney Love again.
On her Wikipedia page, there's a picture of Love wearing a kokoshnik, a stiff hat associated with Russian women. Russian women don't wear them anymore, and I'm sure they haven't for eons. She's wearing it with a miniskirt. It looked absurd, but was probably meant to make a statement. Or here's another example:
The kind of dumb stuff you say when you actually really care about "your 'basic' fashion sense".
I don't know who Japanese Breakfast is (or for that matter what an actual Japanese breakfast is) but they've showed up on this Twitter headline:
Japanese Breakfast is too busy returning to Coachella and making 'music for bottoms' to care about your 'basic' fashion senseOh, bull. That's the exact thing you say when you've tuned your fashion sense to look like you don't have a fashion sense, so you can appear to stay edgy for Coachella.
M'eh.
Exactly.
I note this as in the pews are a young couple, they're not married but perhaps engaged, whose family I somewhat know. From a very conservative background, they're trying to affect the disaffected but conservative look to the max. Unwashed hair and, for the young man, probably third or fourth hand overcoats from the 1970s with huge hounds tooth pattern. The young woman wears, of course, a chapel veil but also is affecting plain to the maximum extent possible, which is detracting a bit from her appearance. I do love her very round, plain glasses, however.
Anyhow, when going for something crosses over into sort of a parody, you've gone too far.
Lost
Anyhow, I think this trend has been going on for a while. It explains the entire Hipster look that's still with us, and was much in force several years ago.
Some days, when I leave the office, there's a young woman coming in. She's either a Native American or a Hispanic from somewhere south of the border. She's always dressed very conservatively, with dresses that remind me of what Latin American women traditionally wear. She always has a big smile when you see and acknowledge her.
She's authentic.
Last prior edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.
Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Vintage Photos Of People Tending To T...
Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Vintage Photos Of People Tending To T...: Vintage Photos Of People Tending To Their Gardens 1930s-1960s
Four in hand.
Lex Anteinternet: Monday, April 6, 1914. Gen. Charles Douglas becom...:
Polish realist painter Józef Marian Chełmoński died at age 64.
Four In Hand by Chełmoński.
Going Feral: The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running
Going Feral: The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running:
I noted last year, when I did this report, the following:
Doves were abundant, but I mostly missed shooting at them, which was sort of the story of the year in a lot of ways. I did get a Mongolian Collared Dove for the first time, so was able to appreciate how much larger they are than Mourning Doves.
Sage chickens were also plentiful this year.
Chukars and Huns, which are in my experience very hard to hit, were abundant, but I didn't do well with them as I missed them more than I hit them. I did get in a lot of late season chukar hunting close to town for the first time.
Waterfowl, which we hunted more than anything else, was very abundant.
So, not a self-reliance banner year. . . or was it?
The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running
I noted last year, when I did this report, the following:
The 2022 Season
The 2022 hunting season has ended.
In 2022, when I wrote about the 2021 season, I started off with this:
It wasn't a great one, for a variety of reasons.
And that statement was true once again for 2022, but for different reasons, a lot of which had nothing much to do with the hunting season itself.
That's because 2022 has been the year of the field of Medicine, or age, or perhaps lifestyle, or whatever, catching up with me.
Well, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on that, as it was once again quite true.
On big game, I didn't draw anything. So, no antelope tag again.
Indeed, sometime in the fall, in one of the blogs linked in here, an out-of-state hunter posted about the great time he'd had in Wyoming antelope hunting and I nearly posted a crabby linked in post regarding that. If out of staters are getting tags, in staters should be.
I didn't want to insult that person, so I didn't make that post, but I'm still not very happy about it.
I had general deer and elk tags, and I did go out for deer, but no luck. For deer, I did have a very pleasant early winter hunt, if that's what we call this frighteningly warm mid-year season this year, but the only white tails, and that's what it was limited to, that we saw were on private land where I didn't have permission. So, no deer.
Bird wise, the season was good for the most part. Blue Grouse, which are illusive in my experience (a Game Warden who checked me didn't seem to think so) did make an appearance this year, so we did okay, but not great.
Doves were abundant, but I mostly missed shooting at them, which was sort of the story of the year in a lot of ways. I did get a Mongolian Collared Dove for the first time, so was able to appreciate how much larger they are than Mourning Doves.
Sage chickens were also plentiful this year.
Chukars and Huns, which are in my experience very hard to hit, were abundant, but I didn't do well with them as I missed them more than I hit them. I did get in a lot of late season chukar hunting close to town for the first time.
Waterfowl, which we hunted more than anything else, was very abundant.
So, not a self-reliance banner year. . . or was it?
Last Prior Edition:
The 2022 Season
Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.
Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, I...:
I started this post right at the start of Lent and then didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.
The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.
I started this post right at the start of Lent and then didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.
The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.
One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat fish on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have. It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).
Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays. It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose. This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound.
