What the Frankie Heck?

A shoutout to Patricia Heaton's wonderfully bumbling character from The Middle.  But did I see this right:

Here is the story. 

This is how bad things are for those who yearn for a time of freedom, democracy, and equality.  Having never fully achieved perfect equality, I guess it's time to scrap it.  So said the DEI training I saw in 2020.  The same mentality is being used with other ideals, like liberty and even our approach to democracy.  So apparently, a political party using the threat of legal prosecution to intimidate youth from joining the opposite party is now fair game?

Am I off base, or am I getting whiffs of the old pollical machines back in the day?  You know, ones that make you think of this:

But more than that, note the story. Should democrats threaten prosecution to deter people from joining the Trump administration?  Should political opponents of the Left be sent to Gulags or not? A vote.  Should the government send Jews to concentration camps?  A poll.  

A long standing media trick has been to make molehills out of mountains and mountains out of molehills.  To act like the killing of a black man by a police officer is the worst thing since the Holocaust or that sin entered the world, and therefore all of Western Civilization should burn.  While at the same time looking away from black Muslims in Africa slaughtering black Christians in Africa by the thousands because, let's face it, does that help leftwing talking points or activism? 

We're at that stage where standing against the institutionally driven storm of post-Western globalism is a bit like standing up in America two days after Pearl Harbor and saying I think we should surrender to Japan.  You will be manhandled in about the same way.  Because like the war effort in 1941, the powers of our society are mostly behind where it is going.  

So much so that a media outlet can ask for a vote on something that would have been presented as fascist authoritarianism 101 as recently as when my sons were in public school.  Yet now?  When those individuals and institutions that are supposed to protect you instead are able to come out and celebrate that they are, in fact, your greatest threat, you've officially crossed a historical line.  

BTW, this is why some people have such a hard time taking the hysterics about Trump's threat to democracy seriously.  

Guilty as charged

Here's a fun link on verbal ticks associated with life and conversations in the Buckeye State.  

Yes, we know it's Kroger, Meijer, and JC Penney.   But 99% of the time it's given an 'S' at the end.  Kroger's, Meijer's, Penney's.  Perhaps ownership acknowledgement?  Another fun one: Warsh.  As in 'It's in the wash.'  But more than anywhere else I've ever been, I'll hear it pronounced 'Warsh' in these parts.  Why?  I don't know.  The only one I didn't know and, to be honest, have never heard, is calling the trunk of a car The Boot.  In everywhere I've been, including Ohio, it's the trunk of the car.  But the others are fair.  

One that wasn't mentioned: Saying 'Yeah-no' before a sentence. This might be done elsewhere, but I hear it in Ohio more than anywhere else I have lived.  That is, you actually begin a sentence or a thought in this manner: 'Yeah-no, Ohio State will definitely go to the championship this year.'   'Yeah-no, congress is obviously dropping the ball on this.'  'Yeah-no, the Rolling Stones were simply not on the same level as the Beatles.'  Whether the speaker is agreeing or disagreeing with the subsequent statement is anyone's guess. 

Bonus:

My mom had an endless supply sayings.  She was the queen of quips, though never with more than a high school education.  Many were old saws of course.  She didn't invent them, but she had an endless store from which I learned my way around this old world.  Sayings like 'Lazy people work the hardest', or 'Worry about the person in the mirror before you worry about others', or 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.'  Of course some of it was probably from her family.  My uncle, who served in the Pacific in WW2, used to be fond of saying 'Wish in one hand and crap* in the other and see which one gets filled the fastest.'  So some of that inheritance I received was no doubt from where she received it.  Given the reputation her dad had of being rather blunt and opinionated, it's not hard to believe where they came from.  

But my all time favorite, because I have no clue what it means, was this gem she would say before wading into my sister or me to drive home a point: 'I'll to you one thing, and that ain't two things!'  Often proceeded by 'Buster.' If you can crack that code, beyond the obvious fact of the statement, you're smarter than I am.  To this day my sister and I have been unable to figure it out.  

