9/11: 25 Years On, We Seem to Have Decided to Surrender, Never Mind Forgetting

Today, the day after the 25th year commemoration of the act of war that was 9/11, it is the Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary, a feast that was added to the Catholic Calendar by Pope Innocent the XI to give thanks for the victory over the Ottoman Empire in the year 1683. The army of Jan Sobieski has asked for intervention through Our Lady of Czestochowa, and it was victorious. 

I only know this from the Magnificat Magazine, because when I initially tried to look it up online, interestingly the identity of the opponent, The Ottoman Empire, was muted. I found the following on Catholic Answers, offered as context. 

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/under-marys-holy-name-victory-in-vienna-september-12-1683

On this tragic anniversary, a tragedy perpetruated by human evil, not by some random chance, the repetition of the phrase, "Never Forget!" or "We Will Never Forget!" began to upset me because the phrase was in a long line of moments of cognitive dissonance I have had, and many others have had since that despicable day. In 2019, one of our young new generation Muslim representatives said this in part:

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties. So you can’t just say that today someone is looking at me strange, that I am going to try to make myself look pleasant. You have to say this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it. I am going to talk to them and ask them why. Because that is a right you have.”

I read a comment like this, and so many online, on the public airwaves and in the remaining newspapers, print and online, and at least I think I might be losing my mind. I will tell you why. I love immigrants from other places, legal immigrants, as were my recent forbearers, who want to be part of the American Experiment, not ones who tell us constantly how evil we are.  Imperfect, yes. That's the result of the sin of Adam and Eve, but not evil. In fact, the history that you are busy revising, and we stupid native born, naturalized and those who chose to be citizens because they actually LIKE it here, are allowing, out of what Gad Saad has called "Suicidal Empathy", demonstrates that, at least for a while, the nation founded under God and natural law, was indeed a beacon. Although the Founding Father's and their progeny knew about Islam (Barbary Coast). The poor things likely had no idea that it would be paired with Communism, under the theory the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (That partnership is doomed to fail once they conquer the rest of us). Any questioning of the motives of an Ilhan Omar, is not prejudice, which has no basis in evidence or fact, it is based on a stated purpose and goal of a faith, and includes comments like that above. You are not comfortable that people wonder about your view of your faith and the United States, when you tell us what you think? The genius of Communism and of your approach as well is that you use our own principles, bastardize them, and then tell us we are not abiding by them. Some people did something. What people? Who? Why? Have we not been told that America is the Great Satan over and over? Yeah, you have a right to ask what the concerns of other Americans are. We have a right to ask without being accused of a prejudice that is not prejudice, but experiences, like 9/11 that pretty much confirm the statements, the history of a group that seeks and has always sought to conquer. 

The last days of memorializing 9/11 has brought stories that I never have heard in 25 years, some of them even more horrifically highlighting the barbaric cruelty of that day than when I first observed the terror on my television set. I think they were withheld so we would forget. And so the next generation would be made oblivious to it, as they are, the same generation who just cannot understand why they must work for money. 

Forgot? This is more than forgetting. I hope that these new revelations and reminders of the fact that people were tortured (things like jet fuel falling on them when the planes hit; having to choose to jump rather than be burned to a crisp) and murdered will reinstate some national memory. We have become hard of heart when it comes to truth. I never understood that phrase when I read it in the Bible. But when people act so consistently against not only the interests of others, but their own interests, hardness of heart is not only a moral failure, but a form of insanity. Stockholm Syndrome? We have been so brainwashed in the last more than 25 years about everything, that we actually walk into the trap with smiles. Even the Church forgets its own history with aggressors. 

We need to say it. We do not want Communism. We do not want Islam. We want the Judeo-Christian nation that was painstakingly crafted so that people did not have to worry about somebody doing something bad to us. But we have to wake up and reverse a trend that has been building even more horribly since what, the 1930s? And before. 

Are we giving up the Republic, or not?

This does not mean that we hate anyone. I hate no one. But when you say you want to hurt us, and you act on it, then we have a right to say, "You are not allowed to do this." We do hate principles and actions which demean, abuse, murder and enslave.We can forgive your transgression. But we do not have to allow you to commit others. You need to stop and if you decline, we have a right to self-protection. And that includes prudent suspicion. Small example. I went to my Church today to pray. It is one of the few places that keeps its doors open during the day. When I got there I heard a loud noise, and then realized there was a homeless man on the choir loft steps who did not look approachable. He had left his food and water on one of the tables. We live, alas, in a world where homeless, mentally ill people stab others from behind. Is that a prejudice, or a reality? I would never tell the man he had to leave, because he has a right to be there and he wasn't doing anything destructive. And I am still glad the doors are open. But I am not going to stay there with my back to him. Where is the unfairness, the cruelty here in this small example? 