It only applies to members of individual Churches. I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches. Moral laws bind everyone. Church laws bind the members of the church.
Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now. It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches. In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week. So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.
That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world. If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night. The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable. And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one. Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.
For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds. Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere. But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much. If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow. There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority. Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches). They can't be expected to know Canon Law.
When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious. "Here's your entrée". . will come the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries.
Oh, well.
That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp. "You can skip it this time". No, you can't. Violation of the rule is a mortal sin. That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexually and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants. If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time. Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different. They both involve appetites and excuses.
This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe. In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more. And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world. It sets us apart, and it should. Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.
This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."
Eh?
Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family. My side of the family is all Catholic. LSS's is all non-Catholic.
I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow. And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.
Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal. We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.
Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me. As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow. I never eat big breakfasts or lunch. I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be. Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective. "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".
You can't really do that.
Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can. He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world. Another reason that they've had to hide his head.
Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do. I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks". The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.
That would be weird.
Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments. Most law offices are closed on Good Friday. But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founds in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture. Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day. And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.
I'm going to have to handle this today. In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed". But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".
I'll let the Puritans ponder it.
Our Only Home.
Last year, I had a life-changing experience at 90 years old. I went to space, after decades of playing an iconic science-fiction character who was exploring the universe. I thought I would experience a deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration.
I was absolutely wrong. The strongest feeling, that dominated everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.
I understood, in the clearest possible way, that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death. I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting so starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.
This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realized that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside. I did my share in popularizing the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is and will stay our only home. And that we have been ravaging it, relentlessly, making it uninhabitable.
William Shatner, actor.
Lex Anteinternet: Holy Week.
Lex Anteinternet: Holy Week.:
Holy Week.
This is Holy Week. It commenced yesterday with Palm Sunday, which we noted yesterday:
Palm Sunday
In those countries which were spared the cultural impact of the Reformation, at least directly, at the entire week is one of celebration and observance. In a lot of those places, people have the whole week off. Some of Spanish and Central American friends, for example do.
Well, in the English-speaking world we've had to continue to endure the impact of Cromwell and all his fun sucking, so we'll be headed to work instead.
Blog Update. New Feature.
We have added a "pages" feature to this blog. The currently visible page is:
There's a couple more in the hopper.
This blog has gotten more active than it was originally, as more original posts are now included here. Originally, it was just a feed for Agrarian topics from Lex Anteinternet. Showing, I suppose, that this is more active, this page is visible on that blog as well.
A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 7. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? Wouldn't every one be just bored and poor?
His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.
Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.
So we've gone through this and lamented on the state of the world.
We looked at how working for largely local businesses, in an economy in which most were local, would work, in terms of economics.
In other words, if you needed an appliance, and went to Wally's Appliance Store, owned and operated by Wally, rather than Walmart, owned and operated by anonymous corporate shareholders, how would that look?
And we looked at something more radical yet, Agrarianism.
So how does this all tie together, and what difference would it really make?
Let's revisit the definition of Agrarianism.
Given the above, isn't Agrarianism simply agricultural distributism?
Well, no.
Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of societyBradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.
Agrarianism is agriculture oriented on an up close and personal basis, and as such, it's family oriented, and land ethic oriented.
We also noted that agrarianism as we define it incorporates The Land Ethic, which holds:
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac. Aldo Leopold.
So what would this mean to society at large, and a distributist society at that?
To start with, it would mean a lot more family farm operations, and no remotely owned and operated ones where the land was held by Bill Gates or the Chinese Communist Party. Combined with Distributism, it would also mean a lot more local processing of agricultural products. Local packing houses, local flour mills, local bakeries.
It would also mean a society that was focused on local ownership of homes with residents who lived a more local, land ethic focused, lives.
Indeed, the local would matter much more in general.
And with it, humanity.
There would still be the rich and the poor, but not the remote rich and the ignorable poor.
Most people would be in the middle, and most of them, owning their own. They'd be more independent in that sense, and therefore less subject to the whims of remote employers, economic interests, and politicians.
All three major aspects of Catholic Social Teaching, humanity, subsidiarity, and solidarity, coming together.
An agrarian society would be much less focused on "growth", if focused on it at all. Preservation of agricultural and wild lands would be paramount. People would derive their social values in part from that, rather than the host of panem et circenses distractions they now do, or at least they could.
They'd derive their leisure from it as well, and therefore appreciate it more. If hiking in a local park, or going fishing, or being outdoors in general is what we would do, and we very much would as the big mega entertainment sources of all types are largely corporate in nature, preservation of the wild would be important.
And this too, combined with what we've noted before, a distributist society and a society that was well-educated, would amount to a radical, and beneficial, reorientation of society.
We won't pretend that such a society would be prefect. That would be absurd. Human nature would remain that. All the vices that presently exist, still would, but with no corporate sources to feed them, they'd not grow as prominent.
