Manhole Music Tea Room

Greensboro goes green, washes away sins of past, present

2011-03-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

A friend posted this article on Facebook. As a native of Greensboro, I think it is both silly and unfortunate:

The Impulsive Traveler: Going green in Greensboro, N.C.

“This is Greensboro?” my partner, Melissa, asked with surprise, gazing up at the LEED Platinum-certified Proximity Hotel, its 100 solar panels gleaming futuristically back at the sun. “When I think of Greensboro, all I picture is the KKK massacring protesters.”

True, the city suffers from a long-standing image problem. On Nov. 3, 1979, local Ku Klux Klan members shot and killed five Communist Worker Party activists during a street protest here. The incident became known as the “Greensboro Massacre” and was examined in documentaries such as “88 Seconds in Greensboro.” The accused Klansmen, in the end, were acquitted by an all-white jury.

I tried not to think about Greensboro’s dark past as our bellhop escorted us through the Proximity Hotel’s sun-filled lobby, explaining that the furniture was locally sourced and that one-fifth of the concrete walls were made of fly ash from incinerated garbage.

The elevator to our room, remarkably, was self-powered, its downward motion fueling the upward lift. The bellhop enthusiastically told us that the hotel uses 40 percent less energy and 30 percent less water than comparable hotels. Solar panels heat well over half the water for the rooms and the restaurant. No wonder this place became the first American hotel to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system’s highest rating.

The surprises continued in our room. “Eco” certainly didn’t mean austere. Loft-style high ceilings allowed sunlight to warm our bed. A sliding door opened up the modern bathroom to natural light as well.

Later, down in the lobby, a cheery receptionist asked, “Ready for your bikes?”

“You rent them?” I inquired.

“They’re free for all guests,” she replied. “To provide a healthy alternative to. . .” Was it my imagination, or was she frowning toward the parking lot?

I gradually gathered that she was suggesting that we give our car a rest from gas-gulping. Before I could even mutter a reply, the concierge appeared out front with two new bikes and helmets. Melissa shrugged and dropped our car keys into her purse, where they would remain for most of our stay.

While gliding along Greensboro’s excellent bike paths, we learned that the city is busy constructing one of the country’s first urban greenway loops, complete with bike and walking trails, as well as a space for public art displays.

Our dark stereotype of Greensboro was further undermined at our first stop: a “living museum” called Elsewhere, housed in a half-century-old thrift store where the artists use only recycled material to create interactive sculpture. “You don’t see a gift shop here,” one of the artists in residence said to me. “Nothing is sold at Elsewhere.”

Ooooh, Greensboro's dark past! But look, see? All of these green initiatives make it all better! They're enlightened now, the racist troglodytes! Greensboro is a veritable utopia; why if this Elsewhere place is any indication, they'll all be sharing property communally before too long!

One isolated incident in 1979 in which one small group of whackjobs kills another small group of whackjobs is deserving of a "dark past" label? Places like Srebrenica have a truly dark past. What about the other 200 years of Greensboro's history? Wouldn't maybe the Battle of Guilford Courthouse come to mind? A really significant event? Or the sit-ins that occurred there in 1960? But I digress on this point.

Dinner was a tough choice. I craved Montagnard food. After all, we were in Greensboro, home to the largest number of Montagnards (a collection of mountain tribes from Vietnam’s highlands) outside Vietnam. But Melissa won out in the end; we hit a local bistro for some rabbit and Bibb lettuce supplied by local farms.

Over dessert, we probed our waiter on the subject of Greensboro. The city is part of the 1.5 million-inhabitant Piedmont Triad (along with the smaller Winston-Salem and High Point). The Triad grew first into a national textile and furniture-making hub and more recently added technology and biotechnology to the mix. Our waiter took pride in telling us that his city has developed a sensitivity to the environment, noting that in 2004, the Department of Energy awarded Greensboro entry to the Clean Cities Hall of Fame.

The next day, I was to give a lecture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The university’s Committee on Sustainability had invited me to discuss my book, “Twelve by Twelve: A One Room Cabin, Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream,” about an American physician and permaculturalist who lives Thoreau-style in a 12-by-12-foot off-grid house.

To be frank, I expected a small turnout. But again, the city surprised. The room filled up with enthusiastic readers who had chosen my book for their Green Book Club. When I asked, “What’s your 12-by-12?” they showered the room with ideas on ecological living. I learned that Greensboro was the birthplace of well-known environmentalist Thomas Berry, and that the late CBS news anchor Edward R. Murrow had grown up in a log cabin outside town.

After the book-signing session, I chatted with attendees in the lobby beside a glass case holding a trumpet that Miles Davis had donated to the school. Beyond the encased horn — the very one that the jazz great had used to record “Kind of Blue”— was a footbridge over a forest, in a spot where there had once been a paved road. A middle-aged man looked me in the eye and said proudly, “We took out the road and gave it back to Mother Nature.” If Miles Davis could see Greensboro today, I chuckled to myself, he might change his tune to “Kind of Green.”

Over lunch at the vegan cafe Boba House, a student environmentalist told me: “In my free time, I slay vampires.” She and dozens of other students dress up as “vampire slayers” to alert fellow students to “vampire energy” — like leaving a computer on when you’re not using it. And the entire university was undergoing a major energy audit.

That afternoon, local resident Charlie Headington gave us a tour of his urban permaculture homestead near the university. Wearing a smile, he led Melissa and me through a marvelous backyard brimming with lettuce and grape trellising. As I looked around, I thought: This is what utopia must look like. Luscious hues of kelly and peacock green — a mix of fruit trees — rose over a clean pool of water stocked with fish. Brightly colored flowers sprouted from their pots, and Charlie’s perky crops felt a little like a welcoming committee.

One thing I will say in defense of this piece: you can get really good Vietnamese food in Greensboro. For me, it has almost become a kind of secondhand regional cuisine. You can't get Vietnamese food where I currently live - Mississippi - but when I go home to North Carolina I always try to visit my favorite place, Binh Minh on West Market. But who craves Montagnard food? I mean, not that I doubt that Montagnard food would be good, but doesn't such a craving just scream decadent westerner?

The whole piece just drips with a kind of frivolity and decadence.

This piece does not portray Greensboro as it is, but rather as how a certain segment of its predominantly white, wealthy residents want it portrayed. As historian Bill Chafe wrote in his Civilities and Civil Rights, Greensboro has long been in the business of cultivating a progressive mystique, and I believe in a sense that this continues today. Greensboro is a community, like many southern communities, that remains fundamentally divided along racial lines. You have only to look at what has been going on in the Greensboro police department of late for proof of that. But you can also look at the extent of the city's greenways and bike paths and see that they primarily only benefit one side of town - the west - terminating at Elm Street, more or less the dividing line between areas that are predominantly white and predominantly black/latino.

There is still a very visible disparity between the haves and have nots in Greensboro - not that I advocate some kind of redistribution of wealth. But it's not a utopia. And it's certainly not populated solely by a mass of Cold Water Army enviro-acolytes (although there are many I know firsthand). Normal southern people live there who like to eat barbecue and drive big trucks. People who don't listen to Miles Davis and crave Montagnard food.

Thank God there are people who don't stay at the Proximity Hotel, drive Priuses, or get euphoric over grape trellising.

The dog coming in and the dog going out

2011-02-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Well I've been lockin' myself up in my house for sometime now
Readin' and writin' and readin' and thinkin'
and searching for reasons and missing the seasons.
The Autumn, the Spring, the Summer, the snow.
The record will stop and the record will go.
Latches latched the windows down,
the dog coming in and the dog going out.
Up with caffeine and down with a shot.
Constantly worried about what I've got.
Distracting my work but I can't make a stop
and my confidence on and my confidence off.
And I sink to the bottom and rise to the top
and I think to myself that I do this a lot.
World outside just goes it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes...
and witness it all from the blinds of my window.

- Avett Brothers, "Talk On Indolence"

Pretty much describes my life right now to a T, right down to the dog coming in and the dog going out.

I Hate Duke

2011-02-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

The Tar Heels just lost to Duke. All evening I've been muttering to myself about how much I hate Duke.

I hate them.

I hate them with a simple, honest hatred which, unfortunately, they don't teach children anymore. I'm determined that my child, should I produce one, will know this hatred - it gives a man purpose and focus.

For those who claim that rivalry is all in fun, that you shouldn't really hate Duke, I have news for you - you're doing it wrong. Tell that to the Cameron Crazies who throw Twinkies at players they perceive as overweight.

Why, you ask, do I hate a team? A school? How could a game involving a ball and men in shorts inspire such disgust? Am I not an enlightened, educated man? All of it is so silly - it would seem on the surface - that this bookish fellow would hate a sports team as if it were some ancient enemy.

But that's what Duke is to me. I was raised to be a Tarheel fan, which you might consider a mere accident of birth. But I don't believe in accidents of birth; God made me a Carolina fan. I thank God I wasn't raised by a Duke fan, bred up to be one of the sickening Cameron Crazies. Thank God I was taught to reverence names like Smith, Jordan, Wallace, Stackhouse, Worthy, Reid, Montross and (Woody) Durham.

Growing up, Tar Heel basketball was a very serious matter. Carolina basketball was the only thing that could shake the foundations of our house - I have innumerable memories of breathless moments spent in front of the TV watching Carolina basketball, my father always sitting on the floor on his knees, hitting the floor and yelling at the top of his lungs. He's like a man possessed when Carolina plays, as if his being is wrapped up in the fate of the team; as if by screaming he can somehow will them through some kind of Druidic alchemy.

He throws things at the TV, usually soft objects like pillows, but on occasion will strike the screen with his bare hands whenever the face of Mike Krzysdfkasdfoimiuiyoeski, or any other rat-faced Dook player presents itself. I'm convinced this has an effect.

He spews venom against referees as if they were a race of corrupt men - every referee in the history of sports is to him a suspect personage, but particularly referees who officiate at Carolina basketball games. Referees have all been bought out by Duke or some shadowy conspiracy. A still more likely possibility is that all referees just hate Carolina, so they must be called out and exposed for the charlatans they are.

Yes, my father is a madman when it comes to Carolina basketball. It's the most beautiful mania.

Recently I learned that dad had stopped listening to Woody Durham because he believes that when he listens to Woody Durham, Carolina loses. This is insane superstition, but it's beautiful.

This kind of insanity has rubbed off on me. I actually have trouble watching Carolina play Duke because I think it will jinx them. Tonight I didn't watch because I don't have a TV, and despite that they still lost (even though they led by something like 16 at half time). This doesn't shake my belief that not watching will somehow enable them to win - when you don't have a TV the rules don't apply.

But all of this hatred and mania is perfectly justifiable because Duke sucks. Duke is a bastion of elitism built on tobacco blood money; a resort for New Jerseyites who drive Saabs and cling fiercely to an imagined sense of superiority and entitlement.

I could never give voice to my disgust at Duke as eloquently as Ian Williams' Daily Tar Heel column written over 20 years ago. But as he makes clear, this is not just a negative hate (and it is oh so negative), but a hate that is born out of love for a place - both the state of North Carolina and the school which has represented it for over 200 years.

Duke are the bad guys - and I'm grateful for the bad guys.

And that's as close as I'll ever come to appreciating Duke.

Roe v. Wade anniversary

2011-01-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the President marked the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. He declared that he was "committed to protecting this constitutional right." Orthodox Christians mark this anniversary with a molieben service for the victims of abortion:

O most merciful, all gracious and compassionate Lord Jesus Christ our Savior, Son of God: we entreat Thee, most gracious Master: look with compassion upon Thy children who have been condemned to death by the unjust judgment of men. And as Thou hast promised to bestow the heavenly kingdom on those born of water and the Spirit, and who in blamelessness of life have been translated unto Thee; and Who said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven” – we humbly pray, according to Thine unfailing promise: grant the inheritance of Thy kingdom to the multitude of spotless infants who have been cruelly murdered in the abortuaries of this land; for Thou art the resurrection and the life and the repose of all Thy servants and of these innocents, O Christ our God.

Turn the hearts of those who seek to destroy Thy little ones. We beseech Thee to pour forth Thy healing grace upon them, that they may be convicted in their hearts and turn from their evil ways. Remember all of them that kill our children as on the altars of Moloch, and render not unto them according to their deeds, but according to Thy great mercy convert them: the unbelieving to true faith and piety, and the believing that they may turn from evil and do good.

- From The Service of Supplication for the Victims of Abortion

A few thoughts on El Al security and junk

2010-11-18T17:23:00.001-08:00

The kerfuffle over TSA groping reminds me of my experiences three years ago when I went through El Al security on a flight from Greece to Israel. My girlfriend and I had to report to the terminal three hours before our flight, not an easy task when you are driving from Glyfada, a fashionable suburb of Athens, to the Athens International Airport. Along the way we got caught in a traffic jam behind a flat bed truck that was home to a family of gypsies. My girlfriend's irate grandfather, a large, rectangular Greek native, cajoled and gesticulated his way through Athens traffic, and despite my fear that we wouldn't make it in time, managed to deliver us to the airport in a timely fashion.

When we arrived at the terminal we were approached by a young man who spoke flawless English. He took our passports, examined them, and handed them off to another sentinel who I presume took them to a back room to check them against whatever Mossad database they likely have access to. The young man took his place behind a kind of lectern and very politely began to interview us. His questions at first were rather innocuous: What are your names? Where are you from? What is the purpose of your trip? How long do you plan on staying in Israel? It felt like one of those scenes in a POW escape movie where the characters are questioned by a incredulous gendarme. We quickly got through these questions, but they were soon followed by more prying questions: Where are you staying? What hotels or hostels are you staying in? Do you have an itinerary? Luckily we had been provided (by my girlfriend's mother) with a very detailed itinerary. This pleased our interrogator.

But the questions didn't stop there, they became still more prying: What is the nature of your relationship? How long have you been together? Do you sleep together?

Er. . . This was feeling less and less like a POW escape movie and more like couples therapy. At the time I wondered just what the point of asking if we slept together could be, but later I thought that perhaps the interrogator was trained to notice physical responses or cues which might clue him in to whether this "relationship" was only a ruse.

After 20 or 30 minutes of interview our passports were returned and we were allowed to enter the secure area of the terminal. The idea of flying on an Israeli airline is somewhat unsettling; it brings to mind hijackings and the PFLP. Athens International Airport itself was the scene of a PFLP attack on an El Al aircraft in 1968, which resulted in the death of an Israeli mechanic. But after having been through the interview process I felt very secure - more secure than I've felt in any airport terminal or on any aircraft. And during the process no one actually touched my person. I was never frisked or asked to undress.

My "junk" was not abused.

I'm not saying this method of security is a perfect fit for the U.S., but it offers us some valuable lessons. The U.S. is of course much larger than Israel and experiences a higher volume of traffic. In this respect it might not be ideal. Yes, the Israelis profile people (the horror!). We in the United States seem to be of the opinion that if profiling were to ever be enacted that the Constitution would spontaneously combust and the nation would become a jack-booted autocracy (which, according to whoever is currently out of power every 4 to 8 years, is just around the corner). Regardless of what pundits and professors may tell you, the United States is not in danger of becoming a herrenvolk democracy (again). Those who would surrender liberty for security deserve neither, we're told. But isn't that a false dilemma? What is liberty without security? An Ayn Rand wet dream perhaps.

What the vast majority of people want is dialogue between the two. The question I would like to pose is what is more tolerable, having a total stranger touch your "junk" or have to answer prying questions about who gets to touch that "junk." If people expect security (and liberty), then some level of prying by security officials will have to be accepted. I am of the opinion that security screening should be more based on detecting the person rather than the object - whether bomb, gun, or box cutter.

Black Bears and Black Confederates: The complex racial heritage of Ole Miss's new mascot

2010-10-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

After several years of having no "official" on-field mascot, the Black Bear has been chosen by the University of Mississippi as its new symbol. For decades, the mascot of Ole Miss was an old, Shelby Foote-esque southern plantation owner named "Colonel Reb." Sporting a cane, a stetson hat and a frock coat, Colonel Reb is a stereotype as equally unrepresentative of the South and southern whites as Jethro Bodine would be for residents of Appalachia, or the cast of Jersey Shore would be for, well, the whole of New Jersey (my apologies to Colonel Reb and Jethro Bodine for inclusion in such company).

Despite the fact that "Ole Miss" is itself a term veritably dripping with racist connotations rooted in slavery (Ole Missus is slave parlance for the plantation mistress); despite the fact that the campus of Ole Miss is dotted with monuments to the Lost Cause, including two monuments to Confederate dead and a stained glass window honoring the University Grays, a local unit which was almost totally wiped out at Gettysburg, the school administration thought dropping the Colonel Reb image - perhaps the most inoffensive image of all - would signal that finally Ole Miss had left its racist past behind and was moving forward. After removing Colonel Reb by executive fiat (much to the consternation of students and alumni), appointing committees to draft new mascot ideas (which included the laughable "landshark" and unspeakably stupid "Hotty Toddy"), a new mascot, a black bear, was chosen.

There are, as far as I know, no longer any black bears in North Mississippi. But the bear has at least some tenuous connection to local lore and to Mississippi history. "The Bear," widely considered to be one of William Faulkner's greatest short stories, is set in Faulkner's fictitious Yoknapatawpha County - a parallel version of the real Lafayette County, Mississippi. The tale, which deals with guilt over man's destruction of the land, as well as his cruelty to man (particularly, in this story in the form of slavery), is a brilliant meditation on human nature and on the character of the South. The story centers on a hunt for a massive, seemingly invulnerable bear named Old Ben (think of the bear in the movie "Prophecy"). Despite being shot dozens of times, he always manages to survive. Literary critics consider it to be the greatest hunting story ever told. I think Faulkner, who was considered an oddball by Oxonians, would have found it funny that his tale would be cited as the inspiration for the university mascot.

But even at the center of this tale of the bear - this new symbol seemingly free of all racial baggage - is a dark past of violence and exploitation. The new factor, however, is guilt. The story centers around the guilt of Ike, who is slated to inherit his family's plantation. But guilt over slavery causes him to renounce his inheritance. The story isn't merely a lively tale about a ferocious bear, but a meditation on the evils of slavery; and as such I feel as though citing it as the inspiration for a college sports mascot is rather strange. But given the context - a school wishing to shed its past associations with slavery and racism - perhaps it is fitting. But Ole Miss has not fully repudiated the image of Colonel Reb - it still owns his image, and even a cursory online search reveals that products bearing his likeness are still for sale.

Mississippi is, apparently, rich in bear lore. It was to Mississippi that Teddy Roosevelt repaired for a bear hunting expedition in 1902. At the invitation of the governor, Roosevelt had come to play the rough, virile figure he was by then so practiced at playing. As his guide was selected Holt Collier, a near mythical figure who is rather like someone who stepped out of one of Faulkner's novels. But Collier is perhaps more fantastical than anyone Faulkner could conjure. Born a slave, Collier was hunting before he had his first pubic hairs. By the age of 10 he was an accomplished marksman and had killed his first bear. When the war broke out between the States, Collier wanted to join his master on the battlefield. He was told that he was too young. Collier snuck away from the plantation, boarded a river boat, and joined up with a Confederate unit in Texas. He served as a scout and apparently as a "spy," although all of the details remain to me, as yet, unclear. As a hunter, Collier was unparalleled; he was rumored to have killed 3,000 bears. Collier is easily the equal of such legendary figures and pioneers as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie - only quite possibly more badass. A highly praised book by the scholar Minor Ferris Buchanan on the subject of Collier has been added to my "to read" list.

Holt Collier

But I digress. During the legendary hunt which would spawn the "teddy bear," Collier cornered a black bear for the President. When Roosevelt failed to appear to dispatch the beast (the President was apparently off somewhere only pretending to be a badass), Collier was faced with the possibility that it would escape. Rather than look like a trifling fool for letting the President's bear get away, Collier took the butt of his gun and went toe to toe with the animal. By himself, Collier subdued the animal and tied it to a nearby tree. When Roosevelt arrived, he refused to shoot an animal that had been tied up. The lesser known part of this story is that Roosevelt was in awe of Collier, who then regaled Roosevelt and his coterie of hangers-on with stories of his experiences in slavery, the Civil War, and in the days of Reconstruction. Roosevelt was so impressed with Collier that he went on another hunt with him years later.

Yet again, at the heart of another story which the bear mascot draws upon, we have another complex set of circumstances which reach back to the Old South. Only this time it is perhaps more confounding. While the story of "The Bear" has the guilt of slavery, the figure of Holt Collier is a "loyal" slave, who fought alongside his master on the side of the Confederacy. An acquaintance of mine is constantly harping on how memorialization of the Confederacy is a "whites only" activity - and as such it should be jettisoned from a public university like Ole Miss. While I do not deny the centrality of the ideologies of white supremacy to the South (and really, the ideologies of white supremacy were central to American history as a whole), to say that it is a "whites only" activity is an oversimplification. Several of the "civilized" Indian tribes sided with the Confederacy, for one. Moreover, there were slaves, whether we like it or not, who served in some battlefield roles. This does not mean that slaves made up a large contingent in the Confederate army, or as some in the SCV like to claim, that the Civil War was not about slavery. There were men like Holt Collier - slaves - who because of ties of affection to their masters (I know academics who would roll up their eyes in horror at such a suggestion) sided with the Confederacy. The Old South, for all of its cruelty, was also in the words of Eugene Genovese, a culture that bound two peoples together in a complex "organic relationship."

And Confederate memorialization has been reclaimed by some - I stress some - blacks. Two come to mind: On one end of the spectrum is the oddball Lost Cause advocate H.K. Edgerton, who gave the most rousing pro-Confederate speech I have ever heard (I met him at a reenactment in North Carolina). On the opposite end of the spectrum is Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the illegitimate daughter of Strom Thurmond, who has encouraged African Americans to join the UDC/SCV in order to get in touch with their white roots.

Confederate memory, like southern history (and indeed all of American history) is complicated. And that complexity comes through even in the figure of a seemingly innocuous black bear. We aren't just dealing with a mean animal that can potentially intimidate opponents or that little kiddies will enjoy at football events; but something that is meant to represent the essence of Ole Miss, as an entity that is bound up with the traditions of locality and state. The lore surrounding the black bear is deeply tied up with the South's complex racial past; it is by no means a figure uncomplicated by race. While this racial association is not visibly written on the figure of the black bear - it is there, embedded in the stories which give the symbol its life. And in an ironic twist it even manages a backhanded paw swipe at those who would dethrone the Confederate symbolism of Ole Miss.

Whether the bear will be able to reverse Ole Miss's fortunes on the football field is doubtful. Houston Nutt continues to confound me.

A prayer for September 11th

2010-09-10T13:56:00.000-07:00

From Fr. John Troy of St. John Antiochian Orthodox Church comes the following prayer, "which has been blessed to say before the dismissal of all divine services tomorrow [September 11th] and Sunday."

A prayer for September 11th

O Lord our God, Who art Thyself, the Hope of the hopeless, the Help of the helpless, the Savior of the storm-tossed, the Haven of the voyager, the Physician of the sick; be all things to our land which nine years ago on this date was devastated by the cowardly and hateful acts of false martyrs; who imitated wicked Herod in his slaughter of 14,000 innocents, whose only crime was to be born at the time of Thine incarnation. For those who lost loved ones, grant the comfort you imparted to Mary and Martha before you raised Lazarus and care for them as Thou didst care for Thy Mother from the Cross, putting her in the care of the Apostle John. For the survivors, grant them healing in every sense, as you strengthened and healed the confessors. For those related to and aiding the survivors and the families of the fallen, grant the strength and compassion Thou didst instill in Thy foster father Joseph, who was Thy guardian in Thine earthly youth. For those who died, grant them remission of their every sin in Thy great compassion; both those who like the wise servant and the wise virgins, constantly prepared themselves to enter the heavenly banquet at any hour; and those who emulated the Rich Fool, preferring to enjoy earthly pursuits and ignore heavenly ones. To the rest of us, instill in us the knowledge that while the devil still manipulates our Divinely-given free will to his own ends in this world, his power is fleeting and ultimately void, as Thou hast already crushed his dominion, leaving to him only those who freely choose him. Remind us that, while evil at times seems to win, and the death of the innocent seems to signal the destruction of goodness, the innocent are at peace, and while the God-fearing will endure a period of torment; those who choose evil shall endure eternal torment. For those who hate us, speak to their hearts as St. Procla sought to speak to her husband Pilate concerning Thee, and as Thou didst speak to Pharoah concerning the Hebrews, to soften the hearts of those who seek our destruction. Spare us O Lord, from all hatred of the murderers, and from prejudice toward those whose only crime is to be of their ethnicity and/or religion. Spare us, O Lord, from paranoia and rash acts by which we trample each other like rabid beasts. Spare, O Lord, those who protect us, those who serve in our government, armed forces, law enforcement agencies and all first responders, from despondency, disillusionment, and all things which would undermine their righteous calling to protect us in the manner of our Guardian Angels, and care for us in the manner of the Good Samaritan. All this we ask of Thee our all-powerful and all-loving Saviour, together with Thine unorginate Father, and Thine all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Rev. William Hogan's "conversion" to the Greek Church

2010-07-14T22:41:00.001-07:00

William Hogan

In July of 1824, the following notice appeared in the Baltimore Patriot:

The Rev. William Hogan, in Philadelphia, has published an address to the Congregation of St. Mary's Church, renouncing the Catholic Religion as established by the Church of Rome, and assuming that of the Greek Church for his future guide. We fully agree with Mr. Walsh, who thinks he "has become tired of those parts of the doctrines and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church, which enjoin celibacy and occasional fasting."

Hogan, formerly priest of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Philadelphia, became the object of scandal in the early 1820s, when he removed himself to a private residence and became involved in behavior that was unbecoming of his priestly office. He refused to obey his bishop, and as a result was removed from the priesthood. When he persisted in his behavior, even going so far as to set up his own renegade congregation where he celebrated mass and railed against the priests and bishops who opposed him, he and those who supported him were excommunicated.

The episode is referred to as the "Hogan Schism," and was the cause of a great deal of conflict among Catholics in Philadelphia during the first half of the 1820s. Hogan seems to have been opposed to the practice of celibacy among Catholic priests, among other things. But overall, he seems to have been a deeply troubled, angry man. Hogan was brought up on charges for assault and battery upon a woman in 1822. That year the division between the Hogan party and the Roman Catholic Church led to a riot in which several hundred persons were wounded.

In 1824 Hogan announced that he was converting to Orthodoxy, although it is doubtful that he ever did. In his letter to St. Mary's, reprinted in the Berks and Schuylkill Journal, he wrote of the difference between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church, noting that Orthodoxy preserved the doctrines of the early church "in their original purity":

[If you] insist upon the right of electing your own Bishops and Pastors - if you consent to the free circulation of the Scriptures - if you consider yourselves on an exact footing with the Greek Catholics, and will denominate your Church The American Catholic Church, I shall feel a pride in being your Pastor. - I have dwelt in serious meditation on the doctrines and discipline of our Church in those countries, where the jurisdiction of Rome is recognized, and in Greece, where it is rejected; and I have come to the conclusion that Rome sanctions an evident departure from their ancient simplicity; and that the Greek Church preserves them in their original purity.

The Records of the American Catholic Society of Philadelphia note that "He professed to have become a convert to the doctrines of the Greek Church," but there is no evidence that he ever became Orthodox. He published several articles in the National Gazette proposing that an American Catholic Church be formed along the lines of the Greek Church. There was little to no interest in such a proposition. Hogan was merely looking for a means to justify his behavior, and he incorrectly believed that the Orthodox Church would enable him to do so.

Later that year he moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he married Henrietta McKay, who came from a prominent propertied family. By all reports the marriage was not a happy one. Hogan was known to neglect his wife, and appropriated her belongings for his own personal use: gambling at the race track. A source records that "Hogan's reputation in Wilmington is that of an unprincipled adventurer." After two years, Henrietta died and Hogan remarried. Adding still further to his suspicious behavior, his bride was once again a wealthy widow, Lydia White Gardner. In the following years Hogan preached in Protestant churches, wrote books denouncing the evils of "popery," edited the Daily American, and served as U.S. Consul to Cuba. From his anti-Catholic writings, we can clearly see that Hogan abandoned any notion of becoming Orthodox. He railed against the Real Presence, the veneration of saints and images, and the erection of monasteries, among other things.

Hogan's attachment to Orthodoxy was not animated by piety, but by both ideology and outright rebellion. When Orthodoxy was no longer useful to him as a prop, he abandoned it and turned to radical anti-Catholicism. Hogan's writings continue to circulate today, as evidenced by their appearance on anti-Catholic websites where they enjoy wider circulation than they would have received when they were first published.

For more on the Hogan Schism, go here.

Nicholas Said, first African-American Orthodox Christian?

2010-07-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

In June of 1863, a 29 year old free black by the name of Nicholas Said enlisted in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry. The military service documents record that he was born in Detroit, Michigan and that his occupation was "servant." But Nicholas was not born in Detroit, Michigan, nor had he always been a servant. In fact, Nicholas was born in the Kingdom of Bornou in Central Africa, the ninth of 19 children, and originally named Mohammed Ali Ben Said. Nicholas was not only the son of a powerful African Muslim military leader, he is also the first known African baptized as an Orthodox Christian to come to the United States.

The Bornou Empire, which was centered in West Central Africa around Lake Chad, rose to prominence ca. 1600 through military conquest. Using techniques learned from Ottoman military advisors, Bornou subjugated its neighbors and carried on a lucrative trade in slaves. By the time of Muhammad Ali Ben Said's birth ca. 1836, Bornou had been in decline for decades and was beset from without by a Jihad launched by the Islamic reformer Usman Dan Fodio. Even though Bornou was itself an Islamic state, the Fulani Jihad was directed at surrounding Muslims who were seen as unorthodox.

Said's family was well-off within the Empire. His father was one of the trusted lieutenants of the king of Bornou and a member of the warrior class. His family held numerous slaves taken in warfare and received as gifts of the king. That Said neglects to mention this in his autobiographies is an interesting bit of political maneuvering in the wake of a Civil War between a slaveholding South and a free labor North.