I am already old and while I am seeing the destruction of our civilization far faster than I expected (which my late father warned me was coming in my time almost 20 years ago). Can you imagine Moses coming down from the mountain today? Commandments, what commandments? Too many are still dancing around the Golden Calf and sacrificing other humans to guttural impulses. Too many are standing by and saying to themselves, "It has nothing to do with me." Those people who died in three airplanes, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and from cancers of the pile of rubble that was once businesses and human beings, deserve better indeed. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/09/the-victims-of-9-11-deserved-better/

Remembrance: Aunt Terri, 1927-2026

I am usually able to write about people, places and things without much difficulty. But on this occasion, I am having difficulty indeed in composing this blog memorial to the last member of our immediate family's World War II generation. "Our" refers to my cousin Carol and I. Though we had a large extended Irish-American family (and I have a large extended Greek-American family as well), there was little interaction while we were growing up with those cousins, second, third and probably fourth. Aunt Terri kept up with them, but we had rare sightings. Whose explicit or implicit decision that was I cannot say. So, my cousin Carol and her nephew, also my cousin, Chris, in Seattle, (by her late sister, Barbara), are the lone remainders of a time and place, that to me, feels a galaxy away. 

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the immediate Higgins/Moffatt core group lived in the same five story, walk up, tri-part building, on Townsend Avenue in the Bronx, near Mt. Eden Avenue and the still somewhat Grand Concourse. There was 1594, where my grandmother lived, and my oldest Aunt, Kathleen (although later we would be told she never lived there, a tale unto itself we never quite got to the bottom of), the Moffatt side, including my Uncle Frank's sister and her kids, Eileen, and later Patricia. Then 1596, which had only three apartments on each floor, where my parents and I lived on the fourth floor, next door to Uncle Frank and Aunt Terri. We shared a fire escape between our apartment bedrooms. And finally 1598, which was where (I might be off on who lived where I realize in the haze of time), my Aunt Rita and Uncle Ben lived with their two daughters. My grandfather, Andrew, who died only eight months after I was born, in December 1955, had been the building superintendant for some years, and the four girls, Kathleen, Rita, Rosetta and Teresa, had lived with him and his wife in the basement to which there was attached an apartment. We kids, me, Barbara, Carol, Eileen, (Patricia was too young), played in the courtyard regularly, and attended family parties at one or another of the apartments in each part of the building, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, birthdays, that to my mind, the eldest of the cousins, were too well fueled by alcohol and deep secret hurts, more than the presents and social joys of the various occasions. The age difference between me and my cousins was significant, even at 2 years and nine months older than my closest in age cousin, Barbara. By 1970, I was in high school. We had moved from the one bedroom in the devolving neighborhood to a two bedroom in a still pleasant area of the Bronx, near the Jerome Reservoir, not entirely up to my mother's standards and desire--a place with a doorman. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank moved to a luxurious high rise rental building on Broadway and 64th Street, right across from Lincoln Center in 1974, the same year my mother died at 48. Aunt Terri got the doorman my mother craved without being satisfied. People, over the years thought thereby that they had a lot of money. The family was scandalized that they were willing (or able) to spend the great sum of $450.00 a month to move there. The 37th Floor with a million dollar view. Or the higher up, the higher the million. But Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank had no kids, and they did have two incomes at a time when that was unusual, he being a bus driver and she being an executive secretary at places like Imperial Reading. And the place was rent stabilized. (Upon her death, the rent was $2050). By this time, the rest of her immediate family, my mother, Rosetta and father Constantine, her sister Rita (Carol and Barbara's mother) and Uncle Ben, and Uncle Frank's sister and family (Ronnie, Tommy and their two kids Eileen and Patricia) had already moved. By 1975, my mother, my Grandmother Higgins, and Carol's father had all died. This, of itself, shifted relationships. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank spent most of their social time with his sister Ronnie, and his other sister, Helen, and Ronnie and Tommy's kids in New Jersey. That part of the family remained intact at least for a time, while my side had already been pared down by death and separation. 