And we will state that it would cure many of the ills that now confront us.
Such a society would force us to confront our nature and nature itself. And to do so as a party of a greater community, for our common good.
Which, if we do not end up doing, will destroy us in the end.
Last prior:
A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics
Directly related:
Finis
Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work: Driving pigs, September 15, 1916
Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work: Driving pigs, September 15, 1916:
LOC Title: "Driving boy" taking pigs to market. Says he is 14 years old and has been working with pigs for 9 years. Goes to school in Paris, Ky. Location: Winchester [vicinity], Kentucky. Published September 15, 1916
Mid Week at Work: Driving pigs, September 15, 1916
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day:
Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day
Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day: A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure. Recently I ran this item: Lex Anteintern...
So, after the crabby entry, what did I do for St. Patrick's Day?
Well, my St. Patrick's Day really started on the prior day, March 16, as my daughter was in town. We always have corned beef and I hadn't secured one, so after work (lawyers, you should be aware, often work six days a week. . . at least I do) I went to get one.
Usually, this isn't a problem, but it was on Saturday and I ended up getting one at a specialty butcher shop after going to three of them, which is a nice thing to think of in a way. Distributism saved the holiday.
I now also have a corned pork butt, or corned pork roast, I'll have to look at the label, from the second one I visited, that visit being due to the recommendation of the first. They were really friendly at all of them, and at that one they insisted I try the corned pork, which they had just cooked one of for themselves.
It was quite good, much like pastrami.
Long-suffering spouse informed me that while she doesn't like corned beef (her DNA, I'd note, is almost as Irish as mine, but not quite) she hates pastrami.
Anyhow, I also went to the liquor store to buy stout and Irish whiskey. I got the last six-pack of Guinness and some Irish ale I'd never heard of.
Which made me wonder what on earth was going on. To see the shelves cleared that way was downright weird. And all the parking lots all over town were full.
I chose the liquor store as it was near one of the churches in town, and it gave me the opportunity to go to confession. They informed me in the store, which was new, that the parking lot was full as their bar had just opened, and it was packed. That surprised me as it was about 1:00 p.m. which strikes me as really early to hit the bars.
I went to confession, as noted, and was right behind my next store neighbors. I avail myself of the sacrament frequently, so I was comfortable speaking to my neighbor while in line. I know what my sins and many failings are. The very traditionally dressed women behind me in line, however, was clearly not happy with us chatting. Anyhow, it's odd as we live right next store, but we don't actually chat all that much.
Long suffering spouse is a better chatter than I am.
I went home and I fixed the St. Patrick's Day meal, which is my chore. It was good, but the corned beef was uniquely not very fatty. Long suffering spouse and daughter liked it better than the usual, grocery store bought, one. I like the fatty one better.
We'll see what opinions are on the pork.
On St. Patrick of Ireland's day itself, the first thing I did was go to Mass. The Gospel reading was as follows:
Gospel
Jn 12:20-33
Some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.
“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder; but others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come for my sake but for yours. Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.
It struck me because of this section:
Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.
The reason is that I've been going through a lot that's been forced up on me recently, together with others upon whom it's been forced, but I'm finding myself unique making decisions for everyone, and not for what I want to do, but for others. The stress of it has been gigantic and when I stop to think about it, it's depressing.
I went home and made a breakfast out of a bagel and left over corned beef.
In the afternoon, I went out fishing and took the dog. On the way, I was listening to a podcast, like I'll tend to do. It was a Catholic Answers Focus interview of Carrie Gress and it was profound. I'll post on that elsewhere.
We didn't catch any fish. Nothing was biting, so we came home.
By that time, I'd finished the short Gress podcast and listened to This Week. I've later listed to Meet The Press. Both featured Republicans try to tell people that when Donald Trump promised a bloodbath if he isn't elected, he didn't really mean that, but was speaking instead about cars coming in from Mexico from Chinese factories. The full text of his speech stated:
We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected, now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories.
It's interesting that Republicans feel compelled to continually tell you that Trump didn't mean what he said. It's also interesting that a person with such a strange pattern of speech is listened to. He rambles and repeats.
The other thing that the shows all dealt with was Chuck Schumer calling for an Israeli election as he's upset with the current Israeli government. A lot of people are upset with the current Israeli government, including a lot of Israelis, but an American elected official calling for a new government in another democracy is really beyond the Pale.
St. Patrick's Day's meal was left over corned beef and Brussels Sprouts, and cheese lasagna from the prior Friday.
No big blowout, no "Craic". Just an observation that probably more closely resembles that of centuries of Irish people, in Ireland and the diaspora. A small family gathering, a small feast, a little regional alcohol. Reconciliation and Mass, and knowing that today the grim problems of the last two weeks, on this Monday, return.
Labels: Catholic, Commentary, Daily Living, Introspection, Personal comments, religion, St. Patrick's Day, Work
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