Facebook Free, A 40 Day Lenten Discipline

Here it is again. Lent's first day, Ash Wednesday. As always, there is lots to do, spiritually speaking. Not that there isn't a lot to do, spiritually speaking, any other time of the year. But this span of 40 days is an opportunity to make a particular effort to purge the distractions of the daily world, and to consider with a laser focus the idea of our God who broke into time and space in order to re-establish a long broken relationship with His wayward creation by becoming one of us and experiencing the consequences of our chosen disobedience.

One distraction, of which I have been a slavish part since 2008, is Facebook. I cannot tell you how much of otherwise more profitably used time it has consumed, but I know when I reach for my phone, I inevitably check it, and consume both its edifying, and less edifying, memes, articles and opinions. In the last several years, it has been far less enjoyable, for this medium as so much other media, has become a place of verbal and emotional combat because of the unbridgeable political, societal, theological, philosophical disputes permeating the American milieu. You might say, "Anxiety, thy name is Facebook" these days. Or any of the various places where opinion, informed or uninformed is posited.

Facebook has become, I realize, something of a compulsion.

In order to give myself over to the soul cleansing work of Lent, it occurred to me that one (by no means the only) key ingredient in the work would be to make the effort not to check my Facebook page for the duration of the season, and see where that takes me.

There is a certain bemusement at this effort. It's certainly not a problem that the disciples of 2000 years ago could possibly have imagined. The saints are probably laughing at me from heaven. But if it relieves some of the sadness about and the anxiety over the anger on its pages, and makes me more patient, and kind, and helps to prepare me for Easter, and the season of Resurrection, that is a good thing I am thinking. Giving up Facebook isn't much of a cross to bear.

As I write, the first day of Lent 2020 has nearly ended. I have not looked at Facebook all day.

I have attended Mass as I do daily. I have received my ashes that remind me of my mortality and sinfulness. I have read some meditative passages. I have said the Rosary. It is a good beginning.

While from my blog page I shall post this entry to Facebook, I promise, I won't be looking to see if my FB friends have read it. At least, not until after Easter! Peace be with you all.

Kobe Can't Be Gone

Sunday Mass was about to begin. We, the servers, and our priest, were standing in the back waiting for the organ to play and announce our procession. But a couple of folks were mentioning a death, one that had only happened.  I assumed it was a parishioner.  After all in a place which features not only Sunday or Daily Services, there are baptisms and there are funerals. It is an expected wave of ordinary comings and goings of the existential sort.

But just as someone said it was Kobe Bryant, a young and strong and famous man, there was a communal heart drop. And among the prayers, there would be an intention for his too soon gone soul.


I am not even remotely a sports fan. I go to the odd game, more baseball, than anything else.  If I like a game, that is the one I do, and I enjoy the natural or historical surroundings of the various fields. If I have been to a basketball game, it was maybe once, and not likely to watch any team of note. Yet, my heart dropped with the others when I heard the name Kobe Bryant. You'd have to have been living under the proverbial rock not to know who this is, who this was. I knew two things for certain, that he was a profoundly talented player on one professional team for his whole 20 year career, and another that was less a shining thing, courtesy of the very press who will now spend the next many days raising him to the status of demi-god, in just as much a furor as when they sought to topple him in the pre-"believe all women" days.

Not only did my heart drop, but I felt--terrible, like it was a personal loss. How could that possibly be? But even more than that, another feeling, that it could not be possible for him to be gone. I am guessing that a lot of the people, more attached to him than I am, who are gathering near the site of the Calabasas helicopter crash site that took Bryant, and his 13 year old daughter, and seven others, feel that sensibility even more profoundly.  Yes, it surely is about his being accomplished, and, at 41, his beginning a new career in businesses and charities and succeeding in all of these. It might be about what used to be called the "American Dream", the idea that any one of us could, with hard work, and of course, some particular talent, rise to the heights of human achievement.

I speak only for myself on this day of his death, less than 12 hours ago, and perhaps some others can say the same. It is about the truth of things we all know but avoid acknowledging as we move up the ladder of love or success or whatever is our desire as we go through our days. That nothing protects us in this life from its end. And that we must face, even if it is for a moment in time accept that we all can be, and will be gone. I learned something new about Kobe Bryant today that I did not know. He was apparently a Catholic.  One of my fellow servers said that he heard Kobe was a regular church attendee.