Said was himself enslaved by a "marauding tribe" of African slavers around the time he was 15 years old and sold to an Arab merchant from Tripoli. He exchanged hands several times, passing through Turkey and wound up as a gift given to a Russian diplomat. He was then given over to Prince Nicholas Vassilievitch Troubetzkoy, a member of an eminent Russian family. Prince Troubetzkoy insisted that Mohammed Ali learn Russian and convert to Christianity, which he initially resisted, but eventually consented to. On November 12, 1855, at the age of 19 or 20, Said was baptized. He had some misgivings about this experience:

Hitherto, ever since my advent into Christendom, I had remained a consistent Islam (sic), repeating the requisite number of prayers daily, and at the time required, refraining from the use of pork, wine, etc., and rolling my eyes in holy horror at the frequent infractions of the law of the Koran that I constantly had occasion to witness. But His Excellency made up his mind to turn me from the error of my ways, and devoted himself assiduously to the accomplishment of his purpose.

Whenever he went to prayers, he made me stand before him, bon gré, mal gré, and imitate every action of his, such as kneeling, bowing, making the sign of the cross, etc., and I used to enjoy myself hugely, cutting capers and going through all sorts of pantomimic performances when he thought I was acting in a very devotional manner. One day, as I was indulging extensively in my favorite amusement, the Prince happened to turn, and caught me in my most striking attitude, whereupon he gave me a striking reminder of what was decent and respectful on such solemn occasions, by administering to my ears a good boxing and depriving me of my dinner.

Finally, my prejudices gave way, however, and I consented to embrace the Greek faith, the State religion of Russia. I was baptized in Riga on the 12th of November, 1855, leaving my Mohammedan name of Mohammed Ali Ben Said at the font, and bearing therefrom the Christian name of Nicholas. This performance ended, I thought the job was complete, but the next day the papa, or priest who had me baptized, sent for me, and on getting where he was, I found myself in a beautiful chapel, handsomely paved with marble of different colors. He caused me to kneel before an immense tableau of the Saviour for hours, asking pardons for my past sins. As the marble was harder than my knees, I was in perfect agony during the greater portion of the time, and became so enraged with the papa, that I fear I committed more sins during that space of time than I had done in days before. In fact, I am not sure but that a few ungainly Mohammedan asperities of language bubbled up to my lips. But I managed to get through without any overt act of rebellion.

When I had become a confirmed Christian, the Prince presented me with a solid gold cross, and a chain of the same metal to suspend it around my neck by, in the prevailing Russian fashion; and, as he had never allowed me to associate with the rest of his domestics, I began to consider myself quite a superior being.

Said's attitude with regard to Orthodoxy does not seem to be one of great devotion. For him, being in the position of a servant, it was a means to gain better treatment and the favor of his master. It was likely much the same for many first generation slaves brought to the New World; acceptance of Christianity held the promise of better treatment, and in rare cases manumission. An 1867 article in the Atlantic Monthly reveals Said was grateful to his master for the baptism, despite his lack of knowledge at the time:

I shall always feel grateful, so long as I live, for Prince Nicholas's kindness to me; but I cannot help thinking that the way I was baptized was not right, for I think that I ought to have known perfectly well the nature of the thing beforehand. Still, it was a good intention the Prince had toward my moral welfare.

Said would later become the first African-American apostate - if he can be called that. As early as 1863, one source records that Said "emphatically" proclaimed himself to be a Protestant. According to his autobiography, he abandoned his nominal faith for Swedenborgianism. But there is one other tantalizing tidbit. The 1867 Atlantic Monthly article refers to a clergyman he met in Constantinople while he was in the service of the Russian diplomat Mentchikoff. Years later, while working in Detroit, he met this same clergyman again. This was some time between 1861 and 1863. Neither the name nor the denomination of this particular clergyman is given by the editor of the article. Could this have been an Orthodox priest? Were there any Orthodox priests in Detroit around this time?

Some American Muslims have attempted to lay claim to Said by glossing over the fact that he was clearly a practicing Christian, and conveniently leaving out the fact that in his autobiography he decries the influence of Islam on his homeland, going so far as to criticize "Moslem fanaticism" and Sharia law's mistreatment of women. I doubt that we can consider Said the first black Orthodox Christian in the United States, but he is certainly the first that we know of who was baptized into the Church and was influenced by Orthodoxy. Neither Islam nor Orthodoxy can fully claim Said, but I feel there is something to be said for the influence of Russia and Orthodoxy on the man that he ultimately became. It was not until he came to Russia that he began to be treated humanely (not that his treatment was without cruelty). And the nagging regret Nicholas felt when he decided to leave Russia for the New World testifies to the fact that he developed a strong connection to the people there:
After he [the Prince] found that I was not to be persuaded [to remain], he got up with tears in his eyes, and said: "Said, I wish you good luck; you have served me honestly and faithfully, and if ever misfortune happens to you, remember I shall always be, as I always have been, interested in you." I, with many tears, replied that I was exceedingly thankful for all he had bestowed on me and done in my behalf, and that I should pray for him while I lived. I felt truly sorry to leave this most excellent Prince. . . . It was many days before I overcame my regret. Often I could hardly eat for grief (emphasis added).

Nicholas' promise to pray for his master may have come from his exposure to Orthodoxy. In the 1867 article, Nicholas relates that he was given "several very interesting" religious books by the Prince's brother, Vladimir, then dying of consumption in Dresden. We can only guess what those might have been, but they were probably Orthodox in nature.

We do have a fairly good picture of what Said did following the Civil War. A May 23rd, 1871 Freedman's Bank record indicates that Nicholas was in Tallahassee, Florida. The Freedman's Bank was established to help emancipated slaves and African-American veterans establish financial security. Said came to the Union Bank in Tallahassee, which still stands, to apply for an account with the Freedman's Bank. He described himself to the bank agent as a "traveler" and his occupation as "teacher." Nicholas was apparently rather well known to the record-taker, who added at the bottom, "This is the wonderful Nicholas Said, doubtless."

Nicholas's signature on the Freedman's Bank application

In the following years he traveled throughout the South and spoke about his experiences. First he settled in Alabama, where he worked as a teacher. He spoke positively of whites in Alabama, which stood in stark contrast to the scorn he heaped on the mulatto population of Haiti and the West Indies in his autobiography. Things in Alabama evidently did not work out, for he then reappears in Brownsville, Tennessee, working again as a school teacher. The 1880 census reveals that he was boarding with a family of ex-slaves and their children, the Jordans.

Towards the end of his autobiography, Said noted that a life of self-sacrifice and love for one’s fellow man led to happiness:

Self-denial is now-a-days so rare, that it is thought only individuals of insane mind can speak of it. A person who tries to live only for others, and puts himself in the second place, is hooted at, and considered a fit inmate for the asylum. The man who artfully extorts the earning of his fellow-man, and who seems to have no feeling for his daily wants, is, by a strange perversion, deemed the wise. To me, it is impossible to conceive how a human being can be happy through any other channel, than to do as much good as possible to his fellow-man in this world.

A scribbled note from Said's military records claims that he died in Brownsville Tennessee on August 6, 1882. He died relatively young, in his mid to late 40s. I am currently trying to get hold of Haywood County, Tennessee death records from that time period to find out where he is buried. If I can find out where his grave is, I intend to go visit and perhaps make a rubbing.

Moondog

2010-03-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

Slave Socialism

2010-03-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

But nobody ought to be poor. There ought to be a competence for all. Warranteeism is a contrivance to procure a competence for everybody. It actualizes this competence and is progressive. It distributes to warrantees a comfortable sufficiency not for strength only, but for health. Warranteeism is not political and economic only. It is hygienic. This also is its essence. It warrants the necessaries of health. It is both curative and preventive. - Henry Hughes, 1854

The South was not always a seat of "conservative" politics and opposition to Federal intervention. In fact, one of the most sweeping calls for an intrusive socialist-style bureaucracy was made by southern sociologist Henry Hughes. His writings are particularly instructive because of their call for a system of nationalized healthcare in...1854. Socialized medicine is by no means a new idea, nor confined to "free," "liberal" societies. As historian Michael O'Brien has said, southerners were not "obsessed" with race and slavery to the exclusion of everything else, but engaged with the intellectual currents then prevalent in the Atlantic world - they saw themselves as a modern, "progressive" people, albeit with a peculiar form of modernity based around slavery (the tensions and contradictions inherent in this insistence on modernity and slavery are exciting for history nerds like myself). In fact, sociology was a southern project before it was a project anywhere else in America. "Sociology" first appears in print in the English language in a book that aims to preserve a system of white supremacy.

Henry Hughes was born in Port Gibson, Mississippi, in 1829. He was a genius. His diary reveals that he viewed himself with a sense of almost messianic purpose. He was going to save the South and the world through his intellectual powers. Despite his sense of destiny and intellectual acumen, he was largely unknown by the southern public, and died in 1862 of disease while out on campaign with the Confederate army. Hughes wrote his magnum opus, a "Treatise on sociology, theoretical and practical" in 1854, in which he envisioned a new system of labor known as "warranteeism." Under warranteeism, slaveholders would become "warrantors," charged by the state with providing for the laborers assigned to work in their households. Hughes believed that coercive force was needed to compel individuals to work - it constituted a civic duty. Individual property in man would cease, but the master-servant relationship would be preserved in its essence, and upheld by a powerful central government ("The relation of master and servant must not be private; it must be public; that of magistrate to people.") This highly regulated, "progressive" (his adjective) society would eliminate want, crime, and even disease. Simply put, Hughes envisioned a peculiar brand of socialism that enshrined inequality and the racial inferiority of blacks to whites. It was socialism for a slave society.

Hughes was preoccupied with the creation of a hygienic polity. To effect the elimination of disease, the state was charged with providing for the health and hygiene of the warrantees. To carry out this goal, Hughes called for the the creation of a health bureaucracy, known as "the body hygienic" - part of a heptarchy of departments or "municipalities" given charge over various facets of public welfare. "The body hygienic" was given a wide scope of powers, many of which today fall under various departments of the Federal government:

The body hygienic shall have jurisdiction over hygienic matters. Of this system, the special end is health, or the normal conservation and progress of the human hody.

It shall have power:—

To establish quarantines; and pass all laws necessary and proper, for the prevention of infections, and contagions :

To order sanitary inspections, or surveys; sanitary scavenging, draining, and purifications; to establish sanitary police, watchmen, and surveyors :

To declare and establish hygienic districts and sub- districts :

To order hygienic statistics or censuses; to keep records of births, deaths, and marriages; and to keep public hygienic registers:

To declare and abate hygienic nuisances:

To interdict food, raiment, and habitation, grossly and manifestly pernicious to health :

To regulate the structure of all habitations and houses ; of all tenements, whether on land or water; and to issue hygienic certificates, probating all architectural plans:

To regulate the number and hygienic disposal, of all tenants whether of houses, water-craft or other tenements :

To order vaccination and other necessary precautions:

To enforce ventilation of public and private buildings and places:

To provide for the inspection, and prohibit the adulteration, of food, and of drugs and medicines:

To provide for the care, and to regulate the use, of poisons, explosives, combustibles, and other materials, dangerous to the unskilled or incautious:

To have jurisdiction of public baths, dispensaries, warming-fires, and life-preservers; and of hygienic asylums and hospitals:

...

To order the qualifications, rights, duties, powers, and responsibilities of medical doctors, surgeons, druggists and apothecaries.

One power stood out from all of the others. It called for making "laws for the conservation and progress of the race; and for this to prevent degeneration, by prohibiting intermarriages manifestly and perniciously degenerative." For Hughes, "hygiene" was just as much (if not more) a matter of race as of cleanliness. Fundamental to a hygienic polity was insuring that certain pregnancies be prevented, that the polity not be burdened by those who might degenerate it. Hughes did not sanction abortion, but he sought to place restrictions on who could mate with whom. Race, hygiene, progress, and religion were all intertwined for Hughes:

The preservation and progress of a race, is a moral duty of the races. Degeneration is evil. It is a sin. That sin is extreme. Hybridism is heinous. Impurity of races is against the law of nature. Mulattoes are monsters. The law of nature is the law of God. The same law which forbids consanguineous amalgamation forbids ethnical amalgamation. Both are incestuous. Amalgamation is incest.

Hughes' society was an intrusive apartheid state that treated its second class citizens - blacks - as wards of the state.

I recently had to listen to one of my professors - who I have a great deal of respect for - rant to a classroom of 300 undergrads about how the progressives were great guys. He was upset with Glenn Beck - who I by no means mean to defend - for decrying all progressives as horrible people who ruined America. I disagree with Beck, but I also don't agree that the Progressives of the 19th and 20th centuries were universally great people, or that everything they proposed had a positive impact on the nation.

I also want to challenge this notion that historically, opposition among southerners to an expansive state is somehow intimately tied to racism, when there have been other currents in southern intellectual discourse that are exactly the reverse. Southerners looked to other foundations upon which to build and defend their peculiar institution than limited government. Another notable southerner who engaged in a socialist-style critique of free-labor societies was George Fitzhugh. "Slavery," Fitzhugh wrote in 1854, "is a form, and the very best form, of socialism."

The one individual who exercised the greatest influence on both Hughes and Fitzhugh was Auguste Comte, a French philosopher and the founder of both the field of sociology and the philosophical movement known as positivism. Comte was a great influence on other "progressive" sociologists, particularly Herbert Croly. Croly was not a southerner, but was born in New York in 1869. Apart from his work in sociology, he was the founder of the New Republic. He's a bit of a celebrated figure among "progressives" even today. In a recent Newsweek write-up, Louisa Thomas opined that Croly's writings had unleashed a wave of legislation that "appealed to basic decency: child labor laws, workers' compensation, the expansion of suffrage, anti-corruption measures, health care, etc. Isn't it time for that spirit again?" Thomas allowed that Croly had gotten "a lot wrong," but there is no explanation of what, exactly, Croly got wrong.

Croly's vision, which called for an interventionist economic and social policy, was an unacknowledged elaboration on the ideas of Henry Hughes. Croly supported the use of coercion to ensure that individuals fulfilled their obligation to work in an appropriate field, a notion which is very similar to core aspects of Hughes' warranteeism. Croly deemed those who lived in rural areas, particularly blacks, to be unfit for life in urban settings, and therefore fit only for agricultural work. He believed that the proslavery intellectuals were correct when they asserted that "negroes were a race possessed of moral and intellectual qualities inferior to those of white men." By asserting that the least trained and intelligent would be more prosperous and moral in a rural farm setting, Croly was carrying the intellectual torch of antebellum proslavery thinkers into the new century.

Croly's ideas laid the groundwork for and partly found their embodiment in the New Deal. The "New Nationalism" he called for aimed at checking the greed and self-interest that had characterized the individualistic/libertarian spirit of colonial and antebellum America. This spirit, Croly wrote, "resulted in a morally and socially undesirable distribution of wealth." I do not mean to argue that the New Deal was racist. While it did uphold the racial status quo in many ways - partly as a concession to southerners - the New Deal was not explicitly racist. The point I wish to make is that the intellectual wellspring of progressivism, and hence modern liberalism, is also deeply implicated in the white supremacist project.

To paraphrase Jonah Goldberg, if "progressives" and liberals had to own their intellectual history the way conservatives do, they would be forced to renounce Croly, not call for his rediscovery.

I want to undermine the notion that opposition to big government is somehow historically rooted in racism, when in fact strands - and indeed some of the roots - of American progressivism were nourished and grew out of a sociological project that sought to maintain white supremacy.

Furthermore, I want to complicate how we conceive of the so-called benevolence (some might even say paternalism) of a state entity that presumes to know what is best for us. The intellectual roots of socialism in this country are anything but lily-white (so to speak). One of the most sweeping (and earliest), radical calls for a highly regulated socialist-style system in this country was made by a man who did so in the defense of a system of white supremacy. The intellectual tradition out of which social welfare emerged is not purely one with its roots in "revolutionary" movements that had in mind the so-called welfare of the brotherhood of man, but also the subjection of one group to another.

Polaris

2010-03-16T01:57:00.000-07:00

Sankofa

2010-03-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

"I give and bequeath unto my son Edward Outlaw one hundred and three acres of land with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging to him and his heirs forever-and one Negro boy called Cophee and one four gallon porridge pot."

This is an excerpt from the will of my great x 10 grandfather, Edward Outlaw. He died in 1714. I've written about him briefly here before, as well as about his brother John Outlaw who I recently discovered was a pirate.

Yes, a pirate.

But I'll write in more detail about that at a later date.

Take a look at that passage again. The positioning of the "Negro boy called Cophee" between a measly parcel of land and a four gallon piece of crockery, like a thing. But that's what a slave was during this time, a chattel, or a tool. He or she was just a tool that was alive, a commodified living body that could be shipped in a boat alongside barrels of grain or bags of sugar and sold at auction like a car or a box of old vinyl records.

And again:

"I give and bequeath unto my son Ralph Outlaw one hundred and two acres of land beginning at a marked persimmon at the upper end of my orchard and so running along the old field to two persimmon trees more and from the last persimmons to run a line to make up the complement-and one Negro girl called Bess to him and his heirs forever."

And again:

"I give and bequeath unto my daughter Elizabeth King one Negro woman called Diana and her increase forever."

And his heirs forever. And her increase forever. History really hits you hard when what you study as a historian and what is tied to your identity, especially in a visceral, physical way, come together. The blood of Edward Outlaw flows in my veins, in a small sense. I'm one of his heirs, ten generations down the line.

I recently read historian Jennifer Morgan's "Laboring Bodies," which deals with the appropriation of the "increase" of the bodies of enslaved women. One of her arguments is that the language of referring to the offspring of enslaved women changed throughout the 17th century. The use of the term "child," or even of "pickaninnies," was discarded for "increase," a term which linguistically severed the mothers claim to her children by commodifying and dehumanizing them. It was fascinating to see the use of such terminology in the will of one of my ancestors.

I was discussing history with a colleague last night and how we can make it more engaging for students. When I read history I imagine it all like a novel; I can see the people that are described on the pages, even though there may be no actual physical description. I see the enslaved Gambian herdsman in the 17th century Carolina backcountry leaning on a cane he uses to guide his herd through canebrakes, and a sweaty, red-faced English settler in breeches and rolled up sleeves, a rude straw hat on his head, hacking his way through bottom land to bring the cattle to fresh water on a blazing Carolina day. The mosquitoes are in abundance and miasmas fill the air. Many don't know that very early colonial South Carolina was originally largely based around the raising of cattle, with many of the first "cowboys" being slaves. But I'm rambling.

I can imagine Cophee and Diana and Bess from what little I can gather from this will. First, Cophee was an Akan, and was from, or his parents were from what is today modern Ghana or Ivory Coast. This is indicated by his name, Cophee, or Kofi, which is an Akan day name for a boy who is born on Friday. Cophee was born on some Friday (in Akan, Afi) in the early 18th century. He may have made the voyage over from Africa, but it is also likely that he was born in Carolina or Virginia and knew only the country that his ancestors would be enslaved in for generations. Either way, if his name is any indication, Cophee's parents still very much held fast to the Akan culture. Diana may have been Cophee's mother and Bess may have been his sister. This is only speculation, though; Cophee could have been purchased separately and had no blood ties to Diana or Bess. Judging by later slave marriage and parenting patterns, Cophee's father may have lived on another farm or plantation and traveled on certain days of the week to see his wife and child. His parents may have told him stories from Akan culture such as the Anansi trickster tales that I also read when I was a child. Tricksters like Anansi and later Br'er Rabbit allowed slaves to clandestinely thumb their noses at the authority of their masters.

There is no typical experience for a child slave. Cophee could have been put to work in tasks which freed older slaves to engage in more pressing tasks. He may have cut wood, hauled water, or tended animals. He most likely would have been employed in the house. Judging by the modest slave holdings of Edward Outlaw - one woman, one girl, and one boy - he was not engaged in large-scale agriculture. His slaves would have been employed in growing some crops, but they would have also been engaged in cooking and other household chores. Cophee may have worked in Edward's orchard picking apples; he may have helped to turn them into cider. The Carolinas and Virginia were notorious for being insalubrious places, South Carolina in particular, and the only thing that was safe to drink was either an alcoholic drink or water mixed with other alcohols. Cophee, Diana, and Bess may have gone down to the persimmon trees that dotted the Outlaw plantation to collect the fruit, as well, and from this made persimmon beer (which I long to make, btw).

Children were not spared from the brutal aspects of slavery. Corporal punishment, which was widespread in the disciplining of white children, could even more harsh for slave children. I've read later accounts of slave children being killed by angry owners over trifles. Whippings were typically done with switches, paddles, or whatever was on hand. I've read of wooden roof shingles being used to whip slave children. Perhaps worse was the trauma of witnessing one's mother or father severely whipped for some infraction. Slave testimonies are replete with reminiscences of parents being brutalized while the powerless child looked on. Historians have argued that the violence of whippings was then displaced by slave parents onto their children, which then became a recurring cycle of violence in each generation. I don't agree with this notion, but it is compelling nonetheless.

As the will indicates, after Edward's wife died, the three were to be willed to his children. Elizabeth lived another 13 years after Edward; by this time Cophee would have been an adult, or very near to adulthood, assuming he reached adulthood. Cophee was willed to Edward Jr., who by this time had removed to Chowan County, North Carolina, which is in the northeastern corner of the state. When the land in Virginia fell into Edward's possession he deeded it to his brother-in-law Robert King. This may have been due to the difficulty of holding land in two colonies. This may (again, that word) mean that Cophee remained in Virginia with Diana, who was willed to Elizabeth King, Edward Sr.'s daughter and now wife of Robert. It is more likely that Cophee would have gone to live with Edward Jr. in North Carolina. This is where the trail ends. Anything after this point is complete speculation, as there isn't even a shred of evidence.

Theophany in San Stefano, 1848

2010-02-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this on Theophany, but wasn't able to because of time. As you know, I'm interested in the South, the Middle East, Orthodoxy, and where they occasionally meet. The following passage(s) are from "Turkey and its destiny," by the Englishman Charles Macfarlane, who traveled to the Ottoman Empire several times during the 19th century. In January of 1848 Macfarlane paid a visit to one of the few Americans then residing in Turkey, Dr. James Bolton Davis of South Carolina. Davis had contracted with Sultan Abdul Mejid to introduce the American method of cotton cultivation to Turkey. Davis established a model farm at San Stefano - a village at the time about 11km from Constantinople - that he staffed with four emancipated slaves that had formerly belonged to his father. The model farm was a failure, but only because of the lack of full cooperation from Ottoman authorities. Davis never had enough hands to work the plantation, and observers noted that local hands brought on to work the plantation were lazy and shiftless, in stark contrast to the work ethic of the newly emancipated slaves. Macfarlane described the former slaves as "incomparably the best agricultural labourers we ever saw in Turkey." Davis wished to solicit still more free black laborers to come to Turkey to work the plantation, but the Pasha wanted him to bring over "Red Men" - American Indians - because they would "afford much amusement" to the Sultan. The situation is a fascinating interplay of racial assumptions on the part of Americans (white and black), Englishmen, and Turks that I won't concern myself with here.

While Macfarlane was staying with Davis and his family, the local Greek population celebrated Theophany. The whole plantation was aroused by the noise of the early morning procession. I found the scene of transplanted southerners, roused from sleep by this motley band to be amusing:

On Monday the 17th of January the Greeks celebrated their Epiphany. They began by times. At the second hour after midnight a fellow went through the streets of the village beating the rough pavement with a heavy club like a "Yangin var" man of Constantinople when a fire breaks out. About half an hour later some men at the Greek church beat with sticks and mallets upon the suspended iron plate which serves in lieu of the Turk prohibited bells. This monotonous clatter at a very few paces from our bedroom continued for some time. Next we heard a priest singing psalms through the nose in the street. Our sleep was pretty well murdered, but I did contrive to doze for two or three hours and can give no account of what passed in that interval. At sunrise we were started out of our beds by new and much louder noises. All the Greeks of the village formed into loose processional order were following their priests to the margin of the Sea of Marmora, which flowed close under one of the fronts of the Doctor's house [he refers to Davis' house]. The priests were psalmodizing most nasally; the people were talking and laughing as if they had some good joke in hand. There was no solemnity or seriousness but the very antithesis of solemnity. The priests appeared to be far gone in raki [raki - a local moonshine]: we were assured by a closer observer that one of them was very drunk. They occasionally stopped the psalmody to take their share in the merriment and laughter. These priests advanced to the end of a short rotten wooden jetty which projected into the Propontis. Some of the laymen got into a caique and pulled it a few yards ahead of the jetty; then a burly priest after saying a prayer and making some signs threw a crucifix into the sea and instantly three of the fellows who were in the boat plunged into the water head foremost after it. It must have been a chilling immersion for the morning was bitterly cold. Perhaps it was on this account that so few of the Greeks dived but the smallness of their number was noted by some as a proof of the decay of orthodox devotion at San Stefano. The man who succeeded in finding the cross and fishing it up from the bottom of the sea was hailed with many shouts.

Macfarlane, noting the "decay of orthodox devotion," asked a Greek man why this was so. He replied thusly in French: "C'es que nous lisons le grand Voltaire et tous les philosophes Francais." Loosely translated, because "we have been reading the great Voltaire and other French philosophers."

A song for you

2009-08-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

Oh my land is like a wild goose
Wanders all around everywhere
Trembles and it shakes till every tree is loose
It rolls the meadows and it rolls the nails
So take me down to your dance floor
And I wont mind the people when they stare
Paint a different color on your front door
And tomorrow we will still be there

Jesus built a ship to sing a song to
It sails the rivers and it sails the tide
Some of my friends don't know who they belong to
Some can't get a single thing to work inside
So take me down to your dance floor
And I wont mind the people when they stare
Paint a different color on your front door
And tomorrow we will still be there

I loved you every day and now I'm leaving
And I can see the sorrow in your eyes
I hope you know a lot more than you're believing
Just so the sun don't hurt ou when you cry
So take me down to your dance floor
And I wont mind the people when they stare
Paint a different color on your front door
And tomorrow we will still be there
And tomorrow we will still be there

Worship the real King & see Elvis in heaven

2009-08-09T16:56:00.001-07:00

I've been out of action for a while for various reasons. Let's just say I've had a bad summer, and I'm in a complicated situation with someone I care about. It's not something I care to explore here.

*****

On Saturday my parents came to visit me in Mississippi. We decided to go see the birthplace of Elvis, a little shotgun shack in a nondescript lower-class neighborhood of Tupelo, MS. On the way there you travel down the main drag of Tupelo, past old sandwich shops and barbecue joints that look like they've been around since the 1950s. The road is lined with Payday loans, a Walmart, hole-in-the-wall "stylists" emblazoned with fake Nagel paintings, and Baptist churches within spitting distance of each other. A sign proclaims "Tupelo, First TVA City."

There's an Orthodox Mission station on the main drag as well, but I saw no sign of it. It blows my mind that there is an Orthodox mission in Elvis' hometown. Unfortunately, they aren't very visible.

Once you pass through the downtown area you find yourself in the "bad" part of town. I do not mean to speak ill of the residents, but the area is obviously poor, poorly kempt, and dominated by an architectural style that could be described as "depressed." They're not any different from the sort of mill houses that populate the piedmont towns of North Carolina where I grew up - but with one crucial difference: these are built on holy ground.

We crossed over a bridge. There's a billboard that says something about "Apparations of Mary," and features a soft, tacky painting of the Mother of God. We had entered a weird spiritual universe that we did not yet fully comprehend.

Tucked down a nondescript sidestreet is the little white shotgun shack that Elvis was born in, complete with porch swing. It's been heavily restored, and probably looks better now than it ever did during its life as a dwelling. A strange religiosity pervades everything. You get the feeling you're at the closest thing southern protestants have to a holy place - at least one not related to the Civil War. I sat on the porch swing for a few minutes by myself while the tour groups were away and I could properly enjoy the place that had formed the world's greatest entertainer (sorry, Neil Diamond).

The house itself faces a Methodist church. As I was sitting there in the relative quiet, shaded from the oppressive Mississippi sun, I noticed the sounds of a gospel choir emanating from the Methodist church just 50 feet away. On the marquee: "Worship the real King & see Elvis in heaven." I walked in to find a gospel quartet belting out. It was a very southern place and moment; to be in a church listening to the music Elvis grew up listening to, across the street from the house he grew up in. Parked outside was a pink Cadillac.

I was irritated by the fact that so many of the tourists thronging the gift shop and museum were utterly uninterested in this scene. There is a definite tension at this site between the "authentic" poor boy named Elvis Presley who grew up with old time religion, gospel music, and idolized black and white musicians, and the larger than life, overexposed, drug-addled superstar who practically embodies all that is tacky. I can't tell which is more dominant, although this is certainly not the spectacle that is Graceland.

To the right of the shotgun shack is a plain, white Assembly of God church, which Elvis attended with his parents as a boy. Elvis' love of music was born in this church. The building has been moved from its previous location to this spot - inside they present a program that recreates what a 1930s Pentecostal service was like. Despite a sign over the doorframe that says "You are welcome," you must have a ticket to get in. We didn't have tickets, but you can hear the voices spilling out of the clapboard building.

Much more fascinating to me was the Elvis Presley Memorial Chapel. Immediately upon entering I was reminded of the early Church's practice of building churches, baptismal fonts, and shrines over the birthplaces or homes of saints. The chapel smells of incense, although I doubt that's what it is, and recordings of Elvis's gospel songs play over a speaker system. The front of the chapel is ornamented with a large stained-glass window; in the center is a white-clad figure, its hands raised to the cross. It looks strangely like Elvis in one of his trademark white jumpsuits, hands raised in supplication - although it's not explicit. On the back wall of the church are smaller stained glass windows representing various points of doctrine. What grabbed my attention was how "orthodox" all of it was, and how it utilized imagery to convey doctrinal teaching.

The window representing the Trinity

The museum at the site does a decent job of interpreting not only Elvis's life, but the area in which he lived - but it seems that more people are interested in all of the gewgaws that Elvis wore than anything else, and there are plenty of those sort of things. A group of tourists who spoke Spanish were in the museum with us at the same time, and despite a sign that said "No photography," one of the men in the group was videotaping the exhibits. One of the elderly tour guides, rather rudely I think, came up to him and said roughly, "No photography!" The man, perpelexed, turned to him and said in a thick accent, "This is not photography. Video." The old man repeated his statement, only more loudly and all the more roughly: "NO PHOTOGRAPHY!" A woman in the group turned and interjected, "it is video. Not photography. No flash." When it appeared that they couldn't understand him he got louder and louder. "ERASE IT! ERASE IT NOW!" The tourist struggled with his video camera, while the old man looked on to make absolutely sure he had erased the offending footage of Elvis's report cards, shirts, and other gimcrackery. That moment killed any sort of positive impression I might have had of the place. So much so, that I would advise against visiting the museum and the gift shop. If Elvis were there he would have been mighty disappointed.

