Saint Peter's meets

To-night, there took place the first religious service at East 17th and Superior since Easter 2010. It was similar to a truncated Liturgy of the Word, calling itself "a gathering for praise and preparation". Thereafter, a parish meeting took place; and a coffee and cookie time for chit-chat.

The official announcement for the first Mass since the Vatican decree of full restoration was made. The Mass will begin 11.30 a.m. Sunday, the 9th of September 2012.

The pastor for Saint Peter Cleveland is Reverend Robert Kropac. He is also the pastor of Saint Wendelin. Currently the Mass schedule at Wendelin is Saturday 4.30 p.m., and Sunday 10.00 a.m. The Sunday Mass will move to 9.30 a.m. at Saint Wendelin.

some forty people were in attendance

It must be realised the bulk of St. Peter's Parish has been celebrating, worshipping, and operating at 7100 Euclid Avenue as the Community of Saint Peter. And they will stay there.

The parish at Superior will continue on. The parish began in 1853, and has worshipped in this building on E. 17th and Superior since 1857. It is the oldest Catholic church building in Cleveland, Ohio. The parish has never gone out of existence, and will have its first public service in the old building in 29 months. This is the 10th of 11 churches to have its attempted suppression publicly lifted after receiving a Vatican decree in the Cleveland diocese.

The parish is looking forward to an active campus ministry with Cleveland State University. The parish will also be working with the Bishop William Cosgrove Center and the neighborhood indigent.

Saint Rita Solon's music director, Bob McMurray, came to play organ and piano

Republican job plans

In the 2010 Ohio senatorial election Lee Fisher lost to Rob Portman. The Republicans swept the state, as they did across many in this troubled land. Portman ran commercial, after commercial trumpeting Portman's "Jobs for Ohio". Which has done what? Perhaps, people ought to call him and ask, as so many Republican and Teabagger commercials demand of Democratic office holders.
Similar campaign propaganda has, and is being used by other Republicans. It must be in their manuals.
Perhaps, an honest and accurate presentation is available. Here is some for Romney. These were visible on an electronic billboard in Tampa, Florida.

The Elephant Maligned

'Therefore, my client is seeking damages for defamation of character.'
Clay Bennett. 12 August 2011.

The elephant is humourous in its appearance. There is the old fable of the several blind men that touched part of the animal, and each suggested another creature. When populations have encountered the animal initially, they were amazed, and in fear. In fiction, they appear in children stories as kindly beasts, because they have family, and communal bonds. They care for each other.

I enjoy humour, the classic set jokes, the elephant situ:

I was on safari in Africa. I got up one morning and shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know.

Q. How do you know an elephant has been in your ice-box?
A. There are footprints in your butter.

Q. How do you raise a baby elephant?
A. With a crane.

These riddle jokes are popular with children. They remember them as adults.

My favorite elephantine joke is lengthier, and not a riddle, but a mirror. I had Professor Carl Gustavson for history: 3 quarters of Russian history, maybe one for 19th century German history, 2 quarters for Russian seminar, and a quarter for French Revolution colloquium. He had taught the courses for so long, he didn't read from his notes. He accumulated anecdotes, and he knew jokes illustrated truths. I was already familiar with the following joke, he added the Japanese line.

Well, after the Great War ended, the nations went to Paris to write the treaties after the Armistice. The maps of the world were being redrawn. Some empires were broken up, and new states were coming into existence. Old states were being resurrected. One should know nation, and state, are two different nouns. A nation is of people, a state is a political creation with borders. Each nation wanted as much territory as possible. For those who have seen, or read, Lawrence of Arabia, know that the Arabs were pressing their cause of independence. They were not alone. The empires of eastern, and central Europe (Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, Russian) were gone, but not those of Britain, France and the United States. This you need to know before the joke starts. It is my favorite elephant joke, i've mentioned this before; not everyone is patient; and as Johnny Carson used to say, "if you got to diagram the joke, you lost the audience".

