Easter in the romantic village of Menotomy

NPR had a piece on Friday afternoon about the last of the lady's milliners.
Y'know hat-makers....milliners still abound in Washington DC thanks to the black church the tradition of dressing up like "God's People" on Sunday.
So you can just imagine the pressure is really on the perfect hat to top off an Easter in D.C.
The woman they interviewed was wildly enthusiastic about her work and drew elegant parallels between an ornate hat and the bliss of the kingdom to come.
Fair enough, at least the work isn't be outsourced to slave labor camps in Thailand.
Of course in my parish, God's People pretty much come to the Lord's House dressed to pull up weeds in the front yard.
Even the altar boys wear bulky sneakers neath' their linen robes.
I didn't see too many Easter bonnets in the pews...and the few that I saw were firmly planted on the heads of girls under the age of five.
Which is still an age that can't put up much of fight about holiday millinery.
Meanwhile Momma is still dressed in flats-n-slacks all set off with the intriguing look of a royal blue sweatshirt...she looks like she'll be taking the dog for a walk after mass or something.
Well what of it?
The R.C.C. is a mass religious phenomenon, it works on volume-volume-volume, there has never been a big dress up tradition therein.
Still, I felt a little foolish in my suit coat and tie...but then I'm a traditionalist living up to a nonexistent tradition.
Otherwise the homily was appropriately platitudinous and no one got hurt.
***
Meanwhile the Boston Globe breathlessly reported this morning the presidential candidate John Kerry received the Eucharist at his favored' church yesterday.
As it turns out, O'Malley can rail against pro-choice Catholics and insist they much skip communion til they are in line with church doctrine....but at the same time the dioceses makes it a policy not to refuse communion to individuals.
So we are back to passive aggression in the pulpit I guess.
I still think O'Malley is sucking up to the R.N.C. on some level.
Last summer he singled out pro-choice Catholics as being outside church teachings and therefore must forego the Eucharist.
The archbishop had nothing to say though in regards to the equally numerous pro death penalty R.C.'s out there...

Just another glorious day in the Bay State my friends...

The obligatory Good Friday Donald Trump column...

The internet is a marvelous thing, typing in the pejorative phrase "short fingered vulgarian" on the google search engine yields dozens of sites about real estate developer Donald Trump.
Yup, the Donald himself the man who brought bombast home to American architecture.
Purists out there will also recall the publicity obsessed Trump is also host and executive producer of "The Apprentice" a so called reality show wherein aspiring managers compete for a single cushy slot in the Trump High Command.
"The Apprentice" is fascinating for all the wrong reasons, Trump (a wench grabbing lout by all estimates) seems to have chosen the female contestants on their looks and the male aspirants on their ability to spout the latest business cliches like Old Faithful.
In sum, a dismal collection of shiny Babbits chasing a buck sans shame or dignity.
Just another day in the Trump Empire, which is a vast expanse of tasteless buildings, rhetorical superlatives, and promissory notes...all presided over by that bloated billionaire vulgarian whose pinched constipated look recalls the Emperor Vespasian.
My favorite part of the show are the bumpers wherein Trump looks into the camera narrows his beady little eyes and belches some Dale Carnegie bromides for the delectation of aspiring moguls in the audience. In an economy about equally divided between near bankrupt software designers and soda jerks at Dairy Queen these paeans of praise to "being passionate about what you do" are irony to put Turgenev to shame.

Hell no less a journal than Fortune Magazine can't seem to properly estimate the exact extent of Trump's wealth due to his plethora of half consummated deals, debt, and fluctuating real estate values.
In the end that vast fortune could all be hot air and may well be as Trump bids to restructure the huge debt he has incurred whilst fruitlessly attempting to conquer the gaming business.
Frankly, if I was one of Trump's offspring I'd save every penny from my allowance or trust fund, take the subway everywhere and clip coupons like a madman. The time may come when there will be less money there than meets the eye.
Well, what of it there is always some mega-clown stalking the earth playing a gleeful god with either their investors money or public revenues.
In the 1920's it was Jimmy Walker the funster Mayor of New York....in the 1950's it was wily bipolar Earle K. Long then governor of Louisiana.
And lets not forget William Randolph Hearst and freakish gigantism that was his "San Simeon" estate.
Trump is merely another free market embodiment of long cherished profligate tendencies....we sigh and chuckle over his neronian excesses even as he turns the New York skyline into what amounts to a garish "Mattel Super City" toy.

Crosses to Bear, Ballots to bless....

Yesterday, it was reported in the Boston Globe that Archbishop O'Malley called our culture "a hostile alien environment" for American Catholics.
Yowza!
No beating around the bush with this boy-o is there?
There is a sturdy myth among liberals, first enunciated by Sinclair Lewis that the Catholic Church is a less puritanical institution than is generally suspected.
Similarly among educated Catholics there is persistent and irrational belief that priest who come out of the individual orders are a little more reasonable and rational than the usual diocesan hangers-on.
O'Malley for example is a Franciscan Friar who did not come up through the ranks of the Boston dioceses...but thanks to this recent hyperbolic effusion he has blown to hell that ridiculous myth of sectarian reasonability.
I don't even know why I subscribed to this legendary notion, the worst, most dogmatic ideologue at the teensy Catholic college I attended was my ethics professor, a full time Franciscan Friar.
So seems that the Archbishop in addition to shoring up his fast shrinking dioceses has decided to become a Catholic cultural warrior a'la Pat Buchanan.
Hence the crazed cult-like hyperbole and hysterics.
It would seem then that Archbishop O'Malley is playing to GOP oriented catholic cultural conservatives who want to impose their secular rightical chic agenda on the R.C.C.
That is what it comes down to in my humble opinion.
It is not revealed religion penetrating politics, it is a debased strain of modern politics that is manipulating religious institutions.
So what remains is, a mind numbing debate from within and without the church as to whether or not the Archbishop will refuse John Kerry communion on the grounds of his apostasy regarding abortion etc.
If this happens, then count on it like his corrupt and egomaniacal predecessor Bernard Cardinal Law, O'Malley will have lined himself up good and early with the wowser wing of the GOP.
So the question comes down to this, shall the Boston dioceses police the conscience of liberal catholics on behalf of the GOP's entirely secular agenda?
Are we, practicing Catholics and non practicing alike, subordinated to the holy see or the RNC?
Has the RNC somehow joined the congregation for the propagation of the faith?
It must have or else why would O'Malley be taking what amounts to orders from Ed Gillespie?
On the other hand, I don't see Archbishop O'Malley cabling the ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Toronto asking him to refuse communion to former governor Cellucci on grounds that his pro-death penalty stance placed him outside the catholic community.
And you damn well won't see O'Malley doing anything like that either.
Cause' Pope Ed wouldn't like it.

Time is the fire in which we all burn...

As the swallows return to Capistrano as a dog returneth to it's vomit, so does "Time" Magazine linger over revealed religion every god damned Easter.
Yup, yew guessed it, Time has put poor old Jesus on the cover.
That would be God's beatnik son the one who got fresh with the Sanhedrin, dumb kid cheesed off the centurions and look what happened?
Well it is about time, the Son of Man was perishing for lack of publicity.
I just love it when Time feels it has to get dressed up in it's Sunday best and gwan down to the church to hear the preachin'....there is nothing more unintentionally funny for the money.
Nonetheless all the Jesus-talk in the world can't disguise the fact that Time (to quote the olde misanthrope) is a "haughty little rag".
In other words, they are just pretendin' to be saved...they'll be back hyping "erotica" and its "power to excite" as soon as Lent is over.
But first the long running newsweekly has to fool the marks down in Anniston Alabama into thinking Jesus still rates with the board of directors at Time-Warner-AOL.
Where Time gets this obsession with christianity I do not know.
Even a cursory reading a cursory reading of the newsweekly reveals that if Time worships anything it is a pagan trinity of fame, money, and most of all power.
Especially when it is fame-money-and-power concentrated in the person of some GOP Hack...that is utter heaven to Time Magazine.
Well...it really goes way back to Time-Life Founder Henry Luce, the demented son of xian missionaries in China...he spent his life making millions in publishing and attributing it all to God's special favor.
He died back in 1967 and now thirty plus years later his gospel of success and GOP puritanism has degenerated relentlessly into craven commerce worship and a smirking toadying tone.
Well anyway....Jesus is their cover boy again for like the fiftieth time and they made the same vacuous platitudes they reserved for Dino De Laurentiis 1976 remake of "King Kong".

Lemme see if I get this right...

The Ship of State has struck an iceberg, the engines have malfunctioned and exploded, fuel has leaked out over the water and ignited creating a sea of fire, the First Officer is in hiding having left behind naught but an epistle demanding new tax cuts...Halliburton sold us the lifeboats with are either rotted or full of termites, the wretches in steerage have seized machetes and bread knives vowing jihad...unwary crew members are being jacked up in the passages....the first class passengers have suffered a collective nervous breakdown and are offering blood sacrifice to "Poseidon Lord of the Deep"....the purser has raised the price of cigarettes and boozes to astronomical levels...and the ship's doctor (another Halliburton alum) is systematically desecrating the mounting pile of corpses for gold filling and the like.
Plus the stokers all wanna get married-now and damn the laws of man and god!
Oh and according to the meteorologists at the Congressional Budget Office, there is a hurricane coming down on us at top speed...
But don't worry, according to Jeff Jacoby the Captain's MBA trumps all.

If we don't dare change horse in mid stream (to mix all metaphors beyond hope of recovery) whaddaya supposed to do when the damn horse drowns and you are being tossed down the river like a cork?

Welcome to the Commonwealth of Arkansas...

Anyone else out there recall Arkansas' inept pro-segregation Governor Orville Faubus?
He called out the National Guard in 1957 in a bid to stop the court ordered integration of Little Rock High school.
Romney is starting to remind me a little bit of old Orville.
More importantly will he do likewise come May 17th?
Yup despite a firm rebuff from the Attorney General and a clear mandate from the Supreme Judicial Court, today's Globe reports that Romney is still noodling around with "other means" to thwart the issuance of marriage licenses come May 17th 2004.
One Faubusian move requires that the State Legislature OUTLAW marriage entirely and simply compel the localities issue civil union licenses until November 2004.
Again, this is the sort of nasty passive aggressive Dairy Queen regional manager type thinking that will in sort order be the downfall of the Commonwealth.
It also irrationally presupposes that the lege will actually revisit the marriage issue any time soon, one doubts they will do this short of a sudden outbreak of galloping dementia.
Alas these are the tattered bankrupt notions the Kolobian Viceroy is conjuring with.
Of course this being Romney he could well invite the usual out of state "volunteers" and interested wowsers to invade and occupy all 351 town and city clerks offices in a mass act of civil disobedience.
The idea being to get all the brides and grooms in the Commonwealth mad at the gays for "causing" all this trouble.
I promise you, dangerous and inane stunts like this are under discussion in the Romney politburo even as I write this.
The court has spoken, the state legislature has spoken, but GOD FORBID Governor Romney should act as anything but an enforcer of the law...no no no....his sworn constitutional duty comes in a distant sad second when there is serious toadying to do before an ugly national constituency.
Rest assured that when the Governor settles on a "transitional" anti-gay marriage policy it will be a churlish and unpleasant thing indeed.

Sick
Demented
Typical....

Echoes and such like...

The nice thing about writing the Chimes at Midnight is the sure knowledge that very few people are actually reading it.
If the "blogosphere ecosystem" is to be believed this teensy page's popularity runs somewhere behind the "Jesus for President" campaign weblog.
So when a local columnist actually agrees with me on a subject, I can happily attribute the confluence to serendipity and move on with a light heart.
Such was the case this morning with Joan Vennochi, who has abruptly decided that the Governor's tortured permutations on the subject of gay marriage are a function of his growing appetite for higher office.
Waaa-aal sheee-it...ah told yuh just the same over a month ago!
Yay for serendipity!
Hell, gay marriage is not only the debut of Romney's presidential dementia but also concurrently the early demise of his "reform" program in the Commonwealth.
One might even say that a steadfast opposition to gay marriage and Romney's ambition is a unholy but not unexpected set of nuptials all on it's own.
Whatever happened to defending people's rights?
Whatever happened to enforcing a law you personally disagree with?
All vanished under the wintery blasts from a few mouthy out of state wowsers who have taken up stations on Boston Common.
Romney saw these people with their inflexibility, fanaticism and ignorance as future Romney serfs and voters in every way.
And not for nothing but Joan Vennocchi ought to be smart enough to realize Romney was a glib, ambitious, spineless opportunist back in campaign 2002....
Alas a charmless naivete' characterizes local political reportage these days.
I realize that I am repeating myself here....but as any columnist will tell you, repetition is the soul of punditry.