Daily Update: September 21, 2009

Today we honor Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (died first century). In the gospels of Mark and Luke, as well as in the Acts of the Apostles, Matthew is mentioned as one of the Apostles without any title, identifier, descriptions, or actions. Virtually nothing besides his apostleship can be determined from these accounts, and he is not mentioned at all in the Gospel of John or in subsequent epistles. The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, names Matthew as the publican called by Jesus, whom the other gospels name “Levi”. This gospel subsequently gives Matthew the title “the tax collector” in its list of the Twelve Apostles. Christian tradition holds that Matthew and Levi were, in fact, two names for the same person. Modern Biblical scholarship holds this position as highly unlikely; however, the Catholic Encyclopedia asserts that Matthew once could have been called “Levi”. The Encyclopedia also states that “The fact of one man having two names is of frequent occurrence among the Jews.” Tradition holds that Matthew the Apostle was also Matthew the Evangelist, the author of the Gospel of Matthew; his Gospel is given pride of place in the canon of the New Testament, and was written to convince Jewish readers that their anticipated Messiah had come in the person of Jesus.Tradition also says that he preached among the Jews for 15 years; his audiences may have included the Jewish enclave in Ethiopia, and places in the East. He is the Patron Saint of accountants and money managers. As a former accountant, and current table games dealer at a casino, I regard him as one of my particular Patron Saints; and before the casino ruled that one could only have casino-related items on one’s casino badge (there were some employees who had so many angels on their badges that they were positive dangers to be around during thunderstorms), I had a medal of St. Matthew on my badge, along with one of St. Jude, the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

I woke up at 8:00 am at the house of Richard’s Sister in Iowa in suburban Des Moines to the sound of my Tracfone©; it was Liz Ellen calling me. Once I was sufficiently awake, I called her back; she is at home with a sinus infection. She also told me that the lawyer for our father’s wife’s succession called her (she’s known the lawyer for years), and the wheels are now in motion for our father’s wife’s will; we do not expect that Liz Ellen will get much, and we also don’t expect that anything will happen much before the end of September 2010. I then put on my Bruce Springsteen 2000 Tour T-Shirt, and came downstairs.

We ate breakfast to the sound of the thunderstorm outside (apparently, it has not rained in Des Moines lately; but everywhere Richard and I go, we bring rain with us). After a marvelous breakfast (Richard’s Sister’s Husband is an outstanding cook), we visited; and I found out via Facebook that my friend Dago has accepted her Significant Other’s marriage proposal. (Mazel Tov, Dago, and I will be at the wedding, whenever it occurs.) At 11:00 am Richard and I headed out into town for some shopping, after Richard got our laundry started in his sister’s washing machine.

Our first stop was the used bookstore, where I purchased a hardbound copy of Empire Falls by Richard Russo (one of the Pulitzer Price Fiction books on my list), Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux (both to replace books that I used to have, but can no longer find, and both books I want my daughter to read), and The Book: A History of the Bible by Christopher De Hamel (because I thought it looked interesting). I had set a budget of $30.00 for my book purchasing, and only exceeded it by sixty-six cents. We then went to Target, and got a new hot plate; then went to the nearby large grocery for roast beef poorboy supplies. And everywhere I went, I got positive remarks about my Bruce Springsteen T-shirt.

We arrived back at Richard’s sister’s house, and found that she had finished our laundry for us (curses). I then read the September 21, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated that we had purchased at the grocery store (Richard noted our subscription copy will be waiting for us when we return home, but that’s a few weeks away). Richard then made our roast beef poorboys for the next few days, while Richard’s Sister’s Husband made homemade pizza for a late lunch for us. We then ate lunch (joined by Richard’s niece and the two-year-old), and visited while it slowly quit raining.

At 4:45 pm, Richard and I left for the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines. We got in line, and at 6:00 pm we got in; and we were early enough to score Pit wristbands. We positioned ourselves about 10 feet from the edge of the stage; and while waiting for the show to begin, I bought a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 2009 Tour T-shirt, and found out via my BlackBerry Internet that LSU is now #7 in both the AP and Coaches Polls.

At 8:30 pm (an hour after the scheduled start time) the show began; and for most of the show, we were only 20 feet from Bruce Springsteen (who turns 60 on the 23rd), and when he came down to the edge of the stage he was only 10 feet from us. It was a fantastic show; he has tremendous energy, and looked like he was absolutely enjoying every moment. He and the E Street Band played for almost 3 hours, and I took tons of photos.

 

The show ended just before 11:30 pm, and we made our way out of the venue to our car. My feet had swollen from standing for hours on a concrete floor, and it was acute agony to walk to the car. We got back to Richard’s Sister’s House at midnight, and I was asleep in bed shortly thereafter.

(I am writing this on Tuesday morning, from Richard’s Sister’s Laptop; after breakfast, we will head for South Dakota, and fetch up somewhere around the Badlands. And it is not raining – yet.)

Our Parting Quote this Monday comes to us from Alice Ghostley, American actress. Born in Eve, Vernon County, Missouri, she grew up in Henryetta, Oklahoma. Spurred on by a high school teacher, she studied drama at the University of Oklahoma but eventually left in order to pursue a career in New York with her sister Gladys. Teaming together in an act called “The Ghostley Sisters”, Ghostley eventually went solo and developed her own cabaret show as a singer and comedienne. She toiled as a secretary to a music teacher in exchange for singing lessons, worked as a theater usherette in order to see free stage shows, paid her dues as a waitress, worked once for a detective agency, and even had a stint as a patch tester for a detergent company. No glamorous star by any stretch of the imagination, she built her reputation as a singing funny lady. Ghostley first came to Broadway in Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952 and in the film version released in 1954. She also performed in several musical comedies, including Shangri-La (1956). A veteran of early television, she appeared as Joy, one of the ugly stepsisters in the 1957 musical television production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which starred Julie Andrews in the title role. Ghostley appeared in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), playing Stephanie Crawford, the fussy neighborhood gossip. She appeared in the 1960 revue A Thurber Carnival and in The Beauty Part (1962), playing several distinct roles in each.  She won the 1965 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Mavis Parodus Bryson in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. In 1967 she played the role of Mrs. Singleman in The Graduate, alongside Marion Lorne, who played Miss DeWitte with her in the party scene. When Marian Lorne, who played Aunt Clara on Bewitched, died in 1968, Ghostley joined the show as Esmerelda the maid, a role she held until the show ended in 1972. in 1970 and 1971, she played Cousin Alice on Mayberry R.F.D. after Frances Bavier’s character of Aunt Bee was written off the series. In September 1972, she was hired as a semi-regular for the ABC-TV variety series, The Julie Andrews Hour. In addition to participating in songs and sketches, Andrews and Ghostley were featured in a recurring segment as roommates sharing a small apartment. The Julie Andrews Hour was cancelled by ABC in the spring of 1973 having completed a full season of twenty-four episodes. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she appeared in episodes of situation comedies such as Hogan’s Heroes (playing Gertrude, General Burkhalter’s Sister), Good Times, Maude, One Day at a Time, The Odd Couple and What’s Happening!!. The film version of Grease (1978) featured her as Mrs. Murdock, the shop teacher. She had a recurring role of Ida Mae Brindle in the sitcom Small Wonder, which ran from 1985 to 1989. Between 1986 and 1993, Ghostley portrayed marvelously dotty Bernice Clifton on Designing Women, which may have been her most enduring character. She also made a few guest appearances on the daytime drama Passions in 2000, playing the ghost of Matilda Matthews (died 2007): “The best job I had when I first started out was as a theater usher. I saw the plays for free. What I saw before me was a visualization of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be.”