Advent

Today we begin a new year in the church. Today is the start of Advent. Advent from the Latin means a coming, an arrival. Today’s Gospel tells us to prepare, be aware, and be alert for a coming. We are embarking on a wonderful 40 day journey that takes us from Advent to the Epiphany. The early Christians would spend time fasting in preparation during Advent much like they did for the 40 days that constituted the Lenten season.

As we prepare for the coming of the Prince of Peace, the birth of Jesus, many of us are too busy preparing for Santa Claus and miss the entire meaning of this wonderful season.
Too many people get stressed out in preparation for the holidays. Hold off on the holidays a bit and try to find a moment each day that you can spend reflecting on what is going on around you. Maybe you can reach out to someone that has no family and brighten their day with a visit or phone call.

Take a moment each day to spend in prayer. Prayer does not have to be structured; the Lord wants to hear your own words. If you can’t think of anything you can at least give thanks for what you have been blessed with. Pray for peace, pray for all that have lost loved ones and have been displaced by all the catastrophic events that have occurred during the past year.
If you can’t do anything, at least make some time for yourself, especially if you are a caretaker. If you are stressed, many around you will become stressed.

Simplify your life and let God handle what you can’t and you’ll have a wonderful Advent.

A Touch of Americana

Reading about the happenings from the past that occurred on November 26, a warm feeling of nostalgia came over me.

The mention of Casablanca evokes memories of Humphrey Bogart (imagine they originally thought of casting Ronal Regan for the part) in Rick’s Café. I can still picture Ingrid Bergman and hear that theme song, As Time Goes By, that will live forever.

The movie had its premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York on this day in 1942.
It took ten weeks to shoot and the original title was “Everybody Comes to Rick’s.” The script was constantly rewritten throughout the shooting, and not even the writers knew whether Ilsa would end up with Rick or Victor at the end.

Casablanca left us with some memorable quotes:

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Here’s looking at you kid.

Here’s looking at you Bogie, thanks for the memories.

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Also on this day in 1922 a man by the name of Charles Schultz was born. If you don’t remember who Charles Schultz was, maybe you remember Charlie Brown and Snoopy to mention a few characters that he brought to life via the comic strip.

Charles Schultz, the only son of a barber who didn’t fare well in school, went on to become one the world’s most famous cartoonist. As a kid, Charles was a skinny kid with a bad complexion and felt like he never fit in. His father with only a third grade education had a penchant for reading the comics. He would buy six newspapers every weekend and read the comics along with his son. For as long as he could remember, Charles Schultz wanted to be a cartoonist.

After serving in WWII, he returned to St. Paul and got a job doing artwork for a Catholic magazine. In his spare time he began to draw a cartoon strip about a group of kids, including one named Charlie Brown. In order to get exposure, he offered the strip to a local newspaper for free. The strip was called “L’il Folks.” After it ran for two years he asked the newspaper if they would begin paying him.

When they said no, Charles bought a train ticket and went to New York and showed his strip to United Feature Syndicate. They bought it, changed the name to “Peanuts” and the rest is history. The first strip came out on October 2, 1950, featuring Snoopy, Linus, Charlie Brown, Schroeder, Lucy and Sally.

The material for the strip was drawn from Schultz’s childhood difficulties. Charlie Brown was the chronically depressed kid who never got to kick the football, whose kite always got stuck up on the tree, and the kid who would never win the love of that little red haired girl.

Charles Schultz became the most widely syndicated cartoonist in history, with his work appearing in over 2300 newspapers. He has published more than 1,400 books, won a Peabody and Emmy awards for his animated specials, and is responsible for the most-produced musical in the American theatre, entitled "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown".

Not bad for a scrawny little kid from St. Paul whose family was so poor that they had pancakes for dinner many times.

The last strip published was shortly after his death five years ago. He had had a clause in his contract dictating the strip had to end with his death. "No, the strip will never be turned over to someone else," he said

Despite the enormous success, Charles Schultz struggled with depression and anxiety.

Charlie Brown was Charles Schultz.
.

Compassion Fatigue

Friday, November 25, 2005, the day after everyone’s favorite warm and fuzzy holiday of Thanksgiving, has welcomed that seasonal party crasher, “The Christmas Shopping Season.” Some of us have barely finished digesting the turkey and its fixings when we find that instead of emptying our bowels of yesterdays fodder we find ourselves emptying our wallets and saying thanks to corporate America.

Many of the so called patriotic wanna bees, with the “Support Our Troops” magnets on their SUVs, show their true hypocrisy on this day. You see many of them have opted to work on November 11, Veteran’s Day/Armistice Day, in order to get the day after Thanksgiving off. They support our troops by working on a day that is set aside for our men and women who served and continue to serve our country, which means us, and choose to support Sony, Samsung, Best Buy, Worst Buy or Any Buy on the day after Thanksgiving. They swapped patriotism for consumerism.

It’s so nice to see many of the unaffected bounce back from the doldrums of the horrific natural disasters and escalating energy costs. “Let’s see, the tsunami, that was three years ago, right? And Katrina, well we gave $50 to the Red Cross, everything’s ok now, right? I was worried we’d be paying $5 a gallon for gas by now.” Much of the country has come down with ADD or has what the Washington Post recently called “compassion fatigue.” But when you venture out today, look around and you’ll find there’s very little evidence of wallet fatigue in what people are wearing and driving and the places so many of us are living in.