Ironically, it was fan appreciation day.

But if you're ever in Tupelo, go sit on Elvis's porch swing for a while, and if you're lucky enough to be there on a day when church is in session, just listen.

Mississippi

2009-06-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, and I have a good excuse; I've been busy packing, moving, and falling in love with someone, but not necessarily in that order.

I'm in Mississippi right now, Oxford to be exact, and still living out of boxes. I'll start proper posts back up soon.

Star Trek: The Doppelganger Generation

2009-05-09T13:15:00.001-07:00

(Beware: here be spoilers)

I went to see "Star Trek" yesterday.

It isn't Star Trek. It's something else. It has all of the characters and imagery of Trek, but it's not Trek. It's an "alternate reality" in which Kirk is a problem child/raging alcoholic ne'er do well and Uhura is in love with...Spock? But rather than call this an "alternate reality," I'm more tempted to call it a "doppelganger."

In the original series there was an incident involving the transporter which created a doppelganger Kirk who was a conglomeration of all of the negative aspects of Kirk's psyche. He rampaged through the ship, drinking Saurian brandy and assaulting female crew members. This division produced two "Kirks" - the aforementioned "evil" side and another "good" side that was unable to make decisions. But in order to survive, the two halves needed each other; the longer they were separated from each other the weaker they became. If the two Kirks could not be re-united into a whole person they would both die.

This new "Trek" is like that evil Kirk. It is not something "whole," but a conglomeration of ridiculous plot devices, bluster, eye candy, and cocaine-induced cinematography. It's just like evil Kirk on a Saurian brandy binge.

I hated the Kirk of this "Trek." I identified with the Kirk of the original series for a number of reasons, one of which being the fact that he was a bit of a pencil neck geek during his academy days. Anyone familiar with the episode "Shore Leave" knows that Kirk was "positively grim" during his days at academy and that he was mercilessly picked on and tormented by upperclassmen. The Kirk of this universe is a party animal who spends most of his time getting it on with Orion slave girls and voyeuristically watching Uhura disrobe - not that different from the evil Kirk of "The Enemy Within," who sneaks inside Yeoman Rand's quarters and attempts to rape her.

The Kirk of the original series taught courses at Starfleet Academy as a young Lieutenant - he was also known among his fellow cadets as a bookworm. In the alternate universe he is all swagger - there's no substance there, nothing to like. When he reprograms the Kobayashi Maru test he struts around like a braggart - the quiet confidence of Kirk isn't there. He just comes across as a jerk.

I'll take the bizarro war criminal Kirk of the Terran Empire or the evil Kirk of "The Enemy Within" over the wild child, Beastie Boys blasting (yes, Beastie Boys in a Star Trek movie) Kirk of this nightmare realm.

So much nonsense in this movie. So many silly plot devices. Are we to believe that Spock would allow "red matter" - a substance which allows for the creation of wormholes - to fall into the hands of Romulans? Wouldn't Spock have sacrificed himself to prevent it from falling into their hands? We know that Spock is willing to sacrifice his life so that others may live ("Wrath of Khan"). In this instance, Spock must necessarily have arrived at the logical conclusion that the "red matter" would enable to Romulans to hold the Federation hostage.

And the Vulcans get a really bad rap in this movie. From the beginning they are consistently presented as intolerant. Accordingly, you feel little or no sympathy for the Vulcans when their planet is destroyed (how could I when Spock, inexplicably, lets the most destructive potential weapon in the galaxy fall into the hands of a band of vengeful, psychotic Romulans - you made your bed Spock, now lie in it). Earthlings on the other hand come across as tolerant and accepting of all cultures, even offering mercy to the defeated Romulans (which Spock is not prepared to offer).

All of the nonsense in this alternate reality is down to time travel. In the past Trek has done time travel well, but at this point it's a trite plot device, particularly when it's just thrown out there with minimal back story. And when time travel is involved it allows you to create all sorts of silly "alternate" versions of things with little or no explanation. So any inconsistency can be explained away with the "but it's an alternate reality" defense.

I disliked the look of this movie also. The camera work is that sort of cocaine-induced cinematography that people call "gritty" and "cinema verite." I call it unwatchable. Hold the camera still for 30 seconds; stay on one shot for more than five seconds; let me see what is happening in the fight scenes. It's just like Battlestar Galactica in this respect, which is unfortunate, because BSG is also unwatchable for the very same reason - it tries so hard to be "gritty" and "edgy" that it loses me completely.

********

Today being Mother's Day, I offer you my two favorite pop songs about mothers:

"Even as a crack fiend, mama, you always was a black queen, mama."

Tangibility and ghostliness

2009-05-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

Two fascinating passages I recently came across in my readings. They're fascinating because they present two different views of the created world and God's relationship to it. Twain has trouble with the notion that God would associate with the "dusky" people of the Holy Land, while O'Connor places the sacraments within the context of place, in this case the South.

Twain in The Innocents Abroad:

It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground that was once actually pressed by the feet of the Savior. The situation is suggestive of a reality and a tangibility that seems at variance with the vagueness and mystery and ghostliness that one naturally attaches to the character of a god. I can not comprehend yet that I am sitting where a god has stood, and looking upon the brook and the mountains which that god looked upon, and am surrounded by dusky men and women whose ancestors saw him, and even talked with him, face to face, and carelessly, just as they would have done with any other stranger. I can not comprehend this; the gods of my understanding have been always hidden in clouds and very far away.

Flannery O'Connor:

I feel that the grotesque quality of my own work is intensified by the fact that I am both a Southern and a Catholic writer. It's standard for the Catholic writer to say that he is not a Catholic writer, but a writer who happens to be a Catholic....I've always been more tempted to say that I'm not a Southern writer, but a writer who happens to be a Southerner. However I feel that both of these are evasions, and that they stop discussions that they ought to begin. The Southern writer can't escape the image of the South that has built up a life of its own in his senses any more than the Catholic can escape the indelible marks that the sacraments put on his soul.

Baptism/chrismation photos

2009-04-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

The photos of my baptism have been posted. They can be found at the Holy Cross Orthodox Mission website, but I've re-posted the better ones here. In case there's any doubt, I'm the guy in the white shorts. Lydia, the little girl in the first photo, was baptized along with me. Her parents, Josh and Amelia, as well as her brother Judah, were chrismated. Also being chrismated with them were Benjamin and his fiancee Angie.

I took the name of Silouan at my baptism.

Rev. George Leyburn and the "Anatolic Church"

2009-04-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I found an article in an 1872 edition of the Southern Presbyterian Review by George W. Leyburn on the Orthodox Church. Leyburn was a Presbyterian minister and missionary from Rockbridge, Virginia. He was a graduate of Princeton and was well versed in the Greek language. In 1836 he traveled to Greece to work as a missionary, but was prevented by the Greek government, which insisted he use the Orthodox catechism, or cease his activities. He returned to Virginia soon thereafter and resumed his pastoral duties in the vicinity of Appomattox Courthouse. During the the war, Leyburn served as a chaplain to the southern troops, although it is unclear whether or not he had a commission in the Confederate army. In 1875 he returned to Greece, at the insistence of the small group of evangelicals there, to continue his mission activity. After only living there a matter of weeks, Dr. Leyburn took ill and died. The work entrusted to him fell to his son, George L. Leyburn, and a Dr. Kalopothakes, a Greek convert and member of the Virginia Synod of the Southern Presbyterian Church.

I had to send away for a copy of the article since they have been archived by the Presbyterian Church in America, and no digital copies exist. I received a copy in the mail a few weeks ago, and though it was late when I returned home and picked up my mail (after midnight), I immediately sat down to read it, my eyes heavy with sleep. What I read did not please me. I mean, it did please me that I had a southern minister writing about Orthodoxy, but the content of that writing did not please me.

Leyburn, here referring to the Orthodox Church as the "Anatolic Church," writes: "Any Church that holds to tradition, and in the most gross and pernicious statement of it, as the Anatolic Church does, is radically degenerate, and even apostate." Leyburn scandalizes his readers with a litany of supposed heresies, ranging from the old hat - scripture versus tradition - to the worship of images and saints as gods and demigods. He calls the term "Theotokos," "dangerous" and "blasphemous," and takes language to mean that Mary is believed to have begotten God from before the ages. He takes the Synod of Jerusalem, held in 1672, as the definitive statement of what Orthodox Christians believe, although this synod was the product of a western influence within the Church, what Georges Florovsky has termed the "pseudomorphosis of Orthodoxy."

So we cannot blame Leyburn for the poor quality of his sources. He comes to the conclusion that the Orthodox are essentially pope-less Roman Catholics who lack the spiritual vitality of the same. He writes:

But as to vital, spiritual religion among the people of this great communion, there is a sad and terrible eclipse. The words are on the lips; the technology of piety is volubly used; - certainly so among the Greeks, and said to be so everywhere else in the communion; - you would think at first that you were talking with some of the most pious people in the world; and this has misled even missionaries at first. But alas! you soon find that, under this outward show, there is an utter want of true spiritual perception and understanding, - the shell without the kernel; - that every body is a Christian from baptism, and that repentance and faith, in their vocabulary, or rather, in their minds and hearts, have a meaning that falls far short, practically, of the true and saving one.

Emphasis mine. I found Leyburn's wording interesting; they lack the "true spiritual perception and understanding."

Leyburn rails against the tangible, visceral aspects of Orthodoxy; he praises the iconoclasts:

Leo and other "eikonoklast" emperors had made, through fifty years, one of the last struggles against this invasion of idolatry. But the Empress Irene, well styled by historians "the infamous," triumphed, in the calling of this council, which decreed every thing that she wanted. And, though the murderess of her husband, she is adored in the Greek Church as a saint, and her name constantly crowned with praises.

It is a mistake often made in the west of supposing Irene to be a saint, since Theodore the Studite praised her as a saint for restoring the icons. But she was never recognized as a saint by the Church, nor does she appear anywhere in the Menaion.

This section of the article was the most interesting to me because I'm fascinated with how southerners viewed Islam. The iconoclastic controversy was an outgrowth of the Byzantine Empire's contact with Islam, which was (and is) strongly iconoclastic. One common thread that appears in almost all of the writings I've read from southern intellectuals on Islam is their praise of Mohammed for bringing about the decline of an idolatrous nominal Eastern Christianity. Islam was often praised for being a more "pure" faith than Eastern Christianity, and for having a salutary effect on the benighted "barbarian" peoples of Africa and Asia. Leyburn, ignorant of the Orthodox evangelization of the native peoples of North America, finds no effort among the Orthodox to raise the "barbarians" from their, well, barbarism:

...if the body now spoken of be a true Church, even one of the parts of the true body of Christ, we might expect to find something of a gospel influence emanating from it upon the non-Christian races - at least those in immediate contact with it. But where has the "Greek" Church done the least particle of such work for ages upon ages past? What good and saving influence has she thrown out upon Mohammedanism?

I think it would have surprised Leyburn - and probably worried him - to know that for nearly 80 years, Orthodox missionaries had been converting the "non-Christian races" of Alaska.

Leyburn continues on the subject of saints and icons:

In the Catechesis of Darbares, already cited from, and the most mild, guarded and apologetic of all the published statements of Anatolic faith ever published, unless we except that of Bishop Plato, we find, in the exposition of the first commandment, even where he is defining the violation of it, such language as this: "That person sins inexcusably and greatly against this commandment who offers to the ministers of God almost the same honor that he offers to God himself; who prays more and oftener to them than to God; who celebrates their memory or their [festival] days with more reverence than that of our Lord; who honors their pictures more than that of our savior," etc. The indirect intimations of this language are sadly significant.

I can sympathize with Leyburn. There was a time when I would have been shocked by such language. Yet, here we have a catechism warning against idolatry. However, note that even when the Orthodox catechism warns believers against making saints equal to God, he still labels it as "creature worship:"

And, bad, in these things, as are her symbols of doctrine, the prescribed worship of the Anatolic Church is even worse. It is a dreadful fact that the larger part of the forms of worship found in the numerous collections of her church services, are addresssed to the Virgin and the canonized saints. And a large part of this vast accumulation may, without exaggeration, be called a compound of puerility with what a properly enlightened mind feels to be not only creature-worship, but even blasphemy and sacrilege of the most revolting kind....

Emphasis mine again. Honoring the saints and asking for their intercession is puerile. Only the "properly enlightened mind" can grasp that it is idolatry, blasphemy, and creature worship. I would love to see Leyburn's reaction to St. John Damascene's "Against Those Who Decry The Holy Images." And what's this business about the "larger part of the forms of worship" being addressed to the Virgin?

Had Leyburn not died so early into his mission efforts, I wonder to what extent he would have been successful. He did not have a clear understanding of Orthodoxy, of the development of Church dogma, or of its history. In part, he can't be blamed, since the sources that were available to him weren't the most accurate. The picture of Orthodoxy he was able to assemble was filtered through western sources - whether they were the "confessions" and catechisms of individual Patriarchs influenced by the West or English clergymen living in Russia who lent their "disinterested" and "objective" testimony to Leyburn's assertion that the Orthodox were idolatrous.

But there is also the anti-Catholic bias, which Leyburn could not help but betray (I should say he was happy to betray it), and that rubs off on Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, this is what many evangelicals today believe regarding the Orthodox.

It's what I used to believe.

Finally, Leyburn's dismissiveness and self assurance simply annoyed me: "We need not take much time for the evidence," he writes, with all of the assurance of a man who knows that he's right.

I shouldn't have been surprised at Leyburn's opinions regarding Orthodoxy. As I have found, almost without exception, southerners tended to take a low view of the Orthodox Church. The only real exception so far is the redoubtable George Fitzhugh, ever one of my southern heroes, despite his unfortunate racial notions (which, in his defense, he shared with pretty much everyone else at the time). How I wish I could transport myself back to that time and challenge Leyburn to a debate, but alas it can never happen.

Baptism

2009-04-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

"Breathe and spit upon him."

I spat in church. On the devil.

I did a lot of things during Holy Week I'd never done in a church before. Spitting was just the beginning.

I didn't know until a few months ago that I'd never been baptized. I'd always assumed that it had happened when I was a baby, but no. So when I told my priest that I'd never been baptized he started scratching his chin - he'd never baptized an adult before. In fact, I was to be the first adult baptized in our little mission church.

A horse trough was purchased for this purpose. On Holy Saturday, I stood barefoot before the baptismal font in my hastily assembled white baptismal outfit (white Dickie shorts and a white Guayabera - I resembled a Central American drug lord more so than a candidate for baptism). The trough had been dressed up with a burgundy skirt borrowed from a nearby hotel - such is common in a little mission church. How fitting it was, I thought, that I was to be baptized in this horse trough, since Christ himself was laid in a feeding trough.

There is a mysterious connection between man's salvation and barns full of beasts.

I was trembling through the rite of exorcism, and was so nervous that I could barely produce the required saliva. And I was still trembling as I approached the trough and watched Father make the sign of the cross over the waters, which seemed forbiddingly dark to me from where I stood....

Then I climbed into the trough, kneeled down because it was too short and shallow for me to stand, and Father dunked me three times in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As I came up the first time I gasped for breath. People later remarked on this. A friend said that I had drowned in the water. It was the last gasp of a dying man. Or perhaps it was like the first in-drawn breath of a child as he is brought forth from his mother's womb.

Or the water was just cold.

But when I came up the third time something changed. I felt it almost immediately after being baptized and felt it quite acutely all that day. It was an almost tangible grace. A serenity descended upon me. An inquirer at our church who will soon be made a catechumen told me that I looked very peaceful and serene, and that he found it "very moving." It was a naked and unashamed state of being. "They looked to Him and were radiant, And their faces will never be ashamed."

How can anyone experience this illumination and say that baptism is a mere "ordinance," or a "testimony?"

As we were lead in procession around the tomb singing "As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ..." I had to fight back the tears of joy and gratitude.

How blessed I am to have been baptized Orthodox!

Pascha

2009-04-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

On Saturday I was received by baptism into the Orthodox Church. I cannot even begin to describe all of it now, as I am still quite exhausted. But I will jot some things down in the coming week when I get some time.

Christ is Risen! Χριστός Ανέστη! Христос Воскресе!

Innocents Abroad

2009-04-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'm highly fascinated by travelogues, particularly the travelogues of Americans - and especially those of southerners - in the Near East. On my reading list right now are two - first, the brilliant travelogue of Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, and the memoirs of James Morris Morgan (Recollections of a Rebel Reefer), a Confederate Naval officer who after the war accepted a commission in the Egyptian Army.

I wanted to post an interesting passage from Twain here because it betrays so much of the American mentality during the 19th century, and even today, with regard to what constitutes a "good" society, and how that affected American perceptions of the rest of the world. Twain heaped all manner of scorn on the filth and backwardness he witnessed in Constantinople. He described St. Sophia as the "rustiest old barn in heathendom," and the street scenes of Constantinople as something which ought to be seen once - not oftener. But shortly thereafter, while visiting Odessa, Twain noted that the city was just like America; everything was "new," bustling, bourgeois, and business-like, until his party walked a ways and came across a queer onion-domed church:

I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I "raised the hill" and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked just like an American city; fine, broad streets, and straight as well; low houses (two or three stories,) wide, neat, and free from any quaintness of architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the streets and the stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses and everything; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was so like a message from our own dear native land that we could hardly refrain from shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old time-honored American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way or that way, we saw only America! There was no one thing to remind us that we were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and presto! the illusion vanished! The church had a slender-spired dome that rounded inward at its base, and looked like a turnip turned upside-down, and the hackman seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat without any hoops. These things were essentially foreign....

Folks who have been to this part of the world can sympathize with Twain. I visited Greece and Israel in 2007, and there were times when I was struck by the meanness and poverty of certain areas. I remember experiencing a feeling of relief when I spied a KFC on the streets of Tel-Aviv, not far from the old Ottoman quarter; here was something familiar and clean, something southern amidst a sea of run-down oriental architecture. I later repented of this feeling, though. There is nothing like sitting on the balcony of an old Turkish bathhouse/hostel, and looking out over the city in the late evening - narghila in hand - while someone plays a baglama somewhere off in the distance.

But I digress.

Twain later visited Ephesus. His party had its share of trophy hunters and many of them came away from the ancient city carrying bits and pieces of ruins and sculptures. Twain writes of the aftermath:

We [Twain means himself] brought not a relic from Ephesus! After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments from the interior work of Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on mule back to the railway depot, a government officer compelled all who had such things to disgorge! He had an order from Constantinople to look out for our party, and see that we carried nothing off. It was a wise, a just, and a well-deserved rebuke, but it created a sensation. I never resist a temptation to plunder a stranger's premises without feeling insufferably vain about it.

This passage struck a nerve. While I was in Israel and Greece, everywhere I went, I took little stones and potsherds. As Twain writes, "travelers are such notorious scorners of honest behavior." From Masada a tiny piece of the casemate wall - 'twas already cracked and barely attached; 'twas waiting for a gust of wind to blow it loose, so I merely helped it and pocketed it. At Megiddo, the ground is littered with potsherds, so I took a few of the miserable things, being very circumpsect about the whole matter. At Caesarea, old walls have been eroded by the ocean, exposing the waste the Romans used as filler. I picked through them and pulled out the handles to several amphorae, as well as some potsherds that had traces of ornamentation on them. It became a sort of mania - it was all so very old! It was like finding an arrowhead in a cornfield back home; only cooler. And these things were legion, so it appeared no one really cared about them. In Israel or Greece, unless it's old (2,000 years or more), it's not considered valuable. And if it's old, it can't be the equivalent of 1st century recycled waste. There are ancient columns in the Old City of Jerusalem - Byzantine and older - that are covered in graffiti. The ancient ruins of Tel Beit-Shemesh are exposed to the air, and covered in inumerable little potsherds. You can walk down into the excavated bits of the city and no one bats an eye. Some perspective - for a time, the Ark of the Covenant was kept there.

At the airport, on the way home from Israel, I was terrified that security would dig through my bag and find the ill-gotten potsherds. I had no idea how protective the Israeli authorities would be over a few miserable bits of pottery. When it came time for my bags to be checked, a young security guy in latex gloves tore into my bag; in addition to the potsherds, I had several containers of spices that my girlfriend had bought at the markets in Jerusalem and Akko. I should have been more concerned about these, for once the bag was returned to me, I found the spices had been opened - and presumably tested for their volatility (or illicit nature), and in the process had been spilled all over the interior of my bag. The "relics" were still there, unmolested, unnoticed, but all of my clothes reeked of saffron.

But I will say this: Israeli security, for all of their intrusiveness, are infinitely more polite about the matter than any American airport security I've dealt with - saffron notwithstanding.

Blind Willie Johnson

2009-04-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was reading about Blind Willie Johnson today and came across an article on Wikipedia about blind musicians. There I read about the Kobzars of Ukraine, itinerant musicians who sang folk ballads, epics, and religious music. Kobzars were almost universally blind and formed together into guilds for mutual support. The Kobzar guilds were apparently associated with certain churches, using funds they'd raise during their performances for the upkeep of certain icons or for the purchase of items for the Church - in this respect the Kobzar guilds were modeled after the Orthodox brotherhoods which sprang up throughout Ukraine. The Kobzars were wiped out by the Soviets, but a few artists continue to preserve the art form today - although almost none of them are blind.

There is also a "tradition" of sorts in the South of blind singers. I've already mentioned Blind Willie Johnson, but there's also Sonny Terry, Blind Boy Fuller (both from my homestate of NC), Blind Blake, Willie McTell, Ray Charles, Arizona Dranes, and Blind Lemon Jefferson to name a few. There weren't any associations of blind musicians who helped the churches, but there were blind musicians who sang religious songs and proselytized. Among the blind performers of Gospel-Blues, Blind Willie Johnson stands out. Johnson performed some of the most haunting religious songs I've ever heard, particularly his "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground," which is a mournful moan over the crucifixion of Christ. The title is derived from a hymn written by Thomas Haweis, an 18th century Anglican priest and composer.

I've been thinking about the Fool-for-Christ figure that is so prominent in Eastern Christianity and its manifestation in the West. Asceticism, monasticism, and living like a hermit are not celebrated in Protestantism, especially when faith and election are associated with worldly success. But there are figures who are "crazy for God," individuals like Johnson, who lived in poverty and obscurity, preaching and singing.

Johnson also recorded "John The Revelator," a song about Saint John and the Apocalypse. I particularly like the line, "John the Revelator, great advocator." Johnson is referring to Christ as our advocate, but it's almost as if he's referring to John as our advocate, or intercessor. It's like a Blues troparion:

[call] Well who's that writin'? [response] John the Revelator

Who's that writin'? John the Revelator
Who's that writin'? John the Revelator
A book of the seven seals

[call] Tell me what's John writin'? [response] Ask the Revelator
What's John writin'? Ask the Revelator
What's John writin'? Ask the Revelator
A book of the seven seals

Well ooh ooh why me, thousands cried holy
Bound for some, Son of our God
Daughter of Zion, Judah the Lion
He redeemeth, and bought us with his blood

[Repeat verses 1 & 2]

John the Revelator, great advocator
Get's 'em on the battle of Zion
Lord, tellin' the story, risin' in glory
Cried, "Lord, don't you love some I(?)"
[Repeat verses 1 & 2]

Well Moses to Moses, watchin' the flock
Saw the bush where they had to stop
God told Moses, "Pull off your shoes"
Out of the flock, well you I choose

[Repeat verses 1 & 2]

Johnson's life was akin to something out of the life of a Fool For Christ, although more tragic. His mother died when he was very young. At the age of 5 he told his father he wanted to become a preacher. He was not born blind, but was blinded by his vengeful stepmother, who threw lye into his eyes. His death was also miserable and tragic:

Johnson remained poor until the end of his life, preaching and singing in the streets of Beaumont, Texas to anyone who would listen. A city directory shows that in 1944, a Rev W J Johnson, undoubtedly Blind Willie, operated the House of Prayer at 1440 Forrest Street, Beaumont, Texas. This is the same address listed on Blind Willie's death certificate. In 1945, his home burned to the ground. With nowhere else to go, Johnson lived in the burned ruins of his home, sleeping on a wet bed. He lived like this until he contracted pneumonia two weeks later, and died.

Johnson's song "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground," was later sent into space with other songs on the probe Voyager.

Twilight Party!

2009-03-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

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.

********

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.

Arabic Bibles in the South and other cultural blatherings

2009-03-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

A fascinating note from an 1859 edition of the Southern Presbyterian review on a Georgia slave - named London - who copied the Gospels into English by way of Arabic script. Long before there were Eastern Orthodox Christians in the United States reading the Gospels in Arabic, Christian slaves in the South were making and reading copies of the Bible in anglicized Arabic:

The Gospels, written in the Negro Patois of English with Arabic Characters. By a Mandingo slave in Georgia.

At a regular meeting of the Ethnological Society of New York, on the 13th of October, 1857, a paper bearing the above title was read by W.B. Hodgson, Esq., of Savannah, in explanation of a manuscript in Arabic characters submitted by him to that society. The writer was a Mandingo slave, by the name of London, owned by Mr. Maxwell of Savannah. Besides these chapters of the Gospel, he wrote a book of hymns in Arabic letters, which has not been preserved. "The manuscript of London is remarkable," says Mr. Hodgson "in the use of the vowel points - harcat of the Arabic grammar. I infer that as London was accustomed to use them in making copies from the Koran, with the same reverential sentiment, he used the vowel points, in copying the bible of his adopted religion. Not having been instructed in English Grammar and Analysis, he could only write the words as their sounds affected his ear. Thus his vocalization was on this wise: - First chapter of John.

"Fas chapta ob jon.
Inde beginnen wasde Wad;
ande Wad waswid Gad,
ande Wad was Gad."

The thought of the Gospel being read and preached from an Anglicized Arabic transliteration at some fire-lit slave barbecue/prayer meeting inflames my soul. These words especially, because they are so pregnant with meaning, and have such a huge bearing on orthodox Christology. How did anyone convey to them what those things meant? It reminds me of the Ethiopian Eunuch encountered by St. Philip the Evangelist in the Book of Acts - he could not understand the Scriptures without someone explaining them to him, hence the need for some form of oral tradition, for the Scriptures do not interpret themselves.

There are other similar instances that occurred throughout the South. Mr. Hodgson, perhaps the South's preeminent Orientalist, collected many of the manuscripts written in Arabic by slaves. Another famous incident which predated the above manuscript, occurred in a jailhouse in Fayetteville, NC, in the early 19th century. A Muslim slave by the name of Omar ibn Said was arrested after fleeing from his master's plantation in South Carolina. The circumstances of Omar's arrest are interesting to me, for he managed to make his way across country to Fayetteville before being arrested for trying to enter a church to pray. Omar was a Muslim - why would he enter into a church to pray? My historian senses get all tingly when I think about that. Maybe the church didn't look like a church - maybe Omar thought it was a mosque? When you consider how barren so many Protestant churches look in this country, it isn't hard to imagine them being easily converted into mosques, or resembling mosques in the minds of tired, weary, Muslim slaves who have been on the run for days.

(I'm reminded of a funny story a friend told me about her Greek step-father. The family surprised him and his wife with a service to renew his vows at a Baptist church. Being raised Orthodox, he had his reservations when he first laid eyes on the church. "This is Christian?")

Or maybe Omar made no distinction between the two? Perhaps he was more "enlightened" in a sense than many Christians and Muslims in that one was as good as the other.

But I digress, back to our Muslim protagonist. Omar, while in prison, did something that I wish I could have witnessed - probably more so than many other singular events in American history - he began writing verses from the Qur'an, in Arabic, on the walls of his jail cell, much to the amazement of those who were there. Omar was in fact posting gris-gris on the walls of his cell, which was practiced among Africans as a means to ward off evil. Omar became a sort of celebrity and was purchased by a gentleman by the name of Owen from Bladen County. Omar lived with the Owen family for the rest of his life and was supposedly converted to Christianity, although to what extent he believed in the Gospel message is unknown.

There is reason to believe that Omar may have simply done so out of obedience to his master, while engaging in the Islamic practice of taqiyya, which is the practicing of Islam in secret when Muslims are subjected by non-Muslim rulers. Despite Omar's ambiguous relationship with Christianity, he did encourage efforts to Christianize Africans. I get the sense that Omar was not as dogmatic in matters of religion as his Christian masters. He saw the salutory effects of Christianity and Islam, and perhaps regarded them equally, seeing no theological contradiction in Mohammed and Christ (fittingly, there was a mosque named after Omar in Fayetteville). In this regard he came very close to what many southern intellectuals and divines held - that Islam was a faith that had foundations in reason, Biblical principles, and that it encouraged civilization. It had lifted Africans out of what they supposed to be barbarism and "gree gree worship," although Omar himself illustrates that Islam did not stamp that practice out totally. Although most would assert the superiority of Christianity, many would allow for Islam's place in a sort of scale of religious progress from barbarism to enlightenment.

For instance, Thomas Jefferson organized his books on religion thusly: works on paganism, followed by works on Judaism, Islam, and finally works on Christianity. I don't know for certain, but I'd like to think that Jefferson placed the crowning achievement - his translation (or rather redaction) of the Gospels last in that pantheon, in which all of the miraculous events of Christ's life were removed, along with His passion and resurrection, and Christianity reduced to the Christian System.

But I digress again (this is something which I am deeply interested in, so you must forgive me). The aforementioned Mr. Hodgson gave Omar an Arabic copy of the Bible, which still survives today, and is in the collection of Davidson College. The frontispiece can be seen here.

Omar refused repeated offers to return to Africa with the Colonization Society, and died in North Carolina in his 90s. He remains one of the most widely studied slaves in American history, and one of my favorite historical figures.

Omar looking fly in his pea coat.

A brief discourse on H.P. Lovecraft.

