Devshirme

I was driving through Lincoln Square today when I saw a crew representing Occupy Worcester.  There were about 5-7 people on the sidewalk near the WWI monument.  One of the demonstrators carried a large red flag with the famous image of revolutionary icon Che Guevara.  I normally do not engage people in political talk, but when I saw Che’s face I had to say something.  Fortunately, due to late afternoon Worcester traffic, I was able to idle for a minute and chat with the gentleman bearing the Che flag.  I rolled down the window and he came over.  I had to ask – why do you have Che on your flag?  He answered that he was for “the people” and his philosophy was in line with the Occupy Worcester people.  I told him the reason I asked, and I disagree but respect his politics on this, is that Che, for all his revolutionary fervor, was a brutal mass murderer.  I did not get into whether Che’s actions were beneficial for those on whose behalf he advocated.  At this point the light changed and I had to drive; I wanted to continue the chat so I said I would park and come back.  I found a legal space several blocks away and did my usual  quick-walk back to the encampment.  The small group gathered around me as my new friend and I continued our conversation.

I am not sure if this group is representative of the whole Occupy movement, but our discussion, which was calm and cordial, was distressing.  I said that Che committed violence not just in the theater of warfare but for political means, including the lining up of political enemies and their summary execution (he also executed priests!).  This pretty much amounts to killing those with whom you disagree.  The occupy group made the argument that the “kleptocracy” (to use their term)  keep people from having health care or homes, and they are really killers in their own right and may well deserve death.  This is scary stuff.  I asked them if they thought violence was justified in their struggle and they said it may well be necessary and that the incidents of violence at other Occupy events throughout the country were “caused by the cops”.  I tried to point out that killing those with whom you merely disagreed on political matters, no matter how serious, was just plain wrong, but they resisted this line of argument.  After saying that, as a clergyman with a flock entrusted to my care I am a (minor) authority figure, I asked them if I may be a target.  They said that if it came to that I may well be.

Things ended cordially – I had to go visit someone in the hospital and left.  I may well return to engage them in more conversation on the Che matter.  I did ask them if they would carry banners with Stalin, Mussolini or other such figures, all of whom were for “the people” but did many unsavory things.  For articles on Che as a mass murder check out Jay Nordlinger’s writings here, and for the same from a left-wing perspective check out this from the New Republic.

Well, not really – certainly no psychedelics were involved.  But after Little Angels and preschool ended, the family went to check out the annual Art In The Park exhibit at Elm Park.  Please check it out – you still have a week and a half or so (I believe it started later than usual this year).  Scoping out the art has become a family tradition, and we always select and compare favorite pieces.  This year mine was this cool one called Portals.  Wouldn’t this make a decent late-60s album cover?

It kind of reminds me of this:

I am not much of a fan of Disney in its current incarnation, but I cannot deny a certain fascination with its history and influence on popular culture.  Walt Disney himself remains an interesting figure, and I cannot deny that I have good memories of going to Disneyworld and Epcot, watching Fantasia, etc.  This article on the origins of Disneyland in California, Disney’s vision and the contrast with old amusement parks, the struggle to get everything done correctly, and so forth is a great, great read.

If you have not watched Fantasia, by the way, make it your next movie to rent or watch on iTunes or Netflix or whatever.  It is like a classical music version of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine – great and varied animation with stunning music.

I have been looking for something to inspire me to start blogging again, and I am fired up after an incident, or non-incident, that happened this morning.  I rolled to the neighborhood hardware store and as I pulled into the parking lot I noticed a Prius whose rear was covered with about 10 or 12 bumper stickers and a Darwin fish with legs eating a Jesus fish (not just the Darwin fish with legs that you see sometimes).  I am into the Prius because a friend has one and I love it, so I notice them, but what drew my attention here was the Darwin fish.

Now, if you know me, you know I am pretty easygoing and live and let live.  I also see no conflict in believing in God as the Creator as well as believing in evolution or some other such scientific explanation for our development – Darwin himself believed God to be the origin of creation.  My thing about the Darwin fish is that instead of coming up with some other symbol, the people who have them take a Christian symbol – the Jesus fish – and use it to mock Christians.  The Darwin fish is not so much a statement of belief in science or whatever as it is a mocking of Christians.  It also betrays appalling ignorance of the many, many Christians like me who are believers in God and believe science is another gift from God.  I understand that the target of the Darwin fish is the Christian who believes in Intelligent Design and other such things (and can be guilty of intolerance or ignorance, as we all can be), but please…how about taking the high road, or at least coming up with a statement not so reliant on the Jesus fish, which is a cherished symbol to many of us?

