Of Course, I Could Be Wrong...: MADPRIEST'S CHRISTMAS MEGAMIX

Of Course, I Could Be Wrong...: MADPRIEST'S CHRISTMAS MEGAMIX: It's Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. There's a whole 364 days to go before it's Christmas again. And there's the washing up from yes...

Here's a rather wonderful mix of music from the Mad Priest at Of Course I Could Be Wrong...  Just in time for the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

Mom's Poetry

My mother, Susan H. Caldwell, has recently started to write poetry, and she sent me some of her work.

The first poem talks about a trip to Spain she made in the early 70s, doing research for her dissertation on Spanish romanesque churches.  At the time, Spain was still under the thumb of General Francisco Franco, a fascist and a promoter of "Traditional Family Values"...

1972 – Segovia, Spain                                           OUT OF PLACE

Noon, sun-filled plaza

                  bounded by hotels, restaurants, small cars

                                    atop Segovia’s hill.

Pink cathedral, Gothic, at the far end;

                  aqueduct (unseen) down the hill—

                                    Roman, of course. 

Children shriek at play;                   girls jump

                  low to the ground over elastic ropes

                                    in patterns unknown to me.

Alone. Sola. Sola: I await…

                  the opening of a museum? a library?

                                    exposed by the sun of Segovia.

                                                                        (Mostly I wait to go home….

                                                                                          to Vermont, to my children.

                                                                                                            Did I dream them?)

Looking up from my journal, I see

                  people looking at me, looking at me.

                                                      I am sola.

Men go alone; women go in pairs, in groups.

                  Every woman escorted—

                                    all but me.

Skirts hang below their knees;

                  My skirts end above.

                                    (My jeans are also wrong, it seems.)

Question:  what am I doing here, sola?

                  Researching un tesis doctoral?

                                                      (Even I don’t buy that story.)

                                   

                                                                                                            So, I must walk…

Along Segovia’s winding alleys

                  seven Romanesque churches await me.

                                    Stone walls, arches, weathered sculptures…

Sola, I find solace in old stones 

                  in whose crevices flowers flourish—

                                                                                          out of place…

                                                                                                                              like me.   

The second poem talks of my father's descent into Alzheimers.  Too young...  It was hard on all of us, but especially my mother, who took care of him for 17 years, ten of them with him at home.

I Remember His Forgetting

“Numbers don’t have the same meaning for me,”

                  he said.  “I mean, like they used to.”

He, who scored 99 percentile on the GRE—he said that.

                  I didn’t believe him;

                                                      but he couldn’t balance the checkbook.

Camping in Colorado among the trees and birds became

                  a nightmare—or at least a bad dream. 

                  He didn’t seem himself somehow.

                                                      Although the sun was shining…

At the first campsite, I followed his directions

                  as we erected the tent with its aluminum poles

                  and blue plastic covering, and pegs pounded

                                                      into the ground, to anchor it.

At the second campsite, he couldn’t put up the tent.

                  I had to figure it out on my own, visualizing

                  the various steps.  It sort of worked,

                                                                        but I was scared.

I supervised the packing up as we left; he followed

                  my directions…                  sort of…

                  He was puzzled; I was frightened.                   

                                                                                          I was cross.

Our dog Tom left us. 

                  He ran up the hill and

                  sat down on our campsite.

                                                      He didn’t want to go home.

              

Billie Hinton and Claire Caviness

This summer I discovered an author, and a character, I love.  The author is Billie Hinton, the character is Claire Caviness, who is one of the main character in her novels claire-obscure and Signs That Might be Omens.  In the first novel, Claire is a young woman, recently graduated from college and working in a bookstore.  She meets and moves in with Finn, a medical student who is--odd.  He does not sleep with her, for reasons that become clear later in the novel, but he clearly tries to possess her.  Soon she meets another man, Raoul, who has a thing for rescuing women who need it.  Raoul's best friend is Bingham.  The plot is psychologically interesting, and the writing is dream-inducing.  The entire novel is written in the present tense, so all the action (actually set in the 1980s as becomes clear due to details in the book-- no cell phones, music, even Claire's clothing) seems immediate, as if one is living through everything right along with Claire.

The second novel, Signs That Might be Omens, opens in 2004, twenty years after the events in claire-obscure.  From there, it fills in what has happened in the intervening years, passing back and forth from the novel's present to different points in the past and from both Claire's point of view and Bingham's, who is, it seems, Claire's soulmate.  It seems, at times, that the entire book is about near misses, but perhaps these two need their life lessons before they can truly come together.