2009-03-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm interested in a lot of strange things, I can't deny that. Of late I've been reading H.P. Lovecraft. I admire a lot of Lovecraft's work, at least in terms of its creativity and antiquarian weirdness. Ancient cults, dream realities, dusty codices hidden and shunned by men. I love all of that. But what I find disagreeable about Lovecraft and his work is gnosticism. The Lovecraftian view of reality is almost wholly negative. Creation is evil and meaningless and the gods who rule over that creation are themselves either ambivalent about men or hostile towards them. For the characters who inhabit this world, the only means of escape is through a sort of gnosticism. They attempt to escape the created world to challenge the gods or seek out a reality that is free from the drab, meaningless earthiness of the physical realm.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath may be said to have gnostic overtones, particularly in that it centers on an escape from reality into a dream-world where the protagonist searches for a beautiful city which the fickle gods have only shown him in fleeting glimpses. The protagonist, Randolph Carter, struggles with the gods of the world of men and the dream world so that he might attain to his gnostic vision of a heavenly city. But in a sense the story comes round to an affirmation of the beauty of "reality," with Carter coming to realize that the city he has seen in brief visions is in fact Boston. The saga of Carter, however, continues in other stories, where he ultimately devises a means to escape reality for the world of dreams through a silver key. But Lovecraft won't let his protagonist win, for in escaping he encounters the horror at the center of the universe, a place where identity is obliterated.

The gods of Lovecraft's cosmology, like those of gnosticism, are malignant beings. Lovecrafts's gods do not draw near to men, but flee from them, so that they might cavort and dance on unknown mountaintops as they did in days of old when men were less adventurous and curious as to their nature. And those are the "good" gods. The bad gods, the "Other" gods are horrible to behold and go by titles such as "Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos." There is nothing good about the gods or their creation; no benign king, no loving God, nothing of that sort. In Lovecraft's world men are pitted against the gods and the meaningless, dread reality which they rule over.

The "world," tangible reality, in Lovecraft's estimation, was something approaching evil, although he does not apply to it the same categorical condemnation that gnostics would apply to it. For the most part we find a certain ambivalence towards the mundane. In places his characters grow alienated from the "real" world - nothing seems fully real to them, but all fake, as if all of it were a veil thrown over some other reality. In "The Silver Key," Randolph Carter grows weary of the "earthiness" of his friends and acquaintances. Carter attempts a career in writing but fails because "the touch of earth was upon his mind, and he could not think of lovely things as he had done of yore." When Carter is transported beyond this world into the Other Realm by means of the Silver Key, he encounters a cadre of beings who are like ascended masters. Their leader explains to him that, "the man of Truth has learnt that Illusion is the only reality, and that substance is an impostor."

One gets the sense that Lovecraft was certainly a conservative in his view of history and society. His view of progress was, I believe, somewhat negative. He once said of the past: "The past is real. It is all there is. The present is only a trivial and momentary boundary-line." His racial attitudes weren't exactly enlightened - he even wrote a story that was based upon his horror at the non-white immigrants streaming into New York, which he imagined were coalescing into a sinister cult ("The Horror at Red Hook"). He was also an atheist, and rejected the notion that reality could be meaningful in the Christian sense. But neither was he a fan of science. It's clear that he dreaded the advance of science, particularly as it related to its pronouncements on the meaning of life. He viewed the theory of relativity as reducing existence to a cosmic jest. Stories such as "From Beyond" hint at a fear of what science might uncover and what was best left alone.

I wonder to what extent Lovecraft believed that life and reality were meaningless? Or was he simply reacting in horror at the movement of all human inquiry and experience (inexorably, as he perceived it), towards the belief that it was meaningless? I almost feel like Lovecraft's character's retreat into dreamworlds is a sort of personal defense mechanism. The only way to salvage reality, consciousness, existence, was to escape into some beautiful other world - such as the past, which was real, or dream-worlds where men might live by their dreams. But those other worlds were just as cruel. So ultimately, in Lovecraft's world, there is no escape.

Lovecraft's life, which was by no means wholly pleasant, helps to explain his outlook. His father and mother both suffered from some form of mental illness, and all through his life H.P. suffered from night terrors, which were often the inspiration for stories. He died of cancer, largely unknown and with very little to his name.

My favorite moment from all of Lovecraft's stories is from "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath." For an individual with such a negative view of the world, Lovecraft was inordinately fond of felines, and I also happen to enjoy them much more than hounds. Randolph Carter can talk to cats and is able to call on an army of them to save him in times of trouble. While being carried away by a group of toad-like horrors across the surface of the moon (if you need further explanation I can only suggest that you read the story), he cries out for the cats to come to his aid:

It was a stupendous sight while the torches lasted, and Carter had never before seen so many cats. Black, grey, and white; yellow, tiger, and mixed; common, Persian, and Manx; Thibetan, Angora, and Egyptian; all were there in the fury of battle, and there hovered over them some trace of that profound and inviolate sanctity which made their goddess great in the temples of Bubastis.

After a pitched battle, Carter awakes to a scene that made me laugh with delight upon initially reading it:

At last awe and exhaustion closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was upon a strange scene. The great shining disc of the earth, thirteen times greater than that of the moon as we see it, had risen with floods of weird light over the lunar landscape; and across all those leagues of wild plateau and ragged crest there squatted one endless sea of cats in orderly array. Circle on circle they reached, and two or three leaders out of the ranks were licking his face and purring to him consolingly.

The cats then lift Carter up and leap back to earth, with him securely held within their host like a kind of furry cocoon.

Lovecraft's work is worth reading for fantastical moments like this.

Up next on my reading list is a collection of the works of Flannery O'Connor. I think I'll have a lot to say about her also.

******

Came across this today, and it's interesting because Philip K. Dick was not only a science fiction author who dealt with reality and perception, but he also became a full-on gnostic late in life. He believed everything that he wrote was communicated to him through the Holy Spirit to reveal that the true underlying reality of all things was the Book of Acts, and that it was in fact the year A.D. 50, but that somehow Satan had fooled us into thinking that it was the 20th century. Dick's beliefs may have been inspired by chemicals, though.

Parker's Back

2009-03-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

I went to my first Lenten service Thursday night, Great Compline with the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. It's the first time in a while that I've been to an Orthodox service where I didn't know what I was doing. Here a full prostration, there a full prostration, everywhere a full prostration. I had some neck pain last week, and it's still a little tight, so doing the full prostrations was a little uncomfortable.

Not knowing the order of things I kept missing the full prostrations, and had to catch up with everyone else. Bowing repeatedly and saying "God have mercy on me" and "God cleanse me a sinner" so many times was overwhelming. I was amazed at how long and penitential the service was. It's certainly one of the more humbling services I've been to, because you spend a good deal of it with your face flat on the floor. It's something that is so out of character for our society; people don't bow in the outside world, but here in this church people are bowing to each other, kissing each other, and putting their faces on the floor in supplication and reverence before God. My favorite part, besides this physical expression of humility and reverence, was when we went down the line and asked everyone to pray for us: Mary, hosts of angels and archangels, John the Baptist, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, and then all of the American saints - with all of the American places they are associated with - Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Alaska, etc. It is at once otherworldly and distinctly non-Western, but also rooted in all of these American localities.

The new header image is just something I'm experimenting with. The image, which was painted by Barry Moser, is based on the Flannery O'Connor short story Parker's Back, which I've linked to here - in part - before. It's the story of southern couple - who might be described as hicks (which I mean in the most loving way) - and their tortured relationships with each other and God. O.E. Parker, who is obsessed with tattooing his body, searches for the one tattoo that his puritanical wife can't possibly ridicule. He's essentially a godless man, who has been running away from God all of his life, despite marrying Sarah Ruth. While at the tattoo parlor, O.E. has an encounter with the Living God in the form of an icon of Christ, which he feels drawn to. He has the artist tattoo the icon on his back and returns home to display it to his wife, confident that she can't possibly mock an image of Him. But Sarah Ruth exclaims that it is idolatry. "He [God] don't look. He's a spirit. No man shall see his face." She drives him out of the house with blows yelling, "idolatry! I don't want no idolater in this house."

I have an affinity for this story because I feel like O.E.

*******

Yet another "Star Trek" trailer, featuring still more angst and...crap. I wrote about this a while back. To me it's blasphemy. This trailer has nothing memorable in it; there's nothing but a blur, nothing that my brain registers as meaningful. Increasingly, films have become little more than fluffy, gratuitous candy. The trailer offers an abundance of artfully executed CG scenes, but for me this sort of thing is like a display of raw, unnecessary power. Hey! Pay attention! Look! Here's some whirring, blinding shots of something whizzing by at a high rate of speed! Did you see that? A zillion lasers are shooting out of that ship! Oooh! A planet is imploding! And so on and so on. I can just hear J.J. Abrams pitching this to some executive, "And then DOOSH! The ship is hit by all of these warheads and it goes KABLAM! DOOOOOOSH!"

And of course there is the pointless "updating" of the universe's image. "We all have the iPhone that does more than the communicator," said Abrams. "I feel like there's a certain thing that you can't really hold onto, which is kind of the kitschy quality. That must go if it's going to be something that you believe is real." Why would I have to believe that it is real? Or want to? It's Star Trek. And that kitschy quality is what makes it great. A great thing about Trek in (most of) its incarnations has been its restraint - its wonderful lack of over the top pretensions when it came to imagery. Sure, there is some cool imagery associated with Trek, but nothing like this. What about some acting? A compelling tale? Something that requires us to use our imagination? Not a bunch of jumped up, hyperactive Dawson's Creek silliness.

Oh, how I loathe "modern audiences."

I stumbled across this today: Vladimir Putin is r egarded as the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul by a heretical sect of Russian ascetics. Fun. The icon is amusing:

Of course, the Orthodox Church does not believe in reincarnation. Nor is there any likelihood Putin will be made a saint. Stranger things have happened, though:

I find the content of the second image much more agreeable.

Politics and "art"

2009-03-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

I have been accepted to Ole Miss for my PhD, and I have accepted their offer. A $10K assistantship and a tuition waiver. Ole Miss comes with the high recommendation of two of my professors and my friends. I am familiar with and highly regard the work of two of Ole Miss's Southern History faculty - Ted Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson. And it is the home of not only the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, but also the Southern Foodways Alliance, whose publications have been a great inspiration and resource for me, particularly as someone who has written about southern culture and southern food culture.

Oxford is a quintessentially southern town, and is considered by many to be the "Vatican City of Southern Letters." I'm excited about living/working/researching there, as well as absorbing the Deep South culture. Moving down there will be a challenge, and I'm only just now asking around within the department for anyone who may be looking for a housemate/flatmate.

******

I'm always bothered by engagement in politics. There's something impolite about it. I bring this up because I've been in a bad state of mind ever since Obama was elected - and it hasn't been this bad since my time in college when I was enthralled by politics. I think my state of mind may have something to do with my southern-ness. In the South, particularly before the Civil War, there was always a preference for "rounded edges" in public discourse among southerners. It just wasn't polite to spoil social interaction with talk about something so mean and divisive as politics. Of course, some historians, like the late (and certainly great in many respects) Clement Eaton, would have taken this mentality as evidence that the South was totalitarian and stifling - that it had no public discourse on political and civil matters. It did, but it was couched in anonymity. Letters to the editor were published under creative pseudonyms. Articles in magazines on politics were published under the first initial of the author. Of course, it was obvious to many who this person was, it simply kept it "polite" and semi-anonymous. Public discourse was not only polite, but because men had honor, and had to protect that honor from slight, it was always best to keep things as circumspect as possible.

In our society we don't remove political discussion from everyday life, but let it seap into everything, and that bothers me. How loath I am to discuss politics with people, not only because I know that it poisons one's perceptions of others, but because it's not conducive to any sort of humility. When it comes to politics I have to be right. I'm always right and you are wrong. There's no mercy in it whatsoever. I like to think that antebellum southerners believed this - that there is no mercy in politics, and that it is best kept in its place in human interaction. I think this was exactly their understanding, if you take into account their opposition to the elevation of the market to the essence of society.

That said, here is something to poke fun at all of the misplaced Obamadulation: Bad Paintings of Barack Obama. Click on each image to see another. My favorite:

Is this Obama/Scarface, or is it Obama as a plantation owner? I remember seeing a picture as a kid called "Alex Haley's Revenge." It was a black man sitting on a greek-revival collonaded porch on some anonymous southern plantation, dressed in a searsucker suit, mint julep in hand, relaxing in a rocking chair. The problem with all images of Obama is that they are all hopelessly poisoned by all of the stern, plainly socialistic imagery, or with absurd comparisons to Lincoln, so that none of them come across as being genuine in any way. The problem with this picture is that he clearly looks like some mafia don, or a drug dealer of some sort. Or a model. Relaxing by his pool, or watching as his latest shipment of coca is delivered in a Russian helicopter he bought on the black market.

You might be able to argue that making politics so public and open results ultimately in art like this.

Rock House

2009-02-21T17:48:00.000-08:00

I spent the day in Stokes County with my ex-girlfriend's mother, driving over hill and dale, in search of the Rock House. That sentence requires some explanation. Most people wouldn't ever hang around with their ex-girlfriend's mother, but I'm still friends with my ex and her family, and I keep in touch with them, as well as occasionally working for them, so it isn't strange for me to be out somewhere with them - whether doing odd jobs on their property or meeting them for dinner somewhere. Right now I happen to be doing research for them, with the goal being the production of a "history" of the plot of land they've bought in Stokes County, NC. They intend to convert this piece of land into a cidery, and to that end they want some sort of story to go along with the property, a sort of "legend," that will make their cidery's image more appealing. This "history" is to be a piece of fiction partially conceived in fact and drawn from tidbits of local history. How exactly this "history" will be structured is not 100% clear to me. The more I delve into the local history of Stokes County the more I find that would make for an interesting story.

This brings me to the Rock House. The Rock House is a practically cyclopean stone fortress/house that was built some time between 1770 and 1785 by Col. John Martin, a Revolutionary War hero, Indian fighter, and judge. This is what we had set out to find. So we traveled over the hills and dales of Stokes County, an area that is comparatively "older" in many respects than nearby counties. Driving through such an area is a treat for me, because I'm a tobaccobarnophile. I like craning my neck to see old tobacco barns, sheds, shacks, mills, and ramshackle huts that dot the countryside. The Dutch have their windmills, we have the tobacco barns. Lately I've been fantasizing about salvaging tobacco barns and building an Orthodox church out of them, so every time I see one I try to imagine it with a gold dome on top of it.

Tobacco barns are all well and good, but then there is the Rock House. This is the most impressive pre-industrial structure in North Carolina that I've ever seen. Sure, Tryon Palace may be grand and reefined, but it can't compare with the herculean effort which clearly went into this backcountry castle. What I find most impressive about the house is that it's so imposing, and composed entirely of huge pieces of rock quarried from the nearby Sauratown mountains. Teams of slaves and quite possibly other hired hands from the community would have had to truck tons of rock a good distance from where it was quarried to the site, which sits on top of a promontory. The walls are three feet thick in most places, and around the chimneys which flank either side of it, five feet. Most of the stones range in size from a foot long to huge monoliths that make up the steps and foundation. Equally impressive is the arrangement of the stones, which have been stacked in such a way that they lay almost perfectly level, one on top of the other, in jigsaw fashion. The house has three floors, arched windows and doorways, and a huge basement area that was used as a kitchen. During times of panic, such as the American Revolution when marauding Tories and Indians were roaming the country, the home served as a refuge for the locals, as well as a mustering ground for the local militia.

I'm not sure as yet how to utilize the Rock House in my "history," but I'm working on it. Below are some photos, even though they hardly illustrate just how large this building is.

Carolina Conquistadores

2009-02-20T11:26:00.001-08:00

I was excited when I read about this a few years ago. Spanish forts in North Carolina predating English settlement by 20 years. I was reminded of this because of late I've been conducting research for some friends on the history of Stokes County, NC. There are three explorers who penetrated into the Carolina bac country in the period between 1567-1700, and all three were named John. Juan Pardo, a Spanish Conquistador, Johann Lederer a German physician, and John Lawson an English naturalist.

In the record of his travels, John Lederer, the German explorer who explored the North Carolina backcountry in the 17th century, records meeting a group of Indians who described a powerful nation of bearded men to the south. Lederer assumed that these bearded men were Spaniards, and it seems very likely that they were.

However, it got me thinking about the legends that are associated with the frontier of America. The early areas of contact between Europeans and Native Americans during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries are places of legend, where reality is blurred and there are many opportunities for imaginative conjecture and fantastical stories. Lederer was certainly aware of the failed colony at Roanoke, and perhaps of the disappearance of its inhabitants, along with the cryptic message "CROATOAN" carved menacingly into a tree.

Lederer may or may not have been familiar with the legend of Prince Madoc, the Welshman who came to America with a group of colonists in the 12th century. They are purported to have roamed the waterways of the southern interior searching for a permament home, all the while avoiding unfriendly Indians. The Cherokee spoke of a "moon-eyed" race of people who had fair skin and blond hair. Many historians think this legend was invented as a means to assert a prior English claim to the New World - and if so I think it's brilliant. Nevertheless, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a plaque to Madoc overlooking Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1953 that read: "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer who landed... in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language." The plaque was later removed, which is unfortunate. Who cares if it's apocryphal? We need legends like this, if only to add an ounce of wonderment and mystery to our past.

There is also the legend of St. Brendan, who some believe sailed to America in the 6th century. A researcher demonstrated that it was possible to sail such a distance using a coracle - but I've been in a coracle before, and they're not particularly comfortable, even over short distances. There are others who claim to have found evidence of ancient Hebrew settlement in the Americas, but that begins to cross the line from entertaining speculation into full-on nutjobbery.

But the fact that Juan Pardo, the Spanish conquistador, came to North Carolina in the 16th century with his priest, troops, plates of armor, and arquebusiers is mysterious and fascinating enough to inspire me to wonderment. They built six forts, all named after saints or existing cities in Spain, such as Salamanca, Santiago, and Cuenca - which was Pardo's hometown (Cuenca, incidentally, may have derived its name from an Arab castle called Kunka which stood near the present city of Cuenca). The first Christian religious services held in North Carolina were Catholic. The first Christians in Carolina asked Mary and the saints for intercession (Pardo even named a fort near present day Morganton "San Juan," for his patron saint) and in all probability celebrated some sort of liturgy in modern day Rowan County. So, there were Spanish Catholics worshiping in a fort that was probably named after an Islamic castle in 16th century North Carolina - to me that's incredibly fascinating.

The Spanish presence established in North Carolina by Pardo only lasted 2 years, with a lay missionary, Father Sebastian Montero, remaining another four years among the Indians, teaching them Spanish and the rudiments of Christianity. He's certainly an individual I would like to learn more about. What if they had succeeded? What if the Spanish project in North Carolina had held on, and not only established a permament settlement, but successfully converted Indians to Catholicism? Would we be living in Carolina or the northern portion of La Florida?

But reality is perhaps more amazing than any "what if" scenario or fantastical legend. Juan Pardo left Carolina unsuccessful, and eventually the Indians were also driven out in turn. But now the Mestizos and Hispanics have come to Carolina - Indians of other tribes and points of origin - and they bring with them their Catholicism, their images of the Virgin, and their Spanish language. History is full of such wonderful ironies.

Men in funny hats

2009-02-19T21:05:00.000-08:00

It's always an interesting day at Books A Million, for one reason or another. Today a venerable southern black lady came in asking for the books on applying for college aid. I took her back there and we started talking about my college experience. This shifted to what I studied. She asked me about history - was the American Constitution based on Christian principles or was it from some other source? I said that I believed it was primarily derived from Greek philosophy and Enlightenment notions, not that Christianity had nothing to do with it, but I emphasized that the founding fathers were primarily deists, not orthodox Christians. Thomas Jefferson even took out all of the parts in the Bible he didn't like - the miracles, references to Christ's divinity, etc.

We continued on the subject of religion. She asked me how I knew so much about Christianity, and I explained that I was a Christian. She asked what denomination. Oh boy, here we go. So I explained my upbringing and then explained that I was converting to the Orthodox Church. She didn't know what that was at first, so I explained further. Her idea of the Orthodox Church was terribly intellectual men in funny hats - somehow this seemed to signify the lack of life, of spirit. I attempted to explain the mystical quality of Orthodox theology to her, that at its heart it's anything but intellectual, but deeply mystical. A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian, I thought, but I didn't tell her this. She also seemed to think that the Russian Orthodox Church was Marxist. I thought this was funny, but didn't say anything.

She said that she was brought up Pentecostal, but was now involved with a church that had a bishop who was from Liberia, and he didn't approve of all of the crazy slain in the spirit behavior. They still had speaking in tongues, but she seemed to indicate that it was engaged in to a lower degree than in her previous experience. "Do the Orthodox speak in tongues?" I said that we believe in Pentecost and all that it entails, but I wasn't able to articulate to her just what that means to the Orthodox Church, at least in the time given. I did make it clear that speaking in tongues wasn't something that went on during our services.

"Then how do you know if you have the Holy Spirit?"

How do we know anything? How do we know God exists and that He created all things? How do we know that Jesus Christ is His only begotten Son? Except apprehend it by faith? When people say things like "How do you know if you have the Holy Spirit?" or "How do you know if you're saved?" it upsets me. Because it's a preoccupation with salvation, with the signs of election, than with what really matters, and that is loving God. A believer should not be asking him/herself such things, but rather they must love God, love their neighbor, pray without ceasing, repent, rejoice, and give thanks. But most of all give thanks for the gift of salvation.

But when I answered her question, I had to be honest and said, "It would take me a while to explain that to you properly." But then it got really weird. She put her hand to her head and closed her eyes and said, "The Lord is telling me something now...you're not going to convert to that Church."

"Oh, really?" I said.

"Yes, the Lord says that you're searching for truth, and that's good, but don't let them get their hooks in you. You'll find the truth. He's telling me that you're looking for unadorned worship, without the trappings of men, and that you'll find it. And He's telling me something else, that you're going to become a great pastor."

She started speaking about the Devil coming in the form of an angel of light and essentially warned me to stay away from the Orthodox Church, even though she clearly didn't know much of anything about it.

At this point I'm thinking, okay. I have a lady prophesying in Books A Million. I honestly didn't know how to react initially, but as the evening went on and I thought about her words they only further confirmed me in my decision to convert to Orthodoxy. I thought, what could possibly deter me from the True Faith, from the Church, in which is Life? "Unadorned worship," is no worship at all. Worship is rich and elemental; gold, smoke, fire, water, bread, wine. To me the very notion of not being baptized into the Church was foreign. For all of my life of being brought up Christian, I had Christ, but in the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church I have seen Him. I have come to the fullness of Him. I thought about the words that are sung after communion every Sunday: "We have seen the True Light, we have received the Heavenly Spirit, we have found the True Faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity, Who has saved us!" How do we know if we have the Holy Spirit? We eat the flesh and drink blood of Jesus Christ. I have come to the point on my journey where I think, why would anyone not want to be part of this?

Perhaps only those who do not understand, or who have yet to "come and see." I wonder to what extent the ignorance of this woman with regards to the Orthodox Church - who I believe is a very sincere believer, and most certainly a much better Christian than I - is general among southern evangelicals? Black evangelicals?

We must disenthrall ourselves

2009-02-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

Fr. Thomas Hopko has a great podcast on President's Day and Abraham Lincoln. This is taken from another great speech that Fr. Tom gave on Lincoln and our secular religion, but I can't find it online. I've only heard it on cassette tape because it was given way back in the day at Saint Vladimir's Seminary.

In the podcast, Fr. Tom addresses how Lincoln emerges in American secular theology as a redeemer figure. Horace Bushnell explicitly stated this in his book "Vicarious Sacrifice" - that Lincoln had to die in order to "save" the Union. It's clear from Lincoln's writings that he believed in this providential view of America as being "chosen" by God and aspiring to some great destiny. And Lincoln was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of human lives to save this. "We must disenthrall ourselves," is Lincoln's Gospel message. It's the same sort of self-assertive language we find in "Yes We Can."

I was always disgusted at the notion of the the Union and why it had to be saved. Fr. Tom speaks of America as the nation with a soul of a church. If that is so, then the Union takes on a sacramental character. If America is a chosen people, set apart by God, then the Union cannot be dissolved, for its dissolution would invalidate that belief. It's like saying the Body of Christ - the Church - could be dissolved and divided.

Yet I am reminded of John Wilkes Booth's final journal entry, written just days before he was shot and killed by Boston Corbett in a barn in Northern Virginia. He wrote: "This forced Union is not what I have loved." I find it interesting that Booth was a baptized Episcopalian, and some of his fellow conspirators were Catholics, whereas Lincoln - although he clearly read the Bible - had never been baptized, was not a believer in the Church, and had a deistic view of God. In another interesting religious twist, Boston Corbett, the man who helped pursue and later kill Booth, was himself a religious "eccentric." A born-again Christian, he was given to displays of sudden religious euphoria, such as shouting "Praise Jesus!" He later moved to a secluded piece of prairie in Kansas where he dug a hole - yes, a hole - and lived in it like some ancient ascetic. While there he castrated himself so as to avoid being tempted by prostitutes. He was later put in an asylum, but escaped, and possibly met his fate in the Great Hinckley Fire in Minnesota - although there is no definitive proof.

Fr. Tom does make an incorrect statement though, that America is the only place where race-based slavery existed. Rather, race-based slavery existed throughout the Americas (Central America, Caribbean, South America), and in other parts of the world in different periods. Under Islamic slavery for instance, the more menial work was typically assigned to Africans, who were seen as inherently intellectually inferior in Semitic culture. This is not to assert that there is anything in Islam which asserts that blacks are inherently inferior. However, Islamic writers did use the Koran to defend racist attitudes. This is the same case with Christianity; rather than simply using Scripture to defend slavery in the abstract - which they certainly did - American slaveowners also looked to the Bible to defend race-based conceptions of slavery. This led to all sorts of "mark of Cain" and "curse of Ham" nonsense that many throughout the ages - including southerners unfortunately - believed.

********

I've been watching "MacGyver" from the beginning and today I watched "The Heist." An English soldier of fortune/war criminal/casino owner (played by Vernon Wells of "Mad Max" and "Commando" fame) steals 60 million dollars worth of diamonds from a charity that intends to use the funds to feed starving people in Africa. Of course MacGyver is sent in to get the jewels back - why people always turn to MacGyver in these situations is never made fully clear. It seems to me that a unit of Delta Force could just go in and run roughshod over the bad guys, but then again I suppose it wouldn't be as fun to watch. MacGyver teams up with a Peace Corps worker turned vigilante who is determined to get back the $60 mil and return it to its rightful owners in Africa.

Really the whole episode is just a silly romp, which is what television should be. At one point, MacGyver has to infiltrate the casino by dressing up as a high roller. When a woman at a craps table asks who he is he replies, "The name is Bond." Despite his suave clothing and demeanor, MacGyver can't seem to get his cowlick to stay down.

Terry Nation of "Dr. Who" fame contributed to this episode, and it shows. The pacing is brisk, and frequently it doesn't make a lot of sense - which is rare for MacGyver episodes since they're typically so science-based. There are a couple of things in this episode that are frankly quite impossible. For instance:

1. MacGyver uses a piece of plastic tubing to contain a beam of light that is being used as a security device. It's a good effect, but it's totally impossible, especially since MacGyver has to interrupt the beam before he can connect it to the other side.

2. The baddies use a vault that is encoded with a code that responds to a certain sequence of notes. MacGyver is able to infiltrate, listen to these notes, and then replay them using four wine glasses and a bottle of wine. And he has help from a tropical bird, which has heard the notes so many times that it keeps repeating them. This is one of the more entertaining MacGyver moments, but we all know he'd be there for hours trying to get the perfect notes - and how come the bird doesn't set it off on its own spontaneously?

3. MacGyver jerry rigs a parachute to a sportscar in the back of a cargo plane. He then drives the car out of the plane and parachutes to safety. The shots of the ground below are clearly somewhere in the southwestern United States, not the Virgin Islands, where this episode takes place. If this had been in the Virgin Islands, MacGyver's car (which contained the diamonds) would have been lost in the ocean. Furthermore, you can clearly see the cameraman jumping out of the plane behind the car.

Fr. Paul Yerger on Orthodoxy in the South

2009-02-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

There's a great article over at Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog by another southern Orthodox priest, Fr. Paul Yerger. It deals with the question I've been wrestling with of late, how Orthodoxy fits into the South, and I think he answers it rather well:

Christ-haunted — Southern Christianity is split down the middle, head and heart divided asunder. There is head religion: some tincture of Calvin, all about law and judgement, righteousness and sin, the fearful grace of the sovereign God tamed by respectability. Then there is heart religion: Pentecost, revivals, Jesus and the Holy Ghost called forth on demand to save souls and soothe the heartaches of life. And there are redneck existentialists, too, who want nothing of either, like Hazel Motes in O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, who preaches the Church Without Christ: it ain’t got no Jesus to die for you and make you feel guilty about it.

....

Orthodoxy is the only Church that puts it all together: the mind in the heart, the body and the spirit, the word and the image, grace and freedom, the good God who loves mankind. This is the “evangel”: the Good News for the South. Her deepest longings are met here. As Vladyko has taught us, all that is good and true in Southern Protestantism is here. Jesus and the Holy Ghost are here: the real Jesus confessed as Lord and God and Saviour, risen from the dead. We are steeped in the Bible and love to hear its cadences. We also know that deep sense of the irony and mystery of human life, that yearning for something lost. The writers of the Bible knew this yearning well: By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. This yearning is really a yearning for the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

Thanks to Fr. Chris for bring it to my attention. Read the whole thing.

A friend from high school wrote, performed, and produced this album. Give it a listen. It has sort of a Postal Service/Elliot Smith feel. It's the product of ten year's of dreaming - since our sophomore or junior year of high school. I'm certainly quite impressed.

Antebellum Southerners on Orthodoxy

2009-02-12T21:26:00.000-08:00

[This post can also be found on OrthodoxHistory.org here]

For the most part, the attitudes we find towards the Orthodox Church, typically referred to as the "Greek Church" among southerners, were either negative or ambivalent. There were some individuals, particularly George Fitzhugh, who praised the Orthodox Church, but for the most part southern attitudes towards Orthodoxy were informed by either a prejudice against anything that seemed Catholic or were filtered through an Enlightenment lens. Much of what southerners knew of Orthodoxy was through Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon took an unfavorable view of the eastern churches and wrote of the rise of Islam thusly:

More pure than the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of Moses, the religion of Mahomet might seem less inconsistent with reason than the creed of mystery and superstition which, in the seventh century, disgraced the simplicity of the Gospel.

