The Crusaders' Last Battle

I was rambling through the ruins of my memory palace looking for the Crusaders' last battle.   Down a corridor, next to Humphrey Bogart holding a bird statue, a priest was kneeling outside the door,  praying over a dead man.  Inside, David I Walsh was walking around the suite dressed in a spaceman's uniform shouting "Let's make sure history never forgets the name: ENTERPRISE!"   My mother, the WAVE, dressed in her WW2 officer's uniform is telling him:  "Don't be a malcontent.  Do your duty."   I walked into the Sea Power room and there was Alfred Thayer Mahan, son of West Point's Irish savant, repeating "Lepanto, Lepanto."  Then I realized something was terribly wrong!   Mahan shouldn't be saying "Lepanto."  Lepanto belongs in another room of the NROTC suite.  

Recovered memory or not.   There it was: Lepanto.  It's 1571 and the Crusaders' last battle.   The Pope has answered the Venetians' appeal for aid in resisting an Ottoman tsunami that had overwhelmed Cyprus and was headed west.   Pius pulls together a Holy League fleet of 200 galleys from Spain, Venice and the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta (aka Knights Hospitaller), only a few years removed from the horrific four-month long Ottoman seige of Malta, the Crusaders' refuge after being driven across the Mediterranean from the Holy Land.   The Ottomans entered the battle with an even larger fleet, but mostly manned by over 30,000 Christian oarsmen, galley slaves.  In the ensuing battle, the Knights of Malta are mostly killed, the Muslims are defeated, western civilization is saved and the Christian galley slaves are freed ... a lot of them, anyway.

Down the hall, Donald Kagan dressed up as the Greek Themistocles is clearing his voice and shouting:  "Let's make sure history never forget's the name: SALAMIS ... western civilization is saved!"  A figure runs past Kagan and hops through a window onto the fire escape.   I run after him.   He stops and turns to look at me from the fire escape, his Whig askew.  It's Lord Macaulay!   He's stolen the keys to the rooms in my palace and waves them at me!  A monkey on her back his head popping up over her shoulder, perhaps a Gibbon,  Karen Armstrong grabs Macaulay's hand, and pulls him down the fire escape.  Kagan yells "presentism" at them as Macaulay, Armstrong and her Gibbon disappear into the darkness.

Not to worry.   I keep a backup in a safe space.  

------------------------------

Pop Quiz -- match column B to column A
-- extra credit: is the above an homage to Matteo Ricci or Stephen King

Crusaders in Arabia

This is the emblem of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Some people might find it intimidating... especially an older generation of Italians, Greeks and Spaniards with nightmares about marauders with swords.  Didn't bother me when I worked in Saudi Arabia, though.   If you followed the rules and were a respectful guest, you were treated with respect.   It never occurred to me to complain about sword intimidation... although it might have given pause if I'd been rounded up like a friend of mine was to witness a public beheading, staged to make a statement:  "This is how we handle foreign rapists."  If I had decided to speak up about the swords, theocratic oppression, Gideon's Quran in the hotel rooms or the means by which the Al Saud had come to power, I'd have been put on a plane headed for someplace else "quicker than you can say Jack Robinson."  I stayed a respectful guest.

Ali and the Irish Women

Many years ago now my boss called me into his office and said the firm had a project that needed a little guidance and I should go work on it:  "It will be good for your career."   Partner-speak for: "If you don't want to work on this, you won't have a career."  After I'd been on site for a week and gone over the project plans, I called up my boss.

"Hey boss, I've got some good news and bad news."

"First the good news, the project is really worthwhile and doable."

"The bad news.  You guys blew the bid and are gonna lose a ton of money on the contract.   The geniuses who bid this thing have fallen into the "nine-women-can't-have-a-baby-in-one-month" trap ... and they haven't even hired the nine women, yet."   

(I could have completed the metaphor with "your current project manager [who wasn't me] doesn't even know the facts of life."  Never mind that the client required that the work be done using a Datacom database, which had its own proprietary programming language.   "You need to find a whole bunch of women who code in IDEAL."  High tech, then)

"Thanks for the suicide mission."

"Don't worry we'll take care of you."