Thank God that you weren’t one of the victims of the tsunami or earthquakes or floods or mud slides. You see they’re still picking up the pieces, if they were lucky enoughto find any. Some are looking at the possibility of sleeping out in subfreezing weather conditions. They would welcome a piece of plywood over their head never mind a flicker of heat. Some would kill for the Thanksgiving day leftovers that are going to end up as trash in the next few days. Please don’t forget these people just because you don’t hear much about them in the news. Remember that many live right in our communities, the rich and plentiful USA.

Thank and Give

Taking care of seniors

Comedian Bob Hope found the secret to staying young. He offered these words of wisdom, “I’ll tell ya how to stay young: Hang around older people.”

Many more people should think about hanging around with older people because they need YOU.

Did you know that 55% of older adults in Boston live alone?

Did you know that 36% of older Americans in Boston leave their homes less that 4 times a week?

Did you know that 10% never leave their homes?

Did you know that 27% of older adults were unable, to buy medicine, glasses, or make rent payments or heat payments.

Did you know that at least 15% of older adults in Boston do not have someone to contact in an emergency.

Did you know that 10 – 30% of older adults cannot afford prescriptions?

Did you know that 5% of them have no insurance?

Did you know that 3,400 older adults in Boston live in public housing but because of limited space, thousands are waiting?

Many of these people took care of us when we were children and now it’s our turn to take care of them.

In last Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew we hear Jesus tell us on what we will be judged to inherit the kingdom. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

“Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

We are called to serve and serving the elderly is the right thing to do. We too, someday could be in the same predicament.

Confession

There’s an article on Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/2130589/?GT1=7407 (I don’t know why I’m plugging them, maybe just because they stirred up some dormant feelings) about confession and why Catholics have stopped going. The author is right in stating that many Catholics have shied away from confession, but I’m not sure if I agree with the statistics provided.

If we step aside and take religion out of it, doesn’t confessing one’s sins or transgressions or whatever other label you want to stick on them make sense? Oscar Wilde, a British author is quoted as saying, “A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.”
I believe that any person that can discern right from wrong, upon committing a transgression and not reconciling oneself lives an unhappy life. If one has a conscience and does not reconcile their sins, they will feel like they are carrying hundreds of pounds of excess baggage and in due time this excess weight will do them in.

In confession we open our lives to healing, reconciling, restoring, uplifting grace of the Lord who loves us in spite of what we are. Reconciliation also lifts the heavy weight we were carrying and takes it away.

Chesterton said that, “Psychoanalysis is CONFESSION without absolution.” For any treatment program to work one must feel comfortable with their therapist and in the same manner people choose a priest that they’re comfortable with.

I can recall that, in the Catholic elementary school I attended, every Friday each class at different intervals would be marched from the school to the church in order for us to go to confession. The school had eight grades with approximately 40 pupils to a class. So in a matter of maybe an hour 300 confessions were heard and 300 penances were doled out. The class I was in filled three pews of young boys and girls. Most of us took this ritual serious, but occasionally there would be the giggle or smirk that would arise during the boring wait which the sisters would immediately quell.

I’ll never forget this one particular Friday. I was in the confessional with a priest that will remain unnamed, when all of sudden he raised his voice at me. So from within the darkness and secret compartment of the confessional a voice was heard throughout the church for all to hear. To this day I don’t know why he lost his cool. I didn’t say anything derogatory toward him, I had just confessed that I missed going to Sunday mass and he blew up. I was too embarrassed to leave the confessional and face my peers who were all waiting for me to come out. I can imagine what my face must have looked like as I came out and headed to the altar to say my penance.

I don’t know if the nuns talked to the class before my coming out of the sin bin, but to my amazement no one said anything. No one ever asked what happened in there. Maybe they thought I did something horrible and they were staying away out of fear. Looking back, I probably should have talked to a grownup about it but instead I took my lumps and went on. From that day on I would not go to see that priest any longer and had a hard time with many of them. It took a long time to get over that experience.

Getting back to the article, which mentions that although people have shied away from the confessional, they have no problem going on shows like Springer to air out their dirty laundry or will go on line to a web site to post their confessions? Curiosity got the best of me and I checked out one of the sites mentioned and found that hundreds of thousand of people log on each day. I’m not interested in hearing the garbage that people choose to post on these shallow sites.

Looking back at my experience made me think of the various sports and how they handle “sins” committed by the athletes. Of the major sports, hockey is similar to going to confession in that it banishes the player(s) who committed and infraction to the sin bin, the penalty box. The referee catches the player in the act of doing something wrong on ice and blows his whistle. Play stops, the referee proceeds to the person in charge and gives him the information which is broadcast for all in attendance to hear. Everybody watches as number 5 is escorted to the penalty box as the following is heard, “Number 5, Shifty, two minutes for hooking.” His team is now forced to play shorthanded for two minutes. Sometimes he finds company in the sin bin as another player is serving his time. The penalties doled out match the severity of the infraction. In hockey unlike some of the other sports, penalty minutes, is one of the published statistics. They also reward the least penalized good player with an award at the end of each year.

In soccer, the referee stops play and runs up to the player who committed the infraction and proceeds to hold up either a yellow card or red card right in the player’s face. If he’s red carded, the player has to leave the game and his team is forced to play shorthanded. Sometimes the player will not be able to play the next game.

In basketball, again a referee will point out the offending player and will dish out the penalty which is also broadcast to everyone there. In basketball it’s called a foul and there are various kinds of fouls from non-shooting to shooting to technical fouls determined by the severity. In basketball they allow you to accumulate five fouls per player per game. Anything above that and you are banished from playing the remainder of the game. In this case your team is allowed to send in a replacement for you.

Football is interesting because most of the players are hidden under a mass of equipment and sometimes you never know what a player looks like unless he takes off his helmet. Football has what appears to be almost as many on field officials as they have players. In football you see the referee almost as much as you see the quarterback. Football is also neat in that the referee has to know a myriad of hand signals. Sometimes I think football was invented for deaf people. If there’s an infraction, one of the officials will throw a flag (yellow) – sometimes there are multiple flags thrown on the same play. The officials then will huddle to discuss what they saw and then the referee will announce to the thousands in the stands and the millions watching on TV that “Number 66 on the offense is being penalized for 10 yards for holding.” As the official is measuring and placing the ball ten yards back from the original spot, the camera is now focusing on the player who committed the penalty. You either see on the spot someone denying what he did by shaking his head or apologizing to his teammates for his “sin.”

Just imagine if life was like a game with a referee. In an office environment, as John Small walks off with two pens, he hears a whistle and a referee comes out and fines John $5 for illegal use of hands.

Or how about the employee that calls in sick and then heads out to play in a golf tournament on the cape, as he’s about to tee off on the first hole a referee in a golf cart throws a yellow flag and whistles him to go back to work, “illegal substitution.” His foursome will have to play one man short.

It would make life interesting. That referee resides in us in the form of a conscience and we need to confess and reconciliate. As Publilius Syrus said, “To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.”

Thanks Giving

I read an article recently where the author was trying to explain the difference between being thankful and giving thanks. Before I continue, stop for a moment and think what giving thanks means to you and what it means by being thankful. Do you see or find a difference?

Giving thanks turned around spells thanksgiving, a holiday we celebrate on the fourth Thursday in November. Originally celebrated by the pilgrims in 1621, it wasn’t until 1863 when President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed by every president after Lincoln, the date was changed a couple of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who set it up one week to the next-to-last Thursday in order to create a longer Christmas shopping season. Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date two years later. And in 1941, Thanksgiving was finally sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November.

Back to the question posed up above. Being thankful is a state of being. It’s good to be grateful. But being happy about one’s good fortune is one thing, giving thanks is another.

Thanksgiving should be about giving thanks and not about thanks-gorging. People get together to stuff themselves and imbibe, yet in the midst of it all they seem to miss the true meaning and in some cases family members are frayed and strung out.

I applaud the author’s candor in revealing that his family was in such a state. He had an aunt who would show up drunk and weep at the table. No one knew why and no one asked. His grandpa did not speak to his grandma. His older brother would only show his face when it was time to eat. His mother in trying to make everything perfect would come down with a migraine causing his father to be upset because she didn’t feel well. The Detroit Lions seemed to get more attention than anyone at the table.

The Thanksgiving feast would not last very long and with all the lavishness they would always be left with a feeling of emptiness. In some families, Thanksgiving has become sort of an escape, a kind of therapy, and not a meal of celebration. Some don’t even let the day come to a conclusion before making plans as to how early they have to get up in order for them to snap up the “bargains” in the after Thanksgiving day sales. More and more, holidays are planned around the various retails’ store schedules. Some are scheduled around football games. Is that what you’re thankful for?

What about thanking our family members, even with all their pimples and warts of life, for just being them? What about thanking the person who cooked the meal. What about thanking our Lord, for all He gives us.

This reminds me of the Gospel story (Luke 17:11-19) about how Jesus cured ten lepers and only one, a Samaritan, came back to thank Him. Would you be one of the nine that didn’t give thanks?

“Much obliged,” are two words that have vanished from the old American vocabulary. It used to be a common expression of thanks. It meant more than thanks because it showed that you really appreciated what was done for you and you were ready to do something in return. You were obliged. You were obligated to do something for the person that did something for you. “Much obliged” seems to have a stronger meaning than thank you.

Thank you for your patience while I ramble on. I hope that it makes some sense to you. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take the feeling of gratitude from this day and spread it throughout the remainder of the year?

Who are you going to say thank you to on Thanksgiving?

Women and Shoes

When it comes to men and women, as a man, I will never understand the love affair that women have with shoes. At first I thought it was a thing that was strictly endemic to my wife. I’ve lost track of the number of pairs of shoes she has – she buys shoes like I pop M&Ms. Years ago, I read about the queen of shoes, Imelda Marcos, wife of then president of the Philippines, and felt a little bit better about my wife’s shoe fetish.

It was reported that Imelda owned approximately 3,000 pairs of shoes, some which were worn only once or never at all. What is it with women and shoes? I own ten pairs of shoes and three pair of sneakers and a couple of pair of slippers and feel that is too excessive. I know that my wife has at least four times that amount and still will stop and purchase others.

Psychologists have ventured their opinion in that buying shoes is a means for a woman to treat herself when she feels a little depressed. Come to think of it, maybe I should do that instead of drowning my depression into cake and pizza and ice cream. Gee, I could create a new slogan for the shoe industry, “Buy a pair of shoes and lose weight.”

But reading the latest sales figures, the shoe industry is doing very well without my help. Sales in October and November have gone up significantly. Retailers are stumped as to why the increase in sales in women’s shoes. Boot sales at one store were up 40%, and many were having a hard time keeping them in stock.

What is it with women and shoes? Some women get more excited and seem to get more pleasure at the purchase of a new pair of shoes than having sex. Could it be that the increased sales of shoes is being driven by the movie, “In Her Shoes?”

A woman in St. Louis, in town on business, was reveling in her boot purchase and was going on about what shoes do for her. Her husband, sitting in a nearby chair, sat there shaking his head saying, “I don’t get it. I don’t get it. Sorry.”

I’m with you pal, I don’t get it either.

Stiffs

Pretty soon he’ll be hearing, “Quiet on the set,” “Act 2, scene 3, take 9,” or “That’s a wrap, Mr. Aiello,” and "makeup for Mr. Riggio, please."

Well at the ripe age of fifty-something our Pal Sal will be going for a wardrobe check.
He will be appearing in the funeral scene and maybe a bar scene in the upcoming movie, Stiffs, that will be shot in the North End of Boston.

It’s nice to see one of my former employees make it to the big time, Hollywood. I knew he had it in him, what the heck he’s been acting all his life and finally someone noticed his latent talent and has given him a break.

Watch out world, today Stiffs, tomorrow who knows what.

Good luck, Sal – ‘break a leg.’

Paul, may the Lord bless your soul, your saying, “today is a good day to get stiff,” has finally come to fruition.

Fear or Love

Fear or Love

All human actions are motivated
by either fear or love.
Every thought and action is based in
either love or fear.
Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down,
retreats, runs, hides, hoards and harms.
Love is the energy which expands, opens up,
sends out, stays, reveals, shares and heals.
Fear wraps our bodies in clothing;

Love allows us to stand naked.
Fear clings to and clutches all that we have;
Love gives away everything we have.
Fear holds close, grasps, rankles and attacks.
Love holds dear, lets go, soothes and amends.
I will fear no one because the Lord is
my light and my salvation.
I will never be afraid because the Lord protects
me from all danger.

Lino C. Viola

"Strunzo" of the Week

Question - Why is this man, er I mean strunzo (turd) laughing?

Answer - That's the look of a man who screwed all of us by manipulating the oil prices the last few months.

He denied it in front of our illustrious Senators saying Oil industry earnings are "cyclical" and are currently in line with most other major U.S. companies.
What did people expect him say? “Yes, Senator, we took advantage of the people and used the hurricanes as an excuse to profiteer.”

His company Exxon earned $10 billion in the third quarter and profits from the five major oil companies were more than $25 billion during the July to September quarter. That's billions not millions.

How quick they were to take advantage of a tragic situation to profit from it. At one point there were so many increases that they had to hire someone just to post the price changes at the pumps.

Not only are these sleaze balls charging record prices and getting record profits but our government has been giving them record tax breaks. Wake up, they don’t need the record tax breaks, we do to pay the escalating fuel bills.

I had been reading all week leading up the hearings how our senators were going to grill the oil execs about the record profits. What happened was quite different for many senators used their time to ask the executives instead about pet projects in their home states or for their views on alternative energy sources, such as vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

Why don’t we get a list of these senators and send them our fuel bills this winter. If these senators had any coglione’s (balls) they would slap these companies with a windfall profit tax and use the tax money to help fund a federal program to help the poor pay their heating bills.

Why is the man up above laughing? Because he just heard Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., say that the hearing’s testimony had reassured him that the oil companies had not profited unfairly.

You can tell that money is going to be scarce this winter because of the higher heating bills when you see retail stores trying to lure shoppers in earlier than in previous years. They can see the handwriting on the wall. Higher heating bills mean less money to spend of Xmas gifts which means lower profits for them. One guy is laughing while millions are seething.

I wonder how many Senators have investments tied to oil companies.

Ponderings

Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up like every two hours?

If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?

Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?

How come we choose from just two people for President and fifty for Miss America?

Why do doctors leave the room while you change?They're going to see you naked anyway.

If a 911 operator has a heart attack, whom does he/she call?

Why is "bra" singular and "panties" plural?

Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?Why did you just try singing the two songs above?

Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere,but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt?

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Psycho Test

If you get this right, anyone near you better kill you!Now, here's one for you !Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads. No One I know has gotten it right- - including me.

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met this guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy, she believed him to be just that! She fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?


(Give this some thought before you answer).


SCROLL DOWN.









Answer: She was hoping that the guy would appear at the funeral again. If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was created by a famous American Psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in the test and answered the question correctly. If you didn't answer the question correctly, good for you. If you got the answer correct, please let me know so I can take you off of my email list, unless that will tick you off, then I'll just be extra nice to you from now on. Be sure to share the test!

Who is he looking out for?

When are we going to wake up and stop giving these so-call self appointed leaders of our country the publicity they crave for to survive?

The following story is proof positive of how one man thinks he's above every one else just because he's on TV.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10004302/

Think about it; is he really "looking out for you" or is he just out to get more attention so he can get more viewers? Yes, educationally he might be much smarter than the average Bill, but who lifted him on such a high pedestal?

My heroes, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Paul and Blessed Mother Teresa, went about helping and serving others. They were the ones that could truly have said, "We're looking out for you" and not the likes of Bill O, Rush Bimbaw, Fawn Bannity and the likes, who have got millions of people eating out of the palms of their hands as they stuff millions of dollars into their coffers.

The're not looking out for you. The're looking out for themselves.

A Powerful VP

In the seventies we had “Tricky Dick” and his involvement with Watergate. Now we are possibly seeing another Dick go down in history as possibly “Shifty Dick.” One shouldn’t be surprised that Richard Nixon appointed Dick Cheney to his first job in the executive branch back in 1969. Birds of a feather flock together.

I hope I’m wrong, but when the dust settles and believe me there’s plenty of dust, we will find that Dick Cheney was the one running the White House. I don’t want to cast stones on him yet, but I just don’t get good vibes when I look at this man. He reminds me too much of a sleazy used car salesman that I dealt with back in the 70’s.

He has slowly earned the reputation as the most powerful Vice President in American history. One article that I read lately states that he has fourteen people on his national security staff which has a finger in every pie. I have always believed that George Bush is only a puppet figure (a marionette) with Cheney and Rove and Rumsfeld taking turns in pulling his strings.

A recent book published in England about Tony Blair has the following remark: “Blair and his aides had less friendly dealings with the ‘sometimes intimidating’ Vice President Cheney, which gave discussions a ‘certain Soviet woodenness.’"

Those who have known him over the years remain astounded and describe how indifferent he is to the thoughts and feelings of others. "He has the least interest in human beings of anyone I have ever met," says John Perry Barlow, his former supporter. Cheney's freshman-year roommate, Steve Billings, agrees: "If I could ask Dick one question, I'd ask him how he could be so unempathetic."

In time, I’m sure a lot more will surface on the man who’s done a good job of keeping a low profile. Stay tuned.

Judge Alito

It wasn’t that long ago that if you were a Catholic and aspired to run for a national political office your chances in getting elected were slimmer than a foreigner becoming president. Even though there were a handful of token Catholic Supreme Court Justice appointments in the eighteen hundreds, I believe that President Kennedy, in 1960, broke the anti-Catholic barrier that surfaced in 1928 when Alfred E. Smith ran for President.

Fast forward to today, 2005, and you read, "At the very least, it's a victory over historic prejudice, and it shows that Catholics have come fully into their own in the United States." This quote by M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of theology and law at the University of Notre Dame, comes at the heels of President Bush’s nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the position of Supreme Court Justice. If confirmed, Mr. Alito would join Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., the four Catholics currently sitting on the Supreme Court. Not only would there be a five member Catholic majority but it would also mark for the first time that there are two men of Italian descent on the Supreme Court.

• Alito was born in Trenton, New Jersey, as was Antonin Scalia, to Samuel A. Alito Sr., an Italian immigrant, and his wife, the former Rose Fradusco. ("Of course he's against abortion" Samuel Alito's 90-year-old mother Rose told reporters at her home in Hamilton, N.J.)
• He attended Steinert High School in Hamilton, New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in 1972, and attended Yale Law School, where he served as editor on the Yale Law Journal and earned a J.D. in 1975. Alito's father, who is now deceased, was a high school teacher and then became the first Director of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, a position he held from 1952 to 1984. Alito's mother is a retired schoolteacher. Alito's sister, Rosemary, is regarded as one of New Jersey's top employment lawyers.
Some lawyers call the judge "Scalito." Roughly translated, the nickname means "Little Scalia," suggesting that Alito, a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has modeled himself after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. would be the 11th Catholic Supreme Court justice and the fifth currently seated on the court.

Good Luck

The Hat

"Camilla dear, can you remove that silly antenna from your hat? It almost poked me in the eye."

Things I remember

Why do certain useless things find a nook or recess in the corner of your mind and never go away? I can’t seem to forget the image of an actress named Spring Byington who appeared in the sitcom December Bride from 1954 – 59. Fifty years have gone by and I still remember this woman. I can’t remember what I had for lunch two days ago but I remember some insignificant TV actress from ages past.

Why did this TV show leave such an indelible mark on my mind? Maybe I was attracted to such an unusual name (Spring) or maybe the character she played filled the motherly void created by my own mother who was away at work all day. I can still hear that soft but rather quizzical sound of her voice. I also remember, Pete, I believe he was the next door neighbor. Pete was played by Harry Morgan who starred in many other TV shows. Pete had a wife on the show named Gladys who was never seen until a spin-off show called Pete and Gladys came out in 1960 -61. Gladys was played by Cara Williams.

Another TV show I can’t forget is My Little Margie that starred Gale Storm. She also went on to star in The Gale Storm Show: Oh Susanna in which she played a social director on a cruise ship with Zasu Pitts as her roommate. Who could forget Zasu Pitts. Unique names, that’s definitely why I can’t forget them.

I’ll always remember Eve Arden who starred in Our Miss Brooks with Gale Gordon who played Osgood Conklin. These are all shows from the fifties that were somewhat borderline mediocre but they left their mark on me.

This would make for a good topic to discuss with a psychotherapist. What does it all mean? TV was a relatively new form of media and for a nine year old who was all alone it provided companionship until mom came home from work.. While performing this self analysis, I’m getting a better picture as to the scarring that takes place to children that have been mistreated and/or abused. If something as insignificant as a TV sitcom can leave impressions that have lasted for fifty years, I can now see how people relive the nightmares of an abusive relative. I empathize for them.

Pork Barrel Spending

Here’s another example where we Americans have our heads buried in the sand and are being led like cattle to their proverbial slaughter without uttering one moo. This summer congress passed a $286 billion pork-laden highway bill. Lawmakers took advantage of the bill at the tune of 6,000 pet projects targeted for their districts which totaled $24 billion.

I thought the highway bill was to allocate money for the cost of maintaining the nation's highways and bridges in the coming years not to siphon off money for parking lots, bus depots, bike paths and whatever else our congressmen could think of. One noted pet project has been named “The Bridge to Nowhere.” This pet project was championed by Senator Stevens (R) from Alaska. He was able to go into the pork barrel and take out $223 million to build a bridge that would link tiny Ketchikan, with a population of 8,900, with its airport on Gravina Island -- population 50. $223 million to take care of a small amount of his constituents who currently take a ferry that takes 7 minutes to get them back and forth. When this was first reported people thought it was a joke. It’s not a joke.

Where’s the outrage! I thought Republicans were fiscally conservative, but they are proving to me that they’re all a bunch of crooks. $24 billion, used like play money, wasted on pet projects while they now contemplate making cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, farm subsidies and student loans. Why couldn’t part of this $24 billion have been used to rebuild the Interstate 10 Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain outside New Orleans, a major transportation corridor that was shattered during the Katrina storm surge?

I shouldn’t have labeled all congressmen as fiscally irresponsible, because there are people such as McCain and six other Senate Republicans who want to reallocate the pork dollars in the bill to help pay for the damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of eight House members who opposed the legislation, and who declined any special projects for his district, wants to rescind 10 percent of the bill's total cost and allow states to disregard the pet projects authorized by the legislation, and spend the money as they wish.

Where’s our president? Why did he sign this bill? President Ronald Reagan once vetoed a highway bill because it contained 152 pet projects. Despite the pork inflation, Bush had no complaints about the current package when he signed it on Aug. 10. "This bill upgrades our transportation infrastructure," he declared. "And it accomplishes goals in a fiscally responsible way."

I guess we in Massachusetts can’t throw stones. We’ve set the record with the greatest cash cow of them all the Big Dig. The Bridge to Nowhere is a just a ripple in the pond in comparison.

Will Rogers

"When I die, my epitaph is going to read: 'I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.' I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it."

The author of this quote is humorist, Will Rogers, whose birthday we celebrated today. He was born in Claremore, Oklahoma in 1879 and was the last of eight children. He never graduated from high school and, at an early age, began performing in rodeo shows, specializing in roping tricks. His father, a successful rancher, tried to settle him down by enrolling him in a military academy, but he ran away and hopped a boat to South America. From there he took off to Africa, where he began performing in something called "Texas Jack's Wild West Show." He toured with various circuses in New Zealand and Australia until he finally found his way back to the United States, where he performed in vaudeville shows in New York City.

Rogers went on to become the original king of all media. In his lifetime, he was a Broadway showman, Hollywood actor, traveling public speaker, radio commentator, and newspaper columnist. His column was syndicated in almost 400 papers; it was the most widely read column of its day.

Will Rogers had a love for horses and flying. He died on a flight to Alaska in 1935 with a daring one-eyed pilot named Wiley Post who also lost his life in the crash.

Some of my favorite quotes from Will Rogers are:

`Personally, I have always felt the best doctor in the world is the Veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what's the matter. He's just got to know.'

'No man is great if he thinks he is.'

`Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.'


Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U. S. Senators.

Live in such a way that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Lack of Respect

"I don't understand that," Sherman, a former high school history teacher, said as he walked away from the podium in the media auditorium. "That stuff to me, to be honest with you, is a total lack of respect for each other. Forget me, you don't have to respect me. But respect each other."

This person shares my sentiments exactly as he walked out early on a press conference after being annoyed by some cameraman’s cell phone going off. Sherman is the coach of the Green Bay Packers who has long banned cell phones at the team’s meetings.

It’s not that I don’t like cell phones and it took me awhile to succumb to buying one, I don’t like the rudeness of some people when using them. I’m starting to see more and more signs posted with “turn cell phones off.” Why do people have to be told where to turn their cell phones off? Don’t they know the places that it would be inappropriate for their use? Don't they have any common sense?

It’s happened in church numerous times. One lady’s cell phone went off during the homily and it took her what seemed to be an extremely long time to turn it off. The phone must have rung at least eight times causing the priest to stop his homily. Lack of respect. Some people forget, and I can excuse that for one time, but I see people sitting there and taking their phones out to check their voice mail or instant messages. If it’s happened in church it’s probably happened at funerals, wakes etc.

At first I thought that it was only the kids and yuppies who were the culprits. Now it seems to be spreading to the middle age people. Just yesterday, I was sitting on a commuter train heading home and just as the train pulled out of South Station a middle aged man right behind me proceeded to call what I can surmise a friend. I was forced to hear about his job interview, how long it took, and what he wore. I know that he wore a blue Bill Blass suit and a tie that he borrowed from the person he was talking to – so my assumption that he was talking to his wife was quickly dispelled, unless his wife wears ties. The only thing I didn’t know was whether he wore boxers or briefs thanks only to the loss of signal upon entering a tunnel. I don’t need to know nor do I want to know what goes on in a stranger’s life. I’m going to start carrying a tape recorder just for moments like these and replay the tape when the person ends his conversation.

Some people, as Mike Sherman stated above, have lost respect for others. It’s all about them and only them. I used to like to sit back and read on the train, I can’t do it anymore because of these egotistical and disrespectful people. Some are truly addicted and I can envision a Cell phone anonymous coming near you.

One day I got on the Orange Line (a true urban experience) at the Wellington stop and headed for Forest Hills. A nicely dressed clean cut young man who got on at the same stop was nearby using his cell phone. What I soon realized, from his end of the conversation, was that he was meeting someone at the Mass Ave stop. He proceeded to call at every stop that the train made to update the person of his current location. Was he meeting the other person for some clandestine reason? Why couldn’t he just make the initial call and tell them that he would be there in fifteen minutes? For I moment I felt like I was sitting next to the guy on the commercial who keeps repeating, “Can you hear me now?”

These people consider themselves as VIPs (very important people) but I’m labeling them DUPs (disrespectful unimportant people). In Italy they would be considered a cafone (a cad).

In the supermarket you will see “girly men” wandering around with their cell phones attached to their ears keeping in constant connection with their wives who are directing them to different areas of the store and telling them what to buy. These VIPs cannot make a decision for themselves. “Honey, I can’t find the evaporated milk,” I overhear one of these wussies and feel like telling him that the milk evaporated, it’s gone, disappeared. An airplane pilot making a landing in bad weather has less contact with ground control than these wussies have with their wives navigating through a supermarket.

Everywhere I go, even in the rest rooms, I find people invading my space with their ‘very important conversations.’ What happened to the phone booths of years past? I feel like I’ve been hijacked into one of these invisible walking phone booths.

If the signs don’t work, you’ll probably see in the very near future people checking their cell phones at the door much like they did in the west with pistols.

Theo

Paramour? I came across this word as I read an article about the Red Sox inability to re-sign Theo Epstein to a new contract. Never saw or heard the word before in my life. Sometimes you can get a good clue to its meaning when you hear the content of the whole sentence that it’s used in. Here’s the sentence as uttered by senior baseball operations adviser Bill James:
''Certainly I was surprised; I love the Red Sox and have no plans to look for a new paramour."

Paramour? Let’s see, it has the word amour in it which I think means love, so maybe he’s trying to say that he won’t be looking for a new lover. Bill must truly love his job. The word aroused my curiosity so I looked it up in the dictionary and I’ll save you the trouble and tell you what I found:

Paramour - a lover, especially one in a relationship with a married person.

Even after looking up the meaning of paramour, I still couldn’t understand what Bill was trying to say. Why couldn’t he just say that he had no plans to look for a new lover? Enough about paramour, it got me sidetracked from finishing to read the article on Theo.

At this point no one really knows why Theo decided not to re-sign with his beloved Red Sox whom he had grown up with living in Brookline. Maybe we’ll know more when he speaks to the press within the next day or two. At first I was saddened to hear the news but in a selfish way I was not thinking of Theo. He has accomplished so much at a young age and has earned the respect of many who came in contact with him. Maybe he’s trying to break out from the ever present shadow of mentors Larry Lucchino and Charles Steinberg. I respect his decision and like many in Boston will miss him.

''He was a pretty significant part of my life. ''I have a lot of admiration and respect of him. It's different. Change is so unsettling anyway, more so when it's someone very close to you. I mean, this guy impacted my life." -Terry Francona

''Crazy," Ortiz said when asked to talk about Epstein's departure. ''It's crazy. Theo was great. People love Theo. How long was Theo in the Red Sox organization for before he won a World Series?"
The answer: 23 months.
''We were in the playoffs every year," Ortiz said. ''He put the pieces together. They should iron things out with Theo. He's the man, bro."

''You don't get better losing a guy like Theo," Schilling told the Associated Press. ''It's obviously going to be an incredibly unpopular decision with the players."

"I'm very upset that we lost somebody like him," Red Sox captain Jason Varitek said. "We seem to have a lot of that going around."

Listening and reading between the lines that David Ortiz speaks below might give some indication of the problems that Theo faced from within the organization.

''Who is the GM going to be?" Ortiz asked. ''And who is going to want to become GM of our team to work for somebody else? A GM wants to be somebody in a position [of power]. If you're going to be the GM, just to get orders from someone else, it's something they aren't really comfortable with.
''We need Theo. Hopefully, they put it together to keep Theo.
''I think the problem is Theo is not getting enough of a position to say, 'I'm going to do this, if I [mess] up, I [mess] up.'
''He came up with some good ideas that did nothing but help this ball club, this team.
''Before, from what I hear, they had good players, but they never had that chemistry. That's what the team is based on. Who brings the mentality to play the game every day? He understands that."

One of Theo’s special assistants, 71 year old former Tiger General Manager, Bill Lajoie, resigned within minutes of Theo doing so saying, ''I felt loyalty to my boss and left also." It says a lot to me when a 71 year old has loyalty to his boss who could be his grandson.

As Ortiz says, hopefully they’ll put it together and keep Theo. If not I wish him the best wherever he goes and on whatever he chooses to do. I’ll always remember him as the GM who helped bring the championship to Boston after an 86 year drought.

Let's see, hmmm..., I'm still trying to figure out how the word paramour made it's way into a baseball story.

Kinky Friedman

Every day I receive an email telling me the birthdays of famous people. Some I know very well, some I don’t. It’s interesting to read about someone I hardly ever heard of and today was one of those days.
It's the birthday of the singer, songwriter, and novelist Kinky Friedman, born Richard Friedman, in Chicago (1944). He grew up Jewish in Texas and went on to become one of the few successful Jewish country singers with his band the Texas Jewboys. He developed a cult following, writing humorous country ballads such as "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed," and "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" about a fight in a bar between a Jewish man and an anti-Semite.

Then in the mid-1980's Friedman was walking down the street in New York City when he saw a woman being attacked by a mugger at an ATM machine. Friedman grabbed the man and held him until police arrived, and the next day the New York Post ran his picture on the front page with the headline, "COUNTRY SINGER PLUCKS VICTIM FROM MUGGER." The experience of crime fighting inspired Friedman to start writing mystery novels about a former country music singer named Kinky Friedman who lives with his cat and solves crimes in his spare time. His books include Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola (1993), and The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover (1996).
In 2004, Friedman began a serious campaign to become the Governor of Texas in 2006. One of his stated goals is the "dewussification" of Texas. Among his campaign slogans are "How Hard Could It Be?" and "Why The Hell Not?" He's hoping to follow in the footsteps of other entertainers-turned-governors, including Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ronald Reagan. Friedman is friends with both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom have invited him to visit the White House. He wrote about his friendships with them in his November 2001 column ("Hail to the Kinkster") for Texas Monthly.

Here’s his stance on a couple of issues:

On the issue of same-sex marriage:

I support gay marriage because I believe they have the right to be just as miserable as the rest of us.

On Religion:

Yes, I'm a Judeo-Christian. Jesus and Moses are in my heart, and... both of them were independents, by the way.

Good Luck Kinky. If George Bush was elected governor of Texas, I can’t see why you can’t. I’ll be watching this campaign for sure.

It's the Plame, the Plame!

It is extremely frustrating for me to continuously hear and read of soldiers getting killed “over there.” I keep asking myself, “for what?” No one, as of yet, has been able to explain it to me. We’ve lost 2,025 lives, not to mention the tens of thousands that will bear some painful reminder for the rest of their lives in the form of a loss of limb or other disfiguring wound.

Sad to say, for the last few months, I’ve grown weary of reading the daily stories coming out of Iraq and have stopped reading mostly because I don’t want to add to life’s customary burdens with more tales of grief – it just wears me down. It’s apparent that other recent tragedies (hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides etc.) have taken my mind off the “war on terror.” If I put my Christian and Catholic teachings to practice and truly believe that we are all brothers and sisters, then I start feeling wiped out by all the grief that’s been heaped on us all by the destruction and senseless loss of life. As much as I subconsciously bury this war story in one of the closets of my mind, my church reminds me at least weekly of it. As far I can remember, this has been one of the constant prayers presented (each week since the start of the war) during the prayer petitions of the faithful that we all answer to and pray, “Lord, hear our prayer, “ or “Lord, graciously hear us.”

I was reminded of the war this past Sunday while lectoring at Mass. Of the six prayers listed that I was to read the third one was a prayer for the safety of our troops and an end to the war. When I reached this prayer and locked on to the 2000 figure (it's now at 2,025) of soldiers that died, I momentarily froze and found it hard to continue. It was almost as if someone was telling me that I had forgotten about them. I’ve read and heard this prayer more than a hundred and fifty times but Sunday morning it seemed to have a different meaning for me. Since then, I started questioning as to why we only pray for our dead. What about all the innocent men, women and children that have died in Iraq? Estimates that have recently been released puts this figure at over 25, 000. Aren’t they also our brothers and sisters? Wednesday is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls Day), let us remember ALL who have died and pray for them and their loved ones.

The other prominent news story that weaves with the war on terror story is the indictment of “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s go to guy. Libby was one of the key architects in building the White House's case for going to war against Iraq. Now it seems he’s being fingered for outing the name of a covert CIA officer (Valerie Plame) after her husband questioned publicly one of the central justifications for the war in Iraq.

The more I read of this story the more I keep asking myself, why did President Bush put our troops in harm’s way? Also unanswered is the specific question that led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor two years ago, namely who gave Plame's name to the conservative columnist Robert Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, named her as a CIA agent. Plame's husband, a career diplomat, Joseph Wilson 4th, went to Niger in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to buy uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Wilson reported back that the uranium story was unfounded. But Vice President Dick Cheney's team kept on pushing the claim, which was included in President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech in 2003. Wilson then went public with his information.

Unless I’m naïve, it’s evident that Joe Wilson was a fly in Cheney’s soup and decided to take care of him by exposing his wife and discrediting the information provided by the CIA. It’s also evident that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so why were Americans and the world told that these weapons existed? I’m still waiting for Congress to give me an answer to as why are we at war. And who is responsible for all this senseless loss of life.

I don’t know about you, but how can anyone not think of the 2,025 young men and women that lost their lives at the hands of an administration that won’t give you a valid reason. Why are we still there? To lose more lives?