Southerners consistently praised Islam and Muhammad for limiting the influence of the Eastern Churches. C.A. Woodruff, who wrote for the Southern Quarterly Review, judged Islam "more pure" than the "depraved" Orthodox churches that were existing in the Near East. Those churches had fallen into "gross superstition," through the "idolatrous introduction of images as objects of worship," and the "deification of saints and martyrs." An article in the Southern Quarterly Review on Peter the Great contrasted the "self-control" enforced by Islam with the "merely nominal" Greek Christianity adopted by the Russians. John Fletcher, a New Orleans Orientalist and author, also credited Muhammad and Islam with limiting the influence of the "degenerate" Eastern Church, even though he argued that Islam adopted the "errors" of the Eastern Churches to mollify Greek Christians. Just what these errors were, Fletcher does not say.

An article that appeared in the 18 April, 1846 issue of the Southern Quarterly Review described the condition of life in Palestine and Jerusalem in particular, with a great deal of attention given to what the author considered the "nominal" Christians of the Eastern churches. The author ridiculed the descent of the Holy Fire at Pascha as a "farce" and compared the gathering of the faithful in the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre as more akin to a heathen ceremony or an Indian war dance. "Of the iniquity of the bishop, who thus annually deceives these deluded pilgrims, it is not necessary to speak," he writes.

The article is an indictment of the worship and lifestyle of eastern Christians, and the author wonders how such a brand of Christianity could ever attract anyone:

The five thousand nominal Christians of Jerusalem are the representatives of almost every Christian sect known in the oriental world. The exhibition which they make of Christianity in the cradle of its birth, is dishonorable to the Christian name, and it is no marvel, that both Mohammedans and Jews hold it in derision. Such Christianity will never allure a follower
of Mohammed, or enlighten a believer the Talmud. It is painful to think, that the exhibition now made of the Christian religion in the city where it originated, is fitted to repel, rather than allure the believer.

Much of the article gives attention to the ignorance of the population and lack of progress being made in Palestine towards the improvement of the general welfare. This is a common theme in articles about the Christian east - the ignorance of the believers and the corruption and malice of the clergy. The author branded the religion of Palestine "almost universally, worthless, burdensome and debasing," and concluded his article on the hope that Christian missionaries from America and England would improve the intellectual, economic, and religious life of the denizens of Palestine.

Yet another article in the Southern Quarterly Review, from 1855, on Peter the Great, unleashed a wave of invective against the Russian Orthodox Church. Of course, we must keep in mind that this was during the Crimean War, but this does not fully explain the level of negativity:

The clergy were also very numerous, and their spiritual head, the patriarch, was armed with almost autocratic power, but was rarely enlightened enough to see, or interested enough to regard the welfare of the people. Of all the ministers of a corrupted form of Christianity, they were probably the worst ever seen on earth. The priests were disgraced by the most revolting superstitions, were infinitely more ignorant than the Catholic clergy of Spain or Austria, and if possible more unfriendly to all social, moral, and political reforms. They were members of the Greek Church, and their ambition and pride were apparently concentrated in making their churches wealthy, gorgeous, and the scenes of pompous ceremonials - such as appealed most forcibly to the tastes of the vulgar. Although Christianity had been planted in a corrupted form in Russia, as early as the eleventh century, by Vladimir, a powerful Sclavonic (sic) prince, still it had effected but few of those healthty changes which Christianity effected in the Teutonic countries of Europe, under the reign of the popes.

The introduction of Orthodoxy to Russia, which even today Orthodox Christians are fond of recalling, the famous story of Prince Vladimir's servants visiting Hagia Sophia and exclaiming that they did not know if they were in heaven or on earth is interpreted by the author as evidence of the Russian's baseness:

Its very manner of introduction augured few beneficial results. The czar was a pagan and a barbarian, yet had sense enough to perceive the necessity of some recognized form of religion; and therefore sent ten of his ablest councilors into various countries to examine their religious systems, resolved to adopt the form which best suited his royal caprice - Mohammedan, Jewish, Manichean, Papal, Or Greek.

Islam enjoins too great self-control, the author explains. Manicheanism is too hard to understand. Judaism has no country. The Pope was too autocratic. But the Greek Church was selected because it appealed to the barbarians' rapacity, lust for riches, and ignorance:

The vastness and splendor of the churches, the variety of the ceremonies, and the rich dresses of the clergy, struck the commissioners with admiration. Their reports were adopted, the czar and his nobles were baptized, and an expedition was sent to the Grecian empire, which returned with plundered vessels, books, images of the saints, relics, gorgeous dresses, and priests in abundance....Such a religion, merely nominal, had but little effect in destroying or even alleviating the miseries of barbarous life.

In my research into the subject thus far, I can't say I was surprised to find one of my favorite figures from southern history, George Fitzhugh, coming out in defense of Orthodox belief and practice. For those who don't know him, and he has indeed been forgotten by history - as many of those who defended slavery have been forgotten - Fitzhugh was a brilliant social and political theorist years ahead of his time. He foresaw the coming clash between workers and capitalists, and railed against what he saw as the erosion of traditional values and the destruction of organic social order by capitalism and industrialization. He upheld traditional southern cultural values against the acquisitive, "progressive" spirit of the North and the rest of the industrialized world. In terms of his outlook we may say that it was more "orthodox" in its rejection of Enlightenment notions. He celebrated a social order based on hierarchy and held together on a principal of patriarchy. But most of all, Fitzhugh was a sort of conservative enfant terrible of Southern letters.

In an article for an 1859 edition of Debow's Review, Fitzhugh took to task the writings of Bayard Taylor, who looked upon the undeveloped, pre-modern societies in the East as being benighted and backward. Taylor had travelled to Greece in 1859, and during his travels there had kept a travelogue, which was the subject of Fitzhugh's article. Taylor, although somewhat sympathetic towards the Greek Christians, viewed their clergy as "ignorant" and the multitude of their feast days and devotions to be counteractive to progress. In response, Fitzhugh comes very close to articulating an Orthodox view of mysterion and sacramentalism as laying at the heart of true faith:

Our author is one of the last men we should suspect of hypocrisy. We doubt not his religious faith; yet we fear the manner in which he speaks of venerated religious forms, ceremonies, and observances, is calculated to shake the faith of other people. Christianity, stripped of the formal and extraneous, degenerates into universalism and deism, and leads very soon to downright infidelity. Such has been its downward tendency in Boston, and such it will be everywhere. The Episcopal church, in both England and America, is attempting by high churchism to counteract this tendency. This new movment is headed by men equally remarkable for piety, learning and ability. If theirs be superstition, then is all religion superstition, for it is never found without ceremonial of some sort. If it be right to celebrate the birth-days of deceased warriors [here Fitzhugh refers to Greek heroes], sure it cannot be wrong to hold in veneration the memory of saints. A reasonable religion, squared down to philsophic rule, and reduced to human comprehension, is no religion at all. We must all believe what we cannot understand, or not only reject Christianity, but even dispute the existence of a material world.

And then to drive his point home, Fitzhugh quotes Tertullian:

"Credo quia impossibile," [I believe because it is impossible] is not an altogether absurd maxim. A possible religion must certainly be a false one. Not only does the antiquity of the Greek Church entitle its ordinances to respect, but the purity of its creed also challenges our approval.

Further on, when Taylor complains that the Greeks are less tolerant than the Turks, Fitzhugh defends them:

He often complains that he found the Greeks less tolerant in religious opinion than the Turks. A very tolerant spirit is not at all consistent with strong conviction and sincere faith. The Turks are tolerant, because it is notorious they have little faith in their own religion; the Greeks intolerant , because they are sincere and jealous Christians. The Virginia act of religious toleration proceeded not from regard to religion, but from indifference to it with some, and downright infidelity in others. Religious toleration, as it is now understood, is one of the humbugs of the day, which Mormon and other religious isms of the North will soon dissipate.

Taylor reserves most of his criticism for what he perceives to be the excesses of the Orthodox Church calendar, which he saw as standing in the way of "progress:"

The festivals of the Greek Church are fully as numerous, if not more so, than those of the Latin. Almost every third day is an eorti, or holy day of some venerable unwashed saint, whose memory is duly honored by a general loafing-spell of all the inhabitants. The greatest benefit that could happen to Greece, and to all Southern Europe, would be the discanonization of ninetenths of their holy drones, who do enough harm by sanctifying indolence to outweigh a thousand times the good they may have accomplished during their lives. God's sabbath is enough for man's needs, and both St. George, the Swindler, and St. Polycarp, the Martyr, have sufficient honor shown to them in the way of chapels, shrines, candles, and incense, to forego the appropriation of certain days, on which no one thinks particularly about them. Not only are the laborers idle and the shops generally shut on every one of these festival days, but the University schools and public offices are closed also. The Greeks are very zealous professors, and would exhibit much more progress as a people if they did not make a millstone of their religion and wear it around their necks.

This touches on several themes that appear throughout writings on the Orthodox in the South, but also, as we see here, in the North, during the 19th century - their preoccupation with what is seen as a religious "millstone" that weighs them down and keeps them in poverty and ignorance. Fitzhugh, however, sees this as a blessing, and draws a parallel between the Greek way of life and the way of life Fitzhugh was attempting to preserve in the South:

Better wear that than the collar of the rapacious task-master, who would make them work twelve hours a day. Better have too many holydays than none. Greece and the rest of Southern Europe have not as yet adopted the high-pressure system of society, which begets paupers and millionaires, and riots in famine and starvation. Mr. Taylor speaks in terms of high commendation of the purity of the domestic lives of the Greeks. He says also that they are desirous of acquiring knowledge, and learn with great facility. Add to this their religious zeal, their light work, and the absence of extreme destitution among them, and there is left little cause to regret their hesitancy to adopt that high pressure system of progress which our author so much admires, but which, so far, has only doomed the masses to overwork and insufficient food and raiment.

Therefore, we may say that Fitzhugh's worldview was more "orthodox" in its belief in a religion centered on mysterion, history, and tradition. Likewise, the ideal society for Fitzhugh was one based on stable institutions and hierarchy - and above all not ruled by the profit motive. If we are to speak of a "pre-orthodox" mentality in the South, we can certainly find its strongest explicit articulation in George Fitzhugh.

This is only scratching the surface of the attitudes towards Orthodoxy in the South. There are other sources which I haven't even reproduced here, and still many more sources to be explored. Eventually I hope to take all of this and write at least a sizable paper on it.

On communion

2009-02-11T01:24:00.000-08:00

I have been to Capernaum, the tiny fishing village on the coast of the Sea of Galilee, where Christ performed some of his most memorable miracles. The house of Peter still stands there, as well as a 3rd century synagogue which was built on the ruins of the one where Christ preached. I spent a lot of time just silently wandering through this ruined synagogue, which in form is more Roman than anything else. One can only wonder at the fact that God incarnate was here, in the flesh. This also happens to be the place where Christ said some of the most difficult words in all of the Bible - regarding the consumption of his flesh and blood.

Did Christ mean it symbolically when he said "he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him?" Or did he mean it literally? Many of Christ's disciples remarked that this was a "hard saying," and "walked with Him no more." Some have interpreted Christ's words in the following passage, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing," to mean that Christ was saying this in a strictly "spiritual" sense that we would "eat" his flesh and "drink" his blood. But in the Semitic cultures, when one speaks figuratively of eating someone's blood and flesh, the connotation is negative - it speaks of wrath. But if Christ's words in John 6:63 are in fact a sort of explanation or glossing over of his words in previous verses, then why did many of His disciples "walk with him no more?"

"But there are some of you who do not believe," the next verse begins. Christ isn't speaking about his flesh being "spiritual" or "symbolic," but that only those who have faith may grasp this as a mystery. Many of Christ's disciples wanted him to be an earthly king - someone who would kick out the Romans and rule as David had once ruled over Israel. After He fed the five thousand, many among the crowd said he was a prophet, so Christ withdrew into the mountains lest they should proclaim Him an earthly king. All of this talk of eating His flesh and drinking His blood conflicted with that. The crowds who had come by boat from Tiberias to see Him could not grasp this, for they were carnally minded. When Christ says that the Spirit gives life, it is precisely this attitude that He is addressing.

We should not attempt to understand this rationally or fit it into categories that oppose "spiritual" and "material." Just as Christ's incarnation is a mystery - fully God and fully man - so also is the Eucharist a mystery whereby we eat bread and wine, but also Christ's body and blood. To attempt to understand it and fit it into rational categories is not only impossible, but blasphemous.

The words that Christ spoke were meant for simple fishermen, and the meaning was plain to them. The difference between those who "walked with Him no more" and those who remained was that one group had simple faith. When Christ asked Peter, "Do you also want to go away?" Peter replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." That Christ was going to give for them his flesh to eat and his blood to drink did not drive them away. Rather, they simply believed.

The night before Christ was given up, or rather gave Himself up for the life of the world, He took the bread, gave thanks, broke it and said, "this is my body." After they had eaten He then took the cup and said, "this is my blood." What did he mean? The early church was clear on this point. In Paul's writings we find there is no controversy as to its meaning. At no point does someone say, "well, He really meant this," or "while he was using a metaphor, He really meant it this way." Paul says, "whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord." He then goes on to relate how some have fallen ill and died because of this, because they approached the Eucharist without a spirit of repentance. This isn't a mere symbol or a simple memorial.

Justin Martyr, writing not 50 years after the repose of the Apostles writes of the Eucharist:

For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

Saint Ignatius( c. 35 or 50 - c. 98-117 A.D.) third bishop of Antioch (a post which Eusebius records he was appointed to by Peter), warned his flock about heretics and their Gnosticized approach to the Eucharist:

They (heretics) abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ…Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes.

The earliest heretics were themselves anti-Eucharistic and denied the mystery of Christ's presence in the bread and wine. The Gnostics held that matter was evil and hence nothing physical could ever attain to eternal life, or communicate God's grace. There are numerous other references to the Eucharist that appear in the writings of the early Fathers, and they are unanimous in their teaching regarding the Eucharist.

"Do this in remembrance of me" is more than the institution of a memorial, like Veteran's Day or the Fourth of July. If it is a simple memorial then it does not fulfill or exceed the types which are given to us in the Old Testament - all of the images of messianic banquets, manna raining from heaven, the consumption of the paschal lamb, the fiery coal that touches the lips of Isaiah. "Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!" All of the mystery is lost, all of the incarnational significance is jettisoned, if one takes communion and makes it a mere "ordinance." I often get the sense, from reading books and watching television programs, that Evangelicals don't know what to do with communion. You get things like Perry Stone's "The Meal That Heals," which treats communion like a panacea for every sickness and ailment, with Stone prancing around on a stage with giant prop bottles of wine (labeled as "fruit of the vine") and giant prop wafers that look like saltine crackers.

The things of this earth were given by God to men as communion with Him. The Fall was a denial of this reality. The forbidden fruit was not communion with God, but communion with itself, communion with the world, a view of this world as an end in itself, not as communion with Him. This is the essence of sin, forgetting God. Adam and Eve did not remember God when they ate of the forbidden fruit. When Christ says “do this in remembrance of me” he is restoring that lost communion. He takes the stuff of the created world and transforms it from what this world sees it as - mere matter, mundane dust - and transforms it into communion and Life with Him - which it always was, only in Christ we have its fulfillment. While in the Garden God gave man all of creation as communion with Him - as remembrance of Him - in Christ He offers His own body and unites it with creation, with us, in the ultimate act of sacrificial love. Therefore, “do this in remembrance of me” is more than a memorial, but a restoration of our true nature as beings who exist in communion with God.

Coworkers With Candy

2009-02-05T20:43:00.001-08:00

We hired a new woman at work, I won't give her name here but most people who read this already know her name anyway. For the past couple of weeks that she's been working with me she's been very forward and touchy. On the first day that she worked with us I had to train her and show her around the store. She took me back to the astrology/new age section of the store and asked me my birthday. She pulled down this book called "Sextrology" and looked up all of the things that were supposed to "turn me on." This was a list of all sorts of things that I won't repeat here. She also looked up the birthdays of those I would be attracted to, but didn't find herself there. Rather, she found that she was an individual who would "challenge" me. "I'm challenging you right now," she said. How very right the stars would turn out to be in this instance.

It continued with her playfully saying "I looooove yooouuuu...." She would look at me expecting me to say "I love you" back, but I would only look at her and smile. "You have to love me back, that's what Jesus does." She told me about how much she enjoyed evangelical snake oil salesman Joel Osteen once. I don't like Osteen or his writings, but being polite I told her that I was converting to Orthodoxy. She didn't know what I was talking about, so I said that I'm not a Protestant any longer. She didn't know what Protestant even meant. She also professed a great love for Sylvia Browne's books. In other words, she's a bona fide flake. One day Fr. Christopher came in to the store and we talked briefly. "Who is that?" She asked.

"That's my priest."

"Well. Praise the Lord."

Every day she found some way to put her hands on me in ways that were not appropriate. Once she took hold of the strings on my hoodie and pulled them down tight, an action that I interpreted as provocative. On several occasions she has smacked my ass - not with her hand, but with a book or a rolled up piece of paper. These were not "good job" ass smacks that some men are prone to engaging in, nor were they "ironic" ass smacks, but genuinely took me off guard because of their force and abruptness. On one occasion it was while I was helping a customer, which made it all the more inappropriate.

One day she even started quizzing me on my sexual history. I wonder if she's being flirty or if she has no other way of relating to people. If it's flirtyness it's just sad, because there's nothing about her that I find attractive. Some people have told me to turn her in for sexual harassment, but I can't see myself doing that. For one, I'm not the kind of person to raise a stink about something as minor as this. It's annoying, but it's not degrading or frightening.

After talking with her one day I found out that she used to work at a strip club here in town. All of her behavior makes sense to me in light of this. She's used to flirting with people and being touchy. It also explains other things, like her fascination with porn star Jenna Jameson, whose books she also buys at work (Osteen, Sylvia Browne, and Jenna Jameson all seem to fit together). And her whole image. She wears loud clothes like leopard skin print jackets, large amounts of make-up, and has short, frosted pixie hair. She always reeks of cigarettes covered in a layer of some sort of anonymous perfume. Her voice is like a woman 20-30 years her senior, made gravelly and slightly hoarse from heavy smoking. She's actually 28 but sounds and looks as if she's much older. And her accent is the worst kind of southern accent.

She's certainly very strange. Tonight while we were closing up the store she called with around 10 minutes left. Another co-worker answered the phone. She was drunk. She asked what we were up to and if the cafe was still open. He explained that we were getting everything ready for closing and she hung up. Five minutes later she called back again and wanted to know what was up because she was "bored." I was glad that I hadn't answered the phone.

It occured to me who she reminds me of, though. And now that I know who she reminds me of, she seems less of an annoyance and more sad. Jerri Blank, the character from Strangers With Candy, played by Amy Sedaris, is a very close approximation of the kind of person this woman is. The similarities between the character and real person even go right down to the spelling of the first name, which is spelled with an "i" instead of the more standard - and somehow less ignorant - "y."

Death spasm

2009-02-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of weeks I've been having pain in my cheek, jaw and teeth - and this is not counting the other two weeks of recovering from the initial wisdom tooth extraction. I've been in some kind of pain for the better part of a month. The current pain started up about 2-3 weeks after the surgical work in my mouth had healed. All of the stitches had fallen out by that point. I started noticing an aching in my teeth on the right side, which I initially believed was either sensitivity or a toothache. It stuck around and got worse. Soon it became difficult to open my mouth and the pain spread to my jaw, cheek, and ear. It radiated throughout my head on the right side, which it continues to do even now. I also noticed some slight clicking or popping, which was inaudible, but I could feel it in my jaw. I emailed my oral surgeon and she said it all sounded like normal muscular healing. I was skeptical, so I scheduled a follow-up appointment.

I went back to the oral surgeon and was examined by another doctor. He told me it was the muscle in my cheek - the masseter - which had been hyperextended, sliced, and injected in the course of the operation. Not only that, but it was on the receiving end of a solid 30-45 minutes of grinding and cracking as the oral surgeon attempted to break the wisdom tooth on that side. Bone was also removed. The soreness was related to this stretching - which produced muscle spasms - and it would take time for the muscle to heal. He suggested I take 600 mg of Ibuprofen for a week and put heat on it for about an hour a day, which I've been doing. He suggested I begin my own sort of physical therapy by massaging and stretching the jaw bit by bit every day. I've also been doing that. The week is almost up - tomorrow it will have been exactly one week - but there has been little change. Everything still hurts. Some motion has been restored to my mouth, but I'm still in pain and sick of taking Ibuprofen, which makes me feel "not all there." I'm willing to give this another week, but much longer and I'm going to have to visit the doctor once again.

From a site on oral surgery complications:

Many times pain after the first week is not due to the extraction sites themselves; rather it is due to muscle spasms of the jaw muscles. This is most common in adults, and especially in females. Symptoms include pain which is usually worse at the end of the day or in the morning. The pain is more of a generalized one-sided jaw or facial pain than a localized pain in the healing socket. The pain is worse on chewing, talking, and opening the mouth. The inability to open the mouth very wide, or jaw muscle stiffness may be present. The jaw may feel swollen, but there is usually no physical distension of tissue visible. Ear pain may be present. Patients may be awakened in the early morning hours with severe pain if they have a tendency to grind their teeth. These muscle spasms are essentially due to jaw overuse and should be treated with jaw rest (maintain a soft diet and talk as little as possible) moist heat (ice can make it worse), ibuprofen (unless you have a medical condition that prohibits you from taking ibuprofen), and possibly a prescription muscle relaxant that our office can call in. Please note that taking a strong narcotic opiate pain medication for this problem can make this problem worse, because when the body is devoid of all painful inhibitions, it is easy to overuse the jaw muscle and further damage it. The measures taken above will provide pain relief and an opportunity for the joint/muscle complex to heal.

The building committee

2009-02-02T22:08:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday we had a wonderful liturgy and service. Fr. Christopher's son, Alexander, was baptized and it was also Fr. Christopher's birthday, so the church was full of people. A bronze laver was brought into the sanctuary for the baptism, like a gigantic chalice. And Alexander was brought out, after his mother had undressed him. Here was this tiny reddish person, totally naked, wondering for all the world what was going on. Father dunked him into the water three times, eliciting a bleat or two from the tiny babe, and then Alexander was wrapped in a white baptismal garment with a little kerchief to keep his head warm. It was very moving and felt "full," for not only did the prayers mention practically every reference to baptism in the Old and New Testaments, but it was also those words being lived out.

What a shame, I thought, that there are Christians who do not even practice this - let alone infant baptism, but any type of baptism. And what a shame, I thought further, that the Christians who do practice it, don't even believe in it, because they have separated matter and spirit, symbol and symbolized, and reject a sacramental view of the world. And what a shame, I still further thought, that they ascribe no redemptive grace to the act, but make it a mere "witness" or "testimony" or "public proclamation." How empty is that world!

After liturgy I noticed some of the men, the deacons, and the church treasurer gathered around a table looking at pictures of wooden churches. It was the beginning of the building committee. Although a permanent church is far in the future - probably two or more years out - our church has already begun putting together a committee to start floating ideas. I struck up a conversation with one of the deacons - who happens to be an architect - about how cool it would be to create an Orthodox church that reflected a southern vernacular style. A church that was made from recycled tobacco barns, and that employed local river stones and had a tin roof with a coat of shiny red paint on it. He really loved the idea, and had already been thinking about it. What does a hybrid Orthodox-Southern style look like?

I said that if we could do that - it would - and he completed the sentence for me, "be one of the coolest things ever?" I nodded my head in agreement. He pointed to one of the photos, I think from Ukraine, "you see how that Church looks like it belongs there? It looks like a natural part of the landscape." And that's the problem with just plopping a very Russian or Eastern European church in a Carolina landscape - it would look out of place. We talked for a while about vernacular styles and I told him all about my explorations of sundry abandoned buildings. He asked about tobacco barns that could possibly be salvaged. I explained that people did it all the time, and that many people were more than happy to clear them from their property. "I think you just volunteered for the building committee."

A physical expression of what I envision? A tangible example of a Southern Orthodoxy? It would be like...giving birth to a child in terms of its awesomeness.

A Southern Orthodoxy

2009-01-19T16:19:00.000-08:00

If only it were possible to tax moronic, overblown displays of adulation.

Tomorrow is of course the most important day in American history. But with all of the talk of unity in the air and of "post-partisanship" on the mall in Washington, children were throwing shoes at an effigy of George Bush a couple of miles away. This is what I'll remember from the swearing in of The One - the stark contrast of public pettiness and petulance with moronic, gushing adulation. What ever will they do without their Bogeyman-in-Chief? Will the next natural disaster still be George Bush's fault? Oh, I forgot, the seas will cease their rising once The One is sworn in.

******

I was talking with Fr. Christopher the other day about what a native American Orthodoxy would look like. Is it just something that continues to resemble the Orthodoxy as delivered to us from the mother country? Like Russian Orthodoxy in America, but with everything in English? There are some who would prefer to keep it like this, like the ROCOR folks. But Russian Orthodoxy didn't spring into existence fully-formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. It was imported from Constantinople, and had Greek cultural underpinnings. The Russians didn't keep a stylistically Greek Orthodoxy. They kept the theology and the traditions that were handed to them, but they made Orthodoxy their own, adding their own traditions, style, etc.

What I communicated to Fr. Christopher was that I was wary of being "Russified," that I was somehow being turned culturally away from an American - and more importantly southern - cultural outlook. I think this is an obstacle that Orthodoxy faces in the United States - that despite the adoption of English, Orthodoxy will still be seen as predominantly ethnic. His response was that we as Americans are even less aware of it than other Eastern Europeans. Some of the Romanians in our parish are much more attuned to how culturally Russian everything is than we are. But it is still visible to me, and it has gotten me thinking about how to affect a marriage of Orthodoxy - in myriad ethnic casts - with southern culture.

(This was the subject of a podcast by Fr. Joseph Huneycutt, a priest at an Antiochian Church in Houston and a fellow North Carolinian.)

First, I say southern culture because in my mind it is not only more germane to Orthodoxy than generic "American" culture, but I also happen to inhabit it and study it. Second, the very fact that Orthodoxy comes to us in a myriad of ethnic styles should give us heart, simply because Orthodoxy has changed wherever it has gone. Not in terms of theology, but in terms of its style. Let me be clear: I don't want Orthodoxy to make accommodations. There is no intent on my part to make Orthodoxy subject to the leveling impulse of the West. On the contrary, I intend to illustrate that the South is in many ways already almost Orthodox in its cultural leanings.

Contrary to what many cradle Orthodox may believe, the South is not a bastion of philosophical radicalism. While there are philsophical notions in the South which are alien to an Orthodox outlook, the wellspring of southern culture is conservative, hierarchical, and more religiously "orthodox" (with a little "o") than the rest of the nation. However, it is my belief that this uniquely southern character is rapidly being eroded away by a number of factors too numerous to mention here. Suffice it to say that modernity is winning out over the unique southern character - or has already won. Southern culture must find a resource on which to draw new life, because its existence is threatened by a rampant modernity. I see Orthodoxy as a possible resource for a number of reasons which I will address in greater detail in coming posts. I have yet to fully develop my ideas regarding this, but as I do I'll post them here.

It is my intent, therefore, to illustrate that the South is pre-Orthodox in order to better articulate what a cultural marriage of the South and Orthodoxy could look like.

Minor celebrities

2009-01-12T21:26:00.000-08:00

G-boro has its minor celebrities. The ones that come most immediately to mind are Chris Daughtry, Orson Scott Card, and Eugene Chadbourne (A motley bunch, and not necessarily in that order). I also go to church with the lesser known, although highly regarded Sci Fi author, M.A. Foster. I've had my run-ins with most of the other individuals. When I was younger, I think in high school, Eugene Chadbourne walked right past me while I was leaving a grocery store. I was a big fan of They Might Be Giants (still am), and he had actually played on one of their records, so it was kind of a big deal to me. I even saw a major celebrity in the mall in Greensboro when I was in middle or high school - L.L. Cool J. - but this is about local minor celebrities, so he doesn't count. I've never met Orson Scott Card, although I occasionally enjoy his columns in the Rhino Times.

I've also written here about my run-ins with weatherman Eric Chilton. I just wish the dude would give me a call so we could go on some proper scooter rides.

Chris Daughtry on the other hand is someone who, up until the other night, I'd never met before. And honestly, of all of the above, he's the only one who could legitimately claim a "celebrity" status of recognizability and (unfortunately) the ability to induce squees from fangirls. Daughtry came to BAM practically incognito - he's sporting a full beard now - and pulled down tight over his shiny futuristic shorn head was a light blue toboggan. I honestly wouldn't have recognized him had a female coworker not at first realized who he was. "ZOMG, Daughtry is in the store!" She approached him and begged him for an autograph for her mother - who was a huge fan - and Daughtry was happy to oblige. I was the only register open, so he came up and bought a book on how to draw comic book characters - presumably for his son. The dude paid in cash, out of a light blue wallet that matched his toboggan. Let me say that again: The dude carries a wallet that matches his toboggan. And like, OMG, I touched Daughtry's hand when I gave him his change!!111one!!!

After he left I realized that he'd left his empty coffee cup on the counter. It had Daughtry's mouth-print on it. I tried to sell it to some folks, telling them that it was Daughtry's coffee, and that it made it possible to engage in a second-hand kiss with Daughtry, if that was your pleasure. No one wanted it. I thought about putting it up on Ebay also, but I think the period of Daughtry mania has subsided to the point where such wouldn't be viable.

The Doctah is in

2009-01-04T10:32:00.001-08:00

Doctor who?

Who could have guessed that the 11th Doctor would be nine years old and look like the lead singer for Flock of Seagulls? Me. Well, sorta. I had a feeling Doctor Who would continue its progression toward a point where it merely existed as fodder for fangirls. This new guy, Matt Smith, confirms that DW is continuing down the path of squickiness and effete metro boys. Smith is guaranteed to tickle the fancy of the "Twilight" set, which seems more and more to be the dominant DW audience. Would it be too much to ask for a Doctor that we, as nerds, can look up to as a wise, almost fatherly figure? Someone like William Hartnell or Tom Baker? At least give us someone who is old enough to be the father of a sizable portion of the audience! This Smith fellow is my age. I can't enjoy a Doctor who is 26 years old.

