Clambake Song

Friday Five- Patience

Sally posted this thoughtful Friday Five which for you Facebook readers is posted at my blog

Persistence often pays off, but we need to be aware that it sometimes turns into sheer pig headed-ness...

With all that in mind I offer you this Friday Five:

1. Is patience a virtue you possess? If it is then does it come naturally, if not how do you/ did you work at it?
It has to be a quality I possess because my job requires it, but so does my current big project (the destruction was supposed to start Tuesday, but the contractor didn't secure the permit, so still waiting.) No quick fixed anywhere...


2. Being patient with ourselves can be a huge challenge, we are often our own worst critics; is there anything you need to be patient with yourself with at the moment?
See # 1. Also I tend toward depression which is an illness which is not cured but comes again and again. This requires fortitude and patience. Also self care.

3. Are you the kind of person who can/ will persist with a difficult task? How much of this is personality related?
Yes and no. Depends on my mood at the moment.

4. Can you spot when persistence turns into pig-headed-ness, or do you never get there?
After a while

5. Post a song or a poem that chills you out and helps you to re-group, re-focus and carry on?
Since the big project I've been playing show tunes in the car, old shows...Carousel, South Pacific etc. They all chill me out and leave me singing and swirl around in my head taking me back to happier times. I'll post one later when I have time-Think "It was a real good clambake."

Friday Five- Hand on Fire

Friday Five: I would put my hand in the fire for that
--Robert Mapplethorpe, Hand in Fire, 1985

There is a German expression: ich würde die Hand dafür ins Feuer legen, which means: “I would put my hand in the fire for that.”

I learned it many years ago, while reading the Best Reference Letter Ever: written by a very distinguished linguistics professor for a student who went on to win a prestigious international scholarship. This student, he said, was destined for greatness; and he submitted his judgment with the certainty of the expression above.

I’ve always held the concept as a very important indicator in my mind. “Would I put my hand in the fire for that?” I sometimes think, and it helps me to make a decision or see a situation more clearly. It’s similar to “is this the battlefield I want to die on?”

These days (certainly as every day) there seems to be so much difficulty, wrong, pain, injustice, and mismanagement in our world, and I need a little revitalization. Often when I feel this way, I’ll write a list of things for which I’m grateful, but that’s certainly been done, and I need a bit of a stronger draught.

So, what are five things for which would you put your hand in the fire? Things / people / causes in which you believe passionately and completely? This might be demonstrated in that you would take extraordinary (for you) action…donations, marching, writing letters…or merely in the way you live your life. You may give as much or as little detail as you wish.

So difficult th even think about. I really don't want to put my hand in fire for anything. That said, here are some things I care deeply about:

1. Clean Air and Water- They won't last forever. Especially clean water. And the water will put that burning hand out!

2. The rights of all people to live equally, not just the heterosexual white people. The spanish, the blacks, the gays, the women all the other disenfranchised who may have some of the rights and entitlements but not all of the rights and entitlements, or none of them.

3. The right to worship or not. Even thought I'm still working on this and have recently had a nice Episcopal priest in my new weekend home of Long Beach-he's gay and has a partner.

4. The right to love all the people that I love and to love all the people that I don't even know.

5.The right and the ability to work without fear. And to use the skills as I have been trained to help others.

Not going to put my hand in fire, but I have taken a lot of other risks over the years for some of these rights-alienable.

News from about the Catholic Church in Germany

Who's actually enjoying this?
The current holy father hails from the kinky country of Germany, the home of sadism. I wonder why he didn't start his investigations there rather than picking on American nuns who do the good work of the American church for virtually no money. Could it be that he, too, "who enjoyed and often beat the naked bottoms of the children? Or enjoyed having his beaten?"

from the New York Times:
BERLIN — Deepening the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, a special investigator released a report on Thursday saying that 205 former students claimed they had been abused in Jesuit schools, including at the prestigious Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin.

The investigator, Ursula Raue, said the actual number could be higher. “We cannot expect to have heard everything yet,” she said. “The question must be asked why the order dealt so dismissively with the well-based information about frequent incidents of sexual abuse in its institutions.”

Father Stefan Dartmann, Germany’s leading Jesuit official, immediately issued a statement acknowledging “with shame and guilt, our failure.”

“I ask for forgiveness,” he said, adding that there was a “widespread mentality in the order, and perhaps still is, that the primary concern was the reputation of the institution and its fellow brothers.”

The report is the latest blow to a church weathering its most serious crisis over sexual abuse, here in Germany and around the world. Pope Benedict XVI, who has faced accusations that he or his subordinates did not take strong enough actions in several cases in Germany and elsewhere, has acknowledged the depth of the problem, this month calling the crisis “truly terrifying.”

The Jesuit order in Germany had asked Ms. Raue to look into allegations of sexual abuse after 25 students came forward alleging abuse at Canisius.

Her report was unsparing in its details. She said 46 Jesuits and nonclerical staff members at the schools had been accused of abuse or of knowing of such crimes without acting.