I had very little to do with Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank, and from my perspective, really, they had little to do with me after my mother died. I will speak for myself when I say that, though Aunt Terri was my Godmother, we were never particularly close during my childhood. If truth be told, I thought that since I never enjoyed the active social life that they generated with my parents in all the restaurants and Bars of New York, (my cousins and I went to such places at the Top of the Sixes, the Rainbow Room, El Morocco, Chateau Henri IV, the Cattlemen; I guess there were no babysitters) and at the family parties, which always led to extra strain in my parents' carefully constructed relationship, Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank found me a bit of a pill, a kill joy. Uncle Frank's nieces seemed more suited to going out than I did.  I was closer (if I were ever capable of it) to my Aunt Rita, who seemed to have a bead on what it was to be a child, in a way that neither my mother, nor Aunt Terri did. And, my Aunt Terri, seeing that my mother was perhaps too strict with me emotionally, and acknowledging it later in our lives, did nothing to intervene at key times in which she could have reminded my mother that I was a child, not a cat to be trained. (My mother was a cat whisperer). Those were the times. You minded your own business. I can hear my cousin Carol shouting as I write this, "No, No! that isn't right!!!"  But to be fair, most of the time, my life was calm enough, and it definitely was well provided in every way that even as I write this I feel guilty to suggest any lack. To the extent of the good and/or successful that I am, my mother and father were extraordinary. 

By 1981, after I got my law license in New York, I moved to Los Angeles, an intense dream I had had since my first visit in 1977. Aunt Terri came to visit once, maybe twice, while I lived here. We kept in touch by telephone and Aunt Terri regaled me with the happenings with her New Jersey nieces and in-laws. She remained close to my cousin Barbara until Barbara's untimely death in 1992.  But it was a sporadic and superficial relationship between us at best.  Carol was estranged from her and my other Aunt, Kathleen, for reasons I completely understood for many years. Ultimately, there was a rapprochement and after Uncle Frank died 26 years ago, and Terri remained in her Lincoln Plaza apartment alone, Carol began to visit and help as needed. For a short while, her grandnephew from New Jersey lived with her, but that did not ultimately work out. I never remembered Aunt Terri, or any of my Irish relatives, as particularly religious, and definitely not a regular church goer. After Uncle Frank died, Aunt Terri began to attend and assist at her local parish, where she made new friends. She was always very attentive to her old and new friends. I was amazed by the amount of correspondence she had maintained.                  

Her New Jersey nieces wanted her to move to them. She nearly found herself in the Garden State after a fall in the 2000s, but ultimately she was an inveterate New Yorker. She wasn't going to die anywhere other than in New York, and if she could manage it, in the same apartment. In the last decade or more, I found myself closer to my Aunt Terri, and she to me in large part because of Carol. The nearly eight years between Carol and I had compressed, and while we had had vastly separate lives when we were young, we became closer. I visited New York multiple times, stayed with Aunt Terri a few, and as I had seen my mother became ill, a coldness they shared, seemed to thaw. She would tell me how much, when I was born, that she had wanted me to be her child (she could not have children and Uncle Frank was resistant to adoption, according to Aunt Terri.) She would often tell me in her later years "Know that I love you. . . ." words that I never recalled from days long gone by. Aunt Terri was the remaining connection, the sole remaining connection, to my long dead mother. The affection she clearly had for my mother was enormous. Right across from her favorite chair was a large photograph of my mother to which she spoke regularly, telling my mother of whatever activities were going on here in California with me. To be fair, she spoke to all the other relatives and friends pictured in her apartment and to items she imbued with their essence. But I do think my mother got special priority. When a high end coffee and dessert place opened up on her block, called "Rosetta" she was delighted. It did feel slightly cosmic. 

When she could no longer get to Church, Aunt Terri had a regular, and wonderful, Eucharistic Minister, John, who sometimes brought his dog, Abby. She prayed the way I always have hoped to pray, in continuous conversation, ordinary conversation, with Our Lord. She was grateful for every day she woke up, even when activity became extremely limited. She loved her Yankees, and the original Perry Mason. There was even a picture of her and Raymond Burr by the television from one of her visits to Los Angeles, at the Sheraton Universal, where she stayed. And then there were the favorite old movies on TCM.

My cousin and I tried to get what we are sure are family secrets out of her. She circumvented, and sometimes I think, reinvented. Whatever the family secrets, they died with her. I don't know if that is for the best or not. 

I am glad to say that I decided to visit New York in April 2026, to celebrate her 99th Birthday, and share with her my birthday a few days later. She had the determination to live to 100, but every visit had demonstrated a lessening of energy and an increasing frailty. She was wearing out. We ate yet another meal from the wonderful Fiorello's downstairs, though it was take out because she really could not get around anymore, and refused a wheel chair (she only conceded to a walker in the last year). My cousin did it up, with sashes and musical cards and candles and chocolate cake. It was a perfect wrap up for all of us. 

I am always amazed at my cousin's manifest love toward her, truly wishing the best for the other. 