Switzerland is a neutral country. Switzerland has boarding schools with international students. In a later generation, John Kerry, the probable winner of the 2004 US presidential election, was such an one.

One day, a teacher assigned an essay upon the elephant. Each boy wrote one, which reflected a characteristic, national interest. The English boy wrote about the elephant and how to hunt him; the German boy wrote about the elephant and how to eat him; the American boy wrote about how to market the elephant; the Italian boy wrote about the elephant and his love life; the Swiss boy wrote about the elephant, and his travel through Switzerland, with Hannibal; the French boy wrote about the honor of the elephant; the Japanese boy wrote about the duties of the elephant; the Russian boy wrote about the elephant and the cosmos; and the Polish boy wrote about the elephant, and the Polish question.

Monday, Republicans are expected to convene in Tampa, Florida. Those who ply the flesh trade, especially the peculiar ones, are waiting for another big payday. Those who ply the lobbyist trade for the economic royalists have flooded the town before the waves of the expected hurricane, are waiting for another big payday. I agree with Clay Bennett. The elephant is too noble a symbol. The symbols à propos are vipers and scorpions. The teabagger rattlesnake flag will do just fine.

literary parody

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Paul Clifford. 1830.

There are competitions for aspiring writers to poke fun at writing. Three parodies that have been recently active mock Hemingway, Faulkner, and overwritten sentences. Hemingway and Faulkner are very distinctive on the page. They both have their avid partisans.

In high school, we had to hand in reports on writers and their books. I went to the main branch of the public library, used the card catalogue, and searched the shelves. For William Faulkner, there were several books written in German, and in French. Of the several writers, that, i researched this was the only one that was so interesting to foreign language readership.

The book the class was all assigned to read was, "As I Lay Dying". The other book i read was, "The Sound and the Fury". My essay concerned Vardaman Bundren and Benjy Compson. The thesis was that they were literary idiots, and not clinical ones.

I thought the name "Vardaman" odd. There is no Saint Vardaman, there is no Hollywood Vardaman. Where did he get Vardaman? James Vardaman was governor of Mississippi (1904-08), and US Senator (1913-19). He was the candidate of poor whites, and a white supremacist. He was wont to speak in colorful, strong, and vile, vulgar terms. As governor he said, "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy." But Vardaman delivered and promised much as a populist, and progressive. “Jesus Christ, Sears-Roebuck and James K. Vardaman are the only friend a poor man has”, was said by many a white Mississippian. The character, Vardaman Bundren, was so named as an illustration of how some 'rednecks (it was a self-identifying political term at the time)' looked up to the politician, and to mark the character as mentally flawed.

Over the years, from 1989-2005, University of Mississippi ran the Faux Faulkner contest. After a time, it and the older Hemingway contest was sponsored by United Airlines, which printed the winners in their in flight magazine. The last Faulkner winner was not printed, though available, at the time, on the internet. The winning entry by Sam Apple was The Administration and the Fury. The Benjy character was substituted by gwbjr.

'Go and get him Saddam's gun,' Condi said. 'You know how he likes to hold it.'
Dick went to my desk drawer and took out Saddam's gun. He gave it to me, and it was hot in my hands. Rummy pulled the gun away.

The Bad Hemingway contest began in a California saloon in 1977. Every year 'one really good page of really bad Hemingway' was sought for. International Imitation Hemingway Competition and the Faux Faulkner contests are in suspension. In the later years the winners were announced in the fourth week of July.

The still active contest has expanded to cover several genres and categories. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest began in 1982 at San Jose State University.