*He didn't say 'crap', but you get the point. 

Prayers for Pope Leo

By now everyone has heard that Pope Leo is going in for surgery.  I think it's appropriate that we pause and pray that all goes well and the news is good.  I have no doubt he's well taken care of.  Nonetheless, he's human, and we all know what it is to face something like this.

As an aside, I have been heartened to see not a single person who has been critical of Pope Leo do anything but post prayers and hopes that he is well.  Oh, I'm sure if I deep delved it into the cesspool of darkest digital world, I'd find some.  

But on the surface and among those who come by my pages over the days, it's been prayers and prayers alone.  Be them conservative, MAGA, MAGA Catholic, radtrad or whatever.  The only thing I've seen is that we should gather with our thoughts and prayers and lift up Pope Leo, those medical pros tending to him, and ask that when the dust settles, he'll be OK.  So shines a good deed in a dark world. 

UPDATE:  By now many have heard the news that Pope Leo does have lung cancer.  Ugh.  I think if there is one thing that would unite all people it's that we are sick and tired of hearing that word.  So double down on prayers for Pope Leo, his loved ones and all who are impacted, and those within the medical world who will be using their gifts and talents to navigate this challenge of challenges.  

Mystery solved

I no longer follow Deacon Greydanus.  For the same reason I no longer bother with Mark Shea and many other of their ilk.  But on my own page, different posts will sometimes show up on a particular section from people I have followed to people I don't even know.  Well, this came by the other day:

Yep.  The Rocca Maggiore fortress is in Italy, in Assisi.  As in St. Francis of.  Meaning they're in Italy.  Why is this a thing?  Because I've long maintained that ever since John Lennon beckoned us to imagine no possessions from within his sprawling multi-million dollar English estate, the idea of Proxy Martyrdom has become a capstone of modern activism.

That is, words speak louder than actions.  And as long as it's other schmucks who take one for my righteousness, it's the price I'm willing to pay.  Why should I give up for the cause?  So as I watched the rise of the BLM/DEI driven group identity based treatment of people, it puzzled me why so many white Americans were happy with movements that basically say the only good white person is  a crushed in the mud white person.

Until I noticed a trend.  That is, on the street level this is often championed by younger white liberals who have been born and raised in this godless, pointless, meaningless society we've bequeathed them.  It's their way of finding purpose and meaning.  But they're not the only ones.  On the other end, I see a whole lot of ancient, gray haired hippies with their own vocations and professions happily in the rearview mirror and likely not impacted by the cheers of fewer white people and white men getting anywhere in society.

But it isn't always those two groups.  There are your average family types, like the good deacon.  Which puzzled me.  Until I also noticed something.  I came to realize that if you show me a working age family man or woman who is white and embraces this madness, I'll show you someone who is a globetrotter who sends his kids to private schools and universities.  That is, someone who has the money to make sure his kids have as many chances as possible not to be the ones whose opportunities are compromised due to skin color and other group identities.

Now I know virtually nothing about Greydanus.  I know he is a nationally known film critic.  I know that he is an ordained deacon with formal theological training who teaches at a Catholic school.  He reminded his readers of that a lot.  I also know his wife is in the medical field, but I don't know in what capacity.  And I know they homeschooled their own kids, and also sent them to private colleges.  But now I know they also take vacations to Italy.  

Meaning that they can't guarantee their own kids won't get it in the neck by the very demographic driven activism that he now supports in his full backing of the Left.  But they at least have the means to give them a chance others with less means can in no way ensure.  

Remember, Jesus didn't say if someone takes your cloak, then get someone else to give their tunic as well. Yet so many modern causes of righteousness seem founded on not having to give a brass farthing of personal investment or sacrifice for the cause while simultaneously claiming the moral high ground for embracing the same cause.  Like saying I'm anti-racist.  Big deal.  That cost me what?  Eleven keystrokes.  But doesn't it make me feel righteous!  Holy. Saintly.  The World says so, it must be true.  