Both books seem to resolve, and yet do not.  I think I read (but cannot find it now) that these are the first two books of a planned quartet.  If so, I certainly look forward to the upcoming novels!

Both books speak of dreams, as does a third book I read by Hinton, The Meaning of Isolated Objects.  I was not surprised to find that the author is also a Jungian psychotherapist.  These books are available on  Amazon for Kindle.

Mindfulness

The Buddha was asked, "What do you and your disciples practice?" and he replied, "We sit, we walk, and we eat." 

The questioner continued, "But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats."

The Buddha told him, "When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating."

Most of the time, we are lost in the past or carried away by the future. When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present movement, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace, and love.

This was posted for an online retreat in which I am taking part, and it made me think of my studies of eating disorders and disordered eating.  So often what happens is a lack of mindfulness, of awareness, of what we eat, and how much we're really eating, especially in the cases of bulimia and binge-eating disorder.  In both of these illnesses, the sufferer loses awareness, at least in the short term, and also control.  Eating becomes automatic, it is detached from actual hunger, it is not serving the body or the psyche well, because too much food makes one sick, and although the eater may temporarily feel comforted about what is eating him or her, ultimately the binge will result in self-recrimination and more psychic distress.

In contemporary western cultures, it's really no wonder that such a disconnect would happen and cause illnesses like these.  Meals are no longer the communal events they once were:  we eat meals in the car, we eat meals in front of the TV set or a book, we eat far too many meals alone! We're doing other things when we eat, and not really thinking of what we're eating or how we're eating it.  What is more, we aren't doing as much of our own cooking, choosing fresh ingredients with care to make the best food we can make!  I know I eat far too much "food heated up", and I actually like to cook and am pretty good at it.

Preparation also leads to mindfulness.  A Lean Cuisine lasagna may taste fairly good, but you're certainly going to feel more connected to a lasagna you carefully made from scratch:  you'll think about the individual ingredients, the amounts of herbs and seasonings, the finishing touches before you put it in the oven.  Even worse is when you pick something up in a drive-through to eat as you rush off to work in the morning.  You could be shoveling cardboard into your mouth for all the enjoyment you get out of it.  Sometimes it's unavoidable, but try to taste each bite of your breakfast burrito as you eat it.  Pull over if you have to.  Be mindful.

I have something of a history of binge-eating, though not, I think, to the point of a clinical diagnosis.  Sometimes, if something is bothering me, or I'm feeling sorry for myself, I'll start eating a favorite (forbidden) food, like potato chips or chocolate, and I won't stop until it's all gone.  I might savor the first few bites, but soon I'll just be gobbling it up without thinking, or, worse, thinking I have to get rid of it before anyone finds out I have it.  (Forbidden food, remember?)  The last thing I'm doing is being mindful when I eat like this, and as a result, I don't know if I'm even tasting it properly.  I think the next time I find myself on the verge of this sort of a binge, I will try to stop, breathe, and be fully aware of each bite.

Are there any things you do that lack mindfulness?  Do you think that cultivating an awareness of your actions would improve your enjoyment of life?

Thoughts While Walking the Labyrinth

Yesterday morning, I went over to St Brigit's and walked the labyrinth.  I was all alone, the sun was shining, and I found myself thinking about what Joseph Campbell called the Hero's Journey.

We have a Chartres labyrinth, which is simply a winding path.  There are no branches, and as long as you stay on the path, you will find your way to the center, and then find your way out again.  The path folds, and turns, and when one is on the outer edge and feels farthest away from the center (God-- or the Heavenly Jerusalem), one is actually quite close to the end of the journey.  Conversely, when one is closest to the center, one still has a long way to go.

This made me think of Odysseus' travels.  When he has been trapped on Calypso's island for years and years, and has nearly given up on ever returning home, he is actually quite close to the end of his journey.  When he has come within sight of Ithaca, his men accidentally let the winds out of Aeolus' bag, and send him far, far away again.

The original Chartres Labyrinth is found at the beginning of one of the pilgrim's paths to Santiago de Compostela.  For some, it was probably all they could do of the pilgrim's journey because of infirmity, or obligations at home.  It signifies a sacred journey, and a journey of discovery, just as Odysseus' journey was for him.

Chicken Noodle Soup

INGREDIENTS

1 rotisserie chicken, shredded, skin, fat and bones discarded
1 T olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, chopped
3 carrots, sliced into 1/2" pieces
3 stalks celery, sliced into 1/2" pieces
8 cups low sodium chicken broth
2 bay leaves
poultry seasoning, pepper and salt to taste
8 oz whole grain noodles

Saute the garlic and vegetables in the oil until soft.  Add the chicken broth, shredded chicken, and seasonings. simmer 45 minutes.  Add the noodles and simmer 15 minutes more.  Makes 8 servings.