But the biggest insult of all? He's white. I'd been hoping for a black Doctor for some time now. I fantasized about a blaxploitation style restyling of DW. And let's face it, all of those pasty-faced Brits - God love 'em, and I'm from that stock - but sometimes they (and I mean we) just tend to start looking like aging lesbians. Black dudes on the other hand always look cool - generally much more so as they get older. I was thinking an Isaac Hayes type dude would be just right. I got excited when I heard Paterson Joseph was being considered and thought that he just might have a chance in this year of "Change" and "Hope." But no, we get another pasty, androgynous metro boy. Apparently the BBC has yet to enter the post-racial world the rest of us enlightened souls have entered by so bravely electing The One.

*******

I'm having my wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday. I'm still teething a little bit because they keep pushing. I'm off three days next week to recover from the operation. The day I'm having them out - Tuesday - is Theophany. I spoke to Fr. Christopher about my inability to come for liturgy on Theophany because of my teeth and he offered to pray for me and anoint me with oil. I wasn't aware I was eligible to receive this anointing as a mere catechumen, but I am grateful for it. God willing, I won't have any complications and won't be totally laid up from the pain. Now if I only had someone to offer ministrations to me in my afflicted state afterwards.

*******

Two versions of the same tune. Weldon Irvine's "Music Is The Key:"

And Bernard Wright's version:

To the Unapproachable One, the earth offers a cave

2008-12-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

In North Carolina we get rain on Christmas. Somehow, this is is inevitable. If we lived anywhere else, this would be snow, but we don't live anywhere else. Stupid North Carolina and its typically crappy winter weather.

Today was busy at work; I took in 4k in 4 hours. I was originally scheduled to work until 6:30, but a coworker and friend, knowing that I'd been engaging in a fast for the past 40 days, decided to take my slot for the remainder of the day, enabling me to leave early for my Christmas eve vigil service. This was a good Christmas gift, and I appreciate it greatly. The service itself was new to me, although I got the sense that everyone - especially the children - were very tired tonight. There was much crankiness and crying from the babes. The adults seemed to be sick, if their lack of singing and constant coughing was any indication.

As a result, the service was long and burdened by constant physical failings: cracking voices, missed cues, and even one of the altar boys was stricken with a sudden attack of some sort and forced to sit down. I suspect he had just gotten overheated, since it was rather hot inside the church. The lights came on and off; babies cried; children were rolling around on the floor in a daze. Irate fathers stormed out with their crying children; spankings were administered. One man, a guest, kept checking his watch. Is the service really this long? There was so much human frailty and petty concern on display. I myself was developing a headache, and my voice was also not at its best. Everything just felt sleepy.

This is the world into which Christ came, with all of its frailty and lack of attentiveness. To those familiar with the icon of the Nativity, this world of frailty and petty concern somehow fits perfectly. The icon is a scene of busy activity: onlookers come, craning their necks to get a peek, midwives work, an old man (representative of Satan) converses with Joseph in an attempt to get him to abandon Mary and the newborn Jesus. And in many versions, including a famous one attributed to Andrei Rublev or one of his followers, Mary is looking away from Christ, perhaps in exhaustion, wrapping her robe about her. It's anything but a scene of reverence. It's almost quotidian. But as with the icon, there were moments during the service that my self and all that was around me, the world of frailty and pettiness, were pierced like a spotlight by the reality of this feast.

To the unapproachable one the earth offers a cave.

The Orthodox don't depict Christ as being born in a stable - the typical image one finds in the west, made of wood and with a thatched roof - for a number of reasons. For one, ancient stables weren't likely to be built out of wood. Bethlehem, for anyone who's ever been there, isn't populated by many sizable trees. Typically, caves were used as places for stabling animals. The transformation of the cave into the western-style wooden stable is largely cultural, although I think it unintentionally does violence to the tradition. Why does it matter whether Christ was born in a cave or in a more "traditional" stable? Because it foreshadows Christ's mission on earth. Christ was born into a cave because he was born to be crucified and buried in a cave. It also symbolizes Christ's descent into Hades and victory over death.

This is not to detract from the fact or deny that Christ was born into a place where animals were kept. The "dumb beasts" recognize their creator. This is one of the facets of the icon of the nativity that I admire the most; out of the cleft in the rock appear the cows and sheep, and they look down on the Creator of All, Whom they recognize, as a tiny child. My heart leaps at this thought, that the beasts know him as he lays in the manger.

The manger is also something we don't contemplate. It speaks to the great poverty and humility of Jesus - his perfect humility - but we typically don't go beyond that, if we even contemplate that at all. The word "manger" comes from manducare, which means "to chew." In Greek, manger is phatne, from the word pateomai, "to eat." Christ, the Bread of the World, receives a trough where animals take their food as his first bed. As the cave illustrates that Christ has been born to die and descend into Hades, trampling down death, so also the manger symbolizes that he has been born to offer his body as nourishment to all. "Unless you chew (trogo) my flesh..."

But I digress. My favorite moment in the service was when Father Christopher came down to the choir niche and stood and sang a hymn in a stark Byzantine style with Judah, a catechumen. A sort of sparse, flat, 2 part harmony that sounds like it's straight out of a desert cave:

We magnify thee, O Christ, Giver of Life, who for our sake now art born in the flesh of the unwedded and most pure Virgin Mary.

Funk break

2008-12-20T19:41:00.000-08:00

I have a weakness for early 80s Soul/Disco/Electro Funk and D-Train Williams is one of the artists I most enjoy. The sound is a blend of disco beats, funk instrumentation, and soul vocals. Some might characterize it as formulaic and soulless because so much of it is done with synthesizers and drum machines, but I would strongly disagree. The song "Keep On" came out the year I was born, so that must have something to do with why I enjoy it so much. I may have been nodding my zygote head to it in my mother's womb - assuming it was bumping anywhere in the Greensboro area during 1982, which is likely.

My prenatal preferences aside, I also love how empowering the music is. One of the reasons I enjoy soul music so much is that it is life-affirming and empowering. It's typically written by people who grew up with nothing and had to struggle to make it. McFadden and Whitehead, a similar act, had lyrics such as "ain't no stoppin' us now," which was picked up as a sort of theme song for the civil rights movement that carried on into the early 80s. Unfortunately, this has been eclipsed by a culture of excess, which these days seems to afflict the vast majority of R&B like a plague. A similar evil afflicts other forms of pop music, although I see it as a sort of ennui brought on by a life of comfort (a good example is Country Music, which went from a working class genre dominated by tough guys to a middle class, suburban genre dominated by models and a slick pop sound).

Beyond the philosophical and psychological aspects, you can dance to it. And I like to dance, at least in my room when no one is watching.

Another artist who reminds me of this sort of sound is Jamie Lidell, although he also has elements of Otis Redding, Sly & The Family Stone, and Stevie Wonder. Right now, as far as soul music goes, he's the best thing going. Jamie Lidell is just real. His songs are just real. I can't really articulate it other than by saying that he's authentic and that he's got soul. And this is one of my favorites:

And another, with a Stevie Wonder flow:

Nativity paradox

2008-12-18T21:10:00.000-08:00

I had hoped to blog about this Orthodox hymn this week, but Father Stephen Freeman beat me to it.

Nevertheless, here are the words:

Today is born of a virgin
He Who holds the whole creation
In His hand

He Whose essence none can touch,
Is bound in swaddling clothes as a child.

God Who in the beginning
Established the heavens,
Lies in a manger

He Who rained manna on His people
In the wilderness
Is fed on milk from His mother's breast.

I had a meeting with Fr. Christopher today and we both agreed that this is one of the more powerful Orthodox hymns, along with Antiphon 15, which is sung on Holy Friday. The line which stands out for me is the last stanza, He Who rained manna on His people in the wilderness is fed on milk from His mother's breast. What can anyone say to that? Words fail when one contemplates what this means. Our God is a consuming fire, true. Our God is a great and mighty fortress, true. It's easy to sneer at that stuff about might and power. But what can one say to this? God comes naked into the world, totally at the mercy of those around him, utterly meek and powerless. God also condescended to make Himself tiny, to humble Himself out of love. Only when one ponders this does one understand the words "in weakness is my strength perfected."

Saint Ephrem the Syrian writes about this and other paradoxes we find in the Nativity:

Thy mother is a cause for wonder: the Lord entered her

and became a servant; He who is the Word entered

- and became silent within her; thunder entered her

- and made no sound; there entered the Shepherd of all,

and in her He became the Lamb, bleating as He came forth.

Thy mother’s womb has reversed the roles:

the Establisher of all entered in His richness,

but came forth poor; the Exalted One entered her,

but came forth meek; the Splendrous One entered her,

but came forth having put on a lowly hue.

The Mighty One entered, and put on insecurity

from her womb; the Provisioner of all entered

- and experienced hunger; He who gives drink to all entered

- and experienced thrist: naked and stripped

there came forth from her He who clothes all.

Lumps of coal

2008-12-16T20:02:00.000-08:00

I had a crazy kid throw a tantrum at work today. You know those kind of children who are not whipped properly when they should be whipped? The children who are merely appeased when they throw fits? The children who deserve lumps of coal and yet all throughout their lives receive everything they want?

This very Noo Yawk-ish accented family came up to the register with their son, with the intention of purchasing a toy truck. I asked them how they were doing today and the mother responded with "How you doin'?" like she was Joey Tribbiani. I rang up the truck and she started to swipe her debit card, but the kid wanted to swipe the card himself and pretend he was a grown up.

"Maaaaaaaaam. I wanna paaaaay."

"No, sweetie, your name isn't on the cawd, moine is."

"MAAAAAAAM. I WANNA PAAAAAY"

So he started hitting his mom in the back with closed fists. The kid should have been pleased that he was getting the toy truck, but apparently that wasn't enough. The mom tried to shake him off. "Stop it! Stop it!" The dad stepped in to try and restore some order by pulling him off, but that only set the kid off into a fit of crocodile tears.

"Okay, we're not getting this now." And he started to pull the truck from the counter, in the hopes of getting the kid to calm down. Either not grasping that this was a trade-off (good behavior for a truck), or simply knowing that he could get away with it (I lean toward the latter), the kid yelled "NOOOOOOO!" at the top of his lungs and smacked the truck out of his father's hands, across the counter, past me, where it bounced off of the shelving behind the registers. I leaned down to pick up the truck, thinking for certain that the kid would be carried out of the store sans toy.

"Why do you have toys here?" The father asked me angrily. As if this tantrum was my fault. "We came here expecting to find books, not toys!"

"It's a store that has books in it," I replied. "Do you still want to get the truck? The receipt has already printed."

After some huffing and puffing they just took the toy and stormed out.

The Horrors of BAM Christmas Music

2008-12-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

At work we play the worst Christmas songs ever recorded. These aren't the old standards, or even the newer novelty tunes like dogs barking to the melody of "Jingle Bells" or "Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer." I would welcome those songs; they would be like a breath of fresh air compared to the horrors we are subjected to, which amount to the most abysmal collection of soulless and humorless Christmas songs ever assembled. Why does Books A Million play these songs? Royalty free, of course. BAM doesn't strike me as the sort of company that would ever spend a little extra to have decent music playing in their store.

The only song in the collection which is remotely tolerable is a lame version of Bach's normally sublime "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." Some nights I actually get embarrassed and have to close my eyes and pretend I'm not there; I don't like being associated with this music. There is one "song" in particular that always makes me sick and embarrassed, and that's a "tune" by the virtually unknown "songwriter" Mike Morucci entitled "Christmas Gift." The title is ironic, of course, considering that this is not a gift that you or anyone with an ounce of sanity or taste would want for Christmas. It's the sort of Christmas "gift" they give you in Hell.

The lyrics of this "song" are some of the most trite drivel I've ever come across. It's like a parody of a bad song, but it's totally serious. The instrumentation sounds like it was composed on a cheap Casio keyboard. It has nothing that resembles a melody, just an atmosphere that is reminiscent of what it feels like to be depressed. To make matters worse, Morucci cannot sing. His delivery is a flat, nasally drone, and not the Bob Dylan sort of nasally drone.

If you are so inclined, you can go here and listen to this piece of garbage, as well as a couple of other arrangements by Morucci, which are similarly terrible. Morucci gives the story behind the "song:"

I was never very expressive and with my family growing up, but was able to express a tremendous amount of feelings in a short song. I sat at the piano while my parents and sisters were at church. I was 22 at the time. They enjoy it. I hope you do too.

They "enjoy" it? Good Lord. Morucci considers this his "signature" track, which makes me retch.

Here are the lyrics:

December’s come
Another year’s gone by
Forget the past
We’ve made an honest try
For hope and love surround this family
We sometimes fight, but there’s nowhere I’d rather be
Than Home at Christmas Time (this last word is drawn out to "tiiiiiiiiiiime")
It’s Christmas Day again, I’m by the tree alone
You’ve made me think about the ones who have no home
I hope and pray that Christmas comes for them
I hope they share the love that we do At Christmas Time each year ("yeeeeeeeeeeear")
I’d like to thank you for all you’ve done for me
I really love you, my family
I hope to share my Christmas joy with you
I hope this song will show my gratitude
My love for you this way ("waaaaaaaaaaay")
It’s Christmas Day again, I’m by the tree alone
You’ve made me think about the ones who have no home
I hope and pray that Christmas comes for them
I hope they share the love that we do At Christmas Time each year ("yeeeeeeeeeeear")
At Christmas Time each year (YEEEE-eeeeeeear")
And every other day ("daaaaaaaaaaaaay")

Boy In The Striped Pajamas

2008-12-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

Saw "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" with Ash today. It's a Holocaust film about the son of a camp commandant and the friendship he develops with a Jewish boy. Some aspects of it are quite wonderful and well done, but the concept isn't believable for several reasons (which I'll get to in a moment). Overall I enjoyed the story and especially liked the ending, which I didn't expect. Also Vera Farmiga, who plays the commandant's wife, is rather fetching. I spent most of the movie checking her out in her 1940s couture.

However, being a historian, I had a couple of problems with the film. First, near the beginning, there is a party in the home of an SS officer at which Jazz music is being played. The Nazis banned Jazz music. It seems unlikely that Jazz, or cabaret style music, would be performed at a party for higher-ranking Nazi functionaries.

My main issue with this film was the fact that the commandant's family lived so close to the camp. From my limited knowledge - and I've studied at least two camp commandants - it seems that families were kept as far away as possible from the dirty business of the Final Solution. Men like Franz Stangl only occasionally returned home from Poland or elsewhere to visit their families. All of the details in this film are left intentionally ambiguous. We don't know if this is Germany or Poland or Czechoslovakia or elsewhere.

Furthermore, it's not very likely that a little boy would be able to get near the fence of a concentration camp without being seen. Camps were constructed so that there was nowhere you could go within the yard or work area where you could not be seen. It is unlikely that the two boys could have had daily meetings by the fence without being spotted by a guard whether on patrol or in a guard tower. Also, the outer perimeters of camps were typically lined with tank traps, barbed wire, and mines.

Despite all of this it's worth sitting through the movie for the ending, which came as a surprise to me.

God only knows

2008-11-21T14:52:00.000-08:00

Time felt wasted today. I woke up early expecting someone over, but they never showed due to a miscommunication on my part. So I spent most of the day inside trying to stay warm and reading about theology. Having the day off is a curse and a blessing.

Today is the feast of the entrance of the Theotokos in the temple, which is found in the Protoevangelion of James (or the Gospel of James). Protestants might sneer at this because it is "apocryphal," and indeed the book is, but being kept out of the canon of scriptures does not mean what the book proclaims is not true (historically true and theologically true are different things and I'll get to that in a moment). It may seem odd to consider that the same Church which celebrates the theological and liturgical truths elucidated in the Protoevangelion was the very same Church which decided to exclude it from the New Testament collection. It's just that the Church did not consider the Gospel of James, which is at least as old as the early 2nd Century (and perhaps older), to be necessary for the salvation of souls. Father Thomas Hopko makes the case that the book is not historically "literally" true - that it was a genre of writing that existed in the classical period that used a story to relate a higher theological truth. Some of it most likely has a basis in fact, however, and there is an interesting case to be made that one interesting detail may find corroboration in the book of Matthew.

In Matthew 23:34-35, speaking to the Pharisees, Christ states:

Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

2 Chronicles 24:20-21 is given as a cross reference for this verse, but the Zechariah referred to here is not the son of Barachiah:

Then the spirit of God took possession of Zechariah son of the priest Jehoiada; he stood above the people and said to them, "Thus says God: Why do you transgress the commandments of the LORD, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has also forsaken you." But they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the LORD.

To whom was Christ referring then if Z. the son of Jehoiada and Z. the son of Barachiah are not the same person? The prophet Zechariah? The Bible does not record that he was killed. Yet, a plausible explanation is found in the Protoevangelion of James. There, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, a temple priest, is killed by Herod for not revealing the location of his son during the massacre of the innocents (Chap. XXIII):

Now Herod sought for John, and sent officers to Zacharias, saying: Where hast thou hidden thy son? And he answered and said unto them: I am a minister of God and attend continually upon the temple of the Lord: I know not where my son is. And the officers departed and told Herod all these things. And Herod was wroth and said: His son is to be king over Israel. And he sent unto him again, saying: Say the truth: where is thy son ? for thou knowest that thy blood is under my hand. And the officers departed and told him all these things. And Zacharias said: I am a martyr of God if thou sheddest my blood: for my spirit the Lord shall receive, because thou sheddest innocent blood in the fore-court of the temple of the Lord. And about the dawning of the day Zacharias was slain. And the children of Israel knew not that he was slain...

This interpretation is made more likely by Christ's language, "from...Abel to...Zechariah." Why would Christ refer to someone who had been killed 500 years previous if he was illustrating that the Israelites had always - up until the day he was speaking - killed prophets and righteous men? The death of the father of John the Baptist would have been very recent, and the circumstances of his death in the Protoevangelion fit the description Christ gives.

It seems likely, given the context and language, that Christ was referring to something which is not recorded in the Bible, but is rather preserved outside of the canon. This information is not necessary for our salvation - it is not dogma - but we cannot understand what Christ says here outside of the Church's living Tradition. I feel that in a small way this illustrates what I believe is the importance of interpreting Scripture from within the Church Tradition rather than outside of it.

I initially found all of this here. A Protestant take is laid out here, which although admitting the strong possibility of Christ referring to John's father, makes no reference to the Gospel of James as being a possible source of evidence for the interpretation.

*********

When my day was at a low ebb and I was feeling "blah," I was suddenly struck by the urge to hear "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys. There is just something about "God Only Knows" that communicates a simple joy. As Father Alexander Schmemann would say (not of the song, but of similar works of art), it testifies of "the one thing needful," and proclaims that "all is elsewhere."

Blasphemy

2008-11-16T17:11:00.000-08:00

Just watched the new Star Trek trailer.

Ew. The opening scene has bullet time in it. Note the Iowa plates on the car. At least they got this detail right.

Young Kirk wouldn't introduce himself as James Tiberius Kirk. That's...retarded.

"I will not allow you to lecture me." Man, Spock sounds like such a turd in this.

Shot of Uhura disrobing. She looks too skinny. I also see there have been no advances in bra technology in the next couple of centuries.

Sultry scene of what appears to be Kirk and Uhura.

Lots of bad dramatic close-ups, shaky cinematography, pining, ship destructo-porn, pointless Dawson Creeky-ness, and over-use of CG. This looks like it's going to be bad. When I first heard about this project a while back I hoped that it would focus on Kirk's time in Starfleet Academy, with perhaps an appearance of his nemesis Finnegan. But no, you should never hope for anything with life in it. This generation has to destroy everything by paying homage to it. It loves something so much (but for the wrong reasons) that it must pay homage to it by ruining it, "updating" it, "reimagining" it. That's what happened with Battlestar Galactica. That describes practically everything our culture produces today (see Shepard Fairey, for instance). If you love it, then leave it alone. There's no need to "bring it to a new generation." Star Trek is great because it's timeless. Sure it's campy (which, in my opinion is a huge part of what makes it brilliant), but its themes are universal and cultured. Yes, Kirk would fight a monster and maybe his shirt would be torn, or maybe he'd seduce a woman who was in fact an android, but there was always a fundamental human truth that was being articulated. Men in space. Women in short skirts. But by V'ger they were philosophizing!

This just looks like those same cultured characters, who had great rapport and chemistry, being subjected to Michael Bay retardation.

Blasphemy.

*******

Watched a fun Ralph Meeker movie last night, the poorly named "Big House, U.S.A." Meeker plays a cold-blooded, tight-lipped kidnapper and extortionist named Geraldo Barker who gets sent to a maximum security prison after a kidnapping goes bad, but not before he manages to hide away the ransom money in a national park. He gets mixed up with a group of even harder, more cold-blooded criminals who are planning to escape from prison (two of which are played by Lon Chaney, jr. and Charles Bronson). The group, though reviling Barker as a "kid killer," (which Barker vociferously denies) value him so long as they can obtain his hidden ransom money. Once they are led to the money they plan on killing him and making off with the dough. Barker doesn't want to go along with the plan, but he himself is kidnapped in the escape. Meanwhile the FBI is monitoring everything, hoping that Barker will lead them to the money and hopefully to where the body of the boy is hidden.

It's a pretty dark movie, even by today's standards. The kid dies (although he's such a wheezing little spazzy wimp that you actually welcome it) and Meeker's tight-lipped tough guy reaction to it is emotionless and matter-of-fact. Men die horribly throughout, whether by being scalded to death or brained with hammers and subsequently mutilated by acetylene torches. Everyone in this movie is no good. I actually found myself rooting for Meeker's character, who although a bad guy, isn't a two-dimensional good guy or a brutal double-crosser.

This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end.

The cynicism of "hope"

2008-11-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

Tired. Not merely physically, but emotionally. I've spent the past few days off from work. Initially I was looking forward to having a few days off, but it's become a burden. Doing nothing is really bad for the soul. Truly "it is not good that man should be alone."

I've been writing and researching for my own benefit of late on the Theotokos. I feel as though that one cannot understand Christ without properly understanding Mary. And a little Nativity figurine that gets put out once a year isn't the proper understanding.

The OCA has elected a new Metropolitan. It actually felt good to witness this, at least in a small way (thanks to Ancient Faith Radio). It gave me a sense of the Church being alive. And Bishop Jonah strikes me as someone who will do God's work. Lately I've felt like the world has been filled with so much falseness and ignorance and error. The election of Bishop Jonah to the Metropolitan throne presented a little glimmer of light in a world that has otherwise been filled with darkness. May God grant the newly elected Metropolitan Jonah many years!

Something he said in his address that really stuck with me:

"You must mercilessly persecute the spirit of hypocrisy within yourself."

I've been looking at the the work of Shepard Fairey, the guy who painted the Orwellian images of Obama that are pasted everywhere. After looking at his work I've come to understand why I get such a sick feeling of alienation from them. I'm not an art critic (if you can call what Fairey does art), but I've studied culture and the history of images and propaganda (my MA has got to be worth something). All of his images are done in this very stark style, involving a very limited palette. His subject matter is often authoritarian figures or authoritarian symbols, drawn from Soviet or revolutionary propaganda. By "drawn" I mean lifted. I hesitate to say plagiarized. Perhaps "appropriated?" Borrowed or taken on loan? An article here points to some very blatant appropriation on the part of Fairey. Figures in gas masks, children clutching grenades, female Vietcong, and AK-47s held aloft in triumph populate a landscape of industrial waste and urban sprawl where Big Brother is always watching you (Fairey is best known for his "OBEY" stickers, taken straight from Rowdy Roddy Piper's magnum opus, "They Live."). The most striking element of this art in my mind is its lack of humanity, its vacuousness. These are the sort of images I would put on my notebook in high school because they were provocative, dark, and cynical. They spoke of resistance to some "other." But above all it is cynical. To quote something I just read over at Father Stephen Freeman's blog: "Cynicism may refuse to believe what is false, but it does not possess the virtue of seeing what is good."

Fairey's work offers no hope. His image of Obama, looking off pensively into the distance like he is perplexed as to what course he should take, is rendered Orwellian because it booms "HOPE." Fairey can only convey hopefulness, happiness, and joy by boldly proclaiming it in text - not conveying it as an image. His style does not allow for this. This is a stark image, and certainly is very visually compelling on the surface. The washed out, muted look of the image is compelling. But this clashes with the image of Obama himself who looks as though his lips are pursed in a smirk, as if he was trying very hard to discern something far away. And then "HOPE" screaming at us at the bottom, as if it is willing us to find hope in this image.

The utopianism of this image is undermined by its style, its presentation, its pedigree. This sort of art, Soviet, Socialist Realist, conveyed the outlandish, utopian goals and claims of the revolution for a century. But those goals and claims were proven to be bankrupt, to be based in coercion and slavery. This is at the heart of why these images of Obama are so out of place, so alien. Fairey's art is meant to be ironic, of course, but in embracing irony it makes itself incapable of speaking for anything genuine.

(Note: Fairey uses Andre the Giant's face in nearly everything. I respect Andre, but we must remember that Andre the Giant was bodyslammed, leg-dropped, and 1-2-3 counted by Hulk Hogan. Respect the Hogan.)

Sorry mom, the mob has spoken

2008-11-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, after I had time to mull over the election and feel properly dismayed, I came home and tried to forget about all of it for a time. Ironically, while trying to chill, one of my favorite Simpsons episodes came on, the monorail episode, in which Springfield is duped into buying a monorail by a slick-talking huckster. Marge wants to put the town's money into fixing the roads in Springfield, but Lyle Lanley, the monorail huckster, convinces the townspeople to build a monorail.

Why is this ironic? Because on election day the American people bought a figurative monorail.

Schmemann

2008-10-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Fr. Alexander Schmemann's journals of late and found them to be endlessly fascinating. I came across his entry for November 3, 1976, and found it interesting:

Carter has won the election. Spent most of the night watching returns. it seems to me that all those who voted for Carter were those who want a change; all those who really have a poor life within the system (blacks); those who want a guaranteed well-being (unions); those who believe in those guarantees and changes and professionally advocate them (intellectuals); and finally those who look at everything through colored glasses (utopians)! Carter's majority was quite minute; he actually received only a quarter of the votes of people who have the right to vote. It remains to follow his career. How does the messiah act once he gets power?

How little things change, I thought. Change? Hope? Messianism? Utopian Socialism? Nothing new here, folks, move along.

I was also struck by what he writes later in that same entry:

People, Christians too...see in everything a problem that must be solved. God, when creating the world, did not solve problems or pose them. He created what He would call "very good." God created the world, but the devil transformed the world and man and life into a "problem." And a legion of specialists solve it. That is why in the world it is so dark, so cold, so joyless.

I'm officially becoming a catechumen of the Orthodox Church this Sunday. I'm excited at the notion of being given this title, this responsibility. It will officially make me part of the liturgy. It is exciting to think of this - that I will be mentioned by name by the Priest, that all of the hosts of heaven will pray for me, that I be "united to the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" and be granted "a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ." I should stop now, lest I seem self-absorbed, but it really is very humbling and sobering to think that I am entering into this ancient and mystical thing.

"O Lover of Mankind, glory to thee!"

Who's driving?

2008-10-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Strange and disturbing story out of western NC.

When I first read this story this morning I just knew that someone would latch onto an explanation that had something to do with racism, and whaddya know, I was proven right:

Political science professor Chris Cooper said the dead bear "sends a pretty disturbing message. Obviously it sounds like it may have some racial implications and at the very least its somebody sending the wrong message and taking this hot political season the wrong way."

Racial implications, you say? Well, it is a black bear. This from a professor at at state college. Egads. Do I really want to work with people like this for the rest of my life? You know, it could be a statement about the economy. The dead bear covered in Obama signs could signify that the bear market is the fault of Obama's work with ACORN, or that Obama's policies will bring about such an economic downturn. Always jumping immediately to the racism whenever there is a perceived criticism of Obama.

Meanwhile, my uncle was heckled by passing high school students this afternoon because he has a McCain sign in his front yard.

I think I may try early voting tomorrow.

Musings

2008-10-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

"The Seraph could not touch the fire's coal with his fingers, but just brought it close to Isaiah's mouth: the Seraph did not hold it, Isaiah did not consume it, but us our Lord has allowed to do both." - St. Ephrem the Syrian

I was reading St. Symeon the New Theologian last week and I was struck by his sense of wonderment and terror when describing the Incarnation and the presence of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist. "This is the mystery, all full of holy terror which I hesitate even to write, and tremble in recounting." How can I partake of this, which is full of "holy terror?" Paul, writing to the Corinthians, describes how many who have partaken of this mystery have become weak, ill, or "fallen asleep" (i.e. died) because they ate and drank in an unworthy manner. No mere remembrance or memorial is this, that has the power to bring sickness and death.

There was a street preacher at UNCG today. I had gone up there to check out some books. A young black man, dressed in what I would describe as stereotypical 19th century preacher wear; black slacks, a white button-up shirt, and suspenders. He looked like he belonged in a primitive Baptist church. It was truly surreal. A crowd of students had gathered around him and were shouting insults and catcalls. It was a sort of party atmosphere; every pronouncement was met with laughter and mockery. It did not greatly help his cause that he was not very eloquent, or that he had a message which offered no hope, only condemnation - a gospel of anxiety.

I'm growing so weary of hearing world leaders and political pundits chalk up our recent financial and economic woes to the failure of "extreme" capitalism. That has very little to do with it, if anything. In fact, it was misguided idealism that brought it about, a desire to circumvent capitalism in the name of a utopian social vision. Correcting what was brought about by state intervention with still more state intervention does not bode well for the future.

Scooter rally last night. I heard a rumor from several individuals that a local scooter shop is closing for good. Can't say I really mind, considering the store in question is simply terrible and run by a terrible businessman. However, it does bug me because now there will be no one in this area selling Vespa brand products. Sure, I'm not fond of the new Vespas; they're fuel injected (no carburetor on a scooter just seems wrong), and they're so complex that an average Joe such as myself can't open them up and do work on them like I do on my Stella. Just last night I opened up the headset on Estelle and tightened some of the leads on her headlight wiring. She's just so basic, and dare I say primitive, that I can fiddle around and bolt things on to my heart's content. But, they're Vespas, and I still have a certain longing and fondness for them. The modern Vespa is a subject that I'm clearly torn on, and perhaps one day I'll break down and buy one, but for now I'm firmly wedded to a world of 2 stroke engines and carburetors.

In this area, unfortunately, there is less of a market for the Vespa; they're expensive bikes, retailing for almost 1K more than a Stella and 2K more than the more common Kymcos. They're not greatly economical bikes compared to their cheaper counterparts. The Vespa has gone from an economical vehicle once marketed to American farmers though the Sears catalog to an expensive, metrosexual, metropolitan (all things metro), urban elite vehicle.