But that's not how we should determine our priorities and causes.  Not that everything I agree with should force me to storm the beaches and take a bullet for the team.  But when virtually nothing I do costs me anything, but often costs my neighbor everything, it's time to rethink such offers of assurance for my moral superiority and righteousness.  Since by now, we should see what happens to a society where people can ascend the mountain of moral superiority through nothing other than posturing and words.  It doesn't take them long to find other causes to feed that sense of superiority, especially if everyone else has to pay the piper.  

It's a boy

Part II!  Turns out our second son and daughter-in-law are expecting yet again.  And if medical science is right on the nose, we once more have Griffey boy two, of the next generation.  That will be two, count them two, grandsons.  Meanwhile, the current gaggle of Griffey gremlins: 

They have no idea!

Yep, they don't know what's coming their way.  This, for those keeping score, will be three under three.  Woof.  As if two under two just wasn't challenging enough.  Our oldest son was almost three when our next son was born.  He was too young to do much, but he was old enough to do a little.  Truth be told, for only three, he did a good job trying to be that good big brother.  I can still see him trying to push his new brother in one of those baby swings at the park.   

But it was still enough to help.  Our granddaughter is not quite three yet, and won't be until well after our latest edition is due to be born.  So that's going to be a newborn, a toddler barely a year old, and the oldest a little over two and a half.  

That, folks, is why you have kids young.  It takes that much energy and stamina.  At my age, just thinking about it wears me out.  But so far they're doing something right.  Their first two are beautiful kids, even in those terrible twos, and I don't know that I've seen many children in my life more perpetually happy than their daughter.  So right there makes me glad for our latest edition to the Griffey dynasty. Congrats to them.  

I do not hate science

Nor do I think STEM is a vast communist conspiracy.  Nor do I pine for the good old days of Medieval medical treatments and outhouses.  As I've said plenty of times, I'll forever be grateful that I was born on the leeward side of the invention of toilet paper.

I also don't hate scientists.  My late father-in-law, a wonderful man, was a chemist.  Several of my friends over the years have been in the field of science or medicine.  Two teach or have PhDs in science - physics and chemistry.  And I'm personally fascinated by science, from geography and geology to astronomy (though on a very amateurish level to be sure). 

I say all that because a comment that was made on this post some years ago.  I sort of hope it was a comment meant for a good laugh or perhaps a bit of facetiousness.  Because the suggestion that I hate science, scientists and regard STEM as a vast Commie Pinko plot is simply bone headed wrong.  I obviously don't.

Do I think it's time to rethink our modern approach to science in light of religion?  Sure.  And I'm not talking about the laughable 'follow the science' or 'settled science' buzz phrases in modern political discourse.  Nor do I mean science as it is often misused in the atheist community as some trump card that once and for all proves there is no God.

I do mean that even when we reject such things as political or atheistic misuse of science, we can sometimes still be dragged into a rather material, secular vision of the world nonetheless. Oh we still speak of demons and angels and miracles, especially on Sundays.  But through the week, we can often seem as beholden to the secular spin on science and scholarship as the alpha and omega of reality as any devotee at a Richard Dawkins seminar.

That's also not to say we need to swing to the other extreme and assume I can't find the TV remote because a devil (or perhaps, on a better day, an angel) hid it form me.  Or think the best thing to do when my wife is having a heart attack is to break out the incense and pray that an angel appear to heal her..  Throughout most of history, believe it or not, people may have attributed more to the spiritual than was warranted, but people understood there was a natural part of the world as well.

