June 16
There was mention of Joe H. at mass on Sunday. Father Joe. A good man and a good priest, of compassion and courage. He ran afoul of diocesan authorities for his attempts to minister to homosexuals.
What actually happened was he caught the attention of a handful of truly rabid homophobes, who then, as guardians of orthodoxy, took as their blood mission to run him out of the priesthood. The bishop was not strong enough to stand up to them, was in fact enraged at having been put in the position of having to do so. Joe was to him a problem priest, and was soon disappeared. He has now surfaced in New Jersey, where one presumes that there are other voices in addition to the homophobic. He is still, thank God for the rest of us, a priest.
I wish I had been close enough with him that we could’ve remained friends. That would’ve been some kind of break for me, a break from reticence. Those are my second and third responses to hearing his name; pangs of regret. (My first response was to remember him fondly.)
I tend to blame myself, but in truth, I tried to start a relationship with Joe. Invited him over for dinner, more than once. Engaged him in email correspondence. Approached him on the running trail. We became friendly, but not friends. He had too many sheep to tend, and was in some ways more guarded than I was.
During those dinners here, he opened up. Literally took off his collar and lounged on the sofa, his thick gray hunting socks and huge pale calves protruding from his too-short black pant legs: the image of a New Jersey farm boy. Plied with a bit of Scotch, he dished the dirt, compared being called before the bishop to “getting into a pissing match with a skunk,” and also spoke sanely and sensitively and with conviction about important things. He especially liked Lola, in part, I think, because she is not Catholic. She liked him too, always favored him with a warm hug after mass. But when those dinners were over, the veil went back up.
We knew nothing, really, of his troubles—except what appeared in the newspaper: scathing letters to the editor written by his enemies and the tepid responses from the chancery. Knew that he was unhappy as a diocesan priest, heard that he had tried to join the Maryknolls and was rejected. In preparation for that application, he had gone to South America to study Spanish, and picked up an intestinal bug, and lost a lot of weight. (He was pleased afterward, said he’d been trying to lose.)
And then he disappeared. Eventually I discovered by googling him a couple of snippets indicating that he had gone back to New Jersey, but there was nothing definitive until this past Sunday, when our deacon mentioned that he had come for a visit. I was sorry that I had missed him.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Scene from the Gospels
May 30
“If you’re gonna be a Christian, you better look good on wood.”
--Daniel Berrigan
They are walking toward Jerusalem, a dusty road through open country. The twelve seem dazed; they’re tired and overloaded. The people behind are apprehensive. Where are we going?, they are wondering They keep a safe distance.
Jesus looks from his left to his right, at Peter, at Andrew. He shakes his head, a rueful smile breaking across his lips. Again he stops, pulls them aside.
“Do you understand what we’re doing?” he asks them patiently. They stare at him blankly. “We are going to Jerusalem,” he says again. “There, the Son of Man will be arrested. He will be accused. He will be beaten and spit on and scorned. He will be hung on a tree and left to die.” He pauses. “And he will rise again in glory.”
The Sons of Thunder perk up at that last part. Glory? “When you get to heaven, can we sit next to you?” one of them blurts.
He sighs. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Like children, they persist. “C’mon. We asked you first. Why not?”
He turns to look at them, eyes piercing, face now grave. “Can you drink the cup that I must drink?”
They glance at each other before answering. “Y-yes. We can drink it.”
His eyes and voice grow tender. “Indeed you will drink it, brothers,” he says quietly. “Indeed you will. But a place in the kingdom is not mine to give.”
The others approach. “A place in the kingdom? What’s all this?” Peter’s voice is indignant. There’s jostling.
He grabs Peter by the shoulders, firmly, but not roughly. The jostling stops. “Know this, brothers,” he says, back to smiling. “When men gain power, they seek out the high place for themselves, the seat of authority. It cannot be so with you.” Again, his voice grows tender, and he looks from one to the next. “With you, it must be like this: The one who is first is the one who serves all the rest.”
“If you would be first,” he repeats, “you must be servant to all the rest.”
They look at him. Some of their faces remain hopelessly blank. In others, though, in Peter’s and Andrew’s, a dim light of recognition finally dawns.
“If you’re gonna be a Christian, you better look good on wood.”
--Daniel Berrigan
They are walking toward Jerusalem, a dusty road through open country. The twelve seem dazed; they’re tired and overloaded. The people behind are apprehensive. Where are we going?, they are wondering They keep a safe distance.
Jesus looks from his left to his right, at Peter, at Andrew. He shakes his head, a rueful smile breaking across his lips. Again he stops, pulls them aside.
“Do you understand what we’re doing?” he asks them patiently. They stare at him blankly. “We are going to Jerusalem,” he says again. “There, the Son of Man will be arrested. He will be accused. He will be beaten and spit on and scorned. He will be hung on a tree and left to die.” He pauses. “And he will rise again in glory.”
The Sons of Thunder perk up at that last part. Glory? “When you get to heaven, can we sit next to you?” one of them blurts.
He sighs. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Like children, they persist. “C’mon. We asked you first. Why not?”
He turns to look at them, eyes piercing, face now grave. “Can you drink the cup that I must drink?”
They glance at each other before answering. “Y-yes. We can drink it.”
His eyes and voice grow tender. “Indeed you will drink it, brothers,” he says quietly. “Indeed you will. But a place in the kingdom is not mine to give.”
The others approach. “A place in the kingdom? What’s all this?” Peter’s voice is indignant. There’s jostling.
He grabs Peter by the shoulders, firmly, but not roughly. The jostling stops. “Know this, brothers,” he says, back to smiling. “When men gain power, they seek out the high place for themselves, the seat of authority. It cannot be so with you.” Again, his voice grows tender, and he looks from one to the next. “With you, it must be like this: The one who is first is the one who serves all the rest.”
“If you would be first,” he repeats, “you must be servant to all the rest.”
They look at him. Some of their faces remain hopelessly blank. In others, though, in Peter’s and Andrew’s, a dim light of recognition finally dawns.
Why I hate golf
May 29
My good friend I-man keeps trying to get me interested in playing golf. Now he’s trying to get my son, his godson, to play. I don’t have the heart to tell him how much I hate the sport.
Let me count the ways:
Because it is a Republican sport, a rich man’s sport, a wasteful sport, the sport of someone who would heedlessly impose himself on the environment. I hate it for moral reasons, as some people hate eating meat. I grew up across from a golf course, so I knew it sort of innocently. A nice course but not exclusive—not at that time. By now it has no doubt become so, a gated community. But then it was open for the neighborhood kids to crawl. Nobody chased us, or cared that we were there. Try cutting across a golf course today, to get here or there. Or sneaking there at night to have sex. They’ll sic the dogs on you.
It takes so much water, so many chemicals, so much money, to tame a place for golf. It’s an obscenity. Yet I met a man who designs courses, a nice and down-to-earth guy, a Bizup.
I hate it for the same reason I hate ice-skating. You’ve got to pay every time you do it, for God’s sake!
I can appreciate the skill required, the thrill of hitting well, the addictive nature of it. The whole being outdoors bit. But the expense!
My good friend I-man keeps trying to get me interested in playing golf. Now he’s trying to get my son, his godson, to play. I don’t have the heart to tell him how much I hate the sport.
Let me count the ways:
Because it is a Republican sport, a rich man’s sport, a wasteful sport, the sport of someone who would heedlessly impose himself on the environment. I hate it for moral reasons, as some people hate eating meat. I grew up across from a golf course, so I knew it sort of innocently. A nice course but not exclusive—not at that time. By now it has no doubt become so, a gated community. But then it was open for the neighborhood kids to crawl. Nobody chased us, or cared that we were there. Try cutting across a golf course today, to get here or there. Or sneaking there at night to have sex. They’ll sic the dogs on you.
It takes so much water, so many chemicals, so much money, to tame a place for golf. It’s an obscenity. Yet I met a man who designs courses, a nice and down-to-earth guy, a Bizup.
I hate it for the same reason I hate ice-skating. You’ve got to pay every time you do it, for God’s sake!
I can appreciate the skill required, the thrill of hitting well, the addictive nature of it. The whole being outdoors bit. But the expense!
Herman Wells of Indiana
May 23
In Bloomington for a conference last week, I saw plentiful evidence of one man’s legacy, how much good a single man with vision and energy can leave behind. The man was IU’s longtime president, Herman B. Wells.
I do not know where Wells came from, or how he got to the top. I don’t even know his academic specialty. But I walked through the magnificent concert hall that he had built, and I toured the Kinsey Institute, whose controversial mission he stoutly defended, and I walked (and ran) the beautiful campus he planned and developed, with its distinctive limestone buildings and its copious, richly imagined greenspace, and I didn’t wonder that people spoke of him always with reverence and awe.
His portraits are numerous around campus, a stout, round-faced, pleasant-looking man in a tan, 50s-era suit. So are the stories: of how he used to attend weeknight student recitals well into his 80s, of how he .
Perhaps the most impressive story was this: that through the worst of the McCarthy era, this lifelong bachelor, who lived with his mother until she died in her 90s, whose sexuality was a well-guarded secret, had the courage to resolutely defend Alfred Kinsey’s right to conduct and publish his research.
Surely MyU has never had such a leader.
In Bloomington for a conference last week, I saw plentiful evidence of one man’s legacy, how much good a single man with vision and energy can leave behind. The man was IU’s longtime president, Herman B. Wells.
I do not know where Wells came from, or how he got to the top. I don’t even know his academic specialty. But I walked through the magnificent concert hall that he had built, and I toured the Kinsey Institute, whose controversial mission he stoutly defended, and I walked (and ran) the beautiful campus he planned and developed, with its distinctive limestone buildings and its copious, richly imagined greenspace, and I didn’t wonder that people spoke of him always with reverence and awe.
His portraits are numerous around campus, a stout, round-faced, pleasant-looking man in a tan, 50s-era suit. So are the stories: of how he used to attend weeknight student recitals well into his 80s, of how he .
Perhaps the most impressive story was this: that through the worst of the McCarthy era, this lifelong bachelor, who lived with his mother until she died in her 90s, whose sexuality was a well-guarded secret, had the courage to resolutely defend Alfred Kinsey’s right to conduct and publish his research.
Surely MyU has never had such a leader.
Memories of graduate school
May 22
I was a shit in graduate school. On the first day, I taped a sheet of paper over the 8x10 glossy of Steve Martin with an arrow through his head that my office-mate had fixed to the painted cinder-block wall behind our shared cubicle. “I can’t stand him looking at me!” I scribbled on the paper in blue ink. My office-mate was rightly incensed; I have a memory of her tossing her hair and harrumphing indignantly at the edge of my vision. But she said nothing to me, and neither did any of the dozen other first-year grad students who shared the remaining cubicles. I was left to slowly recognize on my own what an ass I’d been. It took about a week, and I was much too shy to apologize.
This had been, and to some extent remains, the pattern of my interactions with people. Long bouts of vacuum-packed silence punctuated by eruptions of inappropriate boldness or ferocity. A kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing. My parents used to call me Vesuvio.
The result was that after that first day no one talked to me—no one except Howard, a shaggy, gangly 6-foot-6 inch Thoreauvian from south of Pittsburgh who happened to be a born-again Christian. Howard was drawn to me by his intuition that, unlike the others, I did not reflexively condemn his religion. He took a big brotherly interest in me, often talked to me about his church, but was never pushy. “Don’t you like people?” he once asked me after I expressed a distaste for crowded suburbs. It made me think. Howard would die of melanoma within a month of getting his Ph.D., leaving a wife and infant daughter.
Silent as I was, I spent a lot of time listening to conversations from behind my smoked-glass cubicle walls, quietly admiring the self-conscious repartee. Are there any souls more pretentious than graduate students in English literature?
I was a shit in graduate school. On the first day, I taped a sheet of paper over the 8x10 glossy of Steve Martin with an arrow through his head that my office-mate had fixed to the painted cinder-block wall behind our shared cubicle. “I can’t stand him looking at me!” I scribbled on the paper in blue ink. My office-mate was rightly incensed; I have a memory of her tossing her hair and harrumphing indignantly at the edge of my vision. But she said nothing to me, and neither did any of the dozen other first-year grad students who shared the remaining cubicles. I was left to slowly recognize on my own what an ass I’d been. It took about a week, and I was much too shy to apologize.
This had been, and to some extent remains, the pattern of my interactions with people. Long bouts of vacuum-packed silence punctuated by eruptions of inappropriate boldness or ferocity. A kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing. My parents used to call me Vesuvio.
The result was that after that first day no one talked to me—no one except Howard, a shaggy, gangly 6-foot-6 inch Thoreauvian from south of Pittsburgh who happened to be a born-again Christian. Howard was drawn to me by his intuition that, unlike the others, I did not reflexively condemn his religion. He took a big brotherly interest in me, often talked to me about his church, but was never pushy. “Don’t you like people?” he once asked me after I expressed a distaste for crowded suburbs. It made me think. Howard would die of melanoma within a month of getting his Ph.D., leaving a wife and infant daughter.
Silent as I was, I spent a lot of time listening to conversations from behind my smoked-glass cubicle walls, quietly admiring the self-conscious repartee. Are there any souls more pretentious than graduate students in English literature?
Too elite to eat meat?
May 8
This locavore business that I’m reading about in the New York Times: Is it just the latest fad? The latest someone wanting to make me feel guilty? That’s a Neanderthal response, I know, but why is this stuff always being pushed by people who have it all? The latest thing to be into. Cause of the week. Forget vegan. Or maybe on top of vegan.
In truth I have long had an affinity for eating local, within reason, as my father would say. I detest the idea of eating apples imported from Washington or New Zealand. But to get so religious and strict about it? Devotees of the “100-mile diet” eat nothing grown further than 100 miles from their homes. That means they deny themselves coffee, tea, flour, wine, in addition to most fruits and a good number of vegetables and God knows what all. Olives, for God’s sake. Olive oil. Anchovies. Gin. Chocolate!!
It’s enough to make you want to turn a firehose on these people. How about a less absolutist response? How about resolving to eat more locally instead of all locally? To eat more consciously? More reverently, even. To use less. Live more lightly.
It seems overwhelming, like it could become a full-time job. I’d rather remain in the dark. How can we live at all except by remaining in the dark? And yet Jesus tells us to do otherwise, to recognize our connectedness.
Here’s another excuse: I could never get Lori and Danny to convert. And: how could we give up the convenience? As it is we can hardly get meals on the table. And how could we afford it? This is what I mean by elitist. Slow food.
Doing something is better than doing nothing, right? What could be done? Buying more produce and meat from local farmers. Patronizing Stone Soup, the farmers’ markets. Participating in the vegetable co-op. Using re-usable grocery bags. Eating less meat. Eating less processed food. Being less wasteful. It would take more time, money, and effort. It would mean a commitment, and giving up convenience.
And why? Because it’s healthier? Yes. To eat better? Yes. But more because it uses fewer resources, and is more humane. To feel better about ourselves? Salve conscience?
Poor people “don’t have the luxury” of feeling guilty over how the chicken they’re eating was treated. This is true. But it also may be true that the reason they don’t have the luxury is that we do, and we exercise it ever-increasingly.
If I’m just doing this to feel better standing next to my eco-friendly, evolved, mature friends, it’s not going to work. (This is also a bad reason to try to write poetry.)
This locavore business that I’m reading about in the New York Times: Is it just the latest fad? The latest someone wanting to make me feel guilty? That’s a Neanderthal response, I know, but why is this stuff always being pushed by people who have it all? The latest thing to be into. Cause of the week. Forget vegan. Or maybe on top of vegan.
In truth I have long had an affinity for eating local, within reason, as my father would say. I detest the idea of eating apples imported from Washington or New Zealand. But to get so religious and strict about it? Devotees of the “100-mile diet” eat nothing grown further than 100 miles from their homes. That means they deny themselves coffee, tea, flour, wine, in addition to most fruits and a good number of vegetables and God knows what all. Olives, for God’s sake. Olive oil. Anchovies. Gin. Chocolate!!
It’s enough to make you want to turn a firehose on these people. How about a less absolutist response? How about resolving to eat more locally instead of all locally? To eat more consciously? More reverently, even. To use less. Live more lightly.
It seems overwhelming, like it could become a full-time job. I’d rather remain in the dark. How can we live at all except by remaining in the dark? And yet Jesus tells us to do otherwise, to recognize our connectedness.
Here’s another excuse: I could never get Lori and Danny to convert. And: how could we give up the convenience? As it is we can hardly get meals on the table. And how could we afford it? This is what I mean by elitist. Slow food.
Doing something is better than doing nothing, right? What could be done? Buying more produce and meat from local farmers. Patronizing Stone Soup, the farmers’ markets. Participating in the vegetable co-op. Using re-usable grocery bags. Eating less meat. Eating less processed food. Being less wasteful. It would take more time, money, and effort. It would mean a commitment, and giving up convenience.
And why? Because it’s healthier? Yes. To eat better? Yes. But more because it uses fewer resources, and is more humane. To feel better about ourselves? Salve conscience?
Poor people “don’t have the luxury” of feeling guilty over how the chicken they’re eating was treated. This is true. But it also may be true that the reason they don’t have the luxury is that we do, and we exercise it ever-increasingly.
If I’m just doing this to feel better standing next to my eco-friendly, evolved, mature friends, it’s not going to work. (This is also a bad reason to try to write poetry.)
Monday, May 07, 2007
Gene Yang’s Thang
At a recent talk on children’s literature, the presenter spoke of the growing popularity of graphic novels, and their use in schools. My knee-jerk reaction—disdain for these “non-books,” lament for the death of reading—was overcome by one of his examples, a volume titled American Born Chinese by a young San Franciscan named Gene Yang.
The speaker held this book up, literally, as a serious work for young adults, one that had won an important award, a story about growing up Asian American. As the father of a five-year-old Asian-born son, I was intrigued. The book’s clean handsome graphics drew me in immediately, and I was touched when after the program three young Asian women, Chinese graduate students, approached the lectern and shyly professed their love for it. The next day I borrowed the book from the local library—mildly surprised that they had it—and read it in an hour and a half.
American Born Chinese is a book about immigrant identity, specifically the tensions faced by Asian American kids who feel caught between the old world and the new, distanced from their parents but not accepted by their American peers. On top of the normal trials of adolescence, they are visibly and self-consciously “other,” and so subject to an amplified version of the cross-currents of longing and shame, anger and self-loathing that roil the passage to adulthood. It’s a fresh take on an old story.
The book is composed of three distinct stories that play out in alternating chapters. The central story is that of Jin Wang, a boy whose family has just moved from Chinatown to the suburbs, and his efforts to make his way in his new, lily-white, middle school. Jin’s story is flanked on the one hand by a version of the archetypal Chinese legend of the Monkey King, a fiery proud trickster who tangles with the gods, and on the other by the antics of ChinKee, an agglomeration of comically exaggerated Asian stereotypes who torments his American “cousin” Danny with his egregious behavior. Yang weaves these strands into a compelling, humorous and finally rewarding whole, using the side stories to echo and deepen our understanding of Jin’s progress.
Yang, by day a high-school teacher, is particularly adept at rendering the tender contradictions of Jin’s adolescent psyche as he struggles between wanting desperately to fit in and being himself. The side stories illuminate and in the end gracefully reveal themselves as aspects of this psyche personified.
The graphic medium seems ideal for this combination of realism and fable, humor and poignancy. Yang’s cinematic eye, strong, unfussy drawings, and spare, well-written dialogue make a sometimes painful story wonderfully accessible, in a style reminiscent of Spiegelman’s Maus. With sensitivity and compassion, he guides young-adult readers through Jin’s confusion and rage over various trials to his final hard-won self-acceptance, offering through this sympathetic and well-drawn character a model of hope and understanding for their own lives.
The story has layers of resonance; it speaks first to Asian American kids, then to other immigrant kids, and finally to all kids, immigrant or not. American Born Chinese is a worthy, well-wrought book, and it opened my eyes. I want to learn more about Gene Yang, and about the world of graphic novels. And I’m going to buy a copy for my son.
The speaker held this book up, literally, as a serious work for young adults, one that had won an important award, a story about growing up Asian American. As the father of a five-year-old Asian-born son, I was intrigued. The book’s clean handsome graphics drew me in immediately, and I was touched when after the program three young Asian women, Chinese graduate students, approached the lectern and shyly professed their love for it. The next day I borrowed the book from the local library—mildly surprised that they had it—and read it in an hour and a half.
American Born Chinese is a book about immigrant identity, specifically the tensions faced by Asian American kids who feel caught between the old world and the new, distanced from their parents but not accepted by their American peers. On top of the normal trials of adolescence, they are visibly and self-consciously “other,” and so subject to an amplified version of the cross-currents of longing and shame, anger and self-loathing that roil the passage to adulthood. It’s a fresh take on an old story.
The book is composed of three distinct stories that play out in alternating chapters. The central story is that of Jin Wang, a boy whose family has just moved from Chinatown to the suburbs, and his efforts to make his way in his new, lily-white, middle school. Jin’s story is flanked on the one hand by a version of the archetypal Chinese legend of the Monkey King, a fiery proud trickster who tangles with the gods, and on the other by the antics of ChinKee, an agglomeration of comically exaggerated Asian stereotypes who torments his American “cousin” Danny with his egregious behavior. Yang weaves these strands into a compelling, humorous and finally rewarding whole, using the side stories to echo and deepen our understanding of Jin’s progress.
Yang, by day a high-school teacher, is particularly adept at rendering the tender contradictions of Jin’s adolescent psyche as he struggles between wanting desperately to fit in and being himself. The side stories illuminate and in the end gracefully reveal themselves as aspects of this psyche personified.
The graphic medium seems ideal for this combination of realism and fable, humor and poignancy. Yang’s cinematic eye, strong, unfussy drawings, and spare, well-written dialogue make a sometimes painful story wonderfully accessible, in a style reminiscent of Spiegelman’s Maus. With sensitivity and compassion, he guides young-adult readers through Jin’s confusion and rage over various trials to his final hard-won self-acceptance, offering through this sympathetic and well-drawn character a model of hope and understanding for their own lives.
The story has layers of resonance; it speaks first to Asian American kids, then to other immigrant kids, and finally to all kids, immigrant or not. American Born Chinese is a worthy, well-wrought book, and it opened my eyes. I want to learn more about Gene Yang, and about the world of graphic novels. And I’m going to buy a copy for my son.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Virginia Tech
I am seeing this now, rightly or wrongly, as an immigrant's story. My heart bleeds for this kid, caught between two cultures, isolated, the question mark. His parents working all hours to make a life. He has no one to talk to, fits in nowhere, and it just spirals downward until he snaps. That these pressures, these traumas, at least aggravated and finally destroyed a psyche that was already fragile. Take this terribly, worryingly, pathologically shy kid, born into a culture that is achievement-driven and ashamed of weakness, make him an alien, isolate him, separate him from his family...
The no-one-reaching-out-to-him, I tend to buy that too. But then his roommates sure sounded like they tried, and longer than I would've done. Still, maybe no one had time or cared enough to try hard enough. (Fr. Flanagan: "There are no bad boys.")
I bleed for his parents, too, and the immigrants' dilemma; the terrible cost. And it makes me feel guilty for how easy I've had it.
But what about the evil that can curdle self-pity? The choice for that?
One of the Korean pastors quoted in the paper had the courage to tell his congregation that the potential for such evil is in all of us, that "I am not so different from Cho. The father of one of the victims had the courage and compassion to call for prayers for Cho's parents, "for they too have lost a son." Some of the VT students had the strength to resolve that "we need to reach out to the loners."
Surely the voice of Christ is from these, and from Lucinda Roy, who noticed the crying behind the sunglasses and tried to help, scared as she was, and not from Nikki Giovanni, who could not see beyond the "meanness," the "weirdness," the "crap," or Leonard Pitts, who wrote "I don't want to understand this pathetic kid."
The no-one-reaching-out-to-him, I tend to buy that too. But then his roommates sure sounded like they tried, and longer than I would've done. Still, maybe no one had time or cared enough to try hard enough. (Fr. Flanagan: "There are no bad boys.")
I bleed for his parents, too, and the immigrants' dilemma; the terrible cost. And it makes me feel guilty for how easy I've had it.
But what about the evil that can curdle self-pity? The choice for that?
One of the Korean pastors quoted in the paper had the courage to tell his congregation that the potential for such evil is in all of us, that "I am not so different from Cho. The father of one of the victims had the courage and compassion to call for prayers for Cho's parents, "for they too have lost a son." Some of the VT students had the strength to resolve that "we need to reach out to the loners."
Surely the voice of Christ is from these, and from Lucinda Roy, who noticed the crying behind the sunglasses and tried to help, scared as she was, and not from Nikki Giovanni, who could not see beyond the "meanness," the "weirdness," the "crap," or Leonard Pitts, who wrote "I don't want to understand this pathetic kid."
Monday, April 23, 2007
The boys are back. Maybe? L'il bit?
It's not clear yet whether it was my last post or the team meeting that did it, but the Phillies have shown distinct signs of life in their last two games. The kid, Cole Hamels, pitched a masterpiece on Saturday night, striking out 15 Reds and getting the complete game. Utley hit a homer and a double. And the infield pulled off a triple play to boot! "Nunez to Rollins to Dobbs," oh my.
Then yesterday afternoon Freddy Garcia looked pretty good for 5+ innings, and the hitters finally erupted. Two more doubles for Utley, and Ryan Howard, back after three games, taxed one to center.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
Then yesterday afternoon Freddy Garcia looked pretty good for 5+ innings, and the hitters finally erupted. Two more doubles for Utley, and Ryan Howard, back after three games, taxed one to center.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
You said it, brother.
In one of his Lenten retreat talks, Creighton’s Larry Gillick, SJ, quotes Orwell:
“ ‘It’s a tremendous human struggle just to see the things that are right under your nose —’ to become alert and attentive and stay that way.”
“ ‘It’s a tremendous human struggle just to see the things that are right under your nose —’ to become alert and attentive and stay that way.”
De profundis
The Phillies lost another heartbreaker last night. At 4-11, they are now officially the worst team in baseball.
Last night it was Tom “Flash” Gordon’s turn to blow it. After Jon Lieber pitched beautifully in his first start since being reinstated, and Charlie Manuel walked the managing tightrope to get the Phillies out of the 6th, and Alfonseca and Myers did their jobs well in the 7th and 8th, respectively, Gordon came on in the 9th with a 1-0 lead, got two outs, and then gave up a game-tying homer to a guy whose name I can’t remember. Back out for the 10th, Gordon completely unraveled. The Reds won it, 2-1, with only four hits.
Yes, the offense was terrible, too. Their only run was a gift—a third-to-first throwing error that Carlos Ruiz exploited well to score from second. Ruiz is one of few bright spots outside Myers and the starting pitching. A man among zombies, he has been a spunky hitter, a fine defensive catcher, and smart on the bases.
Utley, Howard, Burrell, Rowand, Helms, Victorino. None of these guys is hitting worth a damn. Burrell has hit, but not in the clutch. Utley and Howard are still in hibernation. They’ll come out of it, everybody says. Sure, but by then the Phillies may be all but invisible in the Mets’ (or the Braves’) rear-view mirror. Howard sat for the second day with a leg injury that I haven’t seen specified. He may struggle all year. Utley’s patience has been painful to watch, as he waits grimly for the sap to start flowing. Only Jimmy Rollins has played up to his pre-season prediction.
The bullpen is a disaster zone, as predicted. Geary and Madson have been awful, and Gordon himself has appeared shaky. The converted Myers has pitched well in two outings, looking strong-armed and determined, and Alfonseca (the big-bellied, six-fingered “El Pulpo”) has been fairly effective. Too early to tell whether the fire-throwing Rosario can help. Last night, I found myself willing Charlie to leave Myers in to pitch the 9th. I have a feeling that Gordon, the compact, coil-springed right-hander, may be reaching the end of the line. He’s been a real pro, and he looks strong physically, but right now I don’t see him lasting the season as closer.
“It’s still early.” They’re still saying that in the locker room, but by now it’s coming through clenched teeth. There’ve already been a half-dozen dispiriting losses like last night’s. How many more until their confidence, and their season, slip away entirely?
Last night it was Tom “Flash” Gordon’s turn to blow it. After Jon Lieber pitched beautifully in his first start since being reinstated, and Charlie Manuel walked the managing tightrope to get the Phillies out of the 6th, and Alfonseca and Myers did their jobs well in the 7th and 8th, respectively, Gordon came on in the 9th with a 1-0 lead, got two outs, and then gave up a game-tying homer to a guy whose name I can’t remember. Back out for the 10th, Gordon completely unraveled. The Reds won it, 2-1, with only four hits.
Yes, the offense was terrible, too. Their only run was a gift—a third-to-first throwing error that Carlos Ruiz exploited well to score from second. Ruiz is one of few bright spots outside Myers and the starting pitching. A man among zombies, he has been a spunky hitter, a fine defensive catcher, and smart on the bases.
Utley, Howard, Burrell, Rowand, Helms, Victorino. None of these guys is hitting worth a damn. Burrell has hit, but not in the clutch. Utley and Howard are still in hibernation. They’ll come out of it, everybody says. Sure, but by then the Phillies may be all but invisible in the Mets’ (or the Braves’) rear-view mirror. Howard sat for the second day with a leg injury that I haven’t seen specified. He may struggle all year. Utley’s patience has been painful to watch, as he waits grimly for the sap to start flowing. Only Jimmy Rollins has played up to his pre-season prediction.
The bullpen is a disaster zone, as predicted. Geary and Madson have been awful, and Gordon himself has appeared shaky. The converted Myers has pitched well in two outings, looking strong-armed and determined, and Alfonseca (the big-bellied, six-fingered “El Pulpo”) has been fairly effective. Too early to tell whether the fire-throwing Rosario can help. Last night, I found myself willing Charlie to leave Myers in to pitch the 9th. I have a feeling that Gordon, the compact, coil-springed right-hander, may be reaching the end of the line. He’s been a real pro, and he looks strong physically, but right now I don’t see him lasting the season as closer.
“It’s still early.” They’re still saying that in the locker room, but by now it’s coming through clenched teeth. There’ve already been a half-dozen dispiriting losses like last night’s. How many more until their confidence, and their season, slip away entirely?
Bromberg at the State
Lola and I caught David Bromberg (and the “Angel Band”) last night at the newly refurbished (and magnificent) State Theater. I couldn’t stop marveling that I had last seen him some 27 years ago, at a long-demolished bar here in town called the Brickhouse. So apparently had a fair number in the crowd; several voices yelled out "Brickhouse!" throughout the evening, to no response from the stage.
The crowd was relaxed and a little rowdy. (Before the band came on, one guy hollered at the M.C., “Can we smoke pot?” “Not unless you have enough for everybody,” was the retort.) The show began with a short set by the Angel Band, a sweet-harmonizing female trio made up of two sexy young things and Bromberg’s wailing, witty wife. “Obi Wan” Bromberg she called him, introducing him with the rest of her back-up band.
After intermission, Obi and his sidemen reassembled as the David Bromberg Quartet. It was quickly evident that the old master can still bring it. He is thick-waisted now, and gray-bearded, and his antic side has been diminished, but he still sings, plays, and performs with great soul and wizardry, and that old wicked wit. He still plays country blues guitar like Robert Johnson and vamps like Bo Diddley. Still has that nasally, textured, mercurial voice that runs from a full-out blues shout to a a falsetto whisper and back again, accompanied by an amazing range of funny, tortured grimaces as he wrings blazing notes from the neck of his guitar. Still does “Sharon.”
No surprise that his sidemen on mandolin and fiddle are brilliant. The two sets made an appealing contrast: the sweetness and sass and hymn-like qualities of the Angel Band followed by the rambunctious low-down blues and ball-busting virtuosity of the Quartet. Only Bromberg remained on stage all night. He played ‘til he was tired, and left his old fans smiling.
The crowd was relaxed and a little rowdy. (Before the band came on, one guy hollered at the M.C., “Can we smoke pot?” “Not unless you have enough for everybody,” was the retort.) The show began with a short set by the Angel Band, a sweet-harmonizing female trio made up of two sexy young things and Bromberg’s wailing, witty wife. “Obi Wan” Bromberg she called him, introducing him with the rest of her back-up band.
After intermission, Obi and his sidemen reassembled as the David Bromberg Quartet. It was quickly evident that the old master can still bring it. He is thick-waisted now, and gray-bearded, and his antic side has been diminished, but he still sings, plays, and performs with great soul and wizardry, and that old wicked wit. He still plays country blues guitar like Robert Johnson and vamps like Bo Diddley. Still has that nasally, textured, mercurial voice that runs from a full-out blues shout to a a falsetto whisper and back again, accompanied by an amazing range of funny, tortured grimaces as he wrings blazing notes from the neck of his guitar. Still does “Sharon.”
No surprise that his sidemen on mandolin and fiddle are brilliant. The two sets made an appealing contrast: the sweetness and sass and hymn-like qualities of the Angel Band followed by the rambunctious low-down blues and ball-busting virtuosity of the Quartet. Only Bromberg remained on stage all night. He played ‘til he was tired, and left his old fans smiling.
The Witch is Dead
The horror at Virginia Tech has chased the Imus “scandal” off the stage. I told myself that I wouldn’t spend a moment of my life thinking about the demise of this puerile bloviator, but then found myself drawn to columns by Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, and E.J. Dionne, among others, and a Time cover story on the debacle.
These stories came after the initial wave, and in response to it. There were endless tropes:
--The hypocrisy of the corporations, Imus’s employers, who remained silent until they could gauge the level of public outrage, then cut the guy loose.
--The hypocrisy of those Imus pals who now condemned Imus (again after sniffing the wind) after having profited from “looking the other way” for so many years.
--The hypocrisy of those who crucified Imus for using language that black rappers use, with impunity, every day. (“Prison culture,” one African-American commentator called it.)
--The hypocrisy of Imus’s delayed-onset apologetics.
--The hypocrisy of Al Sharpton.
--The despicable unfairness of a media superstar randomly disparaging a group of heretofore anonymous young women. (This is what “did it.”)
--Imus’s redeeming qualities, grudgingly allowed.
--The frat-boy ugliness at the core of Imus’s act. (Somehow, Imus’s actual physical ugliness—his baleful hawk-like visage, the Wicked Witch of the West in a cowboy hat—was left untouched. There were many mentions of his advanced age and irrelevance.)
--The idea that this incident would or should “re-open” a discussion of race relations in the U.S. (Sure it will.)
--The idea that PC is dead, and there’s something worse in its place: rampant, juvenile incivility. We are Frat boy/Gangsta Nation. Idiocracy.
--The heroic class displayed by the Rutgers women.
I think the most bizarre moment in the whole ordeal was the CNN camera vigil in front of the New Jersey governor’s mansion. Imus had gone there to meet with the women and apologize “privately;” CNN seemed to want to give this meeting the gravity of the JFK funeral. The surrealism was cranked up even higher when it came out later that Gov. Corzine, racing through the Jersey night in his government SUV to make this historic klieg-lighted encounter, had crashed on the Turnpike and nearly been killed.
Second most bizarre were the reports that the right-wing was terrified that this was but the first move in a vast liberal conspiracy to bring down all of talk radio: “Is Rush Limbaugh next?”
Finally, though, I think Slate culture critic Stephen Metcalf summed it up best in trying to account for “the I-man”’s immense popularity over all these years:
“How iced-out in the bedroom and thumbed-under at work are America’s commuters,” Metcalf wrote, “that they find drive-time radio funny?”
These stories came after the initial wave, and in response to it. There were endless tropes:
--The hypocrisy of the corporations, Imus’s employers, who remained silent until they could gauge the level of public outrage, then cut the guy loose.
--The hypocrisy of those Imus pals who now condemned Imus (again after sniffing the wind) after having profited from “looking the other way” for so many years.
--The hypocrisy of those who crucified Imus for using language that black rappers use, with impunity, every day. (“Prison culture,” one African-American commentator called it.)
--The hypocrisy of Imus’s delayed-onset apologetics.
--The hypocrisy of Al Sharpton.
--The despicable unfairness of a media superstar randomly disparaging a group of heretofore anonymous young women. (This is what “did it.”)
--Imus’s redeeming qualities, grudgingly allowed.
--The frat-boy ugliness at the core of Imus’s act. (Somehow, Imus’s actual physical ugliness—his baleful hawk-like visage, the Wicked Witch of the West in a cowboy hat—was left untouched. There were many mentions of his advanced age and irrelevance.)
--The idea that this incident would or should “re-open” a discussion of race relations in the U.S. (Sure it will.)
--The idea that PC is dead, and there’s something worse in its place: rampant, juvenile incivility. We are Frat boy/Gangsta Nation. Idiocracy.
--The heroic class displayed by the Rutgers women.
I think the most bizarre moment in the whole ordeal was the CNN camera vigil in front of the New Jersey governor’s mansion. Imus had gone there to meet with the women and apologize “privately;” CNN seemed to want to give this meeting the gravity of the JFK funeral. The surrealism was cranked up even higher when it came out later that Gov. Corzine, racing through the Jersey night in his government SUV to make this historic klieg-lighted encounter, had crashed on the Turnpike and nearly been killed.
Second most bizarre were the reports that the right-wing was terrified that this was but the first move in a vast liberal conspiracy to bring down all of talk radio: “Is Rush Limbaugh next?”
Finally, though, I think Slate culture critic Stephen Metcalf summed it up best in trying to account for “the I-man”’s immense popularity over all these years:
“How iced-out in the bedroom and thumbed-under at work are America’s commuters,” Metcalf wrote, “that they find drive-time radio funny?”
No nukes
It has been at least six months since our microwave oven conked out. Remarkable how little we’ve missed it. Left-overs heat just fine in a pan on the stove—just add a little water—and “nuked” coffee tastes of metal anyway. The only other thing we used it for, besides occasional defrosting, was popcorn. That, too, is better done in a pot: It comes out less dry and airy, and more flavorsome, and you aren’t a hostage to additives.
Lola’s mom wanted to buy us a new one. She couldn’t survive without hers, and our deprivation seems unimaginable to her. My folks, too, are in the habit of using their “micro,” along with their George Foreman grill. They use it most to heat water for tea, which may be the perfect example of how modern gadgets can take the soul out of cookery. What could be more satisfying, more peacefully engaging, than the simple ritual of preparing tea, or coffee, the old-fashioned way?
Lola’s mom wanted to buy us a new one. She couldn’t survive without hers, and our deprivation seems unimaginable to her. My folks, too, are in the habit of using their “micro,” along with their George Foreman grill. They use it most to heat water for tea, which may be the perfect example of how modern gadgets can take the soul out of cookery. What could be more satisfying, more peacefully engaging, than the simple ritual of preparing tea, or coffee, the old-fashioned way?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Prelude to a kiss-off?
Ominous news out of Clearwater today. Tom Gordon is headed north, to be checked out by one of the Phillies’ approved orthopedic men. The team predictably poo-pooed this development as strictly precautionary, but the fact is that their entire season may hang in the balance. Gordon, the closer, is the only solid bullpen performer they have, despite a winter of trying unsuccessfully to deal for a set-up guy. He was old when they got him, and broke down at the end of last season—and the Phillies have no insurance! Without Gordon healthy at the start, their chances to jump out on the Mets, and even to be competitive, are approximately nil. Now the question is, will they panic and do something drastic, and further disrupt a team that seemed to be starting to jell? Will they trade away a position player they can’t afford to lose, like Aaron Rowand? Will the seemingly far-fetched idea of converting Brett Myers into a closer actually come to pass? Word is that Jon Lieber, the sixth of their five starters, the guy they were trying to shop, is pitching well. Does this make retooling Myers, possibly their best starter, a real option?
The other story lines from camp are painfully trivial: Pat Burrell can’t get used to his new contact lenses, the ones the team insists on him trying and he says he doesn’t need. Now begins the relentless questioning of his eyesight in earnest, started by a single epithet uttered in frustration behind the batting cage and rippling out across the vast ocean of chat rooms and call-in shows until the end of time, or he stops looking at called third strikes, whichever comes first. How does any human being withstand the endless kicking this guy takes as the Phillies designated scapegoat without either slitting his own throat or punching the remaining teeth down the throats of a half-dozen inebriated loudmouths in some foul-smelling Kensington taproom just before last call in the midst of a long home losing streak during which he’s gone 1 for 13? It almost makes his grossly overinflated salary seem justified.
The feel-good story is that of journeyman outfielder Greg Dobbs, who in dark-horse pursuit of the fifth outfield spot is evidently hitting the bejesus out of the ball. His would-be teammates have taken to calling him Roy Hobbs, after Malamud’s mythic slugger, or more accurately after Robert Redford’s. Even the skipper seems to be rooting for him.
The other story lines from camp are painfully trivial: Pat Burrell can’t get used to his new contact lenses, the ones the team insists on him trying and he says he doesn’t need. Now begins the relentless questioning of his eyesight in earnest, started by a single epithet uttered in frustration behind the batting cage and rippling out across the vast ocean of chat rooms and call-in shows until the end of time, or he stops looking at called third strikes, whichever comes first. How does any human being withstand the endless kicking this guy takes as the Phillies designated scapegoat without either slitting his own throat or punching the remaining teeth down the throats of a half-dozen inebriated loudmouths in some foul-smelling Kensington taproom just before last call in the midst of a long home losing streak during which he’s gone 1 for 13? It almost makes his grossly overinflated salary seem justified.
The feel-good story is that of journeyman outfielder Greg Dobbs, who in dark-horse pursuit of the fifth outfield spot is evidently hitting the bejesus out of the ball. His would-be teammates have taken to calling him Roy Hobbs, after Malamud’s mythic slugger, or more accurately after Robert Redford’s. Even the skipper seems to be rooting for him.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Profiles in courage, and other virtues
There were three interesting obituaries in today's New York Times:
The first tells the story of William R. Anderson, the Navy commander who in August 1958 led the nuclear sub Nautilus on a historic voyage to the North Pole. "At a time of rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union over who would first send humans into space," the paper says, "the accomplishment was greeted by banner headlines around the world." The Nautilus traveled 8,146 nautical miles in 21 days, "much of the way under the polar ice." The crew charted holes in the ice in case of emergency.
Anderson was a country boy from Tennessee, who later was elected to Congress. There in 1970 he stood up on the House floor to denounce J. Edgar Hoover for attacking Dan and Phil Berrigan for their opposition to the Vietnam War. Hoover's claim that the Berrigans were planning to kidnap a government official, Anderson said, was over-the-top McCarthyism. A Democrat, Anderson had been a supporter of the war, but changed his mind after visiting Vietnam.
The second remembers Henri Troyat, French writer of 105 books, whose name I have heard, whose books I may have, but who I have never read. "A day without writing made him feel like a sinner," remembers one of his comrades. Troyat claimed to have taught himself to write by reading paragraphs from Flaubert, then trying to rewrite them from memory. Then he would compare his version to the original, and "try to understand why what I had written was an affront to what I had read." He wrote mostly novels and biographies, and his style was "above all accessible." He was 95.
The third describes the AIDS-shortened life of Bob Hattoy, an adviser to Bill Clinton on gay issues. Hattoy is remembered as a fighter, someone who was never satisfied. In a televised speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, soon after he had learned he had the disease, he addressed himself to President George H.W.Bush: "I don't want to die," he said. "But I don't want to live in an America where the president sees me as the enemy." His words apparently gave many people hope. He was 56 when he died.
The first tells the story of William R. Anderson, the Navy commander who in August 1958 led the nuclear sub Nautilus on a historic voyage to the North Pole. "At a time of rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union over who would first send humans into space," the paper says, "the accomplishment was greeted by banner headlines around the world." The Nautilus traveled 8,146 nautical miles in 21 days, "much of the way under the polar ice." The crew charted holes in the ice in case of emergency.
Anderson was a country boy from Tennessee, who later was elected to Congress. There in 1970 he stood up on the House floor to denounce J. Edgar Hoover for attacking Dan and Phil Berrigan for their opposition to the Vietnam War. Hoover's claim that the Berrigans were planning to kidnap a government official, Anderson said, was over-the-top McCarthyism. A Democrat, Anderson had been a supporter of the war, but changed his mind after visiting Vietnam.
The second remembers Henri Troyat, French writer of 105 books, whose name I have heard, whose books I may have, but who I have never read. "A day without writing made him feel like a sinner," remembers one of his comrades. Troyat claimed to have taught himself to write by reading paragraphs from Flaubert, then trying to rewrite them from memory. Then he would compare his version to the original, and "try to understand why what I had written was an affront to what I had read." He wrote mostly novels and biographies, and his style was "above all accessible." He was 95.
The third describes the AIDS-shortened life of Bob Hattoy, an adviser to Bill Clinton on gay issues. Hattoy is remembered as a fighter, someone who was never satisfied. In a televised speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, soon after he had learned he had the disease, he addressed himself to President George H.W.Bush: "I don't want to die," he said. "But I don't want to live in an America where the president sees me as the enemy." His words apparently gave many people hope. He was 56 when he died.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Impatient, ungrateful, critical. And happy.
An epic account of a very ordinary evening.
On Wednesday we went to the taco dinner put on by the Catholic students of “Mission Mexico.” They’ll be spending Spring break at an orphanage in Tijuana, and this is one of their major fundraisers. For us it’s a cheap dinner and a chance to socialize a little, as well as a good cause. Dante enjoys it, and so do Lola and I.
The dinner was held downtown, in the basement of St. Aelred's Episcopal. We had arranged that I would walk there from work and Dante and Lola would meet me. They arrived first, as I had hoped they would. Dante spotted me through the glass door, yelled “Dad!” and ran to hug me, and of course my heart melted. While he was still squeezing my neck, however, I looked up to see Lola counting her money. “Do you have any cash at all?” she asked weakly. Immediately I felt a wash of anger short-circuit the moment's tenderness. “Uh, no,” I shot back, shaking my head. Yet again, I was thinking, she has not thought things out. As though I never make a mistake. She continued, miserably, to recount a stack of wrinkled bills.
We were three dollars short. Lola timidly approached the ticket table, me looming behind her. Dante was oblivious, darting and jiving in the long hallway, running his fingers along the wall. The girl taking money was oblivious too. “Do children get in free?” Lola asked her, cringing slightly. The girl rolled her eyes, waived us in. “Go ahead,” she said wearily. Whatever. Uh…no sanks, as Dante would say. It was a fundraiser, after all. “I’ll go out and look in the car,” Lola said. “Wait here.”
Dante was getting tired of waiting. I was fit to be tied. “Let’s go. Help mom,” I snapped after a couple of minutes, but he didn’t want to go. I had to cajole him. Out in front of the church, Lola was rifling the van, all the usual places: the ashtray, the overheads, the undersides of the sun visors. Nothing. I could feel my face curdle into a sneer. “We’ll have to go to the bank,” Lola said, straining. “Hop in, Dante.”
I brooded all the way to the ATM and back. Tried half-heartedly to cut through the mood with a prayer for forbearance, it being Lent, but I was enjoying my righteous anger too much—even though I knew that to hold it much longer was risking a backlash. I held my tongue, but sighed exasperation when I had to step out into traffic in front of the bank. Lola was not responding.
Finally we were back at the church, paying our money, standing in line. The line was long. The room was crowded with students eating. The girls began to notice Dante, to point, to smile. Soon he noticed them. With only a little encouragement from Lola, he launched into an enthusiastic demonstration of the Chicken Dance, which he had learned earlier in the day at his pre-school afternoon enrichment class. More pointing. More smiles. Laughter. I folded my arms, forced a smile. The boil had been lanced, and the anger was draining. Lola apologized for not bringing enough money. “It’s okay,” I said quietly. Then, “Geez, this line is moving slowly.” She rolled her eyes.
When at last we sat down with our plates I quickly polished mine off, and soon felt a stitch from the fat and the additives. It was all canned stuff, and not even Goya. Mountains of stiff orange machine-shredded cheese, a white plastic bucket of imitation sour cream. Hard corn shells packed in cellophane that crumble at the first bite, leaving you with a handful of shards and greasy meat. Naturally I went back for seconds.
When I got back to the table Fr. Gary was visiting, talking to Lola about Dante, trying to talk to Dante. “How’s your dinner?” he asked. “Good,” Dante said. “How old is he now?” he asked Lola. He does this every time he sees us. Our conversations have never gone farther, and although he knows our faces, it’s clear that Fr. Gary doesn’t know our names. For some reason, though, (maybe it was the kitchen work that awaited him), he was in an expansive mood. He talked on about the Mission, the orphanage, the ragged little boys he sees again every year, the way they paw at his pockets for the bubble gum he keeps there for them, the time two of them doused him with a bucket of water. He was sitting right next to me, and I couldn’t help but focus on the thick tufts of hair protruding from his nose, the way he had just scarfed a taco while standing over the garbage can, the stories I’d heard of his laziness.
At last he got up to leave. “Have to go wash the dishes,” he said, mock incredulous. Soon Lola was done eating, and after a while Dante was done too. The room had almost cleared out. We got up, lingered briefly over the photo displays from previous Mission trips—they all included a group shot from an “R&R dinner” at some cantina in Rosarita—and talked to a few students about the clothing Lola had gathered to donate. She gave two of them hugs as we left; they thanked us for coming. I squatted to tie Dante’s shoe. He quickly rounded on me, a favorite move, and jumped on my back, arms round my neck. “A ride, a ride,” he chanted. I stood, slowly, and hoisted him up. We walked down the long hallway and out into the evening.
On Wednesday we went to the taco dinner put on by the Catholic students of “Mission Mexico.” They’ll be spending Spring break at an orphanage in Tijuana, and this is one of their major fundraisers. For us it’s a cheap dinner and a chance to socialize a little, as well as a good cause. Dante enjoys it, and so do Lola and I.
The dinner was held downtown, in the basement of St. Aelred's Episcopal. We had arranged that I would walk there from work and Dante and Lola would meet me. They arrived first, as I had hoped they would. Dante spotted me through the glass door, yelled “Dad!” and ran to hug me, and of course my heart melted. While he was still squeezing my neck, however, I looked up to see Lola counting her money. “Do you have any cash at all?” she asked weakly. Immediately I felt a wash of anger short-circuit the moment's tenderness. “Uh, no,” I shot back, shaking my head. Yet again, I was thinking, she has not thought things out. As though I never make a mistake. She continued, miserably, to recount a stack of wrinkled bills.
We were three dollars short. Lola timidly approached the ticket table, me looming behind her. Dante was oblivious, darting and jiving in the long hallway, running his fingers along the wall. The girl taking money was oblivious too. “Do children get in free?” Lola asked her, cringing slightly. The girl rolled her eyes, waived us in. “Go ahead,” she said wearily. Whatever. Uh…no sanks, as Dante would say. It was a fundraiser, after all. “I’ll go out and look in the car,” Lola said. “Wait here.”
Dante was getting tired of waiting. I was fit to be tied. “Let’s go. Help mom,” I snapped after a couple of minutes, but he didn’t want to go. I had to cajole him. Out in front of the church, Lola was rifling the van, all the usual places: the ashtray, the overheads, the undersides of the sun visors. Nothing. I could feel my face curdle into a sneer. “We’ll have to go to the bank,” Lola said, straining. “Hop in, Dante.”
I brooded all the way to the ATM and back. Tried half-heartedly to cut through the mood with a prayer for forbearance, it being Lent, but I was enjoying my righteous anger too much—even though I knew that to hold it much longer was risking a backlash. I held my tongue, but sighed exasperation when I had to step out into traffic in front of the bank. Lola was not responding.
Finally we were back at the church, paying our money, standing in line. The line was long. The room was crowded with students eating. The girls began to notice Dante, to point, to smile. Soon he noticed them. With only a little encouragement from Lola, he launched into an enthusiastic demonstration of the Chicken Dance, which he had learned earlier in the day at his pre-school afternoon enrichment class. More pointing. More smiles. Laughter. I folded my arms, forced a smile. The boil had been lanced, and the anger was draining. Lola apologized for not bringing enough money. “It’s okay,” I said quietly. Then, “Geez, this line is moving slowly.” She rolled her eyes.
When at last we sat down with our plates I quickly polished mine off, and soon felt a stitch from the fat and the additives. It was all canned stuff, and not even Goya. Mountains of stiff orange machine-shredded cheese, a white plastic bucket of imitation sour cream. Hard corn shells packed in cellophane that crumble at the first bite, leaving you with a handful of shards and greasy meat. Naturally I went back for seconds.
When I got back to the table Fr. Gary was visiting, talking to Lola about Dante, trying to talk to Dante. “How’s your dinner?” he asked. “Good,” Dante said. “How old is he now?” he asked Lola. He does this every time he sees us. Our conversations have never gone farther, and although he knows our faces, it’s clear that Fr. Gary doesn’t know our names. For some reason, though, (maybe it was the kitchen work that awaited him), he was in an expansive mood. He talked on about the Mission, the orphanage, the ragged little boys he sees again every year, the way they paw at his pockets for the bubble gum he keeps there for them, the time two of them doused him with a bucket of water. He was sitting right next to me, and I couldn’t help but focus on the thick tufts of hair protruding from his nose, the way he had just scarfed a taco while standing over the garbage can, the stories I’d heard of his laziness.
At last he got up to leave. “Have to go wash the dishes,” he said, mock incredulous. Soon Lola was done eating, and after a while Dante was done too. The room had almost cleared out. We got up, lingered briefly over the photo displays from previous Mission trips—they all included a group shot from an “R&R dinner” at some cantina in Rosarita—and talked to a few students about the clothing Lola had gathered to donate. She gave two of them hugs as we left; they thanked us for coming. I squatted to tie Dante’s shoe. He quickly rounded on me, a favorite move, and jumped on my back, arms round my neck. “A ride, a ride,” he chanted. I stood, slowly, and hoisted him up. We walked down the long hallway and out into the evening.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Not lost in translation
Jean Renoir’s 1945 drama The Southerner follows a family of sharecroppers as they struggle to launch a farm of their own. I can’t help but compare it to Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, made five years earlier and long one of my absolute favorites. Amazingly, Renoir’s film more than holds its own.
Zachary Scott plays Sam Tucker, a strapping, laconic son of the dirt with a stubborn dream of something better for his family. Betty Field is his devoted, rough-and-ready wife Nona. Beulah Bondi is magnificent as the childish, hectoring Granny, whose selfishness is distilled from a lifetime of suffering, and J. Carroll Naish is equally good as the treacherous neighbor Devers, a crafty survivor whose soul has been curdled by hardship.
The harshness of their lot, and the family’s fundamental decency, are established in the opening scene, as they pick cotton together in the blazing sun. An elderly uncle collapses in the heat, and his dying words, “Own your own land,” are Sam’s catalyst. From there, Sam and Nona press on through innumerable obstacles, never losing their dignity.
There are unforgettable scenes. The family’s decrepit “new” home has the haunted alien look of Ford’s Dust Bowl shacks, but the scene balances pathos and humor with a subtlety that Ford seldom achieves. Likewise the moment when Scott brings home a possum for his starving family: The gleam in Granny’s eye as she ravens her share of this humble meal powerfully evokes a life of desperate poverty even as it invites a sympathetic laugh. The wedding party and the flood scene play like Faulkner or Dostoevsky.
Indeed it is the humorous ingredients that set the film apart, clarifying Renoir’s object as humanistic; unlike Ford, he does not aim to mythologize. Refreshing reversals of plot and tone undercut and temper the tragedy.
Renoir wrote the script, with help from Faulkner and others to catch the authentic speech and folkways of the American South. These particulars ring true. Yet The Southerner is also universal, a story of peasant struggle and survival that could well be laid in China, or in France, or in any mezzogiorno.
Zachary Scott plays Sam Tucker, a strapping, laconic son of the dirt with a stubborn dream of something better for his family. Betty Field is his devoted, rough-and-ready wife Nona. Beulah Bondi is magnificent as the childish, hectoring Granny, whose selfishness is distilled from a lifetime of suffering, and J. Carroll Naish is equally good as the treacherous neighbor Devers, a crafty survivor whose soul has been curdled by hardship.
The harshness of their lot, and the family’s fundamental decency, are established in the opening scene, as they pick cotton together in the blazing sun. An elderly uncle collapses in the heat, and his dying words, “Own your own land,” are Sam’s catalyst. From there, Sam and Nona press on through innumerable obstacles, never losing their dignity.
There are unforgettable scenes. The family’s decrepit “new” home has the haunted alien look of Ford’s Dust Bowl shacks, but the scene balances pathos and humor with a subtlety that Ford seldom achieves. Likewise the moment when Scott brings home a possum for his starving family: The gleam in Granny’s eye as she ravens her share of this humble meal powerfully evokes a life of desperate poverty even as it invites a sympathetic laugh. The wedding party and the flood scene play like Faulkner or Dostoevsky.
Indeed it is the humorous ingredients that set the film apart, clarifying Renoir’s object as humanistic; unlike Ford, he does not aim to mythologize. Refreshing reversals of plot and tone undercut and temper the tragedy.
Renoir wrote the script, with help from Faulkner and others to catch the authentic speech and folkways of the American South. These particulars ring true. Yet The Southerner is also universal, a story of peasant struggle and survival that could well be laid in China, or in France, or in any mezzogiorno.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
In memoriam
There’s a moving tribute in this week’s America to Robert Drinan, the Jesuit priest who served in Congress back in the ‘70s, then returned to legal scholarship at Georgetown when ordered to do so by the pope. The author, Ladislas Orsy, another Jesuit legal scholar (and one I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, a learned, gentle man), does not dwell on Drinan’s accomplishments, but on his love and generosity, his constant reaching out to people in need. Orsy paraphrases Aristotle and Aquinas in explaining Drinan’s drive and his vast impact, that “goodness cannot contain itself: it is expansive by nature like a wellspring with unlimited supply.” He imagines Drinan 60 years ago as a young Jesuit in Florence, reading Dante on divine love. From there, “he set out on an adventure to mend this broken world.” Requiescat in pace.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Sunday Dinner
I roasted a chicken, using a Mark Bittman recipe I cut from the Times maybe ten years ago. It’s a bare-bones approach (he is "The Minimalist," after all) that hinges on two things: high heat (450F) and preheating the roasting vessel to “jump-start” the cooking of the dark meat, so that everything comes out even. You simply put a cast iron skillet in the oven, turn it on, and salt and pepper the bird. When oven and pan are hot, you plop in the chicken, breast side up, and shove the pan back in the oven. What could be easier? Bittman suggests thirty minutes for a three-pound bird. Mine was four and a half, so I set the timer for 45 minutes, to be sure of doneness. I can’t stomach chicken pink at the bone.
Alas, this time Bittman’s minimalism turned out to be a bit excessive. Before twenty minutes passed L noticed smoke seeping from the oven. I opened the door and choked on a cloud. The bird’s skin was already brown, and the bottom of the pan was swimming in grease, which popped and spattered everywhere. I turned the oven fan on high and opened the kitchen window, but every time I cracked the oven door another billow of smoke rushed to the ceiling. I covered the pan loosely with foil, thinking that might catch the spattering and prevent burning grease, to no avail. Out of tricks, and hungry, I just hunkered down and willed the oven timer to get to zero, alternately cursing Bittman’s cavalier omission ("Warning: Burning grease!") and praying that I wouldn’t set off the smoke detector. In the middle of this ordeal I dimly remembered trying this recipe once before, probably ten years ago—and why I had never tried it again. Thus was reinforced the utility of making notes on recipes, and also that of throwing flawed recipes away.
In the end the bird turned out fine, better than fine even: 45 minutes produced breast meat so moist and juicy I was afraid it wasn’t done, though it had easily run the meat thermometer to 165F. L claimed it was the best chicken she’d ever had. The dark meat was done well, too. Still, despite the results at table, I don’t think I’ll try this recipe again--not indoors, or at least not in winter. My eyes are still smarting from the smoke.
P.S. It’s not often that my having made polenta ranks as an afterthought, but yeah, I made that too. Stirred it for a good 45 minutes while watching the chicken, not constantly, but every couple of minutes over a very low heat. When it was finished I swirled in some Parmesan cheese. It was thick, creamy, and rib-sticking good, nothing like the wretched pre-made stuff that comes in tubes, or the instant variety you buy in a box. The gulf between these impostors and the real thing is akin to that between instant coffee and good French pressed.
I also made some hot oil: red pepper flakes simmered briefly in olive oil which is then allowed to cool, so that the pepper infuses. My father remembers his grandfather keeping a bowl of this simple dressing on the table always, and drizzling it on everything. It added zip to the polenta, caro nonno!
Alas, this time Bittman’s minimalism turned out to be a bit excessive. Before twenty minutes passed L noticed smoke seeping from the oven. I opened the door and choked on a cloud. The bird’s skin was already brown, and the bottom of the pan was swimming in grease, which popped and spattered everywhere. I turned the oven fan on high and opened the kitchen window, but every time I cracked the oven door another billow of smoke rushed to the ceiling. I covered the pan loosely with foil, thinking that might catch the spattering and prevent burning grease, to no avail. Out of tricks, and hungry, I just hunkered down and willed the oven timer to get to zero, alternately cursing Bittman’s cavalier omission ("Warning: Burning grease!") and praying that I wouldn’t set off the smoke detector. In the middle of this ordeal I dimly remembered trying this recipe once before, probably ten years ago—and why I had never tried it again. Thus was reinforced the utility of making notes on recipes, and also that of throwing flawed recipes away.
In the end the bird turned out fine, better than fine even: 45 minutes produced breast meat so moist and juicy I was afraid it wasn’t done, though it had easily run the meat thermometer to 165F. L claimed it was the best chicken she’d ever had. The dark meat was done well, too. Still, despite the results at table, I don’t think I’ll try this recipe again--not indoors, or at least not in winter. My eyes are still smarting from the smoke.
P.S. It’s not often that my having made polenta ranks as an afterthought, but yeah, I made that too. Stirred it for a good 45 minutes while watching the chicken, not constantly, but every couple of minutes over a very low heat. When it was finished I swirled in some Parmesan cheese. It was thick, creamy, and rib-sticking good, nothing like the wretched pre-made stuff that comes in tubes, or the instant variety you buy in a box. The gulf between these impostors and the real thing is akin to that between instant coffee and good French pressed.
I also made some hot oil: red pepper flakes simmered briefly in olive oil which is then allowed to cool, so that the pepper infuses. My father remembers his grandfather keeping a bowl of this simple dressing on the table always, and drizzling it on everything. It added zip to the polenta, caro nonno!
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