("Ha!  You and the rest of the nincompoops who got us into this mess won't be around to help anyone.  You'll all be forced to retire... and they were ... except for the one who died of a heart attack first)

Globally renown firm bit the bullet.  Reputation was worth more than a 10-20 million loss and a contract dispute probably would cost more than completing the project... a lot more.

We cast a net far and wide for IDEAL/Datacom people ... literally across the planet.  We pulled in a brilliant black woman who was an IDEAL/Datacom expert and about to become very rich, her friend who programmed in IDEAL, claimed to be a good witch and had six-inch long fingernails, an ex-Colgate football player who could do a standing jump onto the top of a conference room table, and Ali.

Ali was the guy you pray will show up on a project... smart, dead serious about work, smart, highly experienced, smart and possessed of traditional manners.   The son of a high ranking Iranian military officer, Ali had been sent to America for school and stayed.   It was the middle of the Iran-Iraq war.

"Ali,  are you worried about your dad back home?  Aren't old-regime military officers in danger?"

"No.  My father is a physician, a very respected man.  His skills are in great need at home now."

If I could ask Ali about the Crusader Controversy,  this response would probably be number one on the hit parade:

"Serious people shouldn't worry about that sort of thing and it would be rude for me to comment."

He might also have answered:

"What's a crusader?"  or

"I'm a Turkish Sunni whose family lives in Persia with the Shia.   Apparent from it being rude, it's imprudent to complain that someone's beloved icons are idolatrous.  Too much Sunni and Shia blood has already been shed over that."

Ali's encounter with the Irish was just as intriguing and fraught with danger.   At college he met a beautiful, bewitching Irish-Catholic young woman and married her.   His family must have been bewildered.  If I could have traveled back in time, I'd have asked him if he really thought it wise. 

"Ali, are you sure you want to do this?   You're a serious, conservative, traditional, patriarchal guy.  You're wife's an Irish-Catholic woman.   I love 'em.   I have a family full of them.   But the one thing they hate more than the British is patriarchy.   They weren't fleeing the Famine when they left Ireland.  They were fleeing the village priest and arranged marriages to bossy old farmers."

At Ali's memorial service, his wife approached me and announced:

"You know Ali and I got divorced."

"No..."  I said, lying feeling it might be rude to let on that people were talking about it.

"Funny.   I stayed on at our business after the divorce.   We got along much better after we split."

The Yaqui of ... O'Brian

Having lived in Arizona for some time now, I've been surprised to discover it has a rich Irish history.

Tucson was founded by an Irish general serving the Spanish government, Hugo Oconor. He built the fort to close the Mexico border and keep out the Apaches.

Phoenix owes its existence in great part to William John Murphy who came to Arizona after fighting under Sherman in the Atlanta campaign during the Civil War. He organized the company that built the Arizona canals that irrigate Phoenix and later became a developer who brought the citrus industry to Arizona.

The Brophys are famous for their work in mining and ranching and their role in trying to recover the Irish orphans kidnapped back in 1904 at Clifton-Morenci, Arizona, when New York nuns tried to place the children with Mexican miners' families. I gave my son the option to go to Brophy College Prep run by the Jesuits, but he chose public school instead.

Irish nuns built the pioneering hospitals in Phoenix and Tucson and eventually drew my wife and I into their orbit where the planets collided and we ran off to Yaqui point at the Grand Canyon and got married (don't tell Father Boroughs). The famous Barrow Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital has a pavilion named for a very famous Irishman, Muhammad Ali.

Over the years my wife made many trips to the Yaqui outside of Tucson to review management of their health care needs. Didn't think to much about it. Then one day while I was fixing up the Little League field for fall ball, a guy walks up and says: 

"Hi, I'm Cisco, I have a team from Clarendon [just south of our league boundary]. Can my kids play with you guys?" 

"Sure," Says I, "The more the merrier."

Over the years this worked out well for both sides with Cisco calling us whenever his travel team, the Yaqui, needed a player. Turns out Cisco's from Sonora and a big fan of the Yaqui de Obregon baseball team. Now I'm curious about the Yaqui de Obregon who turn out to be the Yaqui of O'Brian, carrying the name of a Mexican president who was the scion of Irish immigrants.

I wonder if Cisco sleeps with his socks on?

Jim McManus
Proud sponsor, Yaqui de Phoenix

PS:  I have been trying convince my wife unsuccessfully for some years now that she is Irish, since as all good classic scholars should know ... Hispanic is the identity resulting from the marriage of the Italians (aka Romans) and Irish (aka Spain's Celts).   I ask her,  "Can I call you Irish?  No!   Can I call you Italian?  No!  Can I call you Hispanic?  No!   Can I call you my Latin love?   Yes!!!! 




Jimmy Mac, top row, second from your left.

Louie the Greek

There was a knocking at the front door of my grandmother's Long Beach house.   When my mother answered it, it sprung open and a body flew through it,  did a paratrooper combat roll and a man sprung to his feet, threw open arms and with a big smile and an exaggerated wink shouted:
"Hi!  I'm Louie!"

Louis Sarantopolis, or as my father called him, in the tradition of gritty, street wise New Yorkers:
"Louie the Greek."

One summer long ago, my dad met Louie at Long Beach.   Louie got sent down from Connecticut to live with his uncle, play and help out a little, enjoy the summer, and stay out of trouble.  Louie's uncle ran a little snack bar down by the beach on the board walk.  The trouble part mostly didn't work.

My father's family spent the summers at Long Beach, then a destination for New York's privileged, which his mother was with her three story beach house.   She was married to a man who some called "The Priest", but not to his face, a street wise, gritty Irish kid.   He and grandma were an unlikely couple,  united by a nearly fanatical devotion to the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the public school children of the city of New York.  

"Father Joe down at St. Mary's of the Isle taught your dad how to box, Marques of Queensberry rules", Louie like do say, with a smile and a wink.  
"Jimmy,  your dad and I fought like cats and dogs all summer long."
"I was Orthodox Greek and never knew who the hell the Marques of Queensberry was and cared less."
The smile bigger and the wink harder, as he leaned his head closer to mine for emphasis.

Louie joined the Nassau County police force and my dad became a lawyer and with my mother started a small travel agency.   The travel business was a struggle, but after years of fighting the airlines for the privilege of making them richer,  mom and dad were finally making money.   Then one night catastrophe stuck.  The big office building on Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown burned down where they had the travel agency.  My father was frantic.   He raced over to the the building and forced his way pasted the police and climbed into the burned out hulk.   The safe where they stored hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of airlines tickets and the ticket validator were gone.   This meant total bankruptcy and maybe worse.

My father's frantic attempts to locate the safe went for naught.   At his wits end he called up the Nassau County police chief,  an acquaintance from his Long Beach days.  
"Sorry, Jim, there's nothing we can do.  That safe's at the bottom of the Great South Bay by now."

My father turned to Louie, who was now a detective.
"Please, Louie, I'm really desperate.   Find the janitor."
"Ok, Jimmy, I'll do what I can."

A day later Louie called.
"Meet me down at this bar in Hempstead [the Long Island ghetto].
When my father arrive Louie was outside.
"Wait here, Jimmy.   I'll be back in a second."
And it wasn't long before he was.
"Ok, come with me tomorrow.   I have an address where we can pick up the safe at 10 am."

The next day there was the safe exactly where it was promised, unopened, tickets intact,  just a little bit worse for wear.

Native American Healing Conference

Interesting times.   Because of a health care connection my wife and I got invited to the Native American Healing Conference in Tucson some years ago.  Except for a few people from the federal Indian Health Services, we were the only non-native ... and it was a big gathering of people from all over the country.   There were some speeches and then one of the local elders said a few words:

This is our earth we are sprung from it.

We love our black, yellow and white brothers.

But they need go back to the earth they came from.

The blacks need to go back to Africa.

The whites need to go back to Europe.

And the yellow men need to go back to Asia.

Not a particularly comfortable moment as my wife and I looked around, but everyone remained cordial before and after the speech.

Billy Boy

Will you go to the war, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Will you go to the war, charmin' Billy?
It's a long ways away, they are dying every day.
He's a young boy and cannot leave his mother.
Can you use a bayonet, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Can you use a bayonet, charming Billy?
No, I haven't got the skill to murder and to kill...
Don't you want a silver medal, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Don't you want a silver medal, charlin' [sic] Billy?
No desire do I feel to defend Republic Steel...
Don't you want to see the world, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Don't you want to see the world, charmin' Billy?
No, it wouldn't be much thrill to die for Dupont in Brazil...
Girls would like your uniform, Billy boy, Billy boy.
Girls would like your uniform, charlin' [sic] Billy.
They wouldn't get much chance to love me with six feet of earth above me...
Are you afraid to fight, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Are you afraid to fight, charling [sic] Billy?
You can come around to me when England's a democracy...
Will they take you from my side, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Will they take you from my side, charming Billy?
Don't you worry, mother dear, I'm a-stayin' over here...
---------------
A left wing anti-war song composed by Millard Lampell for Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers in 1941 during the period when the Soviet Union was allied with Hitler to invade and divide Poland between them.

Dinner Table Conversation

Mommy:  They're doing a big expansion at the fancy AJ's grocery store.
Daddy:  Oh.
Mommy:  They're still open while the construction's going on.
Dad:  Hmmmm....how are they doing it.
Mommy:  They're expanding into the stores to the left of the store.
Daddy:  Did the restaurant close?
Mommy:  There's no restaurant on the left.
Daddy:  There's been one for years.
Mommy:  No! No! No!  On the left!  Not the right!
Daddy:   The restaurant's on the left side of the store.
Mommy:  No! No! No!
Daddy:   I identify as a grocery store.   The restaurant is on my left.
Daughter:    (Giggles ........ belly laughs........)
Mommy:  Wha.............!
Daddy:   (Laughter... tears)
Mommy:  Stop! You two!
Daddy:  I identify as a car.  I just parked in front of the grocery.   The empty stores are on my left.
Daughter:  What kind of car?
Daddy:  A Maserati.
Mommy:  Excuse me.
Daddy:  You're excused.

On the waterfront -- The Feast of San Gennaro

Back in the early days of World War 2,  dad was assigned to guard the Brooklyn docks.   When he graduated from OCS and they handed out the assignments, some got sent off to the war in the Pacific, some to the North Atlantic and some to guard the docks.   The Brooklyn docks was not a difficult job. March the troops out to their posts, then check up on them occasionally to see that they were awake and then march them back to the barracks after they were relieved from duty.

When the Queen Mary was in town, if you were careful, you could enjoy its amenities.   One evening while lounging on a bed in a luxurious cabin, dad was interrupted when one of the crew discovered him and appalled said:  "Sir, get up.  Don't your realize that's Winston Churchill's bed."   To which dad replied, "If it's good enough for Churchill, it's good enough for me."   Dad was never invited back aboard the Queen Mary.

On the other side of Brooklyn's planet, one day, a couple of cops made the mistake of driving onto the docks and trying to break up the lunchtime craps game.   The Italian dock workers did not take kindly to this and instead of breaking up the game they decided they'd teach the cops a lesson.  The cops retreated to their patrol car, but were surrounded by the Italian dock workers.   Then the crowd picked up the patrol car like it was the massive statue of San Gennaro, then,  shaking the uplifted patrol car, the procession started for the water... instead of the Church of the Most Precious Blood in Little Italy   It was about this time my dad arrived with a fresh detachment of armed troops ready to be dropped off at their posts guarding the docks.   Seeing that the police were in trouble, he ordered the troops to fix bayonets, port arms and advance on the crowd.   The Italians dropped the patrol car, scurried off back to work and the police collected themselves and drove off never to return.

Mt Holyoke - Class of 1970 - Almost Famous

It's fascinating to read the thoughts of Mt Holyoke's class of 1970... the glory days when classes were cancelled for the mountain climb where the school president served ice cream at the top of the trail ... weekend socials where young suitors looking for "smart women"  outnumbered the Holyoke gals by six to one... mini-reunions at the Cosmos Club to relive the glory days ... nostalgia for the glory days and sisterhood a drug to numb away life's disappointments ...  job offers that didn't materialize ... embittered siblings ... failed real estate investments ... being left at the alter after waiting years to find the perfect man.

Instead of nostalgia, my own class of 1970 sends letters asking for money and notifying us that the college's students are smarter than ever... the wisdom of this is puzzling ... if they're so darn smart now, they must all be multi-millionaires... why are they asking me for money.   I get it though ... our glory days consisted of the social club organizing off-campus events where we drank a lot of beer and then bought tickets for the privilege of smashing an old jalopy with sledge hammers.  Not exactly something you want to bring up a in college's entreaty for moola.

There aren't many drawbacks to being married to a beautiful and smart woman... too much junk mail from Berkeley and Yale asking for money ... a wife who doesn't quite understand lapses into silence at the dinner table ... trying to outdo each other with our war stories ... starting with the clinic in the Bridgeport ghetto and working her way through the ranks to run Arizona's biggest Medicaid health plan ... but when she gets too carried away with her triumphs over adversity, I drop the hammer: no one ever shot at you ... that's about it as far as drawbacks go.

Nostalgia's a dangerous  narcotic.  It let's me travel back and watch my daughter perform in her first play or sit with her and watch a cartoon show, The Rugrats, with a theme song I still treasure.   Remembering slips into dangerous territory too often though ... searching for lost boys, too often in vain ... hunting for other boys, the enemy, in the darkness ... battles with steel monsters firing artillery shells, the explosions growing louder as the shells land closer and closer.

When the visions interrupt dinner, humming the cartoon show tune seems to help ... but it leaves the wife puzzled at table ... and she asks:  anybody home?   Sorry, dear, I was just thinking about our Rugrats.

In the here and now we care deeply about our children ... there are lessons to be learned and we try to pass them on ... sometimes when I talk about the lessons, their eyes glaze over and I wonder what tune they're humming.

According to the Census

These girls, who all have the same grandma,  are .... Black?  Hispanic?  White?

The War Between the Birds

The sidewalk between my house and the school bus stop looks like the bird equivalent of the Civil War's Antietam battlefield... bodies strewn everywhere.   My 14-year-old daughter walking beside me doesn't notice, even after I tell her to look at what the hawks have done.

Tuesday there was a loud crash when a bird slammed into the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the back of our house.  Dumb bird, again?   Since a couple of summers ago, I'd figured out the birds weren't so dumb, just panicked.  After one such window slam,  I discovered a big old hawk standing in the middle of the backyard eyeing its prey, which was lying dazed too close to the house for the  hawk to finish the job.   Tuesday I looked around and the hawk was sitting on the wall at the edge of our yard, pondering her next move.   She could see me in the window and after we eyed each other for a few minutes, the hawk flew off.  Maybe I should have let nature take it's course, but instead I went outside and moved a lawn chair to a spot near the dove to give it cover if the hawk returned.   Ordinarily  the doves fly off when I go into the backyard.  This dove was still too dazed or panicked to move.  It just watched while I  positioned the chair.   The dove was gone when I returned from walking through the bird battlefield to meet my daughter at the bus stop after school.

This spring I've helped intensify the war between the birds... not deliberately.   I like having the doves and finches around and put out a feeder, a very clever one that defeats squirrels and roof rats, and only lets small song birds like house finches and lark sparrows feed.   It's a good size feeder and I thought I could fill it up and not have to mess with it again for a couple of weeks.   The house finches tore through the bird seed in two days.  They don't just eat.   They poke, pick, dig, shake their heads like crazy and the bird seed flies everywhere.  This makes the doves happy since they eat the seed that ends up on the  ground ... and the doves bring the hawks. 

So now I have a moral dilemma.   How do I deescalate the war between the birds.   If I stop feeding the house finches,  there won't be as many doves around for the hawks to kill.   I could buy myself a .22 rifle and shoot the hawks -- which would make the Phoenix PD and my neighbors really, really unhappy.   The neighbors and the PD aside, I have of too much experience defending "doves" in days gone by and I know that unless you're totally committed to hawk genocide,  even artillery far more powerful than a .22 won't stop the hawks.   Besides I like the hawks... they're beautiful in a fearsome way ... I just wish they'd take it easy on the doves.

Then there are the grackles.   With the hawks around there aren't any.   The grackles rough up the doves in their own way.   A couple of grackles will corner a dove and start pecking its shoulders.  If the dove doesn't get away immediately, the grackles keeping pecking until the doves head comes off.   What's the point?   The grackles don't eat the doves.  They just kill them.   The hawks are hunting for food.  The grackles are just thugs and the hawks keep the thugs out of the neighborhood.

Bottom line:   good luck trying to save the world.   After years and years of trying, I still haven't figured out how to save the doves.

I am African

My son's an awesome kid... and that's a little hard to fathom sometimes... because from his earliest years he'd bring to mind Grandma Honoragh saying:  Ta an diabhal i agat  (the devil is in you).

One day he came home and asked:  "Dad, can Joscia live with us this summer.  His mom's lost her home and he has no place to live."   Sure, if you don't mind a roommate.

After he started high school, he began coming home late. 
"What ya doin, son."
"Just doin' homework at study hall with my new friends."
"Great [miracle of miracle ... he's studying without being told]"

Later he matter of fact reveals his new friends are from Sudan, Eritrea and Cameroon, and the study hall is where they get help with their homework.   My son's doing his homework and helping the African kids with theirs ... which ended up giving him an insight into how African kids view America.

"You don't like your president?   He's better than the one we have in Sudan."

"Why'd we come to America.   You have lots of food.   There is no food in Eritrea."

"Zukifi, look!  Those two girls are kissing!   Don't they kill them when they do that in America?"

"Why do you Americans sleep with the dogs?"

One day a Black Lives Matters activist showed up at an African restaurant where one of the kids worked.

"Will you donate to Black Lives Matter."
"No."
"Why not?  We have to defend our Black brothers and sisters."
"No... No ... No ...  I am not Black.   I am African."

The Dragon Meets the Karate Nun

The folklore about Catholic nuns and brothers beating the children was just that in my experience.    From my earliest years through Catholic school and college,  I never saw a nun or brother hit anyone... except once... which was remarkable given the hellions I went grew up with.

Mike Lacopo came close once.  Mike was a lay instructor at our high school.  His glasses made him look like Clark Kent.  Under his sports coat we were sure he wore a superman uniform.  He was a former Marine, had made a perfect score on the challenging Marine physical fitness test, and was the JV football coach.  Mike was pretty mild mannered and liked to read us poetry in English class.  But one day Andy Vaughn one of the most hellacious hellions finally got under his skin.  Andy made a wisecrack.   Mike turned red, dropped the chalk he was using to write on the blackboard, turned and leaped at Andy.   Chairs and students flew in every direction as Mike flew at the terrified Andy who was sitting in the middle of class.  Mike grabbed Andy by the throat, cocked his free arm back to strike... and just before he delivered the coup de grace ... regained control ... gently placed Andy back in his seat ... straightened his own tie and said:   "Andrew please see me after class and I will write you a grey slip for detention."   Most of us didn't like Andy and were disappointed by the outcome.

We didn't like Dennis Dunn, either.   And were not at all disappointed the day in 7th grade when he decided to punch Sister Mary Angelica.   Dunn never knew what hit him.   There was a flash of whirling robes like a black tornado ... the cheering spectators jumped to their feet ... and a barrage of hand strikes left Dunn lying on the floor.  Out for the count.   Who knew they taught nuns karate in basic training.

Dome of the Rock... and the Catholic Women

It was just a picture.

My wife dropped in to say "hi" to the new hire.  The new hire worked for the Medical Director, not my wife, but it was part of the culture... the welcoming health plan run by women dedicated to the sick and the poor.

"What a pretty picture."
"Yes, it's of my homeland, Palestine."

Though she's a devout Catholic, this meant nothing to my wife and what followed was a lot of small talk about children and family.

I'd never call my wife clueless.  She'd tell you she was just too serious to have time for politics and world affairs.  She was a nurse practitioner who'd worked in the Bridgeport ghetto and the Native American reservations and was now Chief Operating Officer of the second largest Medicaid health plan in Arizona.  Her spare time was spent going to meetings with the governor's wife to figure out how they could improve immunization rates for Arizona's children. And though she had graduate degrees from Berkeley and Yale and could lecture long and loud about how clinical significance trumped statistical significance, she had no idea how much money she had in her retirement savings accounts. If it didn't have something to do with maternal-child health care or making a dying AIDS patient comfortable, it wasn't on her radar. 

