Twilight Party!

Perhaps you are familiar with the books and movie known as "Twilight." If you're female and below the age of 18 the chances that you know what I'm talking about are very high, but since I don't know of anyone who is female and below the age of 18 who reads this blog, I will attempt to explain. "Twilight" is about brooding, goth, teenage vampires and their whiny Dawson's Creek style escapades. Think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but without the awesome. It's wildly popular with the Hannah Montana/Jonas Brothers age group and even among college age females. I think we sell more copies of "Twilight" - or the other 2 books in the trilogy - at Books A Million than just about any single book.

On Friday night we had the long-awaited "Twilight" DVD release party at our store. I and two other employees had to stay past midnight to distribute DVDs to squealing teenage girls dressed up in little outfits and uniforms that were somehow related to the books (I am blissfully ignorant of it all). We also had a doll of the main character, Edward, brought up to the front of the store to sit behind the registers where the waiting hordes of children could see him (my manager had posed him as if he was doing the robot). When the girls saw the doll they became breathless with excitement. "OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT? CAN WE TOUCH IT?"

"No, you can't touch it. That's a 150 dollar doll."

"I SO WANT THAT DOLL."

And the camera phones came out (I'm amazed at the number of girls below the legal working age who carry around cell phones). I remember reading somewhere about when the Beatles first came to the States, how the crowds of girls became so over-excited that some of them peed themselves. That's kind what this was like, only over a doll. I can only imagine what it would be like had the real Robert Pattinson been there.

There was a trivia contest also. The prize was a twenty dollar gift certificate. Each time a question was asked over the intercom, girls would come dashing over to the cafe desk - where answers were received - and would raise their hands like over-eager students, "Ooh! Ooh!" The winners of the contest used their gift certificate to purchase a dozen packages of Twilight Sweethearts. As I rang them up they admitted that they were a "little obsessed."

When it came time to distribute the DVDs the lines began to form around the register, where the DVDs had been brought out and put under guard (by me). I was instructed by my manager thusly: "If anyone touches those DVDs, you have my permission to shoot them. In the head." This was said loudly, so the waiting throng could hear. I armed myself with a stapler. The first girl in line put her phone down in front of me - it had an Edward wallpaper, and was counting down to the minute - 12:01 - when the DVDs would be released. I admit to getting a little antsy as we waited those last few minutes. I half expected the children to start jumping the counter and seizing them. It was like Rorke's Drift. At 12:01 I gave the signal and the distribution began. In a flash, the children had taken their DVDs and gone gallivanting into the parking lot, where high-pitched squeals of delight could be heard. "I'M WATCHING IT TEN TIMES TONIGHT BEFORE I GO TO BED."

When it was over, the store was trashed. We had to stay until 1:30 to clean up the place and make it presentable for the next day.

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Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in North America. (Thanks to Fr. Christopher Foley for bringing this to my attention). Fr. Raphael was born about 1870 in Jamaica, and was known as Robert Josias Morgan prior to his ordination. Near the turn of the century, Robert came to the U.S. where he was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church (Robert may also have been involved with the AME, but I'm not certain about that). During this period he served several black Episcopal parishes in the South, including Morganton and Lincolnton, NC. He pops up in many places - Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, and North Carolina. After having some doubts about the teachings of the Anglican Communion, Robert began studying Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

In 1908 he was deposed by the Bishop of the western NC diocese of the Episcopal Church for unknown reasons (I find this silence very fascinating!). After embracing Orthodoxy, but not yet being baptized, he traveled throughout the Orthodox world - Russia, Greece, and Palestine. For three years he studied under Greek Orthodox priests in the U.S. and then returned to Constantinople where he was baptized and ordained. He was appointed "Priest Apostolic to America and the West Indies" by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was headquartered out of Philadelphia. But the trail, as far as I can tell, ends there. I can't find any reference to him beyond 1915. There is a refernce to him, apparently, in the 1921 edition of the Tuskeegee Institute's "Negro Yearbook," which is at the UNCG Library. I'm going to go take a look at that and see where it leads me.

A book is forthcoming on Fr. Raphael from St. Vladimir's Seminary, but I'm impatient when it comes to matters of history, and would like to find out these things for myself. I just get all crazy, like a bloodhound on a trail, and this is too fascinating for me to not look into further.

I wonder how Fr. Raphael was accepted. He seems to have done missions work in his homeland of Jamaica, as evidenced by some newspaper reports, and even engaged in dialogue with Marcus Garvey. Fr. Raphael took Garvey to task for what he perceived as his attempt to foment further racial division between whites and blacks in Jamaica. But what about in this country? I wonder how ethnic Orthodox would have reacted to a black man as a priest. This development, the conversion of a black man and his subsequent ordination to the priesthood, would on the surface seem to have been a good development for the movement of Orthodoxy into the South. But it took Orthodoxy still many more years to begin to move out of its ethnic enclaves in the South and into the culture, where even today it is still a very small blip on the radar. Thank God we have men like Fr. Moses Berry, who see dialogue with and connection to the southern past as being important.