A priest identified only as Father Eckhart, no longer alive, who was at Canisius-Kolleg, “liked very much to beat” the children. Another priest, called Father Michel, also at that school, was “a sadist who enjoyed and often beat the naked bottoms of the children.”

At three schools, a priest called Father Bertram beat 50 students in a “sadistic sexual” way on their bare or clothed buttocks in the 1970s and 1980s. According to the investigation, Father Bertram underwent years of therapy. Before leaving the order, he confessed in 1991 to having suffered emotional problems that led him to beat children.

“From 1957 to 1990, I beat several hundred children and adolescents of both sexes on their exposed buttocks, in nearly painless symbolic acts of punishment,” he wrote in a report in 1991.

Given that such priests had confessed or acknowledged abuse, Ms. Raue asked why the Jesuit leadership did not take action earlier.

And More News of the Catholic Church and their Wisdom

Post this under news that makes me furious///

Last November, a 27-year-old woman was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, and she was gravely ill. According to a hospital document, she had "right heart failure," and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was "close to 100 percent."

The patient, who was too ill to be moved to the operating room much less another hospital, agreed to an abortion. But there was a complication: She was at a Catholic hospital.

"They were in quite a dilemma," says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. "There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make."

But the hospital felt it could proceed because of an exception — called Directive 47 in the U.S. Catholic Church's ethical guidelines for health care providers — that allows, in some circumstance, procedures that could kill the fetus to save the mother. Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at the hospital as well as its liaison to the diocese, gave her approval.


The woman survived. When Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted heard about the abortion, he declared that McBride was automatically excommunicated — the most serious penalty the church can levy. (apparently he didn't read The Directives)

"She consented in the murder of an unborn child," says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means." (Hey...what about that # 47 and all those priest/pedophiles who are still members in good standing after a happy lifetime of screwing little children?

Ehrich adds that under canon or church law, the nun should be expelled from her order, the Sisters of Mercy, unless the order can find an alternative penalty. Ehrich concedes that the circumstances of this case were "hard." (Oh, so hard, but the mother lived and it was in the first trimester!

"But there are certain things that we don't really have a choice" about, he says. "You know, if it's been done and there's public scandal, the bishop has to take care of that, because he has to say, 'Look, this can't happen.' "

A Double Standard? You betcha!

But according to the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, the bishop "clearly had other alternatives than to declare her excommunicated." Doyle says Olmsted could have looked at the situation, realized that the nun faced an agonizing choice and shown her some mercy. He adds that this case highlights a "gross inequity" in how the church chooses to handle scandal.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, declared that McBride was automatically excommunicated because she allowed a patient at a Catholic hospital to get an abortion. But some say her quick punishment stands in stark contrast to the protection many pedophile priests have received from their bishops.
"In the case of priests who are credibly accused and known to be guilty of sexually abusing children, they are in a sense let off the hook," Doyle says.

Doyle says no pedophile priests have been excommunicated. When priests have been caught, he says, their bishops have protected them, and it has taken years or decades to defrock them, if ever.

"Yet in this instance we have a sister who was trying to save the life of a woman, and what happens to her? The bishop swoops down [and] declares her excommunicated before he even looks at all the facts of the case," Doyle says.

Ehrich agrees that sexual abuse can't be tolerated. But he says neither can McBride's actions.

"She said, 'Yes, you can kill that unborn child.' That's a heinous act. And I'm not going to make a distinction between what's worse. They're both abhorrent," Ehrich says.

Ehrich says the nun can be admitted back into the Catholic community by going to confession and repenting. McBride still works at the hospital in another position. Whether she is allowed to remain in her religious order, Erich says that is up to the Sisters of Mercy.

The Church I Sometimes Attend

Well, I used to attend it occasionally, but after renewed news about cover-ups of abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, I stopped attending mass there and just kept attending the meetings of the Catholic Lesbian Group. I've had made some nice friends and I certainly have lots in common with them.

The Lesbian Group is a nice, smart, fun loving group of women, and the topics of the meetings are interesting. I shared with the members of the group my memories of marching out of Saint Francis Xavier in NYC-this particular church-with Dignity, after the late Cardinal O'Connor decreed that Dignity could not meet there. We had a candlelit march from the church to the LGBT community center. This was about 25 years ago at the height of the AIDS epidemic. My friends scoffed and said, this church welcomes it's gay and lesbian members. This couldn't happen now. So I was surprised to get the following e-mail:

Hello, friends.

The Catholic Lesbians Ministry needs to meet this Friday, May 21, 2010, 7:00 pm–8:00 pm, and then join the Gay Catholics Ministry from 8:00 pm–9:00 pm in the Mary Chapel .

Father Joe Costantino, SJ received a letter from Archbishop Timothy Dolan saying that the LGBT Ministries cannot participate in the Pride March under the Church of St. Francis Xavier's banner. We need to prayerfully discern what we will be doing together.

Tomorrow, I will confirm a room for our meeting and will pass that information on to you. Meanwhile, below is a reminder about why we march.