Time passed and administrations changed.  The Medical Director who hired the Palestinian woman left my wife's company to become the State of Arizona's medical director.   The Palestinian woman's new boss walked into her office, said "hi", introduced himself, said a few pleasantries and then stared at the picture on the wall for several minutes and left the room without saying anything except "goodbye."   The Palestinian woman came running into my wife's office:  "Julie, Julie... how can I work for a Jew."

At this point I might have said "You could start by taking down your picture of the "Dome of the Rock", the shrine built on top of Judaism's most holy place by a triumphant Muslim army."

Instead my wife said "Oh, don't worry.  We've known the doctor for many years. He's a wonderful, kind man.  You'll get along just fine."  She didn't feel she needed to add that if there was a problem that she and the CEO, another devout Catholic woman, would deal with it. Many years have passed and they are all still friends.





  

The Bonfire of the Vanities

In the 15th-century,  Girolamo Savonarola appeared as prophet and reformer to purify Renaissance Florence and expel its patrons the "licentious" Medici.  The hallmark of Savonarola's campaign were the Frateschi, Savanrola's religious police drawn from the zealots among the Florentine youth.   The Frateschi drove the immoral from the streets and organized the Bonfire of the Vanities: the burning of objects condemned by Savonarola as occasions of sin, including the works of Renaissance humanist Giavonni Boccaccio like his X-rated Decameron.

In the 21st-century, we're experiencing a new wave of purification, which aims to rid of us of cultural sin and gender oppression.
At Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, it's led by the head of the biology department who wants to purge the college's Christian Crusader mascot, which might frighten non-Christians.   The head of the biology department?   An odd choice for Savonarola, and purging a mascot is a pathetic exercise  compared to exiling the Medici and burning Boccaccio. 

Jesuit Creighton and Bob Gibson

“From the projects to today,” he said. “The steppingstone was the opportunity to go to Creighton. I was trying to get into Indiana and they had their quota (he signaled with quote signs), which was one, and they got the wrong one, but Creighton gave me a scholarship. And after four years of baseball and basketball, they taught me to be a decent human being and hopefully I am one.”
-- Bob Gibson, Baseball Hall of Fame

Nobody cares about us

Hi, dad.
whosh...whosh... My son was making his morning call while walking to class at the U of Arizona.  Whosh... whosh ... his iPhone was picking up wind noise...whosh, whosh.
Hi, son.  I can barely hear you.  Hold the phone closer.
Ok.
Where you going?
To class.
Did you have breakfast?
Yes.
What'd you have?
A brioche with egg and cheese.  It sucked.  I threw away the brioche and just ate the egg.
Best to stick with plain bacon and eggs at Denny's, son, ... or pancakes.
The pancakes suck.  They hardly give you any syrup.
Buy some more... we can afford it.
The syrup's cold... yuck.
Then go to the Bear Down Cafe.
All the big football players go there.  They intimidate me.
Those guys will be figuring out how to lose weight soon, son.  You're actually just the right size for an Navy SEAL or Army Ranger:  6 foot, 170 pounds.  That's a good life weight.  Football players are weenies compared to SEAL and Rangers.  I doubt most of the guys in the NFL could pass the BUDS qualifier test without dropping a lot of weight and doing LSD training.
LSD?
Yeah,  long slow distances.  Swimming and running.
BUDS?  Do you have to pass a drinking test to be a SEAL?
Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL "school."
Marines become SEALS.
Not often, son, the Marines special ops troops are Force Recon... like your teacher.
Who?
Your middle school teacher.
Oh, yeah. I remember the day he told us "Why can't you people do this! My five-year-old son can do this!"  A black girl shouted:  "Your son goes to a private school where they care about him. Nobody cares about us."
That was awful for her to say that, son.  The teachers really do care about you... even if they are the Few .. But Proud.
I know that, dad.   She was just jerking his chain.  She comes from a happy family and her dad works at the school, too.  He jerked our chain first.
Really... son.  I know you and most of the kids at your school.  You people can do any work he asks you to... when you want to.
Whosh... whosh.

Fuego

I was mulling the newspaper's recent police shootings story in the context of Bayesian comparisons, when my Latin Love popped into the room, said "I'm off to the store," and kissed me on the cheek.

Bang:  my ears started ringing.

What's your diagnosis?

1.  Combat induced PTSD

2.  Tinnitis

3. True love