Mullet Jazz

2008-10-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

I work as a waiter in an Italian bistro that plays Smooth Jazz all day and all night, much to my consternation. This is a good example of what I have to listen to. This video is also notable for its brilliant representation of a late 80s/early 90s aesthetic I consider to be absolutely hilarious. And the animated cat dancing alongside the performers? I imagine that it's post Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract," when that sort of thing was considered very correct for music video makers to include in their work. Notice that this "Jazz" is being performed by really, really white guys with mullets? And the only black guy, or guy who sounds black, is the vocalist, but he's represented by an animated cat. I just find that interesting.

Veronica

2008-09-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

A British ethics expert says dementia sufferers may have a "duty to die."

Elvis Costello's "Veronica" is a fitting rebuttal.

Estelle's new shoe

2008-09-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I noticed that Estelle's rear tire was getting bald. It's nothing terribly serious, just bald enough that I noticed the wheel slipping slightly whenever I crossed over road markings. When C. came over on Tuesday we decided to replace the tire, which I had never done before. Lifting up the rear end of a Vespa is a little complicated because the weight of the bike sits on that tire when the kick stand is engaged. You have to lift it up high enough to remove the tire, but not so high that the bike comes off of its kickstand. I'd seen this method demonstrated here and had my doubts. But with C. on hand to help me stabilize and lift the bike, I was little more confident.

The can we used was a steel can of coconut juice ("Kimbo" brand I think), which we bought at the Asian Market. It worked just fine. Getting the tire off was a breeze, but I had to deflate the spare before putting it on, since there was barely enough clearance to wriggle it underneath the bike.

From now on I'm keeping a spare can with me in case of emergencies.

Before:

After:

Public Kissing, Rose Water, and Rashes

2008-09-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today I participated in my first proper Orthodox feast day, the Feast of the Cross, which is held every September 13 and 14. Today was the vigil of the feast, which is one of the few vigil services actually done at my church (since it's a mission church and so tiny, all they can do is a couple of vigils every year). The feast dates back to when Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine, discovered a piece of the True Cross in Jerusalem. After changing hands a few times over several centuries (the Persians had it for a while), it was brought to Constantinople in the 7th Century. The feast marks both the discovery of the relic and it's recovery from the Persians, but spiritually it is significant in that through the cross, an instrument of death, life and joy has come into the world. The Orthodox Church year began this month, and the Feast of the Cross is right at the start of it to remind us that everything starts at the cross.

The cross stands and the Earth revolves.

I showed up for the vigil late, which I didn't think was possible. For some reason I thought the vigil would be, you know, an all night thing. That's what "vigil" implies. But apparently it was an abbreviated vigil. As I arrived one of the parishioner's sons, who has been struggling with the faith he was raised in (a very normal thing for a teenager, really), emerged from the side door. "You're late," he said, "but you didn't miss much. It's just a bunch of boring stuff." He had been hiding in the back of the fellowship hall area, watching the after-vigil meal being laid out. "There's a bunch of Greeks, Russians, and Romanians in there. They're probably going to start fighting over which race is the best."

"The Greeks..." I whispered, "...the ancient Greeks."

People were backed up out of the sanctuary. It was a big crowd. Father Christopher was giving his homily, dressed in a reddish and gold vestment that I'd never seen before. Also in attendance were at least two other priests, dressed in the same red and gold vestments. There was some chatter going on in the fellowship area, so I couldn't hear Fr. Christopher well. Once he finished his talk he explained how everything was going to work: everyone would make three prostrations, come forward and venerate the cross of our Lord, and then receive the anointing of the oil.

Prostrations? I'd never done prostrations, but I'd wanted to ever since I started coming to Orthodox church. It's a physical act of humility, and that's something I never really experienced going to Protestant churches. And these weren't half prostrations, but full prostrations. Everyone, including yours truly, got down on their hands and knees and touched their foreheads to the floor - three times, before the cross. Then everyone lined up to venerate the cross, which means kissing it to those of you who don't know what "venerate" means.

I asked a guy in line next to me, named Rob, whether I could kiss the cross. "Yeah, it's not a sacrament." To be sure he tapped a nearby woman on the shoulder, Anna, and asked "Can he kiss the cross?" She replied that yes I could in fact kiss the cross, but the oil was a sacrament and I couldn't receive it. This was disappointing. But then Anna spoke to someone else and turned back to me and said "Actually, you can receive the oil." So, I was going to get the full treatment. I was actually nervous.

"How do I kiss the cross?"

"Just kiss it."

"Do I need to make another prostration?"

"No, you're fine."

Finally I got up to the cross, sitting there on a bed of flowers. Gilded in silver, this was no mean cross. I crossed myself, bowed my head slightly, and hesitated; I didn't want to be kissing this cross to my condemnation, so I hesitated for a moment and considered what I was about to do. Then I leaned in, puckering up like I was about to kiss someone on the cheek. The act itself was a little embarrassing, publicly kissing something like that in front of a crowd of people, but it was also very affirming, in a physical way, of what I believe.

Then I went over to Father Christopher, standing at the ready with his holy oil and brush. I looked at him as if to say, "Can I be here?" I half expected him to wave me on, but he nodded, smiled, and swabbed my forehead in a cross pattern with the brush saying, "The blessing of the feast." The rose water in the oil had a powerful scent (I still have it on me hours later) and the smell set my head reeling (this was after working out in the hot sun all day and smelling nothing but sweat, smoke, and the odor of wet fungi). I also noticed that the rose water stung my skin a little, like an astringent. He then offered me his hand, which I had seen everyone kiss ahead of me, but the rose water somehow had upset my memory, and as he offered it I just looked at it for a moment. Then it clicked and I said, "Oh," and gave it a hurried peck.

This was even more embarrassing, somehow, to show not only public affection to a man by kissing him, but also affection and subservience to a priest (something a year or two ago I would have considered anathema). And when I say embarrassing, I mean it in the best way, if that makes any sense. For me it was only embarrassing because I was engaging in a behavior that was alien to me, that broke with my typical behavioral patterns. But it truly is a blessed thing, to be able to kiss things, and people, in church.

So yes, the rose water smelled wonderful, but it continued to sting my skin. I wondered if this was normal. I asked some folks outside: "Is it normal for the oil to sting your skin?" They looked at me, "Your forehead is irritated!" I went to the bathroom to have a look in the mirror, and sure enough, there it was, a Mark of Cain if I ever did see one. I asked around and apparently some people are sensitive to rose water, which is in fact used as an astringent. The fact that my pores were wide open from sweating like a pig all day didn't help, either. The red mark lingered for the remainder of the evening, and it also made me rather self-conscious.

But all of this embarrassment was a good thing, a breakthrough of sorts in my church etiquette. I feel much better about kissing things, and I actually look forward to making prostrations. And hopefully in the future my skin won't react to holy oil as if I were a vampire.

Chick Magnets

2008-09-05T18:14:00.000-07:00

Someone said to me that my scooter must be a "chick magnet." I've had a couple of female friends say that my Stella was "cute," but it was half jokingly. I've had dozens of men approach me and ask me about the scooter; they're interested in her classic styling, they compliment her beauty, inquire regarding the gas mileage, and are generally interested in the performance of Stella all around. When I tell them, yes, she can do 60 mph, gets 90 mpg, and looks absolutely gorgeous they get all jealous. They want one, because Stella is hot. But this appears to be a strictly male phenomenon. I've never had a single woman come up to me in public and ask about the scooter. This may have something to do with me being repellant to women, but this article may actually explain the matter: women are turned on by the noises expensive cars make.

I don't find the European engines all that appealing, personally. First of all, the Maserati, Lambo, and Ferrari cannot match the sounds made by the more throaty Detroit engines, such as those in this scene from Bullitt. That's unrestrained power there. Sure, the fancy schmancy Euro cars may go faster, but they lack the visceral energy of a Detroit big block. Even more appealing to me, however, is the sound made by a 2 cycle engine. To the uninitiated they don't sound all that great, but the tak-tak-tak-tak-tak-tak of a Vespa excites me. It doesn't have the power and tuning of a Euro car, or the aggression of a V8, but it does have a certain alive quality. The clicks and pops of a Vespa engine give it a personality that most automobile engines don't possess.

*******

This is the basis of the graphic I'm getting for Estelle. I contacted the artist and asked if he would send me a high quality version suitable for printing. He was nice enough to send it to me for free, on the condition that I send him a picture of Estelle bearing the decal. I then had a friend with Photoshop skills remove some elements from the image and replace them with others (I wasn't keen on the piercings). I hope to receive the decal this week, and when I do I'll post some pictures.

And Hope became flesh and dwelt among us

2008-09-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

I'm sick today with something cold-like.

Yesterday I visited Waldenbooks at Four Seasons mall. While there I spied a prominently displayed children's book about Barack Obama entitled Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope. I can't say I was surprised, but this is one of the most astounding pieces of hagiography I've ever seen. Actually, I can say I was surprised, because the heights (depths?) of Obama messianism have never been made more plain in a single source. The book is indeed a children's book, but in terms of content it's no different from what many adult supporters of Obama have been saying all along - that he is a "lightworker," "an advanced soul," a "communicator of God-like energy," and even explicitly a "messiah-like figure" with the ability to halt the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.

The packaging and illustrations are typical Obama fare. There's nothing here that isn't already an established part of the Obama campaign imagery. The picture on the cover has him with his hands raised in a Christ-like pose, whether giving his blessing or offering himself up. Elsewhere Obama is depicted with a glowing aura which radiates from his entire person. Also there is drawing of the Holy Family in which the rays of a nimbus cloud issue outward towards a bright future of hope and change. The style is a mish-mash of Christian themes, primitive folk art, and Soviet propaganda.

In the book, Obama is depicted as having a special destiny from birth, indeed, in the opening of the book he is referred to as "Hope" - "One day Hope came to visit" (I'm paraphrasing here). In my mind there is a clear parallel to Christ here; just as Christ is introduced as the Word of God made flesh in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, so also is Obama introduced as manifest Hope in the beginning of the book. Obama's mixed racial ancestry, as well as his childhood in Hawaii are presented as prefiguring his destiny to unite the peoples of the nation. In fact, he is described as a "bridge" by the author, uniting the races because of his white and black ancestry.

What I found most disturbing were a couple of scenes in which Obama is either spoken to by God directly or which more explicitly conjure the Christ element. "Look around you," God says to Obama, "Now look to me. There is hope enough here to last a lifetime." Whatever that may mean. On that particular page, Obama sits in church, a stained-glass window depicting the Dove of the Holy Spirit right next to him. The narrator of the story describes Obama as "like Joseph" from the Bible, yet another messianic allusion. For if Joseph is not THE Christ spoken of in the scriptures, he is a type of messiah, prefiguring Jesus. Finally, in a scene that depicts one of Obama's speeches on the campaign trail, he looks out over a sea of people and sees the ghosts of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy watching over him. In my mind the allusion is clear; it is like Elijah and Moses appearing before Christ at his Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor.

Hagiography such as this should give educated people pause. Obama partisans - and many, many Democrats, like to criticize Bush because of his faith, but they seem to be blind (strike that, they are not blind, but enthusiastically engaging in quasi-religious romanticism) to the apotheosizing trend in their own devotional material. Bush claims to be a man of faith, but the Democrats have made a faith out of their man, and elevated him to a level beyond the realm of mere mortals. Of course, what should we expect from a generation that has turned Che Guevara into a secular saint and embraced the slogans of bumper stickers over substantive discourse?

********

My priest - I call him "my priest," but I'm not actually Orthodox yet - mentioned to me a while back that he could bless my scooter if I wanted him to. The Orthodox Church has a book called The Book of Needs which deals with blessings and services for various occasions, whether they be births, burials, marriages, or simply the blessing of an object. There happens to be a service for the blessing of cars, which Father Christopher said could easily be used for Vespas, so this past Sunday I asked him if he would bless Estelle (the scooter) after Divine Liturgy.

After blessing two icons, Fr. Christopher came outside to my parked scooter in his black cassock, his son in tow carrying a small bowl of holy water and a pine branch. "Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit...." I wish I could recall the exact phrasing of the entire blessing. References were made to the Chariot of Fire, Ezekiel, and Elijah. He then went around the perimeter of the bike, splashing it with holy water and saying, "Bless this vehicle in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

It was really amazing. Very soon I will be getting a mascot for Estelle, a 1940s style pin-up girl with a Tommy Gun. I expect to have the decal completed some time next week and will post some pictures here.

Scooter Rally

2008-08-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I had the pleasure of attending a scooter rally put on by the folks at Scooter Invasion and ScooterNerds. I was the first of my kind to show up (my kind being anyone who rides a Stella or classic Vespa, whether it be a PX or what have you). Most of the early arrivals were the big 600+cc Burgman cruiser bikes that look more like shiatsu chairs you get at Sharper Image than scooters. I initially felt very alone, thinking this was going to turn into a convention for Burgmans as more and more of the riders, mostly elderly men, came rolling into the parking lot of Steak 'N' Shake. Then came a few others, first a Ruckus and then a pink Genuine Buddy with skulls all over the seat.

I began to feel more at home as what I would consider proper scooters began to arrive. Nothing fancy, at least not yet. For the moment I remained the only Stella in attendance. Then I spied a red Stella, clearly a brand new 2008 model, rolling towards me. With the exception of perhaps a half dozen superfluous mirrors (which is mandatory, really, if you're going all-out), it was outfitted with every possible accessory. The rider pulled up alongside and parked his bike next to mine. It wasn't until the rider removed his helmet and goggles that I had a faint feeling of recognition; I'd seen this guy somewhere before but couldn't quite place it. As we spoke about our love for Stellas the coin dropped - it was the local weather guy, Eric Chilton, who I've seen many times on WFMY News 2. We examined the arriving scooters, all told about 40, all the while discussing the joys of scootering.

Eric is planning on getting together a Stella club in Greensboro, which is something I'd be happy to be a part of. There are about 6 of us in the area. While pitching the idea for a Stella club, Eric told me about a local man by the name of Sam Zealy that had been a part of a story he had done last year on the proliferation of scooters on the streets of Greensboro. In the story, Sam, who was a Stella enthusiast, summed up his scooter philosophy thusly: "A car moves the body, but a scooter moves the soul." I'd seen Sam before on the internet while doing a cursory search on Facebook for any Stella groups or riders in the Greensboro area, but this was last year, before I had bought my scooter. I noted Sam's white Stella with a hint of envy then, as I did everyone elses, and hoped that eventually I'd meet the guy at one of the local scooter meet-ups. Well, I had no idea then, but Sam was killed in an accident while driving his scooter last year - a truck that was making a left turn didn't see him (as an aside, I've been almost hit several times by people who weren't paying attention. So please folks, look twice; there are motorcycles and scooters everywhere, and some of them go faster than 35 mph). I think it would be fitting that if we were to have a Stella club that we should honor Sam Zealy by adopting his words "a car moves the body, but a scooter moves the soul" as our motto.

After seeing the scooters and chatting with a few nice folks, I suggested that we go for a ride. So, we mounted our bikes and I set off with the weatherman into the streets of Greensboro. At one point I looked up at the sky while we were sitting at a stoplight and asked, "do you think it's going to rain?" This was totally earnest and without a hint of irony; I was genuinely curious if it was going to rain, because it ain't fun to ride a scooter in the rain. Eric looked up at the sky, "I haven't looked at the weather today." It was his week off, apparently. I had to suppress a laugh. The first time in my life I had the chance to get a forecast straight from the source and it was his week off.

It was an interesting evening, and I would encourage anyone who rides a scooter to show up at the rallies, which are held the third Wednesday of every week at the Steak 'N' Shake on Lawndale (in front of Target). And if you drive a Stella please do come and ride with us - a display of solidarity and raw scooter power is in order.

Gomez Worships Idols

2008-08-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

A guy on a Harley pulled up next to me on my Vespa today. He had sleeve tattoos and one of those beanie helmets. He was hardcore. A man's man. He just had to prove he was better than me by peeling out and farting down the road on his annoyingly loud, overpriced piece of idiotic Americana. A stoplight caught him and I took the fork in the road off to the right, laughing maniacally. Not only do I get more than double his mpg, I drive something unique and non-mind numbing.

I've been puttering around on youtube lately, discovering a lot of Soul and Funk I'd never heard of before. Recently I was struck by Cliff Coulter. Cliff Coulter - "Do It Again." This song reminds me of Sly Stone right around the period his music was becoming more introspective and dark, circa "Fresh" (Which just happens to be one of my favorite Funk/Soul albums ever). Actually, this predates "Fresh" by a couple of years, and I wonder if it had any influence on Sly.

Achewood parodied Jack Chick tracts today. You know, those nutty miniature comic books that don't so much promote Evangelical Christianity as deride Catholics and pretty much everyone who isn't a King-James-Only primitive Baptist. Onstad refers to "Gomez Worships Idols," which got me to thinking about what Chick had to say about Orthodox Christians - because I know protestants believe Eastern Christians are idolaters. They pray to icons! Graven images! So, I went looking around for a Chick tract that addressed just that. The best I could find was one on idolatry in world religions entitled "What's Wrong With This?" Here is the full comic. There is no specific reference to Orthodoxy, but the weird, butlery-looking guy refers to "paintings which can be worshiped" next to a painting that looks like a poor rendering of the Theotokos. Elsewhere there is a painting on the wall of what appears to be either a Catholic priest or an Orthodox priest swinging a censer (knowing Chick he probably meant the former).

It's really rather poorly written, and doesn't attempt in any way to seriously address the theology behind iconography and images in the Eastern Christian understanding (like Christ being the icon, or image of the Father, thereby making all images of Him possible). A lot of it is slander, really. Chick doesn't say anything about how the Bible has become an idol for many protestants (and Chick is a KJV only Baptist, which should tell you something about where he's coming from). No, the Orthodox do not worship icons - all worship is due to the the three persons of the Trinity, and anybody who examines Orthodox liturgy, prayers, and belief will see that. What bothers me most is the part where the butlery-looking guy says "they hate that all you need is faith to do it. So they demand you do "good works" and set impossible goals to control you." The Apostle Paul does not say that all you need is faith - in fact, Paul writes that salvation is worked out in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). I could quote other verses that challenge Chick, but I don't need to treat the Bible like a law book. As an aside, I'm HIGHLY intrigued by Teodor's alternate Jack Chick tract: "The Kid Who Arrested Metallica!"

I started and finished a new icon this week, this one of Saint Nicholas of Myra:

Gesso on wood, acrylic, with gold leaf and a polyurethane varnish. I'm sure Jack Chick would be horrified. That brings a smile to my face.

Silly cyclists

2008-08-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

I ride my bike about 10 miles every day, at least on weekdays. I don't have the nice equipment of the "serious" cyclist; the expensive cleats, the hideous, skin-tight pantaloons (or "bibs"), the sunglasses that are resistant to every spectrum under the sun, both visible and invisible, and most importantly the bicycle made out of something unnatural, like a warp-spawned piece of techno-sorcery. The handlebars on these bikes cost more than my bike.

I like to think I'm at least on par with many of the "serious" cyclists I see riding every morning. Yet every time I give a friendly wave to these individuals I get no response. They're so focused, you see. They probably spent over 2,000 dollars on their entire ensemble, and dammit, they won't wave at some nimrod riding an aluminum single-speed bicycle. They've got to stay focused on justifying spending all of that money on something they probably only get to do once a week. So they get focused, and huff and puff away like mad. I wonder if they actually enjoy it, because they never look as though they do. When I ride I go out with my ipod, and it's more like a 10 mile dance session than a 10 mile torture session.

Today I came up behind one of the "serious" cyclists in his matching yellow helmet, jersey, and cleats. He was grinding away, and there seemed to be no joy in it whatsoever. I kept pace with him with a great deal of ease, and just observed him. He ground his way up a hill like he was pulling a dead weight, all the while I on my light, uncomplicated single-speed easily kept pace with him, resisting the desire to blast past him. In fact, I had to slow down to avoid passing him. He looked back at me at one point, for an instant, but never gave me any real acknowledgment.

So, when you see those "serious" cyclists out and about in their nice outfits and on their expensive bicycles, and they don't give you a wave, just remember that they're dead inside. They're dead. These are people who have to put chamois butter on their butts before they go out to ride. It's like a blasted chore, really, all of that preparation and silly seriousness just to ride a bicycle a few miles. They've sacrificed the joy of cycling for "performance" and image.

Blah (again)

2008-06-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

The day ebbs away in anonymity.

I finally contacted a priest about converting to Orthodoxy. I emailed Father Christopher at Holy Cross Orthodox Church in High Point and he responded. He suggested we meet at some point to discuss it. Holy Cross is with the OCA, which is Eastern Orthodox, and affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" was on last night, as part of TCM's "Essentials" show, which for some reason is co-hosted by Rose McGowan. McGowan's commentary reminds me of something a college student would say; it pretends at being meaningful, and may even sound educated, but it's actually a whole lot of B.S. (In parentheses here I will mention that Rose McGowan is hot - the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away). When asked by Robert Osborne if she was a Kurosawa fan, McGowan replied that she liked "elements" of Kurosawa, but then totally changed the subject to how influential Kurosawa has been. So you don't like Kurosawa? I kinda got the sense that Osborne, one of the most knowledgeable film historians out there, was as irked by McGowan as I was. When the film was over, which is 3.5 hours (3.5 hours of excellent, mind you, in which every shot and scene is necessary and awesome), Osborne asked McGowan what she thought of the film. "Well, I know film students are going to throw popcorn at the screen when I say this, but I prefer 'The Magnificent Seven.'" Seven Samurai, apparently, is too long, and there are, like, you know, all of those words you have read and stuff?

Grave hunting

2008-05-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

Down highway 117 in Wayne County is the town of Mount Olive. It's the home of the Mount Olive Pickle company, and little else, besides perhaps Ava Gardner, who was born in nearby Brogden. It's a sleepy little community of about 4,500; the sort of locality that is typical of eastern NC. A good portion of my family is also from this area - the Grady's, the Outlaws, and the Smiths. When my grandmother was a young woman she worked at the Mount Olive Pickle plant. Her family, the Gradys, had been a fixture in the area since the early 18th century. They were not only a fixture, but important players in North Carolina's early history; my 4th great uncle John Grady, of nearby Duplin County, was the first North Carolinian to die for the cause of American independence.

A trip in the works for some time had brought my family and I to Mount Olive, to locate the grave of my great-great grandfather, Simeon Grady. Simeon fought for the Confederacy; he served in the 2nd NC Infantry, was captured at Chancellorsville, and was kept in a Yankee prison for much of the war. I wouldn't have known about the general location of his grave had it not been for the investigations of B., who spent some time looking around on the internet at cemetery records. Simeon's grave, we were told by an anonymous surveyor, was located in the woods down an "unmarked path" off a backwoods road in Wayne County.

Getting to the road was easy enough, but finding this "unmarked path" proved a challenge. We drove up and down the road, looking for a possible "unmarked path," only to find several. One led off behind a menacing looking trailer surrounded by an electric gate and protected by a couple of surly pitbulls. We pulled up outside and hoped someone would hear the commotion of barking dogs and come to investigate, but no one showed. We then reversed course and went back towards a long driveway, hoping someone there might be of some assistance, but a "No Trespassing" sign greeted us.

My mom suggested we look further down the road. There were more pathetic trailers here as well. We knocked on one door and were greeted by a teenage girl who was enthusiastic about helping us, but was clueless. She led us back through a roughly hewn path on her property to an open field, but this was clearly not it.

By this point I was ready to give up. I was convinced it was behind the menacing looking trailer guarded by the surly pitbulls. But we continued down the road a little further. On the right was a dirt driveway with a couple of rusty mailboxes - hardly an "unmarked path." I didn't think this was it, but there was an old man nearby working on a thresher, and we went over to ask if he knew anything. He was wearing tattered clothes and a mesh trucker hat. He put one leg up on a tiller and wiped his reddened brow. He told us that the cemetery, called Anderson, was located down the dirt road we had just turned onto, and it had about 92 graves. My dad asked if the grave of Simeon Grady was there. "That doesn't sound familiar. There are some Mitchells, Andersons, Mozingos, and Graddys there." "Graddy" is how the name is pronounced in eastern NC. Turns out the old man, who has some of the dialectical mannerisms of my grandmother, is probably one of our cousins.

"Be careful back there. There's ants everywhere, and probably snakes."

And indeed there were ants everywhere. The graveyard was swarming with ants; it's impossible to stand still for more than a few seconds without them crawling up onto your shoes and legs. Dad and I looked around in the graveyard, and initially found the grave of his grandfather, Walter Grady, who died in 1951. A few feet away we found Simeon's grave, one of the larger stones in the cemetery. The swarms of ants made it impossible to really do much more than take a couple pictures and hastily make a rubbing. Apart from the ants it was a nice site, located next to some cornfields in a shady grove. Simeon's wife was nowhere to be found, but I think her tombstone may have been made of wood, as the surveyor's notes indicate that some of the markers were wood and have since been obliterated by the elements.

We then piled back into the car and continued on towards our main destination, the beach. My five year old sister, Claire, looked at me and said, "you know, graves are boring. The beach is more fun than looking at a grave." My dad and I appreciated it, though, and it was the high point of the weekend for me.

Young, gifted and brown

2008-04-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

The semester, as well as my MA, is almost complete. I have but one more paper to write, which is only about 10 pages. Yesterday was the in-house graduate conference, which all MA students were required to present at. That was the last big obstacle before I could consider myself done. Now that it has finally come, I am in a daze.

Meanwhile I am continuing work on my bicentennial icon. Here is a shot of what I have so far. I decided not to add the famous personages, and keep only the skyline of Greensboro:

I expect it should be finished in a week or two.

*****

And now for some soul.

If You Need Me - Solomon Burke

I think this song is about as smooth as soul can be; an ideal slow dance tune.

A Song For You - Donny Hathaway

I don't think I was ever aware of Donny Hathaway until recently. The man had a powerful voice, and was a great songwriter. It was upsetting to learn that he killed himself in 1979. The fact that Hathaway had so much soul, and killed himself at the height of his career, imparts a sense of poetic power - and loss - to his music. This song gives me goosebumps.

Tell Her - Fred Williams & The Jewels Band

The guitar work in this song is something mystical; a wandering, plaintive melancholia. Like a late night Robert Johnson reverie.

Young, Gifted, and Brown - Joe Bataan

This is my jam of the week. Latin Soul.

Shonuff

2008-04-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

I often see or find weird things while out on my bike. For instance I often see an albino squirrel, but never seem to have my camera with me. The other day I came across something even more amusing, a rap song scribbled on a piece of notebook paper. The song appears to have been authored by a young lady who probably does not grasp the irony of what she's written. The sweet, almost bubbly script makes the boastful lyrics hilarious. I imagine one of the high school or middle school students who commonly walk through my neighborhood dropped it. The former are particularly fond of pretending to be gangsters.

All of the "f"s on this lyric sheet are backwards, which I couldn't reproduce here, but everything else has been preserved for your reading enjoyment.

song: shonuff

shonuff got dat money (my pocket) n da bank
shonuff stacked up high like
my rank
shonuff like my car
oh look it's candypaint
shonuff people can't get like so they mutha fuccas hate

got cars clothes and shoes fresh head 2 toe
lookin brand new
now da niggaz stuck 2 my joc like glue
don't 4get about da hataz, yeah them 2
jumped out my benz, stepped n2 baton rouge
people lookin at me like they don't have a clue
I jus came 2 show off my money
dats what I like 2 do
my shades so hot my jayz high top
I'ma keep ballin cuzz I don't know when 2 stop

u see me fresh bebe, look at my shoes
yep they DC's
don't get mad cuz u can't be me
shonuff I can dis u, don't make me hit u
wit a 100 dolla bill
I also got 50s, 20s, 5s (no 10s?)
when u look all u see is dolla signs
shonuff my neck and wrist iz filled wit big diamonds
so when I went across sea they were like
"yes yo hyness" when dat Y-A-NN-A (perhaps the author's name?)
people want uh hand shakes and they wanna say hey
and even da hataz luv 2 say my name

look at my bracelet
it got diamonds like my grill
look at my Balaz (?) phat purse
it match my heels
down n da ATL is where I chill
and every time I take uh bath
I wash with hundred dolla bills
just cuz u can't get like me u wanna fight me
and just cuz I rap like uh nigga
u think I'm diking (?)
I wuz da first 2 wear bubble gum jayz (?)
see everyone biting

******

And now for some truly talented youngsters. That Lorrie Collins. Mmmmmmerceh.

Sitting here in limbo

2008-04-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

Suburbia is a prison when you're 25 and no one comes around to call. When there's no one who wants your company, all you can do is sit in your chair and aimlessly stumble through the routines of screens and stubborn machines. The television people cannot see you and there's no one online; they have lives. They're going out somewhere tonight, somewhere with noises and lights, and you haven't got a car to join them. So you stay locked up in your room and pace the floor, past the spot where glue has dried on the carpet, endlessly. Endlessly.

My brand new computer did something that upset me today. It wouldn't let me log on. I got on my uncle's computer and discovered that this is a common problem; Windows updates are to blame somehow (I didn't recall all of the technical bits). I was able to fix the problem through a system restore, but this has caused some of my programs to totally go to pot. I'll have to reinstall Itunes, including reuploading my entire library from the ipod itself, among other things. Windows is total garbage; I'm finally convinced of this. A friend has turned me on to a Linux OS called Ubuntu that I will eventually be switching over to. It's free, which is a big plus, and it's very customizable, which I also like.

I'm waiting to hear if I passed comps or not. It's been exactly a week since I took comps, and we were told the day we took it to expect about a week-long wait. This has thrust me into an even more pronounced limbo; like a limbo's limbo. I keep getting emails about graduation preparations and commencement, but I'm disregarding them until I hear about comps. Besides comps I've still got two papers to write, but they're not that serious. One is 3/4ths finished and the other will be a short historiography. I won't be that enthusiastic about doing them until I get word about comps.

I just want to withdraw into a cell on top of a high promontory of rock, with only a basket to connect myself to the outside world, and contemplate the lofty things of God.