If that is so, and his belief was stronger than mine is sometimes, then being gone from here is not a permanent condition and Kobe Bryant's family has not lost him completely, or forever.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Rest in Peace, Mr. Bryant.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Almost Biblical, but Not If You Look A Little Closer

As the incredibly lengthy credits of the possibly last installment of the Star Wars movies ran, my companion movie goer said something I remember as "It was almost biblical".




My immediate reaction was to agree. Good over Evil. The nearly demonic Emperor Palpatine was not merely defeated, but Kylo Ren (birth name Ben Solo) turned from the Dark Side back to the Good Side, and joined Rey to destroy him all courtesy of the Force, that mysterious field of galactic energy that binds all things together and can be harnessed by the Jedi Knights. There was sacrifice. There was death. There was resurrection. Now, just wait a minute!!!!

It was biblical in appearance, but in its substance, it lacked the one feature that gives the Bible its essence. There is no God. I can see someone--even myself--trying to stretch it, "Well, the Force is kinda like God." Except it really is not. It has a duality, good and evil. Ah, shades of Mani! Two forces, one good, but not omnipotent, god-like, but not God, (who biblically is all powerful and all good) and the forces of evil, a devil, the devil, battle it out. And mankind, at least in this Star Wars version of things, can harness the good, or the evil, which, in my mind, makes man the center of all things, the very thing which got him (and her) into trouble in the first place in the actual Bible story.  The Manichaean heresy started not very much after Christianity itself, in or about the third century, and has popped its head up in various guises since and here throughout the Star Wars fantasy to this perhaps final chapter.  It has popped up, sort of, in the Star Trek universe also. After all, Spock was brought back to life not by man per se, but by a planet that was created by man's science. That force too had been sought by the evil (Klingons) and was wrestled back from them by the good Federation. Medicine has gotten so good in that universe that even when you are dead, the little tricorder thing that is used for everything can bring you back, if it hasn't been too long since you kicked the bucket.

Man is the Measure of all things, and ultimately can harness the Force itself. The Force, ultimately, is subservient to man, for good finally, if Rey's return to the place where this mythic universe started, Tatooine, the Jedi Master, formed by another Jedi Master, and so on.

The paradoxical thing, and probably this is purely personal, thus anecdotal evidence of the power of temptation itself, is that I like these science fiction universes. The idea that any of us could control that which governs good and evil, the intricacies of the threads of the universe, well, heck, that is mighty attractive. For those of you old enough to remember the old commercial, for Anacin (does that still exist?) it's a kind of hubris fueled analog to "Mother, I'd rather do it myself!" Or, to analogize, "There is no need for a God. I'd rather do it myself." And so, everything, our culture in every aspect nearly these days, is immersed in doing it all for itself, with a smug smile at not merely taking fire from the gods, but banishing all gods, the false and the one True.  As Dr. Phil might ask one of those sad souls who needs to air the dirtiest of family laundry on national television might respond, "How's that working for you?"

So, what's the bottom line? I am not sure, to tell you the truth. I still like Star Wars. But maybe. . . .that's not a good thing? I don't know. Maybe it's food for thought, at least?

And my guess? Not the final Star Wars film. After all, a new Skywalker has risen. 

New Year's Eve '96: A Constantine Story

It being the beginning of 2020, I have found myself re-arranging and, though I no longer make "resolutions" I have privately proclaimed a plan to be more fruitful in my endeavors, to eschew a tendency toward laziness and, as part of that hoped for plan to be more diligent in placing some of my father's short short stories onto this site. As it happened, a re-arrangement of a drawer revealed a few of the stories, which somehow had strayed from the usual place I maintain them. It also happened that one of these was my father's less than cheerful reverie about New Year's 1996, that harked back to one during World War Two and back again.  It follows. 




"What do you do on New Year's Eve?"  The question is old and familiar.  At one time it evokes either joy or terror.  In my formative years, there are holy days of obligation. Saturday night is one.  Not to have a date, not to have a "great time" is a sin requiring the penitential rending of garments.  Failure is never admitted to one's peers, lest shame and opprobrium result.  Worse, it is a diminution of the precious "macho" image.

Naturally, when I score big, I share the experience volubly, gilded for maximum effect.  Though modesty forbids excess pride, some joys defy restraint. When I strike out, I do not talk much. I simply adopt a serene and satisfied expression and listen to others' lies.

New Year's Eve is another story. No failure is tolerated.  Thus, like presidential elections, the planning begins immediately, following whatever constitutes the last celebration. 