Thank you.

Actually, I'm not so surprised. I feel like this group has been flying under the radar for a number of years and there's a new sheriff in town-the Archbishop. And he has a few agendas, and we're one of them. So sad.

Friday Five My Late Great Ancestors

My Late Great Ancestors


Sophia posted this interesting FF:

"I moved across country for a college teaching job last September, and my mother came to visit for the first time last week. We had a fantastic genealogical adventure tracing the family roots of her father's grandfather, who moved away from this state sometime between 1887 and 1891.

We drove a few hours to their county armed with some names and cemeteries, and wondered if we could locate anyone. It turned out there is an awesome local history room in the public library, with a very skilled librarian library, and with her map and a pile of copied records we struck gold! We found, cleared, deciphered and took pictures of old weathered stones marking members of several family branches in four tiny country cemeteries--the one above is my fourth great grandma. Of particular RevGal interest, we spoke with a friendly and helpful pastor at the United Methodist Church (window above) on the site of the Presybterian church my fifth great-grandpa helped found in 1814!"


1. Do you have any interest in geneaology?

I do have some interest in knowing about my predecessors and have thought about getting my chromosones tested. There is a popular geneaology siterun by--run by Mormons-but I have been loath to search there as I heard that they believe in conversion, without permission and even after death! (Correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

2. Which countries did your ancestors come from?

Italy and Croatia/Austria.

3. Who is the farthest back ancestor whose name you know?

Only my grandparents.
I may be related to Hans Asperger-the little professor, the person who first noticed the syndrome known as Aspergers Syndrome. I mean to look this up after I retire-which is not anytime soon.

4. Any favorite saints or sinners in the group?

Only my grandparents, aunts and uncles and you and find both there.

5. What would you want your descendants to remember about you?

That I did the best I could.

Update on the latest PROJECT!

We selected a contractor yesterday. It's number 3, Tim. He was always number 1, but was unable to start until after Memorial Day which, since it's the "the Palace by the Sea" will leave us in construction until oh say...mid July? Or later?

Well that's the update.

What's New?

Me and the Little Woman Getting Ready for Work at the Beach Palace

I know I haven't been much posting to my blog lately, I seem to be mired in work and my other full time job, getting the lovely place by the sea renovated.

On the first front:

It's hard to talk about here as I've linked my blog to Facebook and now can't figure out how to unlink. I have be-friended some work friends as well as my boss, who was a personal friend and now is my boss/friend. Yet, many people read Facebook and never bother with the blog. So if you have any tips about how to unlink, I would appreciate. Just a note that work has been difficult for the last 6-8 months and getting worse. A lot of it has to do with the NYS budget. They are now talking about furloughs-days off without pay (just what I need after a major spending spree) and something called "order of selection," which is where we serve only individuals who are the most severely disabled. Which would cut out the garden variety people with substance abuse, depression, learning disabilities etc. Sigh! This is kind of moot to me as I am feeling not so much like the supervising counselor that I am, but much more like an overpaid clerk (and overworked) these days. Enough of that until I am unlinked...

As for the palace by the sea. We have now interviewed 5, count em 5 contractors! Each one more expensive than the last and it is now May 1. We have not hired one. I have started referring to them as numbers. I was referring to them as the mafia guy-no kidding , the drunk, the-well you get my point, but the number system seems better. Just like Dr, House and his 13. Add to this, my beloved has trouble making up her mind and we spent one Saturday (3 hours) in an appliance store while she decides between two kinds of wood-we had done this before. expand this to the spread sheet for refrigerators. Well you get the point.

I'm an introvert and I rely on my every other Mondays off to recharge. Well we've been using those to do house stuff.

Thanks for listening to my whining. I'm sure things will get better at least with the palace by the sea, but for now. things are not looking so great.

Friday Five-What is there to Smile About?

Jan posted this Friday Five "With the end of RevGalBlogPals' third annual Big Event, I am wondering who went and what it was like. There must be a lot of smiling from the Big Event! Hopefully, the rest of us are not frowning either.

So let us know how your past week was for you."

Write five different aspects of the week
OR answer the following questions:

1. When were you smiling lately?
I'm smiling mostly when I get home from the job that has become deadening lately...

2. What happened unexpectedly to you this past week?
Nothing. I had two-or was it three? trainings 9 meetings (including today-and I may be forgetting some) and a desk filled with work that should have been done.

3. How was a catastrophe averted (or not)?
I found the files!

4. What was the most delicious thing you ate?
Not lately. Lots of cafeteria food. I call it the Ptomaine cafeteria.

5. Did you see any good movies or read any books or articles?
Actually I read Jeffrey Deavers latest Katherine Dance book (on the subway back and forth to work) I think the name was Roadside Crosses. Highly recommended. Woman lead and info about grief.and trauma in a mystery.

Sorry for the down FF, but my life is a little overwhelming these days. Work, with the NY budget cut, has become unbearable and the little beach place, such a hassle that I am completely stressed~