Aunt Terri fell, or passed out, or whatever it was around August 12, and was hospitalized at Mt. Sinai. She had resisted the idea of assisted living or more right up to that moment, but she knew, without being told (though she was) that she needed far more than my cousin could do. The way I see it, the way my cousin sees it, she decided it was time to let the Lord take her. She died on August 18, quietly. The way, I think, she wanted to, although she would have preferred it be in her apartment.

Her funeral was beautiful, where she wanted it to be, at her old parish, concelebrated by three priests, with a cantor with the voice of an angel, and joined by quite a few (considering that at her age so many people are gone, and that she had not been around the parish for some several years) of those who knew her. I stayed in her apartment a few days before it would be cleaned out, the apartment she had lived in 52 years. I memorized the view, the stuff, and took lots of photographs, recalled the moments and was grateful for the reconnection we had had. 

On August 26, I left 37A, leaving the keys on the kitchen counter, closing a big chapter of her life, and my own. I wish I could really pinpoint exactly what I feel. This is the best I seem able to do.

                                        

John Williams: The 94 Year Old Maestro Back on His Stage at the Hollywood Bowl

September 4, 2026. Every year, as part of a summer Hollywood Bowl package, there is a weekend for the music of John Williams. Until July 8, 2023, it was titled the Maestro at the Movies, and Mr. Williams conducted selections from his own works. You would have to have lived under a rock and never seen a movie or watched television not to have heard his compositions. When I was a kid, his early music welcomed and closed the Huntley-Brinkley Report. His was the theme for the Olympics for many a year, and remains so. He scored Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, ET, and Harry Potter, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Schindler's List. He scored much people do not recall, but to which they might hum mindlessly with a soft pleasure. 

My friends, Len and Andrew, and a guest local or east coast visitor have been at these concerts multiple times. The highlight always was the innocence of the bulk of 17,000 people waving their toy light sabers of many colors in the open air venue as the Maestro conducted his famous Star Wars marches. In July 2023, he was joined by two other well known conductors, Gustavo Dudamel and David Newman, a scion of the famous Newman family of composers of movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s. If I recall Mr. Williams held a saber himself one of the nights. Every year we worried that maybe this would be his last hurrah, as the reality of age catches up even to the renowned among us. 

And then it happened. We heard that there were health problems, not particularly identified, but inevitable for any nonogenerian. He had to cancel this and that. To the extent he was seen, including at the dedication of the Hollywood Bowl Stage to him, he was wheelchair bound and frail. 

We still attended the summer event as part of our package, and we enjoyed it, but it lacked the verve that can only be present when the composer is, one who knew how to charmingly milk the audience with whether there would be an encore. He would drift off the stage, baton in hand, stopping for the cheers, and moving toward the wing of the stage, only to stop and do a little motion we called "sleepy time", his hands at his head to indicate he was done. But then he would come back and there would be another familiar piece. That looked to be no more after 2023.

Last night, Len, Andrew, and our visitor from the East (who had to be cajoled to make his usual trip to Southern California from New York, Matt, the son of our long time college friends) ate our sandwiches and mused about the good old days of this concert, now called "A Tribute to John Williams". We still enjoyed them, but I said, "They are really not the same." And based on press and photos, Andrew pronounced and we agreed with equal authority that John Williams would never appear again. 

Bryce Dallas Howard, the actress daughter of Ron Howard, did the commentary in between the various selections, slightly varied from the previous years. It included more of what I admit to enjoying a great deal, watching the film cuts to the accompaniment of the orchestra, just like sitting in a scoring session at a studio, except with thousands of people and under the stars. Some of these clips I hadn't seen in years and they were as affecting as ever. I was as happy last night as I was in the 1970s that ET got to go home, and that those kids flew on bicycles to meet his spaceship in a field. Dallas Howard noted that none of these magical things would be believable, could even happen, without the music of John Williams. They wouldn't have, for me. This I know. 

As always happens at the near end of a concert, lots of people were already filing out, so they could try to beat the rush of crowd and cars and escape to their homes. Sure, there would be an encore, but the evening was winding down. 

And then, whatever the Star Wars March to come, so that everyone could make a final wave of sabers, there he was, John Williams, the Maestro himself, being wheeled out toward the podium and the conductor, David Newman, and Bryce Dallas Howard, and facing us surprised as can be. We had just said with deep affirmation that we would never see him on stage again. And there he was, to the astonished cheers of everyone, cameras suddenly out.  We can speculate about what the health issue is, besides old age, and it appears he cannot speak. He certainly did not speak this night, but he conducted, as of old. No words, but an absolute sense of joy emanated from him as he conducted, and after he conducted. I found myself shrieking in appreciation. This was a rare cultural historical moment. I was, we were, overjoyed to be there to share it. But what I found is how much I loved watching him soak up the love of the crowd, and how he had this amazing personal moment and gave this amazing personal moment to us. 

And maybe to let us know he is all there, inside a well worn body of talent, he even did, "Sleepy Time". 

Will he be back tonight, and tomorrow, for the same show. Len, Andrew, Matt and I agreed, "if he feels up to it." So glad he felt up to it for sure on September 4, 2026. 

Others got better videos than I did, I was so discombobulated by his appearance. 

https://www.facebook.com/100078399062087/videos/2128077847808284/

I am having trouble downloading, so all I can say, since the mainstream has not really reported on it, go to FB or Instagram. Lots of videos.

Artemis Unveiled/In Another Age and Time by Constantine Gochis

This is another one of those stories that I know has some partial truth. The main character "Jim" was in fact a fellow veteran of my father's and he was indeed a police officer in New York. As for the rest, because at the beginning, my father gives a nod to Edith Hamilton with a quote, from her book "Mythology", I assume the rest is entirely fiction. Either way, I hope you agree it is interesting.

                                                             ARTEMIS UNVEILED

"Actateon, a great hunter was out hunting and, hot and thirsty entered a grotto where a stream widened into a pool.  But all unknowing he had chanced upon the favorite bathing place of Artemis, and at the very moment when the goddess had let fall her garments and stood in her naked beauty on the water's edge. The offended divinity gave not a thought to whether the youth had purposely insulted her or had come there in all innocence.  She flung into his face drops from her wet hand and he was changed into a stag. His heart became a deer's heart and he who had never known fear before was afraid and fled. His dogs saw him fleeing. They fell upon him, his own faithful hounds, and killed him." Edith Hamilton, 'Mythology'. 

IN ANOTHER AGE AND TIME

Big Jim called as usual just before Christmas.  He has phoned me at this time of year for more than twenty-five years.  We were buddies overseas in World War II and served together after the war in an army reserve unit. Jim's civilian capacity was, before and after the War, as a police officer in New York City.  He lives quietly now that he is reclusive and at an age when we are fated to a redundancy of memory and a repetition of oft told tales. I assume I will now be regaled with another oldie.  I am wrong. He mentions a name that has never occurred before in his garrulous dissertations--his partner, Barney, a detective with whom he spent years in the Vice Squad in those regions of the Bronx which, if one is wont to draw comparisons of degradation, was and still is comparable to a nether region of the ancient Greek underworld, Tartarus, or Hell.

"I know," he begins, "I never talked about Barney, and for good reason.  I didn't believe his story at first. One thing for certain, he had guts.  It was worth your life to venture into the areas of some of our assignments; you know, numbers, vice, prostitution, and murder were a daily occurrence. Nothing deterred him.  Barney was a hunter. He was fearless and he was feared. He was hated particularly by a new enclave of sectarian criminals from revolutionary torn Haiti. They were dreaded for a hitherto unknown type of criminal retribution--the profligate use of the machete. 

It was rumored they were headed by a woman, one never seen but prominent in legend. 

Then, one day Barney lost it. I can almost name the day it happened. It was the day we were on a drug and murder outbreak in the Haitian enclave of the South Bronx. We had a warrant to search a particular building. When we came out there was fear in his eyes. He acted as if there were someone or something behind him, and his hand was locked tightly on the butt of his pistol.

One day, when he had it particularly bad, he told me his reason for his sudden change from hunter to prey. It came afer we consumed a half bottle of Bourbon at a local gin mill.  

'Remember Jim,' he said, 'when we tossed that building on Cortlandt Street. I open the door on one of the most elaborate bath rooms I ever see, white marble, an immense tub, more like a pool--blinding golden fixtures. When I walk in she rises from the suds filled bath, brazenly nude, soap foam dotting the perfection of her golden brown body, a beauty such as I have never seen. I am startled, and paralyzed. She stares at me coldly and flicks a handful of suds in my face.'

I laughed when he told me all this. 'Forget it Barney," I said, 'that's pure supersition. There's no such thing as voodoo.'

I stopped laughing when his body was found, torn, as if by wild dogs."

All the News That's Fit to . . .Repeat. . .and Repeat (And No One Does Nothin' to Fix The Problem)

As I write there is once again, today, the not soothing sound of a helicopter hovering to "cover" a story.  I am out most days, but today I decided to do a few things at home and have had the opportunity to watch the news gatherers, the ones in helicopters, do their work.

Endlessly.