It isn't as if you could go to a farmer in the darkest of ages and see him sitting next to a field, waiting for God to send angels to grow the crops.  Farmers worked on ways to plant and harvest, to fertilize and increase yields since the beginning of farming.  They understood that there were things you had to do within the world because that's life.  They may not have gotten molecules and DNA or genetics, but they understood that the best way to avoid getting trampled by a horse wasn't to stand in its way and pray that an angel appear and stop the horse, but rather to step aside and get out of the way.

I merely think that we've learned so much about how the universe works, we sometimes forget that the omnipresent 'Invisible' part of creation is still there.  I saw a scientist teaching science for my son's coursework a couple years ago.  Lab coat and everything.  It was part of a Christian curriculum. When teaching about the definition of science that begins every science class in the history of science classes, he used the example of people once upon a time believing you got sick because of demon possession, but now we know it's because of viruses or other infections.

My point is, perhaps saying 'she's sick because of demon possession' misses a few natural marks.  But maybe saying we found the virus means it obviously has nothing to do with anything but the virus misses another mark as well.

As we realize we're at a sort of flatlands right now in terms of leaps forward STEM-wise, and as it becomes clear that there are some problems associated with our 'tech in the morning, tech in the evening, tech at suppertime' culture, maybe it's time to rethink things.  Maybe try to find ways to rethink many elements of our faith that some today have jettisoned because 'Science.'  Perhaps focus on the spiritual senses of the Invisible creation a little more often than just those famous Five physical senses. 

And in the process, perhaps stop following the world around and waiting for the latest theory that we then assume demands we rethink the Church's worldview because Science!. Take, for example, one of the things I got while sojourning with the Orthodox that I will forever hold dear. 

During a Q&A, an Orthodox bishop was asked what the official Orthodox approach to Evolution is.  He said there isn't one.  The POV of the Orthodox is that if, by God's grace, the world is around in 2000 years, then people at that point will look back on our time and barely recognized 90% of everything we've come up with over the last couple centuries.  Either the theories will long before have been debunked, or new scientific revolutions will have completely upended our understanding of things in such a way that in 2000 years they'll barely be recognizable. Oh, there will be some that will still be accepted in 2000 years.  But it's the height of hubris to think it all will, or even most will.  Especially as we watch things only recently floated as obviously true that are now being thrown out the window. 

That's all I think.  As I sit on my computer and type for the Internet, the trick is to remember that the Visible is the small part of the small universe in a big, wide Creation.  The big part - the "Invisible" part we say in the Creed - is the big part of Creation. And the important part.  Understanding how a computer or nervous system or nuclear fusion works doesn't change that.  Any more than developing better irrigation methods did so thousands of years ago. 

Training ourselves to remember that the two - Religion and Science - are not exclusive, and that perhaps we've become a bit too secular in our approach to science  in light of revelation (or revelation in light of science), might be something worth thinking on.  Especially as we see more and more Christians abandoning the Faith because, in the end, they believe that God stuff went out with the coffee makers because obviously it did.  No hating science about it. 

The birth of the Victorian haunted house

I'm usually skeptical about this sort of history.  The old 'How hemorrhoids changed history', in terms of the supposed impact that particular condition had on Napoleon during the Battle of Waterloo.  The real origins of Halloween.  That sort of thing.  Trying to make simplistic sweeps about some historical development or event and explain it all in a bottle.

Nonetheless, it isn't to say such approaches are always wrong or bring nothing to the table. I simply figure there is more to it than what the article shows; other explanations, and other answers.  This might be one small idea in a bucket of ideas worth considering.

And it was fun.  As I wrote here, there are reasons haunted houses exist and we are drawn to them.  And no, the article here doesn't suggest Victorian houses were the basis for the idea.  That idea of haunted locations goes well beyond the emergence of Victorianism.  

My patron saint

Today is my saint day. As a Protestant minister, I had several references to St. Francis displayed prominently in my office.  And before I was a minister I admired St. Francis just the same.  Heck, before I was Christian I did.  