In addition to the Darwin fish the car had a bunch of stickers.  Most were political and were sneering and rude (whatever happened to the New Civility?) to those on the other side of the spectrum.  Generally, when I see a car covered in political bumper stickers it throws up warning signs, but still…Some of the stickers said things like “Religion ruled the Dark Ages”.  So clearly, the driver had a problem with religious people, or at least certain types.  I will give him the benefit of the doubt – there are many people who have had bad experiences with churches, whether through abuse, unfriendliness, neglect, whatever.  Based on his political stickers, though, there seemed to at least be some sort of consistency to his thinking.

The hardware store is not big, and I figured I would see everyone from the six or so cars in the parking lot when I went in.  And I was in full priest-mode – black shirt, collar, everything.  I put a big (and genuine) smile on my face, went in, got what I needed, and got in the line near the register.  It was more a gathering than a line, so the handful of us there could all see each other.  I then engaged in a bit of stereotyping myself – I tried to figure out who was the driver of the car.  Everyone looked pretty much alike but the one whom I guessed to be the owner was indeed that person.  We ended up in the parking lot at the same time but he moved just a bit too quickly to his car for me to talk to him.  If I had had the chance I would have smiled and said “Most of us are decent people” or something like that, but whatever.  I have no idea if he even noticed me, but I would hope that anyone who feels so strongly about such matters would be open to meeting someone from the other side, as it were, and having an honest and friendly encounter.

I was chatting with Fr. Peter this morning and he casually mentioned how they “caught Whitey”.  WHOA!  I had no clue – I don’t watch tv and had not been online last night or in the morning – that the FBI had grabbed Whitey Bulger yesterday.  To give you an idea of how long he has been a fugitive – I was a senior in college, so we are talking 16 years.  The wiki article has a nice section on his fugitive years.  At one point the FBI even thought he might be in Uruguay like a Nazi fugitive!

I have to say that the first thing that entered my mind, after the initial feeling of surprise and delight, was “I wonder if he will give up the location or the story of the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum stolen art???”.   Wouldn’t that be something?  Of course, this is assuming he was involved.  I recently read (on the NookColor) a very exciting mystery novel about the theft called Among Thieves by David Hosp.  Bulger is a big character in this book and his portrayal, I imagine, is pretty close to real life.  One detail that sticks out is he wanted to be called Jimmy rather than Whitey (and he seemed to get what he wanted).  The book has him, the IRA, and a bunch of others connected to the theft.  I then read a non-fiction account of the theft called The Gardner Heist – although it is non-fiction it too is a page-turner.  I highly recommend both of these books, and if you do read both I suggest you read them in the same order I did – fiction first followed by non-fiction.  The second book only mentions Bulger once, but of course until the crime is solved we will not know all of the details (and even then we may never get the whole story).

We all have a set of events where we remember exactly where we were when we heard about them.  I don’t know if today will make the grade, but it is indeed huge news and very good news – Bulger was/is by all accounts a horrible man.  As for the events in my lifetime where the memory of finding out is indelibly stamped upon me, they include President Reagan being shot, the Challenger explosion, Magic Johnson announcing he was HIV+, Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and 911.  Maybe the Osama Bin Laden capture will also join the ranks – we will see.

The Wednesday before Memorial Day I planted our garden (you can see how behind I am in blogging, since it is almost mid-June) and things are going well.  I still need to get more herbs but for now here is what I have:

-Pickling cucumbers – this is usually a high-yield crop.

-Cayenne, habanero and bell peppers.  The cayennes are usually high yield well into the fall.  This is my first year growing habaneros.

-Buttercrunch lettuce and escarole.  The lettuce grows like crazy and I will probably plant and reap several harvests – they have a quick turn-around time.

-Tomato plants with basil planted in between to keep pests away.

-Pumpkin.

-Spinach and kale.

-Rosemary, parsley, thyme and Greek oregano.

-Strawberries.  Last year our plant grew all over the ground on the side of the house but with no yield.  I cut the branches off and took the pot indoors for the winter.  All of the branches took in the ground and we have been getting strawberries every day.

-The usual blueberry bushes and apple tree.  I didn’t plant musk melons this year – the experiment is over, and was a disaster.

-Some mystery plants.  I thought they were chives, which seem to just pop up here and there.  But they got huge and are getting ready to flower.  What are they?  Decorative onions?  Mutant garlic?  We will see.

That is it for now.  I will update with pictures when the rain stops.