Faulkner had long meandering sentences where many readers got lost. He wrote of southern decay. Hemingway had none of that. Both won Nobel prizes. Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea is written in very simple sentences. Much of his earlier work was considered ultra-macho. Bulwer-Lytton was the example of wordy, over florid, purple prose to the point of distraction, overly descriptive nineteenth century writing. His novels were received well, upon issuance, but a century later dismissed by current taste. Each style was easy to imitate and snigger at. Bulwer-Lytton is not an awful writer, but a presently mockable author. Remember, the worst writer in English is Ayn Rand; and John Dewey is extra-ordinarily difficult, and he wrote non-fiction.

Charles Schulz went beyond the childhood cute of his Peanuts gang, and touched on other subjects. Linus was a religious philosopher at times. Snoopy was a Walter Mitty dreamer. He cruised the air above the warfields of France in a Sopwith Camel. He, Woodstock, and his buddies are French Legionnaires. At other times he mounted his doghouse becoming the great, undiscovered author. Time, after time, he types, "It was a dark and stormy night".

Here is a Dishonorable Mention in this year's Crime category:

Bishop threw back the shot of bourbon and reflected on his career as a private dick, a profession he always thought of as perfect for a man named Richard who kept to himself and was often unkind to others. — Jon Maddalena of Mesick, Michigan. 2012.

Romney is a jerk, but you already knew that.

Chan Lowe. South Florida Sun-Sentinel. 25 August 2012.

Even in this he lies. See here, and here, and here. Romney joked, while signaling to a like-minded crowd in Michigan, “Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital, I was born in Harper Hospital. No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate; they know that this is the place where both of us were born and raised”.

Republicans will never stop using discredited arguments, and attacks. They like to lie, lies are often believed. Their opponents must waste time and effort in their rebuttal, and if that isn't done, then the lie succeeds. It is economical and diabolic.

Of course, Romney will not give up his tax records. Oh, what can be secreted there? Tales of grand avarice, hypocrisy, and felony?

“wild greed”

As a senator from Missouri in 1937 Harry Truman railed against the Wall Street, and 'gentleman' lawyer greed that was behind the re-organisation of the railroads. The following excerpt was from his second speech on the topic. In the first speech, in June, he contrasted the $3,000 that Jesse James stole from the Rock Island Line to the $70,000,000 financial artists got away with.

“...We worship money instead of honor. A billionaire, in our estimation is much greater in these days in the eyes of the people than the public servant who works for public interest. It makes no difference if the billionaire rode to wealth on the sweat of little children and the blood of underpaid labor. No one ever considered Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of Homestead steelworkers, but they are. We do not remember that the Rockefeller Foundation is founded on the dead miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and a dozen other similar performances. We worship Mammon; and until we go back to ancient fundamentals and return to the Giver of the Tables of Law and His teachings, these conditions are going to remain with us.

It is a pity that Wall Street, with it’s ability to control all the wealth of the nation and to hire the best law brains in the country, has not produced some statesmen, some men who could see the dangers of bigness and of the concentration of the control of wealth. Instead of working to meet the situation, they are still employing the best law brains to serve greed and self interest. People can only stand so much and one of these days there will be a settlement. ...”

---Senator Harry Truman, December 20, 1937
Congressional Record, seventy-fifth Congress, second session, volume 82, part 2, December 20, 1937. pp. 2482-95.

light at 1/500 second

Light fixtures and a stained glass window. St. Casimir. Cleveland, O.

The Show-Me state shows us a true conservative

Just recently, i quoted President Harry Truman, a Missourian, on the differences between Republicans and Americans of sound minds. Yesterday, Todd Akin (R-what else), a sitting congressman running for senator said the following to St. Louis FOX, “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Just recently, Akin won the Republican primary. The incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill's campaign had been advertising Akin as “the true conservative”. Of the Republican challengers, he was the teabagger favorite and, therefore, by being part of cloud cuckoo land, presumably the weakest candidate to appeal to the entire electorate.

McCaskill responded to his statement “It is beyond comprehension that someone can be so ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape”. McCaskill is absolutely wrong, neither intelligence nor empathy is needed, desired, nor required by Republicans. Such qualities represents neither themselves, nor their voters.

What is interesting Missouri allows the candidate to withdraw by 5 p.m. Tuesday. The national party establishment wants him out, so that the state party can pick a more electable candidate. That is a very short deadline. Akin is a Republican, they pride themselves in NEVER saying “I'm sorry”. Republicans are absolutely loath to criticise a Republican. The national party wants to take that seat. They think it is necessary to gain the Senate. Akin is self-righteously stupid. I think the deadline may pass. Of course, how much private pressure, if any, he is receiving is not known.

More political graphics

What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party?
Lawrence O'Donnell Jr.

Adam Zyglis. Buffalo News. 17 August 2012.

"They’ve said it. Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget, and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the -- he said in the first 100 days, he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains." — Joseph Biden, Vice-President of the United States of America. 14 August 2012.

This is what bothered the Republicans. They did not care for the apt, and truthful metaphor. John McCain, the last failed Republican nominee for the presidency, along with other Republicans suggested Biden was not suitable for his office. This is the party that had Dick Cheney in that position last; and McCain chose Sarah Palin. Romney chose Ryan. The only real differences between Ryan, and Palin, are gender and articulation. Remember, the chief operating mechanisms of the Republican party are the double standard, hypocrisy, and mendacity in all its forms. God Bless Joseph Biden.

Matthew Wuerker. 16 August 2012.
Mike Luckovich. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 19 August 2012.
Mike Luckovich. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 16 August 2012.

Evening from Edgewater

lion on Conrad Mizen monument

across the highway, the chimney left from the Eveready battery factory
footprint on wet beach
setting sun obstructed by a cloud
twilight settles on Lake Erie

Clay Bennett

16 August 2012 The Ballot Box

In most states, the state's Secretary of State is the officer that oversees the rules, and tabulation of voting. Quite often, he is the nominal state chairman of his party's presidential nominee's campaign. Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris), and Ohio in 2004 (Kenneth Blackwell) this was the case. In this the Republicans followed Joseph Stalin's dictum, "You know, comrades, that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how." This is why, to safeguard electoral democracy, such an office as the State Secretary of State should never be a Republican. In Ohio, Jon Husted currently is trying to maintain the game. But, beyond that, state after state with Republican controlled legislatures, and governors, have added hoops to jump through to register and vote. They have invented the threat of voter fraud, where none exists. It is extremely rare. In some states the search can not find one. Electoral vote, well that is another matter. The Republicans will not let that come up for conversation, the same way as the NRA will not comment after an homicidal shooting spree.

15 August 2012 The Running Mate
Romney and Ruin (Ryan). Both huge liars, who, believe the poor are too rich, and the rich are too poor.
10 August 2012 The Revolt
23 September 2011

6 November 2009
"It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life", said Alice.

Clay Bennett won the Pulitzer for editorial cartoons in 2002. His work now, is even better. His high rate of successful drawings of comic truth is astounding. His style of drawing is cute and warm in line, figure and color. When he is not portraying people, he chooses objects all drawn realistically. He does repeat themes often, but then again, we have the same things come up in the daily news again. A bad idea in the USA just never seems to die.

He had worked for St. Petersburg Times, and the Christian Science Monitor for many years. Bennett now works for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Rotaynah—An Akron Whispering Giant

Peter 'Wolf' Toth. Rotaynah. Akron, O. 1985. photographed 15 August 2012.

Peter Toth was born in communist Hungary. His family left in 1956, eventually coming to Akron, Ohio after being in refugee camps.

His first Indian monument 5 ½' high and carved in the stone at the base of a cliff on the California coast at La Jolla, and completed in February of 1972. The ocean has reclaimed it.

He came back to Akron and completed one at Sand Run Park. That, and all, subsequent ones have been in wood. Currently, these number 73 in North America, and one in the homeland. Seventy-three Indians, and the first Christian Magyar king, Stephen. Toth in learning American history empathised with the plight of Indian, and saw something of it in his Magyar nation.

He became committed to carving at least one Indian in every state of the United States, and all pro bono gratis. It has been forty years, and these monuments have had different fates. The first one drowned, the second was vandalised and is gone, another was destroyed by lightning. The biggest destroyers have been ants and termites. The weather has not always been kind. Some he has repaired. Rotaynah [#51] had his feathered headress removed, and parts have been patched with plastic, aerosol foam. Rotaynah was carved to succeed the destroyed Sand Run statue.

Toth roamed about America as a gypsy. The television shows Real People, and Ripley's Believe It or Not! had segments on him. Toth wrote a book, "Indian Giver". By 1988 the series, Trail of the Whispering Giants, was largely complete. In 2008 he began an extended series with the Hungarian statue, his last Indian was Tecumseh at Vincennes, Indiana. More are planned.

face in red oak

There is a family resemblance to many in the series. Some have carvings on the other side. The great majority are more than twenty feet high; some with feathers (as formerly the one above) almost double the height. They have been carved out of several species.

Some people have really enjoyed them and have planned their vacations to see one, and another, and one more. It has only been forty years, but the condition, and even the whereabouts of some is sketchy. Local pride and care has been varied.

parts of the statue has been patched with solidified plastic construction foam

See: the series list, an enthusiast's site, a video, a foto sharing site.
_______________________________
postscriptum: late August 2018, the statue deteriorated so much that it was announced it would be put into storage with the previously removed feathers

Homecoming St. Mary Akron

detail of the Assumption

The second Roman rite parish in Akron had an Homecoming Mass, this evening. The parish was the next to last parish evicted by Lennon on 27 June 2010; the last was St. Emeric, which although reprieved by order of Rome, has still is not opened, nor set to open. St. Mary was open for its school children to attend a weekly Mass, and one outdoor Mass was held for the parish. St. Mary was merged into St. Bernard. They are now both independent, while sharing the same pastor, Daniel Reed. Since it is a Marian parish, Fr. Reed chose the Feast of the Assumption for the Homecoming. He pointed out the scene painted on the apse is that of Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven.

one of two herald angels before the apse

As great an occasion it was, no fanfare was attendant. More than six hundred people almost reached seating capacity of the church. People were happy to enjoy their patrimony again. Before Mass, a rosary was said. The mood was subdued throughout. One of the hymns sung was , 'We Remember'. The Agnus Dei was sung in Latin. Masses are always said with an intention. Such a Mass would have been proper for pro populo (for the people), instead it was said for Richard Lennon. During the Mass's Eucharistic Prayers, the celebrant went further and added to the formula ['Benedict, our Pope, and N., our bishop'], 'and his intentions'. His intentions were to eliminate these parishes, and sell their properties. The new pastor is noticeably less than fully enthusiastic about his second parish.

congregation and plastic slip covered organ

The church never closed, but some maintenance and care fell into neglect. Landscaping was limited to grass cutting. The wallpaper around the clerestory windows was streaked throughout by water stains.

Asperges, the sprinkling rite very early in the Mass

minimal recessional procession: crucifer, two other altar boys, deacon, and priest

note on St. Peter Cleveland

Saint Peter Parish Church. East 17th and Superior. Cleveland, Ohio.

Saint Peter's Homecoming Mass will be on Sunday, the 9th of September, at 11.30 a.m.

some more ornaments

Grotesque in the form of a Gargoyle. First United Methodist. Cleveland, Ohio. One of two hemi-spheres. Board of Education. Cleveland, Ohio.

In the generation before the World War against Fascism, public buildings enjoyed flourishes of stone. There was time, and appreciation for craftsmen.

Mitt's great choice

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition - and then admit that we just don't want to do it.
— Stephen Colbert. 16 Dec. 2010.

Paul Ryan is a disciple of the worst writer in the English language, Ayn Rand. She wrote 'philosophical' novels of conspiracies. Her ideas were simple: selfishness is good, those super individuals of productive greed were hampered by interventionist government and the poor. It is no surprise that Republicans, teabaggers, capitalists, and teenage jerks are smitten.

Those that whine and whinge about government have some similarity to a character in Monty Python's Life of Brian, whom admits (okay, the similarity is not there) after several exceptions are brought up, "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

I have touched upon this Nimrod before. Ryan is an intellectual for the Republicans, he also attacks well. The Democrats will play up what he wishes to do with Medicare, and Medicaid. So, unless the Republicans successfully game the vote counting in several states, it will be close to a Democratic landslide. Enough elderly teabaggers will vote for the Democracy, that Florida and, perhaps, Arizona will go for Obama. The Congress may have two Democratic majorities.

Parish Madonna

There are companies that manufacture multiple units of the same piece of art. There are specially commissioned pieces from professional artists and craftsmen. This one, a Black Madonna of Częstochowa, was done by a self taught amateur, a parishioner, Kathryn Brodzinski-Ksiazka. The shiny bits are pieces of jewelry donated by women of the parish. The parish is SS. Peter and Paul, Garfield Heights, Ohio, a Polish parish.

This is a personal piece with a great cultural affinity for many belonging to the parish. This depiction of the Mother of God is the national one for Poland, and practically all Polish churches outside of Poland have a version of the icon. Some have a metal overlay, sometimes jewelled .

Such a sacred image created by a member of the community has a spiritual resonance for many members of the community. They feel it is a part of their patrimony, and have distinct fondness for it.

SS. Peter and Paul was in the minority of Polish, and nationality (ethnic) parishes not extinguished by Cleveland's Bishop Richard Lennon. Such items would then have been marketed if the parish was suppressed.

Homecoming Celebration

part of the faithful

They had time, they could have had the Celebration earlier. They chose to-day. There 32 page programme used the full, formal, and correct title,"Homecoming Celebration of St. Adalbert/Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament". Another full house, standing room gathering of happy people was met by a bevy of photographers. The eighth parish in the Cleveland diocese has publicly celebrated a community Mass.

joyful cantor, Sandra Gay-Chapman, spreading her arms in both happiness, and the usual gesture asking others to sing

There is a point during Mass when a sign of peace is exchanged. The minimum is a greeting and acknowledging nod. In a congregation with many black people, that doesn't do. It is an extended sign of peace; not the person to your left, and to right (whom often would be those you came with) alone. Many cross the aisle, walk up and down. This is a practice that needs to be joyfully expressed. Jesus enjoys exuberance. It would be good if the officiating priest prods at the beginning of Mass (there are several points when he is free to make an aside) for people to greet each other. By such tiny gestures communities form and solidify. Of course, there are bishops who would send instructions not to prolong this sort of thing, they would be wrong.

one of many photographers that moved through the people

distribution of the Eucharist begins

Annunciation window

And as i wrote before, it is a beautiful church in addition to the warmth of the people. One can easily be comfortable here.

political posters on the internets

Dogs Against Romney is someone's web journal site. Scott Crider began with a disgust concerning the story of Romney driving 500 miles with a dog on the car roof. He started his page in June 2007. Some of the site is humourous, but humour is based on truth. He mocks Mitt vehemently. He recognised in that one incident something in the man's character, and so have others. Romney is a cold hearted, ambitious man. Romney lusts for Mammon and power. Concern for living creatures, whether human, or not, are irrelevant to him. Two of Crider's latest posters are below, followed by links to stories that gave birth to the honest satire.
The roots of Bain Capital in El Salvador’s civil war
Romney Scrutinized over Bain’s Ties to El Salvador Death Squads
Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads
Bain Capital started with help of offshore investors
Bain Capital's Ties to Salvadoran Death Squads
Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses
Romney’s Abortion Business Made Him $50M

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Still there are those that say economic reasons are why someone should vote Republican.