Via Crucis

1st Station: Jesus is condemned to death

To-day is the most solemn day in the Christian calendar. Some commemorative services take place. Our Lady of Lourdes in Newburgh, Cleveland had Via Crucis. The parish was originally Czech, now there are many Meso-Americans. They have a strong devotion to Jesus' path to Calvary.

We went with our greyhounds. At the initial whipping of Jesus, Cassius began greatly shivering. I put down the camera, and tried to comfort him. John took him, and after walking a bit, he relaxed, but for the rest of the way we kept him way back of the crowd. Dogs can be very sensitive, and recognise suffering in others.

3rd Station: Jesus falls the first time

Traditionally, there are 14 stations. "SPQR" is an abbreviation for Senatus Populus Que Romanus, The Senate and People of Rome.

4th Station: Jesus meets His Mother

6th Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

8th Station: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

9th Station: Jesus falls a third time

10th Station: Jesus clothes are taken away

11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross

12th Station: Jesus dies on the cross

To see if Jesus is dead, Jesus' side is pierced by a Roman soldier (Lancelot). The spear runs through both heart and lung, blood and water gush out.

Posing with greyhounds (5) in the gym

Millie Ortiz is pleased with visiting Cassius and Karma

To-day the alfombras are complete and whole. To-morrow they will be trod upon and will be a mixture of colored sawdust. Well, sawdust is easy to sweep.

[click]  Alfombras de Semana Santa at Parroquia La Sagrada Familia Cleveland 2017  [click 2021], [2019], [click 2015],

The parish has made these carpets for Holy Week for some years now. The foto above was taken by John's telephone, the camera i was using this time does not do as well in indoor light.

Holy Week comes every year, but current events are noticed too.

2022 Miscellany #4—April west side Cleveland

cherry blossoms opened at Brookside Park

Sakura time

porch goose in Easter finery

Česká svobodomyslna škola [Czech freethought school] 

In Chicago, and Cleveland, and some other places there was a lot of immigration from the Austrian Empire. For the Austrians Germanisation and Catholicism went together. Some of the more national spirited Czechs were then estranged from Catholicism, there were degrees. So they divided. Sokols had gymnasiums for athletics. Attached to the hall on Clark was a separate building in 1924. This was in the low west forties along Clark, all the other fotos were taken in Old Brooklyn Cleveland.

Y'no, the wacko woman on Pearl across from the library doesn't like Earth Day. Went to see, whether a new sign was up already. You must certainly know Republicans hate fairness, and love to game the system to their favor. They attack relentlessly. Also spelling is one of the many school subjects they do not respect. Judge O'Connor is trying to follow the law here, and Republicans demand judges to vote only their way. All branches of Ohio state government are controlled by the Republicans. They have super majorities in the legislature. All state wide executives are Republican, and have been for some time. The last redistricting they made gross gerrymandering an abstract art form. The state supreme court has three Democrats, and four Republicans. The Chief Justice, O'Connor, is the only non hyper-partisan Republican in the state involved. Several Repukes want her impeached for this offense. Twice, Ohio voters voted to not allow gerrymandering, of course Republicans are not interested in what the people want.

looking at an owl

 

Solidarity with Ukraine

 

An American general said, “War is Hell”. On the teevee programme M*A*S*H, the character Hawkeye, the point was made that war is much worse than Hell. Those in Hell deserve to be there. “There are no innocent bystanders in hell. But war is chock full of them...little kids, cripples, old ladies. Except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander” .

When there is an aggressor, to be neutral is to side with the aggressor. Yes, solidarity, unity is needed with the victims. As John Donne wrote, “No man is an island” . It is good that some of the Polish, and American faithful stand with Ukraine. Those who stand with, or praise, or equivocate in defense of the aggressor have the blood of the innocents dripping on their souls. When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February,  Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya spoke directly to the Russian Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, “There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, Ambassador” .

Our Holy Father Francis has repeatedly called for peace, real peace. When an aggressor calls for peace, he does not want peace, he wants an end to resistance. Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Christians should want peace. In this war, the Patriarch of Moscow is fully behind the cause of war, and the man who orders, and guides that war. This war is war without mercy. There have always been religious hypocrites, and some with high clerical office and their obedient followers, who are against the Way of Jesus. Many Christians, and many supposedly Christian nations supposedly love Mary, the Mother of God. She is our Protectress. As Francis has pointed out Mariupol Ukraine is Mary's city, how could someone who acknowledges Mary attack her city? There is talk that Francis may visit Kyiv, the symbolic message of solidarity and support would be remarkable.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” – Desmond Tutu

Currently on the campus of St. Casimir the Prince Cleveland, there are signs where some of our faithful stand.

“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from the abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.” – Albert Camus

As a protest of the war, Russians outside of Russia (jail is no fun) identify themselves in protest with a white, blue, white flag. They have removed the red (blood). The original designer is Kai Katonina, who lives in Berlin. In Russia people with fully blank signs have been arrested, police recognise anti-authoritarian actions everywhere.

One of the canvasses on the St. Casimir fence

In this journal, many essays showed placards, and other items attached to the fence in front of St. Casimir church. There are again several, showing solidarity with Ukraine, and prayers on behalf of Ukraine.

Caption this

Saturday morning high school baseball

Cleveland John Marshall and Painesville Harvey

Brookside Park, Cleveland Metropark

The baseball is visible in some of these fotos.

a team for the next game

Deutsche Kirchen nicht mehr

Deutsche Kirche Der Vereinigten Brueder in Christo 1868

German Church of the United Brethren in Christ 1868

Looks like this stone was not original to this spot.  This denomination was the first of any to begin in the United States (1800).  It split in 1889, the larger portion merged in 1946 with the Evangelical Church (both German Arminians); that group merged with the Methodists in 1968.  The smaller group started with one bishop, Milton Wright, father of the Wright Brothers.  It is still in existence.

It seems the church on West 42nd and Orchard has been vacant now for some 14 years. The last occupant was Divine Free Will Baptist. The front probably had glass windows. That yearstone is in the lower right.

1930 foto

The near west side of Cleveland (away from the steel mills) was well populated by Germans. Some of their church buildings are still in use, often not by them. Some of the stones still bear witness. German Protestants inscribed in German (before World War I anyway), German Catholics used Latin.

U.A.C. = Unaltered Augsburg Confession

Augsburg Confession 1530

[v. “New Measures” 19ᵗʰC Amer. Prot.]

Somerset, the square and circle

 

Somerset Ohio is a village of less than 1500 people. It has the only equestrian Civil War statue in Ohio. General Phillip Sheridan grew up in the village. There is no traffic light, and all traffic (seemingly) passes through one intersection.

Carl Heber. "Sheridan's Ride" [to Winchester]. 1905.

Somerset is half way between Zanesville and Lancaster on the old Zane's Trace. Somerset was the then county seat of Perry from 1818, and then on, and off, and on, and then finally off in the 1850s. In 1829, in the Federal style, a courthouse was built; it is now the village hall. "Fiat justitia ruat caelum" is an ancient Roman legal maxim. Here is their English translation. "Let Justice be done. If the Heaven's should fall."  The apostrophe should not be there; and it should be one sentence, not two.

Across the street from the Village Hall, there once was a Masonic Lodge. Now, a sewing shop occupies the first floor of the three storey building.