Last week, you may know, as it made national news, a water main, age 106 (when people actually built things that lasted), finally gave in and burst, flooding a major artery of Sunset Boulevard and a series of local buildings on Holloway and Palm Drives. Updating these pipes has been on the City of Los Angeles agenda (the damage was to West Hollywood, but the pipes are LADWP) for some time and getting it done was scheduled for some time in the indeterminate future. When the workers were able to shut off the water, and it could not be done suddenly, so the water continued to flow, some 200 cars were damaged or submerged in their car parks, and many who live on the ground floors of otherwise pretty lovely condominiums, had significant damage.  A popular eatery was damaged significantly. The apartment dwellers are now likely finding out that unless they had flood coverage (and why would they in this area of West Hollywood?) it is unlikely their home insurance or renter's insurance will cover. As to the cars, hopefully people have comprehensive coverage that includes flooding. 

The location of this particular event was about a mile from me, literally a block from the parish I have attended for 43 years, that was happily spared. There was hope that after pumping the water and repairing the pipe and testing the output and strength of the repair, concrete could fill the sink hole and the area reopened by this weekend. However, as of today, in an area where concrete was already poured there seems to be. . .a leak. For the first several days, if I were on my terrace I could see helicopters arriving and hovering through the day. I was not too distressed by the noise, which was somewhat distant, and I was fascinated watching how long one of these vehicles can hover before it has to make a circle, or, running out of gas, which I assume they do, they leave and are either replaced or get a refuel. The last couple of days the amount of time spent watching the progress of the fixing and filling of the sinkhole has been enormous. And much like the skit by Monty Python and the dead parrot, there really isn't a lot to report. Every day, effectively, the word is "They are trying to fix it." or "They are fixing it". Or, "they hope to open the street soon." West Hollywood's version of Nancy Guthrie is still missing. It is truly amazing how the news can say so much about the same thing and tell you that it is is, well, "news".

So, today. I hear endless helicopter sounds upon waking up. It is closer than usual. I mean, nearly over my own apartment, but Google offers nothing. I ask whether there might be a new water main problem, because of the new one that was also found on Sunset. I go to You Tube and put in the following:  "helicopter over Hayworth right now". And up comes the story.  A new water main break on the block next to mine, and flowing to Santa Monica Boulevard (which also got hit a bit, further west, with the first one). Air 7 (I am sure among others) tells us that it was over the scene and there was "a significant amount of water percolating out from the ground and onto the sidewalk and street."  A contractor they interviewed and filmed it said he was worried that these pipe problem "might become more common." Hmmm. A crumbling infrastructure, a feckless leadership that will be voted in in the next election, and earthquake country, I cannot imagine why anyone would be worried.

All day, a copter, the same one or different ones, I don't know, have been making regular trips to hover over the same spot to see what has changed. It stays for about ten to fifteen minutes each time (or it feels that long) and then leaves for a while.  Sometimes I can see it from my terrace; sometimes not. Here's a pic where I could see it. 

But even when I couldn't see a copter, it has been loud. And distracting. And, I know, one person's opinion, it's all brutally unnecesary in its repetitiveness.  It's two thirty. They have been gone a while. Maybe they have enough shots to repeat and repeat and repeat with "new" commentary that repeats and repeats. 

The exploding culture of obsessive observation for the news and for social media, and the noise,  exacerbate the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness at the deterioration of all of California and the fact that endless money for endless needs, education, homelessness, repair of roads, of aged pipes, seem to go missing without anyone ever being held accountable. And those who perhaps should be held accountable (and I leave you to decide who those people are) get re-elected and tell you how wonderful everything is.  The cognitive dissonance is nearly unbearable. My tack of late is to get just enough information to have a vague idea just in what details our world is crumbling but mostly close it out for day to day sanity. And prepare as best as I can for the Eschaton. Hopefully by tomorrow there will be a little less noise. But I am not counting on it. 

Pray with Our Lady of Fatima (June 6 to June 13, 2026, St. Victor Church, West Hollywood, California)

When has it not been turbulent in our world? And why do we insist that we can create a Utopia on our own strength, when clearly the evidence of previous efforts is that we fail explosively? That failure usually means the deaths of millions of innocent souls, and yet, the insistence on being our own gods persists. It began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve, who had everything, gave it all away with the "No" of disobedience to the Creator. Yes, it was a test of free will. Just one thing God asked you not to do. Eve did it first, Adam did not stop her, and worse, he followed her to pain and suffering. "I don't believe in a Creator!" you might retort. That's ok, He doesn't need my or your belief. He asks for it for our good and happiness, not His. He wants for us to share in His freely given gift, to share in His Divinity, not for us to seize it from Him and push Him out. Then why do we all suffer? Love cannot be given, nor reciprocated, in the absence of free will. Free will means that we can fail to give and reject love as well.  The hard answer is that human disobedience unleashed it all, and its randomness, from natural disasters to the death of children. What did the Apostles and others say to Jesus? "Lord, your sayings are hard." Then why doesn't God intervene?  He did. The fallen angels did not get that second chance because they had perfect knowledge of the truth. But as to us, He uttered His Son, Jesus Christ, who in two natures, Divine and human, atoned for our sins by allowing His creatures to crucify Him, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sent His Holy Spirit, thereby extending a Divine Second Chance, expressed in the Catholic Church from and after 33 A.D. The first bad choice of Adam and Eve had consequences and those consequences cannot be reversed, BUT, each one of us can exercise our free will to say the "Yes" that the New Eve, Mary, the Mother of God said, follow Him through the door of death and be with God eternally. He reminds us of that offer all the time. He provided us the Sacraments, the visible signs of His continued Presence in the World, Sacramentals to dispose our hearts and minds to Him, Miracles, Saints, to help us accept the offer, because He knows how weakened we were as a result of the Original Sin, the disobedience of the creature to the Perfect Will of God.

May to October, 1917 was an extended occasion of one of those reminders. The Mother of God appeared to three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, in Fatima, Portugal. These innocents, simple shepherd children, were chosen to send her messsage, on her Son's behalf, and as the mother He had given to us on the day of His crucifixion. The message was of the urgency of  repentance and conversion to a world embroiled in World War I, a warning against an even worse conflagration (World War II) a rabid atheism and anti-Catholicism and Revolution in Russia that presaged Communism in many countries and has assiduously and violently sought to spread its errors everywhere. The weapons she offered were prayer, especially the Rosary, for peace and to convert hard hearts and wake up humanity to its acts of self-destruction, but mostly the ultimate horror, the eternal separation from God, from Love itself. 

Mary encouraged devotions especially of First Saturdays:

“All those who during five months, on the first Saturday, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say a rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary for the intention of making reparation to me, I promise to assist them at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls” (Documents on Fatima & the Memoirs of Sister Lucia, 279-280).

Hard to believe? Yes. But did it happen? It is disputed mostly by modern atheists, while others, even Catholics, fail to commit to the idea that the God they say they believe in, existing outside of time snd space can orchestrate a mysterious, loving warning to His creatures to use their free will wisely in this second and final chance. The atheists of the day in Fatima certainly disputed that it could happen. They derided the stupid peasants, as now those who believe 109 years later it happened are derided as stupid. The mayor, a Freemason, did. A journalist of the paper O Seculo, Avelina de Almeida, a committed atheist did. But on the day of the last appearance of Mary, October 13, in which she urged again the recitation of the Rosary, something happened that is not merely a matter of belief, but documented in photographs and in the surprised and surprising reportage of the unbeliever himself. De Alameida brought a photographer who was no friend of the faith. What they captured was a massive reaction to an otherwise inexplicable action of nature, of the Sun itself, literally spinning in the sky, drying a rain drenched, mud stuck crowd all at once and the ground on which they stood amazingly not blinded by staring into the sun. 

https://www.bluearmy.com/astounding-things-how-the-midday-sun-danced-at-fatima/

https://theotokos.org.uk/article-fatima-october-1917-1/

Was the atheist a victim of the mass hysteria claimed to be the reality of the matter? Were the people miles away affected by the alleged mass hysteria? As in all things related to God and the Catholic Church or miracles, we have a choice to believe or not to believe, and to pray for ourselves and the world which always seems to be spinning out of control because, if we really are honest, of our own persistent sins. 

I am a little surprised at how ecstatic I am at being able to participate in a week of listening to Our Lady of Fatima's message and to thank her for being a model of the "Yes" to the Plan of God the Father to get us back to where He intended us to be, in a divine union with Him, that which is Heaven.

A little band of parishioner believers and their pastor at St. Victor will be hosting the Los Angeles Archdiocese Division's Blue Army replica of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, in whose crown the bullet (related by many to the Third Secret of Fatima) once lodged in St. John Paul II, now reposes in Portugal. The replica is one of several special such statues which make pilgrimages to various locations to spread the message of Fatima to all. It was carved by an apprentice of the sculptor of the original statue (that was in 1947) and blessed by Archbishop Jose Gomez on the 100th anniversary of the appearance of Mary at Fatima. 