Traumdetung

2008-04-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

I had a dream in which I was cleaning the house of two fat, hideous, filthy women. They had no concept of cleanliness, and wherever they went they seemed to leave a trail of corruption. Their chairs were marked with layers of body waste; the objects they handled were tarnished and blackened, and it seemed as if their very fat sloughed off onto the floor. I was made to clean up after them, and in the process their corruption infected me. While cleaning something, I do not recall exactly what, some of their filth got into my mouth; I fled to a sink and frantically washed out my mouth. Just at that moment the alarm clock went off.

Trek

2008-04-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

My head just asploded.

History Nerd Nirvana

2008-04-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

My tenth great uncle, Captain John Outlaw, was a wild ass of a man. For the brief time he was in the New World, he was a hell raiser and a ne'er-do-well. The surname "Outlaw" or "Outlawe" would suggest that he was some sort of pirate, but the Outlaw name had been around for some time in England, and wasn't associated with piracy or banditry. Scholars seem to think it had its origins in an individual or group of individuals who had been excommunicated by the Church or deprived of the right to plea in a court of justice due to a dispute with the Crown. The exact origins of the name aren't clear, nor the decision to adopt and perpetuate it, but as early as the 13th century it was in use as a surname.

John came to Virginia around 1667 or 1668 with my 10th great grandfather, Edward Outlaw, who at that time was only about 18 or 19. John was older than Edward, although I'm not sure by how much, he was probably in his mid 20s. They settled on the western branch of the Elizabeth River near modern day Suffolk, and did what most men did in Virginia in the middle of the 17th century, grow the vile Virginia weed. Virginia was full of men seeking their fortune in the cultivation of tobacco, and John and Edward seem to have engaged in that enterprise. In addition to growing tobacco, John made a living as a boat captain and boat builder, probably ferrying goods and passengers on the Elizabeth river, hence the title "Captain."

Not long after arriving, the men seem to have run afoul of the law, which was common in a society made up primarily of young, single men struggling to survive, and thinking only of profit. John, Edward, and a minor by the name of Thomas Forkin were brought to court in May of 1668 for the crime of killing another man's steer. To me, the crime suggests that the two were probably hungry, desperate for something substantive to eat, and saw a fat steer wander onto their property (there were scarcely any fences then, animals just went where they pleased). Even though John and Edward were probably cultivating tobacco out the wazoo, they most likely didn't grow much that was edible, which was common for those early fortune hunters, who lived in a state of near barbarity. Even the houses they lived in were semi-permanent hovels, bearing a closer resemblance to an Indian hut than a log cabin. The owner of the steer, probably one Edward Wesray, sued the Outlaws and Forkin to cover the loss of his steer, and was awarded 1,000 pounds of tobacco by the court. Another 1,000 pounds was due to the colony, which John was forced to pay for since Edward and Thomas Forkin were both minors.

But the two didn't keep on their best behavior after that. In August of 1668, John and Edward were at a neighbor's funeral. While there, John got into an argument with a man by the name of John Johnson. What this argument was about is unknown (perhaps the stupidity of John Johnson's name, or perhaps Captain John was just drunk), but it got so violent that the local constable was sought out and brought to the funeral to calm things down. Captain John met the constable, William Dafnell (who is also a relative of mine), at the door and while spewing a string of epithets that may or may not have involved the words "canker blossom," he pummeled him repeatedly. "What is the matter with you, Capt. Outlaw," Dafnell replied, "I have charged the peace before you and I know not what to doe with you." One witness testified that Edward became involved in the scrape, but it was John who was brought to court twice for the incident in 1668 and in 1669 as part of a related suit on the part of William Dafnell. The great irony of it all is that Edward would later marry William Dafnell's daughter, Mary. There's an interesting romance there that will most likely never be told.

The exact result of the trial is unknown, but it is clear that by 1670 John was a persona non grata in lower Virginia. That year he moved southward into Carolina, perhaps seeking the greater freedom and anonymity of what was then a lawless backwater. Edward remained on in Virginia, marrying Mary, and accumulating a fair amount of property, including slaves. John seems to not have faired as well as his brother in the New World, but he continued to have some influence over Edward's behavior. For instance, Edward was fined for not maintaining the public roads that ran through his property, an infraction that John had been fined for in the past. But as the two became more geographically distant, Edward became more of an upstanding Outlaw.

In Carolina, John served as a boat captain and boat builder, and he ran into trouble for not being the best of businessmen. A man by the name of Laurence Gunfallis contracted John to build a "bote of fourteen foot" in 1670, apparently paying him in advance. When no boat was delivered and John was "departed from his house," Gunfallis went before the Albemarle County Court to either get his boat or his money back. The court ruled that the boat was worth about 750 pounds of tobacco, and since John had apparently skipped town Gunfallis could "satisfy his debt out of ye said Outlaw's estate where it can be found."

Why had John split? Perhaps after obtaining payment for the construction of the boat he took the money and ran. But for such a small sum? Perhaps more likely, John simply could not deliver the boat for whatever reason (he may have blown the money, Lord knows) and rather than face another court hearing skipped town. There are no records of him anywhere after 1670, and one genealogist says it is believed he returned to England, where he lived for the rest of his life. Perhaps one day, when I finally get to visit England, I will wander through a Norfolk graveyard and find a stone marked "Cpt. John Outlawe." That would please me. Edward remained on in Virgina, becoming one of the earliest (but not THE earliest) of my American ancestors.

Discovering all of this, piecing it together, and now interpreting it is what I would consider History Nerd Nirvana.

Planet Claire has pink hair

2008-04-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

B-52's - "Planet Claire"

Ahhhahhahhahh

She came from Planet Claire
I knew she came from there
She drove a Plymouth Satellite
Faster than the speed of light

Planet Claire has pink air
All the trees are red
No one ever dies there
No one has a head

Ahhhahhhahhahh

Some say she's from Mars
Or one of the seven stars
That shine after 3:30 in the morning
WELL SHE ISN'T

Ahhhahhhahhahhahhahh

Funeral

2008-04-01T15:34:00.001-07:00

Went to a funeral yesterday for a friend's father. It's strange going to funerals for people you don't know; I've been to at least a couple, including one for a great aunt I didn't know very well. You get the Reader's Digest version of a person's life in which other individuals try to sum up what that person meant to them and who they were. My friend's father was a "family man," a "man's man" and a "Mason's Mason," but not from below the Mason Dixon; the preacher pointed out that despite his assertions to the contrary, my friend's father was only a wannabe southerner. "Always thinking he knew best, always telling us what to do...even though he loved South Carolina, to us he'll always be a yankee from Indiana." Which he was, even though he'd adopted South Carolina as his home.

The burial was in an out of the way patch of ground in rural South Carolina, a former ballpark converted into a cemetery sitting on the cusp of a piece of picturesque pastureland. I was struck by how quiet the spot was The Masonic burial rite isn't as fascinating as I thought it would be; there are no secret handshakes or sacrifices, only some odd posturing and a vaguely universalistic prayer to the "Great Architect of the Universe." Really it's just a group of rednecks of varying economic standing; there's no way in hell these guys have the secrets of the Temple of Solomon or secretly rule the world. Although, I must admit, there's a part of me that wishes the rednecks did.

Bicentennial icon

2008-03-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

As a sort of celebration of Greensboro's bicentennial I'm working on an icon of The Protection of the Theotokos which will incorporate Greensboro's skyline. Although not technically an icon, since I have no wood panels at present, it will be on a canvas graciously given to me by C. I've been thinking about populating the icon with historical figures from Greensboro praising the Theotokos. Since none of them were Orthodox I'm simply going with those I knew were Christians.

So far I'm looking at Nathaneal Greene, George Preddy (as martial protectors of the city), John Motley Morhead (as a sort of city father), Levi Coffin, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Doug Marlette (for humor). The only non-Protestant I can think of is Thomas Berry, who is nominally a Catholic, but his new age-y philosophy is almost devoid of any mention of God, and Berry is also still alive, so I'm not including him. Most of the figures I'm thinking about using might have balked at the idea of venerating the Theotokos, but I'm sure they would have felt some reverence for the Mother of God. If anybody has any other suggestions, I'm open to them. I'm also thinking of including someone to represent the Confederacy, but I can't think of any well known Confederate figures who were from Greensboro or all that intimately associated with it.

My most recent work is the icon of Christ Emmanuel, also on canvas, seen below. This was just something I painted for fun, as a practice painting of sorts (you should be able to click for a larger view).

Amy Winehouse can suck it.

2008-03-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

Linda Jones - "I Who Have Nothing."

Erma Thomas - "Piece of My Heart."

Bee Gees - "I've Gotta Get A Message To You."

Eddie Hazel - "California Dreamin'."

Sharon Jones - "100 Days, 100 Nights."

They just underestimate me

2008-03-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

I discovered a song today by Sly & The Family Stone that I'd never heard before. I think it's probably my favorite Sly song now. I wish I'd discovered this song years ago. Even though Sly armed me psychologically for a great deal, this is a song that would have done me a lot of good when I was feeling my most alienated and degraded. But that's fine, it comes in handy right now, because very little has changed; I'm still coming up against those who "get uptight" when I "get too bright." That song is Underdog:

I know how it feels to expect to get a fair shake
But they won't let you forget
That you're the underdog and you've got to be twice as good
(Yeah, yeah)

Even if you're never right
They get uptight when you get too bright
Cause you might start thinking too much
(Yeah yeah)

I know how it feels when you know you're real
But every other time
You get up and get a raw deal
(Yeah yeah)

Say, I'm the underdog
I'm the underdog
Say, I'm the underdog
I'm the underdog

I know how it feels to get demoted
When it comes time you got promoted
But you might be movin' up too fast
(Yeah, yeah)

If you ever loved somebody of a different set
I bet the set didn't let you forget
That it just don't go like that
(Yeah, yeah)

I know how it feels
For people to stop, turn around and stare
So go right, don't rate me
I don't mind

I'm the underdog
No, I can handle it,
I'm the underdog
I'm the underdog, yeah
Underdog

I know how it feels to be played upon
See you at the party
But you're really, you're really all alone
They just underestimate me
(Yeah yeah)

I know how it feels when you're feelin' down
And you wanna come up but you realize
You're in the wrong part of town
(Yeah, yeah)

I know how it feels to have to go along
With people you don't even know
Simply because there happens to be a whole lot more of them
(Yeah, yeah)

Say, I'm the underdog
I'm the underdog
I don't mind, 'cause I can handle it
Underdog, it's gonna be alright
I'm the underdog

Art films

2008-03-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

I was at Surplus Sid's army surplus store a few weeks back to pick up a pair of goggles for my Vespa. As he rang up the goggles, the proprietor (Sid?), looked at me and said, "Now, you make films, don't you?" Maybe I have that look, that I make films? Or maybe he mistook me for some Chapel Hill hipster who makes pretentious art films? "Well, I have made films," I replied.

When I was a kid my cousins and I would make "films," but without the benefit of a camera. We even did our own Siskel and Ebert show, with my younger cousin hiding in the closet to operate the "camera." The one movie I remember most vividly was an action/adventure series called "Target: USA." It was an excuse for us to indulge our violent, totalitarian and jingoistic impulses. Basically, the plot revolved around the U.S. being invaded successively by everyone from the Russians to the Iraqis. This was back at the tail-end of the Cold War, so the Russians were still an option then. I don't remember the characters' names, only that everyone who invaded attacked our strategically important treehouse, which ultimately turned into the last-stand/turning point of every invasion. The antagonists were always invisible, unless we could persuade my younger cousin to clumsily portray a member of the Spetsnaz. It doesn't work well when your cousin is 5 or 6.

In high school I also made "films," which were supposed to be educational in nature, but they often became little more than excuses to act a fool. Of course, this time around I had access to a camera, which made things more interesting. I directed a production of "Beowulf" that was "re-imagined" through the lens of "COPS" and professional wrestling. The final battle between Grendel and Beowulf was waged in an abandoned barn made up to be a "Mead Hall."

I made two movies as projects for a history class. I directed and acted in a movie called "The Joys of Jingoism," which was about the Spanish American War, and I acted in another filmstrip about the history of warfare. This last movie was the worst of them all, with just a bunch of high school guys running about in the woods playing soldiers from various time periods. We used bottle rockets and firecrackers to simulate combat.

In my senior year of high school a group of my friends got together to film backyard wrestling. I and my good friend Sweet Daddy Freak-out were the announcers. The matches quickly devolved into anarchy, and I was hit with a metal trashcan, its lid, a metal folding chair, and sprayed with a horrible chemical fire extinguisher. The fire extinguisher was so noxious that everyone fled the trampoline ringside for the safety of the indoors.

And it's true, to an extent, I have made films.

A Reminiscence

2008-03-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

An Easter-related reminiscence.

On a ridiculously hot, sunny day last summer, B. and I went on the stations of the cross. We followed a gathering throng of people down the street, just as scores of Palestinian children were getting out of school and crowding in alongside us. Palestinian kids are cute, and their rudimentary English is amusing, but I know most of them have brothers, fathers, or uncles who are in the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, Fatah, or Hamas. Their graffiti and vaguely fascistic propaganda was everywhere in the Muslim Quarter. They turned and looked at us, smiling, saying "hello" and grinning.

The lithostrotos, the stone pavement where Christ was sentenced to death, is inside an Islamic religious school off the Via Dolorosa. A cadre of Catholic priests lead the crowd inside. B. and I had to stoop, I should say genuflect, to get inside. The press of people was so extreme that we held hands to keep from being separated. Most of those with us were Catholics from Central America and Poland, church groups dressed in color-coded t-shirts and sun visors. I had long hair at the time, and was wearing a hilarious t-shirt from Kansas's 1979 world tour featuring a Cheyenne Indian in a space helmet. We were both sunburned and had been living in a flophouse for the better part of a week, so we were both unkempt and looked like tramps. No one, besides the priests and an odd little man dressed in a stereotypical Turk outfit (fez and all), was "dressed up" for the occasion.

We stepped into a courtyard where we are arranged in a sort of semi-circle around the priests. Below our feet are the paving stones of the lithostrotos, worn smooth by millions of footfalls over the course of two milennia. The procession begins, but only in Polish and Spanish. I understand some of the Spanish, but not enough to totally follow. The priests lead us out of the school and down the Via Dolorosa. The Catholics know the hymns, in Latin, and we don't, so I pretend to know them and vainly attempt to lip-sync. The odd little man dressed as a Turk certainly looks the part; he should be in "Midnight Express." He's got a truncheon, a solid wooden club, and it looks like he knows how to use it. When we arrive at a station he arranges us against the wall so as to allow free passage in the narrow streets. As it gets more crowded and people begin to press through on their daily business, I realize why he's so armed. In addition, there are a couple of Israeli cops, dressed in body armor, making sure everything stays calm. Large crowds in the heart of Jerusalem have the nasty habit of attracting or causing trouble.

We wound our way through the streets, past pushy vendors selling icons either mass-produced or plundered from God knows where, and made our way into the precincts of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In the complex itself, but still outside, was this door that looked like it hadn't been used in a long time:

It reminded me of the sort of road signs and memorials you see in the South. I enjoyed its crudity, since it existed in a sea of very ornate displays of religiosity.

Just a reminiscence.

A series of events

2008-03-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

My day.

I had a dream. I don't recall it. I remember vaguely who was in it, though.

Woke up around 10:00; I thought it was earlier, but the sun never really came out, so it seemed earlier to my half-conscious mind as I lay there. The bed gets uncomfortable in the morning; there are crumbs in the bed and I don't want to think about what they might be. A group of Hispanic painters were here this morning and the house smelled like kerosene.

Took a shower. I find I'm out of soap so I bathe with shampoo.

I resolved today to get something done in regard to my seminar paper, so I headed up to Guilford College to catch the bus to UNCG. Weather-wise today was almost ideal, except for the gray skies. Kinda balmy, which is pleasant when it's 70 degrees and slightly gusty. There was a good tail wind on the way there. Saw a pretty girl in a blue and white polka dot dress walking past the library at Guilford - which made me glad I got out of the house.

It got ridiculously windy once I got off the bus at UNCG; I was nearly blown over trying to get into the library. This was one of the rare occasions when UNCG had all of the books I needed. Mainly I was looking for a book on Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, a scholar, professor, author, and Confederate soldier. His writings are useful because Gildersleeve was familiar with some of the doctrines of Islam and had read the Arabian Nights. My seminar paper is on Islam in the southern mind, and I think modern readers would be surprised to see how enlightened and knowledgeable southern intellectuals were on the subject. Most seem to have inhabited an Enlightenment outlook, at least towards Islam. Gildersleeve wasn't exactly "enlightened" - his view of Islam was more influenced by Catholicism and Christian apologetics, but he was tremendously well-read. And his name was Basil Gildersleeve. You can't invent a name much cooler than that. Well, maybe Leon Sumbitches.

A girl who usually works the circulation desk is pretty, but she has really hairy arms. Like, more noticeably hairy than mine. If she reads this, it's not hideous, just sorta odd. This isn't cruelty, this is observation.

Afterwards I went to see Dr. Calhoon, my "mentor." Calhoon knows Eugene Genovese, my historian-hero, as well as a host of other individuals who are major historians, like Bertram Wyatt-Brown (you should be impressed by that). I went in to tell him that I had finished reading everything he suggested I should read for comps and to ask for some assistance regarding my seminar paper. He spouted off a few references. "And just concentrate on Genovese and O'Brien for comps." Ok. I asked about Genovese's upcoming volume on proslavery thought. He responded positively, saying that he had the draft, which he could let me borrow, but another student had it at the moment. So cool. You have to be a southern history grad student to understand how cool that is.

I was watching a clutch of undergrads today. They're a dissolute lot. Oversexed little shits; I'm uncomfortable with the fact that honest working poor people will have to call them "boss."

Came home. Since then it's been a blur of indolence. Had peanut butter and jelly for dinner. I did some reading for comps, but I have little interest in what I'm reading right now. Mythbusters is on now. And that is all.

Blogging!

Bozart County

2008-03-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Bring Dynamite and a crane
Blow you up, start all over again
Build a town be proud to show
Give the name Tobacco Road

A pox on the town of Burlington, North Carolina, the nexus of the universe.

When H.L. Mencken spoke of the Bozart of the Sahara, he was undoubtedly referring to Burlington, North Carolina and its outlying localities. I returned there for a visit this week and was utterly disgusted by it for the first time in my life. In the past I took a more affectionate view of the town I was raised in, but now it seems alien to me. Burlington is like a piece of rusted pipe with a new coat of red paint. "Your link to the future?" No. A link of rusted chain. So much of the town is made up of useless artifacts and forgotten technology; but they're bad relics, not anything you'd like to save. For a long time I took an interest in saving those relics, in understanding and preserving them, but Burlington is in the grip of such an intellectual, psychological, and cultural aridity that I would rather see it leveled to the ground. It is so poor, in nearly every sense, that I cannot think of a better thing for it than to be demolished, for it is already a pile of junk. Land of tiny mill homes and mouldering tobacco sheds; you forfeited tradition for the promises of industrialization, and yet - now you are a rubble heap.

How many yards are populated by fiberglass deer and lighthouses? How many cash before payday and pawn shops infest nearly every quarter? How many pathetic junk shops are there where grubby customers pick over the bones of the town's measly cast-offs? It is as if the town eats itself.

Possum people! Deformed ignoramuses! Living in your Christmas-decorated-even-though-it's-July-hovels! Conveyed about on your tiny liquor cycles, rusted bikes, and monstrous, camouflage trucks! Why do you populate the land with buffet restaurants and drive-through convenience stores? How many more failed businesses will you transform into used car dealerships? Oh, the hue and cry that went up at the closure of Libby Hill and the fire that consumed Golden Corral! True crises were these, not the inferno of ignorance and poverty that grinds the town into dust. Now the "development" - if the construction of shopping centers and chain restaurants can be called development - flees the body of Burlington towards Chapel Hill in the east and Greensboro in the west.

A new Wal-Mart you say? The new Wal-Mart is perched amidst one of the most pathetic areas of east Burlington, hemmed in on all sides by the ruins of those that came before it. We quickly forget that not half a mile from the new Wal-Mart once stood a Lowe's home improvement store (now a ruin), a formerly well-kept, ironically-named "Southern Pride" carwash (still working, but looking more like a vacant lot), and a cathedral to Burlington's industrial ruin, the former Tarheel Army Missile Plant (in use, but a rusting blight). Across the street from the oasis of development is a row of pathetic mill homes and a ramshackle night club.

Oh no Elon, I have not forgotten you. You are perhaps the worst of all, because you are ignorant and pretend not to be, because you outwardly promise substance but offer only image. How many millions do you squander on manicured buildings and lawns? You contribute little culture to Alamance County besides drunkenness. You are nothing more than an Abercrombie country club.

My plan is to raise an army and make war on Alamance County. It wouldn't be the first time. The governor of NC came to put down those rowdies, the Regulators, in the 1760s for whipping magistrates. A century later Federal troops came to Alamance County to put down a Klan uprising that came to be known as the Kirk-Holden War. This time I simply propose that an army invade and demolish Alamance County.

Who will join me?

Killing the Blues

2008-03-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

I heard a while back that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were going to work together. I was wary, I must admit. I'm not a big fan of Plant or Led Zeppelin. I couldn't imagine Alison Krauss' delicate (and yet powerful) voice - who is probably my favorite female vocalist - harmonizing with Plant, who is probably one of my least favorite singers ever. Well, call me pleasantly surprised.

I heard this tune originally on a commercial for JC Penny, featuring images of middle America and wholesome family goodness. The tune caught me largely because of its high lonesome steel guitar, which never fails to get me (and you hear it so rarely on television these days, not even on CMT, which has gone to pot), but also because of the male vocalist's tremolo when he says "swingin' the world by the tail...." It was so light, airy, and country, and I had to know what it was. So I googled it, and wouldn't you know it, it's Plant and Krauss doing "Killing the Blues." Give it a listen. I can't believe that is Robert Plant.

After listening to a couple of other songs from the album, "Raising Sand," I can say that Krauss has not gone astray. She has done well. The tunes "Killing the Blues" and "Polly Come Home" convey a great sense of high lonesome desolation. "Gone, Gone, Gone," the old Everly Brothers tune, isn't bad but it suffers from an inordinate amount of polish. "Through the Morning" is probably my favorite track.

Blah

2008-03-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Note to self: stop drinking iced tea for dinner.

I went with C. to my favorite local Mexican place last night. One of the reasons why I enjoy it so much is their lime tea. I inhale the stuff whenever I'm there. Don't get me wrong, my enjoyment of this beverage in no way constitutes a rejection of tea in its perfected state - that is, pure, unadulterated Southern iced tea, which is flavored with a cup of sugar and a lemon wedge - but the lime stuff is certainly good. And it represents the flowering of a hybrid Hispanic-Southern culture, something I'm very interested in seeing. But I've found that drinking tea in the evening is something my body can no longer engage in and function normally. I get so wired from a glass of tea that I stay up until 3 in the morning, which I did last night. I woke up this morning around 11:45. I was appalled that I had slept so long and all day I've felt a sort of shame at it.

*******

I've heard a lot about how crappy Windows Vista is. It was my misfortune to just buy a computer with Vista last week, and now I know just how crappy it can be. My one specific complaint is what appears to be Vista's mental retardation when it comes to connecting to and maintaining a wireless internet connection. When the wireless connection is dropped for whatever reason, Vista seems to be incapable of reconnecting to the internet unless I remove my adapter or in extreme circumstances restart the computer. Vista also has the nasty habit of dropping my wireless connection when the computer is idle and goes to screensaver. I get frustrated with technology; I feel as though a non-functioning device is a personal affront, especially when that device has set me back half a grand and is preventing me from getting my motorcycle insurance.

For the man who's going places, Vespa 1-5-0 c.c.

Toof

2008-03-01T19:43:00.000-08:00

I had a dream last night in which I was pop-locking in a church.

A friend wrote a letter to the editor in the News & Record about a walking tour I helped put together a couple of semesters ago about the final days of the Confederacy in Greensboro. Apparently, the N&R put together a piece on the collapse of the Confederacy in Greensboro recently and failed to mention our walking tour. But, get this, even though they failed to mention it, they stole the title of our walking tour for their article. They originally used "Chaos in Confederate Greensboro," which was our title, but have since changed it on their website to "A turbulent month that shaped our history," which is lamer, but less illegal.

A friend informs me (the same one as above, actually) that she saw a girl on a red Vespa riding through Greensboro. This interests me.

*******

I went to the dentist the other day. The sort of dentist office you'd expect to see in the future. There's something vaguely Gattaca about it, like they are also engaging in gene manipulation or have a room full of neon green back-lit fetuses in jars. There is a massive flat-screen t.v. in the waiting room, and a glass partition separates us from a work area where files are stored in blue and red-lit glass cabinets. The glass partition is set-up almost as a sort of performance area - "Watch the dental assistants at work! See junior college education in action!" it should read. The examination chairs are actually lined with animal pattern leather and snake-skin (or pleather - couldn't tell), and each one comes with it's own personal fold out flat-screen television, for maximum distraction during root canals.

The Gattaca feel would be complete if the place didn't have some of the most glaringly tacky decor. Just when you think it's going to be minimalist and antiseptic, it busts out a picture of a chair (framed with a horrid rococo frame) with "18th century French style" written underneath it. It's completely non sequitur. Or in the checkout area there is a picture of urn-like finials done in charcoal framed in another hideous frame. I know most people don't think about these things, but I sit and ponder them as I'm in the waiting room. What do urns convey to patients sitting in a waiting area? My wisdom teeth continue to plague me. They are like grinding, charcoal urns, the tombs of my mouth, gnawing at the insides of my brain.

Or, rather, I've been gnawing on things. In fact, I've been teething for the past couple of days. My two remaining wisdom teeth have both erupted from underneath the gum. My mouth is reacting like a toddler's; saliva out the wazoo and the strange desire to gnaw on things. Luckily the excessive salivation has worn off, but for two solid days I couldn't produce enough of the stuff. Naturally, this led to the rather sad situation of drooling on my pillow at night. To make matters worse, all of that excessive swallowing has made me mildly sick. I have a slight cold and a bit of a sore throat. At this point, I'm for drastic measures on the wisdom teeth. They only bring me misery.

I end up having an x-ray, an exam that lasts all of two minutes (this amounts to a "consultation"), and pay $81. They refer me to an oral surgeon in Raleigh, who will charge me a standard consultation fee of $117 dollars to tell me how much more I will have to pay when I finally get them taken out.

Why Can't A Man Stand Alone?

2008-02-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

Why can't a man stand alone?
Must he be burdened by all that he's taught to consider his own?
His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation
They just weigh him down
You know pride is a sin that we tend to forgive
But it gets hard to live
When you don't have the love in her heart to begin with
Why can't a man stand alone?

Why can't a woman be just what she seems?
Must she be tarnished by men who can only be men in their dreams?
When beauty meets ignorance they shout in the street
Repeating their offer to each girl they meet
The respect that she needs, it isn't a gift
But it gets hard to lift yourself up
When you don't have the strength to begin with
Why can't a woman stand alone?

Why can't a baby sleep at night and dream of the time to come
And never fear the world outside the touch of someone very near?
Why can't a man stand up?
Why can't a man stand up?
Why can't a man stand alone?

-E. Costello

St. Auxentios Day

2008-02-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, men who are enthralled to selfish, materialistic women will engage in a consumerist ritual that is only tenuously related to a 3rd century saint. Single people will either pretend the day doesn't matter or will feel miserable.

Evolutionary psychologists explain the purchase of useless Valentine's baubles on the grounds that they are...well...useless.

Tomorrow, instead of feeling miserable, I celebrate two figures. First, Boba Fett. Before George Lucas ruined him, Boba Fett was my favorite Star Wars character. He was enigmatic, had flamethrowers on his wrists, and his armor could actually resist midichlorians. Tomorrow we sing of his tribulations in the sarlacc.

I also celebrate Saint Auxentios of the Mountain, a 5th century hermit, whose feast day is commemorated on February 14th:

The Monk Auxentios, by origin a Syrian, served at the court of the emperor Theodosius the Younger (418-450). He was known as a virtuous, learned and wise man, and he was moreover a friend of many of the pious men of his era.

Distressed by worldly vanity, Saint Auxentios accepted the dignity of presbyter, and then received monastic tonsure. Setting off after this to Bithynia, he found a solitary place on Mount Oxus, not far from Chalcedon, and there he began the life of an hermit. (This mountain was afterwards called Auxentian). The place of the saint's efforts was stumbled upon by shepherds, seeking after lost sheep. They spread the news about him, and people began to come to him for healing. With the Name of God, Saint Auxentios healed many of the sick and the infirm.

In the year 451 Saint Auxentios was invited to the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon, where he became known as a denouncer of the Eutykhian and Nestorian heresies. He was greatly familiar with Holy Scripture, and Saint Auxentios easily bested those opponents who entered into dispute with him. After the finish of the Council, Saint Auxentios returned again to his solitary cell on the mountain. By means of spiritual sight he saw the end of Saint Simeon the Pillar-Dweller (459), from over a great distance.

The Monk Auxentios himself died in about the year 470, leaving behind him disciples and many monasteries constructed in the Bithynian region.

"Distressed by worldly vanity." Why is it that on a daily basis I find myself relating more to hermits and monks than anyone else?

From the mouths of babes

2008-02-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

My parents let my sister watch "Spider-Man 3" over the weekend. She's five. Of all the lines in the movie she latched onto one of the most ridiculous and began repeating it over and over.

My mom didn't find out until the next day when she was at the grocery store with my sister. As they were leaving my sister says, "Did you hear what that man said to Spider Man? He said, 'I'm gonna kick your little ass!'" My mom was surprised at this. "Claire, you shouldn't say that." My sister, being a bright and wiley five-year old busted out an iron-clad argument to the contrary: "What? It's not bad. It's just a word."

"You still shouldn't say it."

"Well, I think it's funny. I said it to Ariana yesterday and we just laughed and laughed." Ariana is two. She can barely make coherent sentences. My mom thought this was hilarious. But my sister must have known that it was bad to say it, for she was careful not to say it too loudly at daycare.

"I said it quiet so Miss Myra couldn't hear me. She didn't know what we were laughing at." Miss Myra is the lady who runs the daycare. She then launched into a discourse about whether or not I would find this amusing.

"Do you think my brother would think it's funny? Or would he think it's bad? I think it's funny." I find it to be incredibly hilarious; not only for her choice of quote, but for her brilliant defense of the adoption of the quote and its repetition. This is probably the first time my sister has actually done something technically bad and defended it successfully rhetorically.