I notice that today the question evokes none of the trauma of yesteryear for me.  This can be attributed to the wisdom of old age, or more accurately, the serenity of hormonal emanations.

I do not d very much this year. I feel more likely that what I have to report is a very bad hangover, induced by several martinis, interspersed with champagne, which I share with some equally sedate relatives.  We decide on two highlights for the evening. Some TV station is scheduled to present a Guy Lombardo retrospective, and of course, there is the descending ball at midnight in Times Square, New York.

Of course, we do neither.  We open another bottle of champagne and tell "sea stories".

I am a little sad that we miss the descending ball.  Guy Lombardo's music does nothing for me, and, if I remember correctly, I do not like him when I dance to his orchestra many a New Year's Eves ago.

Times Square is different. I go there when I enter my teen age status, with some guys I hang out with.

We go early, though there is not much we can do in reference to the passing of a tired, limping year. Cronus is divested of his glory by an impudent son. The inexorability of Time.

We have no money.  We simply get into the swirling masses, a solid undulating ocean of humanity.  We are caught in the viscous flow, no longer capable of independent movement, a living demonstration of the reality of Fate.

There is no space unoccupied.  Battalions, massive formations move in opposite directions.  A lone cop, just ahead, tries to maintain separation of the hordes, swirling tide flows of chaos.

Frustration and anger bring crimson to his great bulging neck.  For some inexplicable reason I am in violation of his purpose.  He reaches out to grab me by the collar but the force of human momentum tears us apart.  My collar is rent, but I am safe, and relieved.

In those days cops do not have a sense of humor nor is there the blessing we now have of juvenile offenses and the tolerance of the exuberance of youthful excesses. 

We get to see the descending ball, and with a million other people, welcome the infant year January 1, 1934.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruta0hMs1Z4

It is the last day of 1944, in Naples, perhaps a decade later.  I am on the way from one place to another.  I do not remember where or why.  My pistol and carbine are weighing heavily on my restless soul.  It is again the venerated day.

An importunate war interferes with the proper obeisance to a holy day that will never return.  I enter a bar that is emitting some sounds of gaiety.  I am mistaken.  It is practically uninhabited.  I sit at a table and order brandy.  The sounds I hear come from an old Victrola.  There seems to be only one record in the repertoire, the mournful crooning of the ubiquitous Bing Crosby dreaming of his "White Christmas."

This is my least favorite song and crooner of all time.  This terrible, monotonous dirge has been everywhere in Europe since the first GI's arrive.  Even the Italians add their traditional undulating rhythm to the unremarkable ditty.  So, in pain, I order another brandy to palliate my suffering.  Then I order another for the road back to my monastic billet and the merciful sack.

I am startled awake by the sound of widespread gunfire.  There is the sound of anti-aircraft explosions. The city, and the word is total darkness.  It is the Apocalypse.

I roll off my cot and search blindly for my weapons, retrieve them and rush outdoors.  There are GIs everywhere, firing pistols and rifles into the air and shouting, "Happy New Year! Happy New Year".  It is 1945 and I have almost slept through the arrival of the newly arrived interloper.  I read somewhere that a falling bullet can kill as surely as a directed one.

Last year, in LA, seventeen people meet their maker in this manner.  This year, the police list no fatalities.  In the Naples of 1945 and the world, people were being killed wholesale, most, intentionally, so who would quibble on a few sacrifices in honor of the Great God Janus.  Such statistics would only be the concern of the Graves Registration people, anyway. 

DjinnfromtheBronxChapterThree: Richard Jewell: Thoughts on Truth, Artistic Licens...

DjinnfromtheBronxChapterThree: Richard Jewell: Thoughts on Truth, Artistic Licens...: Richard Jewell would have been an anonymous outlier, but for the fact that he was a security guard at Centennial Park in Atlanta in 1...

Richard Jewell: Thoughts on Truth, Artistic License, and the Brave New World of Accusation without Evidence

Richard Jewell would have been an anonymous outlier, but for the fact that he was a security guard at Centennial Park in Atlanta in 1996, discovered a back pack bomb and alerted the disbelieving police. Two people died, and many were injured, but the casualties would have been far worse had Jewell not insisted that there was something amiss and that people needed to be evacuated. He was a hero, at first. But nearly instantaneously he became the suspect. He was a plump, 33 year old man, who had returned home to live with his mother. He was obsessed with being a law enforcement officer, a profession he worshipped, and he wasn't very good at it, though he had studied the penal code assiduously. He was slow; he was plodding, the kind of person who is tormented by bullies in school and laughed at by the wise, self-righteous adult world.

There was a scene in the Clint Eastwood take on the events of the bombing, investigation and media coverage, where FBI agents are attempting to deceive Jewell into believing that their videoed questioning is to be for a training film. They hand him a form that acknowledged he had been read his rights, and waived them, telling him to sign as merely a piece of authenticity for the training film. Now, as a lawyer, in fact a prosecutor (of attorneys for administrative discipline) and consumer of legal television shows, fictional and documentary, I knew that police and other criminal authorities are allowed to use something called "strategic deception" in their interviewing. But this? I couldn't believe as I watched the scene that it could possibly be based on any semblance of fact.

But it was.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/07/29/fbi-conduct-constitutionally-suspect-in-jewell-case-says-justice-department/441fc00d-07ee-4657-a28c-06cd3c625d9f/

(There is also Marie Brenner's 1997 article in Vanity Fair which provides a great deal of information about the whole Jewell affair: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/1fd2d7ae-10d8-474b-9bf1-d1558af697be

The conduct was denominated "constitutionally suspect" and a "major error in judgment". There was some semblance of discipline of certain of the investigators.  I remember the events vaguely. I knew there was a bombing. I didn't remember that anyone had died, or that there had been injuries. I knew that Jewell was the primary focus for a while, and then he was not. I did not have any idea what had happened to him after 1996.

As the movie unfolded, though, I found myself impatient to read about the events to compare them to the Eastwood retelling. The only thing I had read about the film was how upset the media was about the movie's treatment of the reporter, Nancy Scruggs, now, like Mr. Jewell, deceased. There is no doubt that there was a leak from the FBI to Scruggs leading to the identification and subsequent media decimation of the life of Jewell, but the movie connects Scruggs to a composite character representing the FBI (played by Jon Hamm) and posits that there was a sexual quid pro quo. This bothered me. It still does. Mr. Eastwood interpolated the scene, I'm guessing, from descriptions of her, one or two of them apparently in writing.  Here is one from the Atlanta Magazine in July 2003, after she died.

She was blonde and wore mini-skirts and gaudy stockings. She smoked. She drank. She cussed. She flaunted her sexuality. She dated Lewis Grizzard (my note: he was a writer, and columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who died in 1994). She dated an editor who allegedly beat her with a telephone. She dated cops, including one who was accused of stealing money from the pockets of the dead. 'Kathy was a bigger than life figure. . .she was over the top in many ways.'

You can read the rest of the article.

 https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/requiem-for-a-reporter-kathy-scruggs/

I guess the question is, based on his research, and since the actual source was never revealed (Scruggs and her co-writer were jailed for refusing to do so), was it unreasonable artistic license by Mr. Eastwood to suggest that the real life Scruggs slept with anyone to get the information? The media, as to this late reporter, say yes. I would agree with them, without reservation, if the media had any level of credibility regarding their conduct as to Mr. Jewell, who was figuratively roasted alive without any concern about his future, his reputation, or his legacy.  I guess I agree, but with reservation. I wish Eastwood had not mixed a real life person with a fictional character and an uncorroborated conclusion as to how the real life person got the information in the first place.  But here is my other question, isn't that done in many movies based on real life public characters? Are there some people in the public eye who are off limits? Or are all of them off limits (which will severely, perhaps appropriately, limit movie making about real life figures).

For the most part the movie seems to be on target with the facts of what happened to Richard Jewell.
He too is dead and I doubt his reputation ever recovered from a public "oops we made a mistake" destruction. I wouldn't be surprised if some people still think he did it.

But back to the credibility of the protesting media. Richard Jewell was 23 years ago. Where was their concern about truth and reputation when Judge Kavanaugh was being accused of criminal acts without a soupcon of actual evidence other than accusation. I seem to remember wall to wall coverage with attending salivation and shouts of Kavanaugh's unfitness. And now that the Judge somehow made it to the Supreme Court despite the best efforts of a political party doing the informational tango with the media, the matter has died. Phyllis Schafly is dead, and she is a hated conservative. But a popular television series repeated aspersions on her character that are still disputed today. There was no mention of the disputations for fairness. Then there is the movie "Bombshell". I haven't seen it yet, I admit. I will. It involves Roger Ailes of Fox News. Was there any license taken regarding this deceased person?  My reading of some of the reviews indicates license was indeed taken. Is there outrage about it? Or is it all right because the woke folk don't like Fox News?

The media now objects to that of which it is the progenitor, even the first cause. Are they and their representatives to be spared that which they do not spare anyone else? The genie is out of the bottle, unless and until it can be stuffed back in with the rediscovery of truth, the objective kind, where accusation and malevolent gossip do not become facts. Do not do unto others what you wish they would not do unto you. But it's probably too late. And everybody has to watch his or her back and pray not to be a target. 

Sometimes, Lord, It Really IS Too Much

In the very modern Church at Magdala in Israel, where I spent several days last year, is this very surprising image on a pillar, in company of various saints. He is not usually in their company as he is Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. And once he realized the sin which he had committed, he despaired, and committed suicide, while Peter, who also betrayed Christ, wept bitterly, and repented.

I always have had sympathy for Judas. There is, to me, a gossamer thread of a boundary between what Peter did, and what Judas did when the world and its evils pressed upon them. I am guessing I am on somewhat heretical ground here, but I wonder how fair it is to say that Judas rejected Grace because he did what he did. Well, you could say that he did reject it, but was that rejection truly voluntary? It seems to me that it is possible, and we now know that with regard to suicide in general, such that it is no longer forbidden to bury suicides in holy ground any longer, that the burdens of this world can be so much that free will is impaired.

Judas' world was full of oppression by one human being against another. His people had been oppressed throughout its history. "How Long O Lord?" they would cry. The solution came but human beings are weak and He came in a nearly hidden way. And here we are, more than 2000 years beyond the act of salvation, and still those who seek belief struggle to see Him and are as then bombarded by a culture that would happily crucify Him again, some of them among the Shepherds of His Church.

Just as I was beginning this entry I read that the beatification of Fulton Sheen has been halted at the request of some US Bishops. The article notes emphatically that there is no indication, certainly there is no mention, of any impropriety of the sort that has come to light in the last 25 years, but by so noting, however innocently, there is no such indication, the spectre of impropriety is raised. Clearly, the request is for some purportedly significant reason. Since the days of Cardinal Spellman, it seems to me that there has been a deep antipathy toward Sheen, and the antipathy increases as his prophetic words about the American and International and Spiritual culture become more evident. This news only put a period on the existential angst I am feeling.  Just as I finished this sentence, though I put a nice sign on our entry way door, which slams if someone does not hold it for a moment and close it gently, requesting that they take that moment, slammed to remind me of a world redeemed that has contempt for its own redemption or even its possibility.

The cultural dialogue, in articles, on Facebook, on television, on You Tube, on Google, anywhere that one tries to garner the pulse of the day, is plain ugly, though purveyed by those would would say they are kind and nice and tolerant--those who, I care about, have cared about, and have respected. It is no longer that one disagrees with you. It is that your opinion makes your very existence abhorrent.
I will not assert that it is on only one side of the political and moral divide merely because my own experience makes it seem so. I will assume, for the purposes of this lament, that it is on all sides.

Decent people can say horrible things with a pride that is joined by other decent people. Or perhaps I am wrong, perhaps what is said is not at all problematic. Perhaps the writer should be praised for forthrightness and truth? I leave it to the reader, and posterity to decide. But for me, it is a source of deep deep upset.

This week's straw that broke the camel's back for me. A friend of a friend on Facebook noted that he had been on a plane and saw a person wearing an American Workers cap. The writer thought, at first, that it was a Democrat, showing pride in unions. But then he saw a "Trump 2020" inscription in the back. He added this in an additional comment, ". . .it's one thing to know these ppl exist, it's another to share a close space and oxygen with them.  Hopefully, what they have is not contagious."

I wrote a comment asking if the person knew how terrifying that comment was. I have not heard back as of this writing.

Such things discourage, they enrage, they inspire fear. I can understand how Judas thought decisive, earthly action was the only solution, that God was really not listening, not intervening. The light of Grace was there, but Judas did not see it. The light of Grace is here now, but it is very hard to see it, to embrace it. And to hang on.

I just read in some Advent book authored and promoted by Bishop Robert Barron, that faith is
"passion for the impossible". Well, then, I shall try to keep faith in the face of a world so distorted that I think persecution in the United States is not unlikely. But sometimes, Lord, it really is too much!

P.S. December 13, 2019. The Facebook commentator did respond. She stood by her comment and accused me of a denigration of her.