From the afternoon of June 6 (3 p.m.) to the morning of June 13 (the 109th year after the second apparation of Mary), there will be prayer, Procession and Adoration of the Eucharist, Confession and devotion inspired by this visit, especially the recitation of the Rosary. There will be an opportunity for the attendees to join the Blue Army

The tentative schedule:

Saturday, June 6, 3-5 p.m., The Divine Mercy Chaplet, Message of Fatima delivered by a member of the Blue Army, Los Angeles Division, Questions and Answers.  Hear the story. Hear the urgency. Hear about conversion, reversion and reparation for our sins and those of the whole world!

Saturday, June 6, 4:30 p.m., The Rosary

Saturday, June 6, 5 p.m. Vigil Mass

Sunday, June 7, after the 10:30 Mass: Procession of the Eucharist around the block of St. Victor Church 

Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12:

Daily Rosary at 8:00 a.m. 

Confessions daily from 8:00 a.m. to 8:25 a.m.

Daily Mass at 8:30 a.m.

Eucharistic Addoration Daily from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. with confession from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00  p.m.

Saturday, June 13 at 8:00 a.m. Rosary

Saturday, June 13, at 8:30 a.m. Farewell Mass

Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us, for the conversion of souls and the reparation for sin. 

Ever so slowly, so slowly are the words I was taught as a child finally coalescing in my heart and mind. Some absorb it without resistance, in trust, as did the three children at Fatima. I am late to a slow burning realization that comes from too much thought and not enough faith. 

Today was Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the fearful and made them all brave and holy. 

Now I look forward to a week of hearing the critical message of making the right choice in order to save souls, including my own. 

Love Stories by Constantine Gochis

So many of my father's stories were generated in the context of his travels in his neighborhood, my neighborhood at that stage, for we lived blocks away from one another in those days, the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. I think both of us favored the area because it was reminiscent of the New York neighborhoods we had left to come to Los Angeles. I came here, willingly and excitedly, with the hope of being a television writer or perhaps voice specialist in some aspect of the entertainment industry. Dad came because his only child was here. I am sure I have mentioned before that my father was not crazy about Los Angeles, paradisal weather notwithstanding. This story is one among them although Fairfax Avenue is not directly mentioned in it. He made the best of having sacrificed himself for me. 

_______________________________________________

The lines to the cashier were interminable.  Christmas Eve is no time to shop. There were now only three customers before me, though customer number one had filled the moving counter to capacity, and worse, she was preparting to write a check for the purchase. There would now be the inevitable search through her cavernous purse for identification, the clerical notations for security, and then the "double coupons".

The elderly woman in front of me reached up and smoothed an errant hair just over the right ear of her companion, an older gentleman who had so far remained immobile during this process we shared. He had his own checkbook precariously held in his palm. She examined him carefully for further imperfection and ran her hand along the side of his mouth, though I could not see any disorder there. She whisked whatever it was away, with a gentle flick of her fingers.

"You like him?" I importuned. 

"Very much," she answered, her face brightening from what had seemed of questionable humor when she noticed my probing attention.

"Have you always liked him?" I insisted.

"For forty-five years," came the unexpected response from the seemingly inattentive gentleman.

"Yes," I offered, '"but does he like you?"

"I think so," came the reflective reply, and then she recovered, "I'm sure, I'm very sure."  It seemed a kind of penitential response, but then she smiled. A few of the other customers were now listening avidly to the conversation. A smiling African American lady offered her experience to date, "I've been married for eleven years," she said proudly.

"No cigar," I said.  "You have thirty years more to match these folks."  The loving couple beamed, and we all moved up a notch. The lady ahead of us had completed the "double coupon" phase of her interminable transaction.

"How about you?" I asked the girl just behind me, young, maybe approaching thirty. She had been expressionless through our improvisation. Her hair was combed back severely and there was an air of privacy about her. But I took the chance.

"Don't tell me," I began, "you are recently married, perhaps three years?"

"Two," she answered.  

There were two twelve packs of beer in her cart.  "Your husband is a football fan?" I inquired. "A couch potato?" I added.

"No chance," she retorted. There was determination in her answer. "Not if I can help it," she posited, to me, rather glumly.

I thought of the gesture of the elderly lady brushing an imaginary spot from the mouth of her husband.  There was love in the gesture. I looked for softness in the young girl's face. It might be there, but there seemed to be a difficulty in its manifesting itself. Her face was pale, and there appeared bluish rings under her eyes and to the extent she smiled, it seemed to be with reluctance. I felt a touch of sadness on this eve of the day of the Nativity. a day of new birth and hope and promise.

Deep in her eyes there was this tangible sadness, and unfulfilled aspiration. And she had so many years to travel still.