Harmon Killebrew just passed away only days after announcing he was entering hospice care – this article is a good read except for Bud Selig’s involvement.  A few thoughts on the passing of this great player and great guy…

-I find it amazing that even after the steroid era and everything else that has come to pass in baseball, Killebrew still ranks 11th on the all-time home run list.

-When I was a baseball-obsessed child I spent hours a day poring through the baseball encyclopedia, and I was always fascinated that Killebrew had so many great years with the Twins and finished up by playing a year with the KC Royals.  Photos of him with that team are even rarer than Reggie with the Orioles pictures.  Here is one of two I found online.

-I always got a kick out of people from outside of New England at the seminary who jumped on the Sox bandwagon when “we” won the World Series in 2004.  They had no idea how twisted life was as a Red Sox fan in the decades before.  My house growing up was no different.  My mother was a big Carl Yastrzemski fan while my father, though a Sox fan, couldn’t stand Yaz (I remember asking him in 1979 why Yaz had a helmet with bigger holes in the earflap than other players and he said “so he could hear the boos better).  You can argue whether he had one good season or whether he had just tremendous career numbers (or whether he hung on five years too long, etcetera) but he did win the Triple Crown in 1967 and remains the last person to do that.  However, as my dad would argue, that ’67 Triple Crown is tainted because he did not win the home run title outright – he tied for the lead with…the late Harmon Killebrew.  RIP, Killer.

Tag Day always used to fill me with dread.  Two hours or so standing in the entryway of a local bank, making awkward conversation with strangers, and guilting people into throwing change or a dollar into the little carton things we held was no kid’s idea of fun, but it was something we had to do once a year for Little League and Babe Ruth league.  Tag Day now, at least here in Worcester, is a lot different.  The local Ty Cobb Little League (I think it is hysterical that the league is named after one of the nastiest players who ever lived, although he was a heck of a competitor, so that is good) had its Tag Day this past Saturday. The days of asking for money at the bank are gone – these kids collect at intersections throughout the city.  The parents are there as well – it is much too dangerous to leave kids, I suppose, the way we used to be dropped off.  I dutifully contributed – it is a great cause – but I must say I have problems with this system.  The biggest complaint I have is it is extremely dangerous.  The players, and in reality the parents who seemed to be doing most of the work, wander in and out of lanes as cars are moving.  I pray no one gets hurt during one of these events.  There is much banter with drivers and each other, and people get distracted easily.  The Little League is not the only group that does this – other charities, school organizations, etc. can be found fairly often at Worcester’s intersections.  I do not like to encourage this way of doing things but I always contribute – I usually have my collar on, and how bad would it look if a priest did not give something?  But the system needs to be rethought.  There is no reason we can’t go back to the standing at the bank (this time with a parent in tow) rite of passage that we all went through back in the day.

UPDATE: Apparently the law in Worcester is that you have to be 18 or older to “can” in the street.  This explains why it looks like the ‘rents are doing all the work.

Vaia recently hit a major American childhood milestone – she received a Mr. Potato Head toy.  I myself had one of these, and for all I know my ‘rents still have it in the attic.  Although I have fond memories of this toy, I think of it more for something that happened long after I stopped playing with it.  When I was a freshman in high school there was a small item in the paper about how Mr. Potato Head was losing his pipe to discourage kids from smoking.  The Wiki article, which is excellent – who knew MPH was the first toy marketed on TV directly to kids rather than their parents? – says the pipe went when he became the spokesman for the Great American Smokeout (celebrated each year when I was at the seminary by my friends and me,  joined by sympathetic faculty, mirthfully puffing on cigars).  I remember that this struck me as ridiculous at the time, and it still does – who wants to smoke a pipe because Mr. Potato Head does?  At the same time a sister who taught at my high school started a campaign to change the team nickname from Red Raiders because it was “offensive”.  The campaign fizzled quickly and she was, for whatever reason, teaching elsewhere the next year.  These two episodes were my first introduction to the culture of political correctness.  Long live Mr Potato Head and his pipe!

Today our family attended the premier Worcester cultural event of the season – the St. Spyridon Preschool Art Show/Open House.  The children as well as Ms. Jenn and Ms. Jackie worked very hard for five weeks in preparation for the opening.  The students learned about artists like Albers, Monet and Pollock while being exposed to a variety of mediums.  They tried their hands at many new creative art experiences, and the results speak for themselves.  The open house/art show continues Sunday after church – make sure to check things out.  Here are some photos:

The room was reconfigured for the event for maximum ease of passage and display surface:

Here is a mobile that Vaia made, as well as her self-portrait: