SPEAKING OF THE NUNS,
AND THE GOOD OLD DAYS....

This just in, from my email inbox:


Do NOT mess with Sister, buster.

THE GREAT INVERSION

When did it all go belly-up?, you were wondering one day.

My friend David Warren sends me his latest column for the Ottawa Citizen, which contains the answer. He pinpoints the date as August 10, 1969 ("That's one small step for [a] man...."), and the documentary proof is in his high school yearbook.

I emailed him back with my thoughts on the subject, and, well, they were just so damned insightful I figured they must be shared with the rest of the world. (Thanks to all eleven of you.)

Sir: [that's Warren]

I think you have nailed the year quite well. I enrolled in a Catholic girls' high school in 1966. At that time it looked pretty much as it always had, staffed by the local branch of the Holy Names (Montreal-based order, thriving in Oregon) which had also staffed my elementary school and many others, as well as running their own women's college, site of their blossoming novitiate. I had never wanted to attend [name of school, which shall remain nameless], and had begged my parents to let me go to a new De La Salle school (with boys) but they refused.

When I returned for sophomore year in the fall of 1967, the nuns had taken their first step towards being part of the "new church" by doffing both their elaborate traditional head-gear (in favour of the "hankie veil") and their "names in religion". Sister Magdala Mary was now Sister Debbie if she wanted to be. [names fictionalized but characters real] At [the school] I had followed my elder sister, who had made a name for herself in many noble pursuits which I was convinced I would never live up to. During my second year I was followed by my cousin, who also made a name for herself in many noble pursuits-- and all I wanted was to get out of there and join my friends back in the suburbs at the local public monster-institution. My parents finally relented, urged on by the sight, on a parents' night at the girls' school, of a banner across one of the classroom blackboards which read "God is a marshmallow."

Two years later (1970) during my first year of college I met one of my fellow [the school] drop-outs, who told me the tale of having been in a (fortunately unconsummated) romance with her married drama teacher at her new public school, which had emotionally devastated her and turned a sweet girl very cynical. Although she had left [the school] the same year I did, she had continued to take [nameless instruction] from Sister Debbie, in whom she had confided about her miserable lovelorn situation. The nun's sage advice to the 17-year-old? "Maybe he'll get a divorce." That was around 1969.

Within another year the nuns had, on the whole, chosen to doff their habits entirely (not going nude of course, as far as I know, but donning the equally identifiable uniform of the the polyester dress and blazer), and move into downtown apartments in small clusters...

I knew it was all but over when I ran into my favourite nun on the street in my college town-- a worldly and probably somewhat liberal woman who had been in her twenties and engaged when she decided to "enter", and was therefore much more sensible and clued-in than almost any of her comrades. She had been, as I understood it, the last to want to give up the habit, the community life, and her name in religion..., but there she was walking in front of my apartment doorway in a maroon velveteen pantsuit. She had not left the convent -- it had left her. I tripped on the sidewalk and landed on my knees.

The complete, and apparently overnight, implosion of the great teaching orders and their historic mission to parish schools has always been one of my major markers for the triumph of the revolution, and something of a mystery. Or so it was until I read Ann Carey's Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities... It is a jam-packed book in desparate need of a brutal editor...but I will credit it for explaining (at great and repetitious length) exactly how and why the American sisterhood went kami-kaze. And you can certainly lodge those events, at least as I experienced them, in the festering heart of 1968-70.

I did go to the local public high school in the fall of '68, by the way. And by the spring of '69 even that whitebread and well-moneyed campus had begun its interior crumble. The long-established dress-code was removed as a result of student activism; the "fascist" vice-principal had to transfer his energies from calling the police about Minors in Possession of Tobacco (still a misdemeanour then) and dealing with the cloud of marijuana in which many students were living; an underground newspaper was trumpeting that "Nixon is A-BM" and "napalm is war-gasm"; and the annual May Fete crowning was serenaded with the theme song, "This is the dawning of your sensitivity" (to the appropriate tune from HAIR).

There are many reasons for most people not to be the least nostalgic about their high school days-- certainly for those of us who had nothing in common with "the cool kids". But I have often reflected on how little we understood about just how wretched a time that was for the well-being of the universe. On the other hand, kids in my second high school were still subject to the military (Vietnam) draft (most in our neighbourhood would have the convenience of a college deferment, but not all), so there was a fairly grave reality check driving some of what was happening. And we graduated, and looked forward to college, just a month or so after the Kent State shootings. So I suppose that's an excuse of sorts for taking oneself more seriously than 18-year-olds deserve.

Unfortunately, we are now witnessing the ascendancy of that Kent State generation in power-- the kids who became "cool kids" in 1969 were not the traditional sort who quarterbacked the football team and dated the cheerleader, but the sort who ran the student government and took on the system from within. (I believe that's also the year a high-school kid got himself elected President of our newly-minted parish council!!) They got so full of themselves, so fast, that they lived out one of the truly revolutionary inversions of all time: they actually ENJOYED HIGH SCHOOL (dear God!), and wanted it to last forever-- and they are now fulfilling that dream as they run the American congress, and probably substantial hunks of the EU and the UN.

I remember the moon landing well. I don't remember associating it with "the end of all things"-- we probably thought it was the beginning. I guess one implies the other.

Thanks for helping me get ready for Good Friday, dude.

By the way, saw 300 last night. (First time men have had to show their chests in order to get a movie role! A veritable warehouse full of six-packs. Leonidas channelled Mel Gibson, the movie channelled everything Gibson ever made except Passion of the Christ.)

Husband walked out with about 30 minutes to go-- couldn't take the schlock any more. I was willing to go with the appropriately artwork-style super-heroic depiction for awhile, but groaned as it descended into soap-opera 90's-guy senstivity. A Spartan sobbing about his dead kid that "I never told him I loved him best!" BARF! BARF! BARF! What was Victor David Hanson thinking!

This is a footnote to the above reflection insofar as the decadence attributed by the movie to the Persians inspired but one thought in me: that's us. Spring break at Myrtle Beach.

TODAY'S WORD IS....

Congratulations to Dictionary.com for keeping up with the times. The top entry in the post is "Word of the Day" and for Saturday, March 31, it reads:
"Today's word is...sedition."

Really?

Over at Drudge, today's word is that Speaker of the House San-Fran-Nan Pelosi, currently soiling the Holy Land with her presence, is set to pop across the border and visit Secondary Axis of Evil Lifetime Member Syria, in defiance of official U.S. diplomatic policy and the urgent personal behest of the current administration.

Let us all be charitable and hope that the worst thing that happens to Mrs. Pelosi during this heinously unnatural act is that she has made crystal clear to Mr. and Ms. Ordinary American her gargantuan arrogance, her contempt for her country, and her boundless stupidity.












Also to be found at Dictionary.com:

trea·son /ˈtrizən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tree-zuhn] –noun

1.	the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill its sovereign.

2.	a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.

3.	the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.

---

[Origin: 1175–1225; ME tre(i)so(u)n <>traïson <>trāditiōn- (s. of trāditiō) a handing over, betrayal. See tradition]

—Synonyms 1. Treason, sedition mean disloyalty or treachery to one's country or its government. Treason is any attempt to overthrow the government or impair the well-being of a state to which one owes allegiance; the crime of giving aid or comfort to the enemies of one's government. Sedition is any act, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or constitution, or calculated to bring it into contempt or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection; it does not amount to treason and therefore is not a capital offense. 2. See disloyalty.




























HAD ENOUGH YET,
AMERICA?

INMATES RUNNING ASYLUM --

American military prepares for
Operation "Valley Forge"

Congress to the troops:
"No shirt? No shoes?
No problem!"




Recently-Purchased Congressional Votes on Military Funding/Surrender:

HOUSE -- (voting to fund the war, stuff the cash-boxes of greedy lawmakers' pet projects, and provide the enemy with a date-certain surrender)




Self-loathing Spineless Yellow Jelly-fish Party -- 218 Yay

Apologetic Impotent Paralyzed Mute Party -- 212 Nay



SENATE -- (voting to fund the war and the pet projects but strip out the commitment to a date-certain surrender)


Self-loathing Spineless Yellow Jelly-fish Party -- 50 Nay

Apologetic Impotent Paralyzed Mute Party -- 48 Yay

The literally life-and-death questions of whether, over the next year

(a) when American military personnel reach into their packs for an ammunition clip, they will find one at hand,

and

(b) when one of them falls on the field of battle there will be anyone to step into the gap in the line,

were proposed this week in the American national legislative assemblies, right alongside questions of whether (among other things) spinach, peanuts, shrimp, Christmas trees, and political conventions will be beneficiaries of special subsidies.


Once upon a time, not long ago, the consumate symbol of political pork-barreling was the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. Clearly the new Bridge to Nowhere is much closer to the nation's capitol-- apparently one crosses it on the way up the steps to the front door. Never, since the brainless meddling of King George III, has the American nation been so ill-served by those responsible for its government and well-being.

Hugh Hewitt has aptly dubbed this the "Kung Pao Congress" (that's "Gung Bow" to you mandarin-speakers) owing to its inexplicable loyalty to the ingredients of a good stir-fry.

"Given the pork spent today on shrimp, spinach, and peanuts, this seems like the right way to refer to the new House majority. (Special Secret Ingredient: chicken -- ed.)

Keep reading and keep weeping: the whole miserable Congressional Pork Pie is available for perusal at the Victory Caucus.


DISHONORABLE MENTION
to my personal representative, Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith for continuing his bold course of selling out the troops. I will be giving special consideration to arranging for his defeat in '08.

Should Republican turncoat Chuck Hagel give up his laughable bid for the Presidency and decide to stick to trying for another term in the Senate, I'll be on that case too. Defeating him for President? Yeah, right. Next question.

DOS AMIGOS.
















SPEAKING OF OREGON (if we must)

Just in case you had any doubts about the true nature of the effigy-burning thugs of Portland, Oregon, you can watch them in action here and listen to their creative chants while the stuffed camouflage is immolated. Try these on for size:

FRY, FRY, G.I.! – IN IRAQ YOU’RE GONNA DIE!

IT’S NOT JUST BUSH, IT’S THE SOLDIERS TOO –
FASCIST WAR IS NOTHING NEW!

(Musical interlewd)

BUILD A BONFIRE, BUILD A BONFIRE
PUT THE SOLDIERS ON THE TOP –
PUT THE FASCISTS IN THE MIDDLE,
AND WE’LL BURN THE F#*KIN’ LOT!

To close out their little dog-and-pony show, the incendiaries took up a mysterious chant about the electoral process:

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHICH CANDIDATE WON –
PUT DOWN YOUR BALLOT AND PICK UP A GUN!

Who should pick up a gun? The soldiers (BOO!)? Or the anarchists (YAY!)? Which candidates? Which ballots? The ones cast in the three Iraqi elections? The charge of the Pelosi Brigade in ’06? The butterflies of Florida 2000? I’m so confused.

But one thing at least is clear, and it’s nothing new. That nasty element who HATE the soldiers who fight in the war did not die with their victory at the ignominious evacuation of Saigon. They’re still here, they still spout their righteous venom.

Some things have changed, however: they no longer try to hide their hatred behind the flower-power mush of Donavan’s version of “The Universal Soldier” (composer Buffy Sainte-Marie’s version had less popular play, but was more forthrightly caustic). It’s all up front.


What they do hide these days are their faces. Notice how the brave souls who speak the unspeakable feel they must mask themselves in order to pull it off on a Saturday and go back to class on a Monday.


At least the ‘Nam-bashing hippies were willing to put their own faces on their vile pronouncements. We have the photo evidence to prove it. (spot the future Presidential candidate on the left)


















Well, sort of. (spot the future Presidential candidate below)


On the other hand, there was some bare-faced protest in Portland that would have been better hidden, especially from the eyes of nearby children. One fine specimen of American youth em-bare-assed himself when he dropped his drawers and laid his personal PEACE MOVEMENT atop an already desecrated American flag. There are many reasons why such things take place (and without interference)-- if you had to narrow it down to one primary reason it would be that no matter what ordinary citizens, police, or civic officials might wish or think or do, no court in the land will ever punish creatures like this in the name of public decency.


SPEAKING OF HIPPIES (Old/Wrinkled Division)
Res Ipsa Loquitur






















Department of ETERNAL YOUTH

Bill Bennett has been soliciting support-the-troop lyrics via his radio show. One creative wag named Tony contributes this:
[hat-tip: the Corner at National Review Online]

The Mission-Plan
(abject apologies to Dr. Suess, Mrs. Geisel, and all the little Geisels as ever were)

That mission-plan!
That mission-plan!
I do not like
that mission plan!

Do you like
The soldier-man?

I do like
the soldier-man!
I just don't like
the mission plan!

Would you like it
here or there?

I do not like it
here or there.
I do not like it
anywhere.
I do not like
the mission plan.
But I like
the soldier-man.

Can you see
the jihad-man?
Can you see him
in Iran?

I cannot see him
in Iran.
I cannot see
the jihad-man!
And if I saw him
in Iraq,
I?d have to take
my protest back!
I do not see the jihad-man,
I do not like this mission-plan!

Would you fight him
in St. Paul?
Would you oppose
jihad at all?

Not in St. Paul,
nowhere at all!
Not in Iran,
Not in Iraq!
I will not fight him here or there,
I will not fight him anywhere.
I still support the soldier-man,
although I hate the mission-plan!

Would you? Could you?
Cut the funds?
Take the money,
and then run?

I would not,
could not,
cut the funds!

You may cut them.
You will see!
Take the cash for
AFDC!

I would not, could not cut the funds.
Nor give the cash to anyone!

I need to get elected soon.
I cannot cut the money, loon!
I do not like this mission plan,
but the voters are big fans!
al-Sadr left his cozy house,
bin Laden's hiding like a mouse!
The mission-plan is working well!
My strategy may go to hell?

A vote! A vote!
A vote! A vote!
Could you, would you,
take a vote?

Not on the floor, nor in committee,
A vote right now would be a pity!

I could not vote now to de-fund,
Two thousand eight is all but won!
I will not criticize Barack,
Or Clinton?s vote to hit Iraq.
I do not like the mission-plan.
Or the ignorant soldier-man!
Whoops I didn't say that right,
please don't quote me, I was tight!

Say!
In the dark?
You're in the dark?
Did you just make a dumb remark?

I will not comment
on that remark.

Would you, could you, on the news?

I would not, could not,
on the news!
I support the soldier-man!
I just don't like this mission plan!
I do not see jihadi-man,
in Iraq or in Iran!
I did not say "I don't respect?"
I told a joke, to bad effect.
The Right can all just go to heck!

You do not want
to win the war?

I do not
want to,
anymore.

Won't you fight the
bad jihadi?

I'm afraid
of Sadr's
Mahdi

Do you want to
flee right now?

No, let's "redeploy" somehow!
I cannot vote to cut supplies—
voters prize our soldiers' lives.
But I so hate the Bushie-man,
that I need to have a plan!
I?ll say I love the soldier-man!
Really, truly, I'm a fan!
Just 'cause I don't want to pay him,
Does not mean I'm seeking mayhem...
Since I cannot cut the money,
I'll try to make the PLAN look funny.
(And also call the Prez a dummy)

I do not like
this mission-plan!

But I do love the
soldier-man!

You love the soldier-
man, you say.
Then support him,
every day!
Read the plan again, I say.

Say!
If you will let me be,
I will read it.
You will see.

Oops!
This is a groovy plan!
This plan could make a better land.
This surge-y plan, this "take and hold,"
Could make jihadis much less bold?

I will not support it, though!
My party says it has to go!
Two thousand eight is near, we'll win it;
I can't switch parties, like Bill Bennett.

I do not have the courage to,
defeat's my only happy news.
And I will focus on the bad.
And I will make Iraqis sad.
I will not fight jihadis there.
I will not fight them ANYWHERE!

This is Bush's
mission-plan.
I can't
support it?

until Hillary flip-flops and says it was hers.

DOMINO THEORY





I’LL HAVE A LARGE IRISH PIZZA
topped with monomania sausage, Guiness cheese, hair-trigger hot peppers, and magic healing-Mass mushrooms, with an extra large glass of Monaghan’s Ol' Fashioned More-Catholic-than-the-Pope Kool-Aid and a side order of Insular/Oedipal emotional-blackmail slaw.





Dominator’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan’s latest chess-move in his micro-management of that Floridian Portmeirion

known as Ave Maria University has been to fire Provost [professor of theology & philosophy, promoter of good liturgy, founder of Ignatius Press, all-round “can-he-really-be-Jesuit?” Catholic shite-disturber] and FOB [friend of Benedict] Fr. Joseph Fessio –

only to rehire him 24 hours later, albeit in some truncated capacity.

I’m not totally up to speed on the finer points of the AMU chronicle, beyond the general awareness that it is hemorrhaging students, faculty, and public good-will (and probably financial support) as Monaghan seems increasingly determined to create this new Catholic World in His Own Image (something done earlier, better, by a whole Trinity of talented Persons), and to have a ready answer for that nagging Portmeirion question, "Who is Number One?"

Not content with personally molding all the statues in his Catholic Town / Higher Education theme park (click here, and be afraid, be very afraid), scuttlebutt is that Monaghan has finally exerted sufficient pressure on the more established and more successful (owing to its being more independent) Ave Maria School of Law to force closure of its Ann Arbor, Michigan, campus, and kit-and-kaboodle-transfer to the AMU Naples, Florida, campus. (“See Naples and die”?) (see “hemorrhaging” above)

Massive weeping and gnashing of teeth greeted the surprise (you-have-24-hours-to-clean-out-your-desk) firing of Fr. Fessio, especially on the part of students. It took only a day for Monaghan and Corp. to rescind the FIAT, and offer Fessio an “association” which will see him permitted to attend commencement (and lunch afterwards????), deployed on the Florida campus in the summer with high school students, surveying AMU’s European campi during the regular term—[not so bad: Austria and Rome]-- and possibly wedged into the teaching schedule for next spring as a player to be named later.

University President Nicholas Healy described the recent events as “the separation of Fr. Fessio from the University’s administration.” To my knowledge Fessio was neither married to nor physiologically conjoined with the University administration, nor was March 21 the date of his divorce proceedings and/or surgical detachment-- separation? say again?

I leave all this to wiser, better-informed, and more wickedly funny people than me to make sense of [ here and here ]. My parting shot is that a reformed and revivified Catholic Church must surely be added to that long list of things that Money Can’t Buy Me—Everybody Tells Me So—No No No NO.

If I ever had any enthusiasm for the enthusiasms of Tom Monaghan (and I have to admit I once did), it all came to an end when I got a look at the GOD-AWFUL design his administrative star-chamber had passed for gajillion-dollar chapel at his Catholic Town campus. SWEETE JESU!!!!!






Apparently it was generally considered such a gross-out that the design was revised. Oh, this is MUCH better!









The Curt Jester feels that the Church of Monaghan has actually come full circle and re-instituted the whole concept of radio-based revivalism. Look out, Aimee Semple McPherson, your day has re-dawned!:





The Jester proposes an interior design which could start a whole new communications revolution called “AMU-Tube”.


Comments at the Jester’s include the dedication of this edifice as the "Shrine of Saints Amos and Andy”.

Provosts come and go, staff gets hired and fired, but architectural crime is forever.

MEDIC !!!

Heard today at congressional hearings on Globull Warmitude from Veep-that-was Al Gore:

"The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor."

Good news, Al! The Doctor is IN!!

And we're so grateful!






Meanwhile, back in my old home town of Portland, Oregon, there are some folks who are at least more honest in their wartime enthusiasms than the average Washington Democrat and his/her willing accomplices on the Lower Left Coast:









LAND OF THE FREE, we salute you.

READ IT AND WEEP

Some days I spend a whole day crobbling together a post for this blog. Other days there is absolutely no point, sometimes for the good reason that someone else has done it, said it, so much better than I could ever hope to.

Today thanks are due [a "hat-tip" hardly says it, a 21-gun salute might begin to cover it] to JULES CRITTENDEN at Pajamas Media and Forward Movement (via Hugh Hewitt), who has put together a post that should sear itself into the mind of every person who will express an opinion and/or cast a vote mindful of the state of our union anytime in the next two years.

Read it, watch every video (if you can bear it), and weep.

Weep for the busloads of cowards, traitors, drunks, frat-boys, shrikes, whores, monomaniacs, saccharine grannies, bloated bores, pocket-stuffers, pimps, pederasts, panderers, gropers, drowners, pasty-white-flabby-assed Monday-morning hangin' judges, posturing nit-pickers, onanist pig-counters, and assorted self-sodden mediocrities whom we routinely elect to the highest positions of power-- perverters of law, of language, and of the truths of history-- denizens of the political pond from the scum at the top, through the toxic larval wigglers in the middle, to the slithering bottom-feeders.

And then stand in awe and wonder that there were ever people of courage, principle, and eloquence as those celebrated on this post, in such abundance as to have lived and written the history that brought us all into being.
























And then say a prayer that something short of a cloud of anthrax and radioactive fallout, and an acre of severed heads, gives enough of us the wake-up slap to be conscious of what, on our best day, we might be capable of doing for each other.