By the time I was in high school and college, the societal emphasis was increasingly on the sins of the West and its bastard child America.  Nonetheless, even with the negative focus, overall the final verdict was that, despite its manifold sins and evils, the West was still a net boon for the World. 

Likewise Christianity.  Naturally, by my time in college we were a functionally atheistic society.  And those secularists were not idle.  In multiple classes we were met with the various canards about religion being invented by ancient man in lieu of science, or the bible being riddled with errors and falsehoods, or simply treating various religious figures - including Jesus - as merely ancient religious rebels, often looking like John Lennon, and usually adhering to our  modern day's latest social activism.   

In all of that, however, was St. Francis.  In dealing with a figure who puzzled secular scholars, the parlor game - as with all academic parlor games - was to find a way of explaining him and his impact without the whole God stuff paradigm since, again, God and religion had long ago been debunked by science.  Sort of the way they did with Joan of Arc.  You know, her motivation was really a secret lesbian desire, or perhaps she had troubles with menstruating.  Anything other than the simplistic 'because God does exist' excuse. 

Despite attempts to downplay the supernatural or spiritual aspects, as one scholar noted, St. Francis was nonetheless still met with overwhelming choruses of praise and adoration even from the most secular of sources.  In many ways, because he lived it literally. 

Let's be honest, often times we appeal to some pretty strict and narrow interpretations of various biblical admonitions when it comes to everything from sex to greed to oppressing of the least of these.  But when it comes to the charge that we should sell everything and give it to the poor, we're fortunately reminded that Jesus clearly wasn't making a sweeping, general commandment.  Which for those of us in the wealthier parts of the world is always comforting to know.  And, yes, those outside the Faith do take note of such things, however they might be explained away.   

When it came to St. Francis, however, he clearly didn't get the memo.  And as one medieval historian I remember reading said, he decided to embrace his Lady Poverty, and it was a beautiful marriage.  He took things at face value and lived them.  And that, let me tell you, is always a powerful witness.

So powerful that even to this somewhat haphazard liberal agnostic, I couldn't help but conclude he really, really believed it.  We may sometimes mock those who say the Bible says it, I believe it, and then I live it. Yet there can be some good witnessing there.  And with St. Francis, it certainly was.  Including among so many historians and scholars of the time that I read.  And, quite frankly, including for me as well.  

It's not a surprise, therefore, that when I became a Christian, I still held onto St. Francis as I had already begun to do so as a non-believer.  And when we entered the Church and RCIA told me to pick my Patron Saint?  It took me about a half second.  So on this day when I'm reminded of a saint that has been near my shoulder since my college days, here is the always reliable and informative Fish Eaters breaking down all things St. Francis.  

This is interesting

And seasonal.  I wrote ages ago on the original spooky movies we watched as part of our annual Fall and Halloween viewing.  Most of the movies were not an every year occurrence, but a few became annual traditions right along with The Great Pumpkin and Halloween Haunts.  And one of those is often the 'kick-off' movie of the season, Universal's 1931 production of Dracula.  It was a favorite of my mom (released the year she was born), and I suppose that's one reason I have a fondness for it. Plus, it's just an excellent production, with sets and atmosphere that shame most modern attempts to capture the same feel.  And, as my sons like to point out, it helped teach the world that at least part of the classic ballet Swan Lake really belongs in the realm of horror. 

Well, it turns out that there was an epilogue for the movie that hasn't been shown in decades.  And it isn't part of any version of the movie I know.  Prologues weren't uncommon back then, having them from the original Frankenstein to DeMille's Ten Commandments in 1956.  But an epilogue? I wonder how common those were.  

Anyway, here it is.  A fitting post for the first day of that Month of spooky.  If the epilogue ran with the original release or was added later, I also don't know.  Again, this has only recently come to my attention because I think it was only recently unearthed.  It's Edward Van Sloan, who played Dr. Van Helsing in the movie, giving a final warning to the audience about, well, you know: