The sequel to
“Every Boy Has a Daddy“:

Hepburn’s Mass
at Heaven’s Gate

Katharine Hepburn died at 2:50 PM EDT
on the Feast of St. Peter. 

“The Consecration and Sacrifice effected by the priest (standing in the place of Christ) is, then, the visible manifestation of an eternal and timeless act. After the Consecration, as Gueranger says in The Liturgical Year, ‘the divine Lamb is lying on our altar!’ Thus we see that the Mass is the visible reality, here and now, of the timeless eternal Mass of Heaven, described in the Apocalypse. Through it we participate in the Celestial Liturgy; through it the gates of Heaven are opened to us and the possibility of eternal life is made available to us.”

The Source:

The Church Militant recommends
Defense of the Inquisitions.

For a different viewpoint,
see my May 12 entries.

Every Boy Has a Daddy

Today is the Feast of Saint Peter.

The most timely quote I know of for today’s religious observances is from Oh What a Web They Weave, by F. John Loughnan:

“Every boy has a daddy.“

This was written as part of an attack on the father of a Latin-Mass Catholic who authored the website Ecclesia Militans, which has the logo

Note the resemblance to the Iron Cross.

Soldier of Fortune magazine, April 2002, contains a brief discussion of the German motto “Gott mit uns” that is relevant to the concept of The Church Militant.

Soldier of Fortune,
April 2002

The actor on the cover, Mel Gibson, also serves to illustrate our meditation for today, “Every boy has a daddy.”  See Christopher Noxon’s article in the New York Times Magazine of March 9, 2003:

Is the Pope Catholic… Enough?

Noxon attacks Gibson’s father Hutton — like his son Mel, a Latin-Mass Catholic, and author of

Is the Pope Catholic?

A related “Every boy has a daddy” attack appears in the June 2003 issue of Playboy magazine.  An entertaining excerpt from this attack on Joseph P. Kennedy, father of JFK, may be found at Orwell Today.  

Finally, let us meditate on the ultimate “Every boy has a daddy” attack — by novelist Robert Stone on the alleged father of Jesus of Nazareth:

The New York Times Magazine article mentioned above was prompted, in part, by Mel Gibson’s current movie production, “The Passion,” about the final 12 hours in the (first, or possibly second) life of Jesus.  If I were producing a Passion play, as Peter I would certainly cast Stone.

See also the 11 PM sequel to the above.

Countin’ Flowers on the Wall

Today, the birthday of Bob Keeshan (aka Captain Kangaroo), seems an appropriate day to meditate on religious issues.

The death of minimalist artist Fred Sandback on June 23, coupled with my vitriolic attack on Christianity of that same date, suggest that I should give some recognition to defenders of that bizarre religion.

Two of Christianity’s most able defenders are singer Martina McBride and professor of English Gerald McDaniel.

McBride has stated loudly and clearly her conviction that

“Love’s the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.”

I may be mistaken, but this sounds to me like a profession of faith in the Christian church.

McDaniel’s Cultural Calendar includes many items of Christian interest (saints’ days, etc.) but also includes a greater variety of general cultural history than any other online calendar I know of.  Like all Christian documents, it displays little regard for the truth (dates are often wrong), but its heart seems to be in the right place.  Most important, in light of McBride’s persuasive song lyric, is the fact that McDaniel’s calendar — and therefore, perhaps, his church — does seem to be big enough — at least in principle — for some of the pain in the world, as well as some of the joy.  Unfortunately, the church has much less room for truth than for emotion.

For emotion, see McBride’s album of that title.  For some thoughts on truth, see McBride’s fellow country singer, Patty Loveless (whom I greatly prefer to McBride).

The above reflection was prompted by McDaniel’s having a written a document that includes both of the following items for June 27:

• TV’s Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, was born on this day in 1927. He was also Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody.
  
• On this day in 1928, an American expatriate bookseller, Sylvia Beach, and her companion Adrienne Monnier, had a dinner party to which they invited James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald. It was held at her flat above her bookstore Shakespeare & Company….

These two items appear to have been placed by McDaniel in the right date slot.  (Christians may sometimes have the right values, but should never be trusted to have their facts straight.)

Magic

“I really don’t believe in magic. I believe in some kinds — the magic of imagination and the magic of love.”

— J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter’s creator,
June 26, 2003

Amen, Sister.

In memory of Staige D. Blackford: 

Introibo ad Altare Dei

“…they [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

“Stately, thin Thomas Jefferson came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed…. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
— Come up, Staige! Come up, you fearful editor!”

With apologies to the University of Virginia, to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and to James Joyce.

“Man, it’s long…
It’s a long, long, long road.”

— Frank Sinatra

See also memorials to George Axelrod and Leon Uris, both of whom died at the summer solstice, June 21.

In memory of Leon Uris:

Mate Change Problem

White to mate in 2 moves

H.W.Grant, 1st Prize,
Australian Column 1924

The concept of “mate change,” appropriate on this, the coronation date of Henry VIII, is explained at Chathurangam.com, my source for the above problem.

For the connection with Leon Uris, find the “key” to the above chess problem… i.e., the notation for White’s first move.

From the New York Times, June 24:

“Reviewing Mr. Uris’s 1976 novel Trinity in The New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill wrote: ‘Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human.'”

Uris, 78, died at the summer solstice… Saturday, June 21, 2003. 

See also Force Field of Dreams.

Night and Day…

Some comments on yesterday’s entry that are too good to be hidden under a “comments” link.  References are to Through the Looking Glass.

My understanding of the “Red Queen” was that it was a metaphorical reference to a womans menstrual cycle.

The two queens were representative of a womans behaviors throughout. Or some such thing.

Posted 6/24/2003 at 11:12 AM by oOMisfitOo

Humn. [affects very proper British Accent:]  I suppose then the good reverend is out of his bloody mind?

Posted 6/24/2003 at 11:14 AM by oOMisfitOo

Speaking of religion, blood, and the 23rd, perhaps Sissy Spacek should play both the Red and the White Queen in Looking Glass. Remember her prom night?

See my entry of May 23rd, The Prime Cut Gospel. 

Posted 6/24/2003 at 2:46 PM by m759

For today’s musical offering, click here.

Harry Potter
and the Fairy Queen

Lest the incautious reader gain the impression from yesterday’s entry “The Real Hogwarts” that Christianity is anything other than a pack of damned lies, or that the phrase “oasis of civilisation” I used yesterday was meant otherwise than with tongue in cheek, I would like to nominate a well-known professional Christian liar as Queen of the Fairies this Midsummer Eve.

The reader is referred to

The Good Book:
Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart,

by the Rev. Peter Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and pastor of that institution’s Memorial Church.

The Rev. Gomes, an acknowledged homosexual, gave a commencement address recently wearing a gorgeously red academic gown.  This comported well with his contention that the real heroine of “Through the Looking Glass” was not Alice, but the Red Queen.  The reason?  The Red Queen, Gomes says, could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.  Apparently this is a virtue in Christian Morals, at least at Harvard.

For a RealOne video of Gomes’s address, click on the link below:

The Red Queen

(Actually, the queen who discusses “six impossible things” in Chapter 5 of Through the Looking Glass is the White Queen, but clergymen never let a little detail like truth stand in their way.)

The Order of the Phoenix

Some links of interest
on this day of Potter-mania:

The Royal Order of the Phoenix

Knight’s Gold Cross
 With Swords

awarded to
Arthur Edmonds,
Royal New Zealand Engineers,
attached to Special Operations Executive and parachuted into occupied Greece
1 October 1941,
serving with Greek guerrillas.

St. James Church Cemetery,
Kerikeri, New Zealand

In Loving Memory of
 Arthur Edmonds
who died June 20th,
1914, aged 88 years:

Logos

 Logo,
Anglican Diocese
of Auckland


Logo,
Catholic Diocese
of Phoenix

See also Cullinane College.

— Me and Frodo Down by the Schoolyard

The Irish Cliffs of Moher
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Who is my father in this world,
    in this house,
At the spirit’s base?

My father’s father,
    his father’s father, his —
Shadows like winds

Go back to a parent before thought,
    before speech,
At the head of the past.

They go to the cliffs of Moher
    rising out of the mist,
Above the real,

Rising out of present time
    and place, above
The wet, green grass.

This is not landscape,
    full of the somnambulations
Of poetry

And the sea. This is my father
    or, maybe,
It is as he was,

A likeness, one of
    the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.

(Collected Poems, 501-02)

xxx

Of Time and the River

Today is the feast day of Saint Gerard Manley Hopkins, “immortal diamond.”

“At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being–the reward he seeks–the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”

— Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

Thomas Wolfe

“entered the university at Chapel Hill at fifteen ‘an awkward, unhappy misfit.’ By the time he graduated, he was editor of the college newspaper….”

Jeff MacNelly, who died on this date in the Year of Our Lord 2000,

“in 1977 started drawing the comic strip ‘Shoe‘…. The strip was named in honor of the legendary Jim Shumaker, for whom MacNelly worked at the Chapel Hill Weekly.” 

From my Monday, June 2, 2003 entry:

Two quotations from “The Diamond Project“:

“We all know that something is eternal,” the Stage Manager says. “And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.”
— John Lahr, review of “Our Town“ 

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.  Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.”
— Song of Solomon

Here are some other thoughts from the same date, but a different time, fictional time, Faulkner time:

June Second, 1910

Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after a while the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep. They dont touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory.

— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

The concluding link from my June 2, 2003, entry furnishes a clue to the timelessness of Quentin Compson‘s thoughts above:

Glory… Song of Songs 8. 7-8

From the King James Bible‘s rendition of the Song of Songs:

8:7  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
8:8  We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?

For Quentin Compson’s thoughts on his little sister Caddy, consult the online hypertext edition of

Blanche’s Waltz

For the birthday of Miss Jessica Tandy

Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!
Dort, wo die alten Häuser stehn,
Dort, wo die lieblichen Mädchen gehn!
Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!
Dort, wo ich glücklich und selig bin,
Ist Wien, ist Wien, mein Wien!

The web page where I found today’s midi of “Wien, Wien, nur du allein” offers a view of the pulpit of the Stephansdom in Vienna.  From Hermann Weyl‘s Symmetry:

“Here (Fig. 41) is the gracefully designed staircase of the pulpit of the Stephan’s dome in Vienna; a triquetrum alternates with a swastika-like wheel.”

The closest to Weyl’s Figure 41 that I can find on the Web is located here.

Perhaps Stanley Kowalski had a lower opinion than Blanche DuBois of swastika-like wheels.

SKEPTIC, or
Beware of…
Jews Telling Stories

“Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday.”
— Bernard Holland, C12, N.Y. Times, 5/20/96

From my entry of Monday, June 2, 2003:

William Holden and Martha Scott
in “Our Town,” 1940 

Holden            Scott

From a website titled Child of a Voice: 

“The Talmud says, even in a time when there is no more prophecy there can still be the Daughter of a Voice.

The Tosefot explain: this is like the sound the echo of a hammer makes when it strikes something, and the sound echoes back from mountains. Not the Voice, but a daughter, a child of it.

Not the sound but the echo of a sound. Not the prophecy from God in its purest way, but in a less pure way.

Now because of our sins there is no more prophecy but in a time when there is no prophecy there can be Daughter of a Voice.”

Copyright Abraham Mezrich 2003

From a July 1999 review of a novel:

“The good news is that this is perhaps Ben Mezrich’s finest thriller. The irony is that he used a pen name on it.”

Fearful Meditation —

A follow-up to yesterday
afternoon's entry of

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?

— Shakespeare, Sonnet 65

Pop Culture's answer:

"Flashes of fire,
a raging flame!"
— Song of Solomon

Click on the album title "0304" for details.

A different answer:

Solomon’s Seal —

From the New York Times of May (Mental Health Month) 31, 2003:

Martha Scott,
Original Emily in “Our Town,”
Dies at 88

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Martha Scott, who created the role of the sweet, ethereal Emily in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and was nominated for an Oscar for repeating it in the film version, died on Wednesday [May 28, 2003] in Los Angeles. She was 88.

United Artists

Martha Scott with William Holden
in the 1940 film of “Our Town.”

A quotation from Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon:

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

Two quotations from “The Diamond Project“:

“We all know that something is eternal,” the Stage Manager says. “And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.”
— John Lahr, review of “Our Town” 

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.  Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.”
— Song of Solomon