287 cal., 9.3 g. fat, 83.5 cal. from fat, 2.75 g, sat., 55mg chol., 573mg sodium, 4.1g fiber, 25g protein.

Meatball soup

1T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots
2 stalks celery
4 cups reduced sodium beef broth
1 lb hamburger
3 T egg beaters
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 red-skin potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces.
pepper, oregano, basil to taste
1 small dried pepper, crumbled
2 bay leaves

In a dutch oven, saute the onion, carrots and celery in the olive oil until the onion is soft.  Add the broth.  Mix the hamburger, egg beaters, bread crumbs and some of the pepper, basil and oregano together and form into balls, dropping into the soup as you go.  Add the rest of the herbs and spices. Simmer for 10 minutes,  and add the potato.  Simmer until all the vegetables are tender.
Serves 4.

Nutrition:  343 cal., 13.5g fat, 130 cal. from fat, 4.3g sat., 70mg chol., 605mg sodium, 3.3g fiber, 29g protein.

Values

I recently found myself in a position that I really didn't want to be in.  A friend of mine had told me about some rather serious issues involving the neglect of some children of a mutual friend.  This woman had gone from being a very tolerant Catholic to one who was extremely dogmatic in her beliefs after a family tragedy.  Her husband was going off the rails in his own way.  (Possibly due to the scary economy of the last few years-- a lot of people don't seem to be quite logical as far as who they blame.)

As I said, the mother is a woman I consider a friend.  I'm very worried about her, and scared that something very bad will happen to her (like death in childbirth, and I have reason to worry about that), and now I'm also worried about her kids.  But this information was now in my hands.  And the first friend, although scared and worried, was not quite willing to report to the proper authorities. 

What is a person supposed to do, when he or she has information that might be the difference between a happy well-adjusted life, or one that is not, or-- possibly-- no life at all, should the right (or wrong) circumstances come together in a certain way?  What would you, my readers, do?

Keep in mind, I had been worried about what was going on with these children for a while.  One of them is a friend of my daughter, and, I think, potentially gifted.  Yet she is isolated, far from any outside influence, and is being home-schooled by a mother who has very little formal education herself.  This child has also  made several decidedly odd statements over the last couple of years to me as well as others that honestly have me quite worried about her state of mind.  Obviously, the home schooling is perfectly within the rights of her parents: anyone who wants to can home school their children in this country, and although I sometimes have reservations, I would agree that many home schoolers do a pretty good job.  A fellow mother at Natalie's dance school home schools her children, and the older son is doing amazingly well, to the point that he is planning to start college courses a year or two early!

The problem is: I know as a teacher in training that this child would, if she were in a regular public school, or a private or parochial school; first, be exposed to other, saner, points of view besides those of her parents, and would also be flagged by school authorities as a child whose family circumstances needed investigation.  The same goes for the second child in the family, also school age.  Because they are home schooled, they fly under the radar of the authorities.

My first friend was frightened to contact child welfare.  She had merely shared second hand information with me and one other person.  I had independent information: it wasn't very new, but that, plus what my friend had told me convinced me that the children were in  danger, both psychological and physical (from neglect-- NOT abuse: these are parents who love their children and, I'm convinced, wouldn't knowing hurt them).  I made a call to child welfare.

Ultimately, I think that children must be kept safe; and that even if one is not their parent, and their parents are someone one considers friends, it's important to do what's necessary to protect the child, or children.  I hope no one else who reads this is ever put in a situation where it's necessary to call the county; where a conversation (or ten) with one or both of the parents or another relative is enough to resolve the situation.  That wasn't the case here.  I may have blown up a friendship I valued-- and I still hope that my friend goes back to being the person I used to know-- but I think that I did what needed to be done, and I hope that those children are rescued from their situation.

July 16, 1945

Sixty-six years ago today, the scientists of the Manhattan project tested the first atomic bomb. Here, Dr. Oppenheimer compares his feelings to a passage from the Baghavad Gita: Vishnu, the God of Destruction. The quote dates from 1965, two years before Oppenheimer's death.  There is a look that passes over his face as he talks about the bomb and Vishnu that I find simply haunting. 

This is John Adams' treatment of the same quote in his opera, Dr. Atomic.  Subtitles are in Dutch, but the opera is in English.  Oppenheimer was a German Jew, and I can imagine that Adams and the librettist, Peter Sellars, were correct in assuming that he found his work less morally questionable when the primary target was Hitler's Germany.  In the opera, however, which centers on the preparation for the Alamogordo test which took place on July 16, Oppenheimer is a highly conflicted character.

Politics

Metella Porcia is my old handle on a now-defunct social website called AncientSites that I belonged to ten or so years ago .  It allowed people with an interest in ancient civilizations (well, at least some of us had an interest in them) to meet online and discuss our interests, play online games, and-- well, essentially it was similar to Facebook .  I chose the handle I did as a sort of joke-- the Metelli and the Porcii (Portii--the family name was off of a list and whoever chose that one misspelled it) were two of the most hidebound conservative families in late Republican Rome.

 My own political inclinations are pretty far to the left: I think one of the main functions of a good government is taking care of those who most need protection, and that those include the poor, the victimized, the sick, the young and the old.  Although I strongly believe military spending is vital for the protection of a country, I do not believe that spending several times as much money as any other country in the world on the military is likely to do anything other than encourage military adventures abroad.  I also think that continuing to throw money at the very rich has very little effect on job creation, at least job creation in the United States, and I don't believe continued refusal on the part of the Republicans to consider restoring tax levels to pre-2001 levels for the very wealthy will make the fiscal crisis any better.  I do think that continuing to disassemble the social safety net will eventually lead to societal instability and unrest, and that defaulting on our government's loans will cause the economy to collapse completely.  I wonder if people like Ryan and McConnell have thought at all about what they might be creating.

I think that how our country taxes needs to be more equitable, with corporations and the very wealthy paying a greater share, and perhaps --just possibly!-- tax credits being tied to job creation in the United States!  I think also that we should cut back on military spending, and use the savings to fund programs that help more of the lesser privileged people in this country: programs like WIC, more money for education--including grants (less emphasis on loans!) for higher education, retraining for jobs, and healthcare for all (yes, I do mean single payer!).  Right now we have a privileged upper class that is doing very well indeed, while the majority of people in this country are not as well off as they were thirty years ago.  I find this a frighteningly unstable situation, and I think we need to get it fixed.  

Mythology

I got interested in Classics because of Walt Disney's Fantasia.

 I saw the movie when I was five or six, and really loved the segment with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (a piece of music I still love, by the way).  Of course, now I find it amusing how the Disney animators mixed actual mythology (thunderbolts forged by Cyclopes for Zeus) with pure fancy (a whole family of winged horses when Pegasus was the one and only)! 

Whatever.  My five year old self was captivated, and I wanted to know more.  A few years later, I found D'Aulaire's Greek Myths at the library, and really started learning about mythology.  As I got older, my interest spread to other cultures besides Ancient Greece and comparative religions as well.  In high school and college, Joseph Campbell was my hero.  I'm still interested today, and honestly the interest in comparative religion has done much to inform my own (rather unconventional) religious views also.

Counting...

I should have said that we were down to five (from six) when poor Phoebe disappeared about three months ago.  I really can count, I promise!

Why "Cats and Classics"?

I chose this title for my blog because I spend a great deal of time thinking about both of these subjects.  They also have a rather nice alliterative quality...

I think about cats because I live with five of them, which is really a little crazy but it's not my fault.  Last year when I moved to Frederick, I didn't know that my house came with a feral cat, and that she had produced a litter of kittens days before we moved in!  My boyfriend Gerry, with whom I live in two places (more about that in another post!) had two cats, Phoebe and Jade, and I had one, Spots.

I had just lost a dog, and really intended to get another, but then, we discovered our surprise residents.  Being tender-hearted types, and also thinking that my daughter, Natalie, who lives with us half the time and with her Dad half the time, would enjoy raising some kittens, we borrowed a trap from the local no-kill shelter and brought everybody inside.  We thought we'd keep one or two kittens, but ended up with three for a total of five cats, and no dog.  Such is life...

Why Classics?  Why indeed...

I got a BA in Classics from the University of Oklahoma, and I enjoyed getting the degree quite a lot.  Unfortunately, one of my former husband's Electrical Engineering professors had the most typical reaction to my course of study.  First, he asked me what instrument I played, and then when I told him I was, in fact, studying the language, history and culture of Ancient Greece and Rome, he said, "Don't worry dear, stick with Ben and he'll support you."

Personally, I think I'd make a great Founding Father, but there isn't a great demand for those right now.

Never-the-less, I love the Classics, especially the history and mythology, and I'm glad that I have studied them in some depth.  Now that I'm no longer "sticking with Ben" I'm working on a degree to teach English in high schools however.  It's much more likely to result in an actual job.

About the instrument: I don't actually play an instrument, but I do sing, and I like classical music too.