Happy New Year! Today is the First Day of the First Month of the Chinese lunar calendar, so today begins the Year of the Dragon. We also honor Blessed Marianne Cope, Virgin and Religious (died 1918). Today is the Sixth Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with the overall theme for 2012 is “We will all be changed by the Victory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 15:51-58); for today, we highlight Changed by God’s Steadfast Love. Finally, yesterday was the 39th Anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade; as yesterday was a Sunday, today we observe a Day of Prayer and Penance for Life.
Celebrated in areas with large populations of ethnic Chinese, Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal), Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and formerly the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu). Outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, Chinese New Year is also celebrated in countries with significant Han Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Today we also honor Blessed Marianne Cope, Virgin and Religious (died 1918). Born as Maria Anna Koob in Heppenheim in the Grand Duchy of Hesse (modern-day Germany), her family emigrated to the United States when she was one year old, settling in Utica, New York and changed the family name to Cope. By the time she was in eighth grade her father had become an invalid and, as the oldest child in the house, she became a factory worker to help support the family. Her father later became an American citizen, which at the time granted automatic citizenship status to her entire family. By the time her father died in 1862, her brothers and sisters were old enough to support themselves, so she felt free to enter the novitiate of the Sisters of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis based in Syracuse, New York. At the completion of her year of formation, she received the religious habit of the Franciscan Sisters along with the new name Marianne. Cope then became first a teacher and then a principal in newly-established schools for German-speaking immigrants in the region. By 1870, she was a member of the governing Council of her congregation. In this office, she was involved in the opening of the first two Catholic hospitals in Central New York. At the time, their Charter was stipulated so that medical care was to be provided to all, regardless of race or creed. She was appointed by the Superior General to govern St. Joseph’s Hospital, the first public hospital in Syracuse, from 1870 to 1877. During her period of hospital administration, she became involved with the move of the College of Medicine in Geneva, New York to Syracuse, where it became the Geneva Medical College. She contracted with the college to accept their students in the treatment of the hospital’s patients, to further their medical education. Her stipulation in the contract–again unique for the period–was the right of the patients to refuse care by the students. In 1883, Mother Marianne, by then herself Superior General of the congregation, received a plea for help in caring for leprosy sufferers from King Kalākaua of Hawaii. More than 50 religious institutes had already declined his request for Sisters to do this. She responded to the letter enthusiastically, and set out with six of her Sisters from Syracuse to travel to Honolulu to answer this call, arriving on November 8, 1883. The bells of Our Lady of Peace Cathedral pealed to welcome their ship, the SS Mariposa, as it entered Honolulu harbor. With Mother Marianne as supervisor, the Sisters’ task was to manage Kakaʻako Branch Hospital on Oʻahu, which served as a receiving station for Hansen’s disease patients gathered from all over the islands. Here the more severe cases were processed and shipped to the island of Molokaʻi for confinement in the settlement at Kalawao, and then later at Kalaupapa. The following year, at the request of the government, she set up Malulani Hospital, the first General Hospital on the island of Maui. Soon, however, she was called back with haste to the hospital in Oahu, where she had to deal with a government-appointed administrator’s abuse of the leprosy patients at the Branch Hospital at Kakaako, an area adjoining Honolulu. Her demand to the government to choose between his dismissal or the Sisters’ return to Syracuse resulted in her being given full charge of the overcrowded hospital. Her own expected return to Syracuse to re-assume governance of the Congregation was then delayed when her leadership was declared by both government and church authorities to be essential to the success of the Mission. Two years after the arrival of the Sisters, her accomplishments had so stirred the admiration of the Hawaiian government that the King himself bestowed on Mother Marianne the Cross of a Companion of the Royal Order of Kapiolani for her acts of benevolence to his suffering people. Another pressing need was fulfilled when a year later, in November 1885, after Mother Marianne had convinced the government that it was of vital need to save the homeless female children of leprosy patients, the Kapiolani Home was opened. The unusual choice of location for healthy children to dwell in a Home situated on the grounds of a leprosy hospital was made because no one other than the Sisters could be found to care for those so closely associated with people suffering from the dreaded disease. A new government took over in 1887, which changed the official policy toward leprosy patients. While new patients had not been forced into exile at Molokai for several years, the new administration decided to end that policy, and closed the hospital built for them in Oahu. A year later, as the consequences of this decision became clear, the authorities pleaded with Mother Marianne to establish a new Home for women and girls on the Kalaupapa peninsula of Molokai. In November 1888 she moved to Kalaupapa, both to care for the dying Father Damien, SS.CC. (who was already known internationally for his heroic care of the leper colony there) and to assume his burdens. She had met him shortly after her arrival in Hawaii, when, while still in good health, Father Damien had gone to Oahu to attend the dedication of the chapel in the hospital she was establishing. After his diagnosis as a leper, he was shunned by both civil and church leaders. It was only Mother Marianne who gave him welcome, even arranging for the King to meet him. When Father Damien died on April 15th, 1889, the government officially gave Mother Marianne charge for the care of the boys of Kalaupapa, as well as her original commission for the female residents of the colony. A prominent local businessman, Henry P. Baldwin donated money for the new home; Mother Marianne and two assistants, Sister Leopoldina Burns and Sister Vincentia McCormick, opened and ran a new Girls School, which she named in his honor. At her suggestion, a community of Religious Brothers was invited to come and care for the boys. After the arrival of four Brothers of the Sacred Heart in 1895, she withdrew the Sisters to the Bishops School for Girls and “Brother” Charles Dutton was given charge of the Baldwin House by the government. (He was a veteran of the American Civil War who had left behind in the United States a life broken by alcoholism, and it was he who had been Father Damien’s primary assistant.) Mother Marianne died in 1918; in 2003 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared her to have been “heroically virtuous”. In 2004 Pope John Paul II issued a papal decree declaring her Venerable, and in 2005 she was beatified in Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI in his first beatification ceremony as pope, and her canonization is set for October 2012. Today is the Sixth Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with the overall theme for 2012 is “We will all be changed by the Victory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 15:51-58), For today, we highlight Changed by God’s Steadfast Love, and we pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, by Your Resurrection You have triumphed over death, and have become the Lord of life. Out of love for us You have chosen us to be Your friends. May the Holy Spirit unite us to You and to one other in the bonds of friendship, that we may faithfully serve You in this world as witnesses to Your steadfast love; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.” And, as yesterday was the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has ruled “In all the dioceses of the United States of America, January 22 (or January 23, when January 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life.”
Today I freshened up my casino shirts for today and tomorrow in the dryer, and noted the arrival of the New Moon at 1:39 am. We then dumped a load of trash on our way out, and headed to work with me doing my Devotional Reading along the way. Once at work, Richard was on Let It Ride; I was scheduled for a Blackjack table, but was immediately re-assigned to Mini-Baccarat, which had a maximum of four players at any given time until the table went dead for the rest of the day at 5:00 am. (For the next six hours, I became very aware of all of the Coushatta commercials and events being broadcast on the in-house television screens, one of which is right in front of the Mini-Baccarat table I was on; in the 30-second video promoting the upcoming Alan Jackson concert, he wears three different hats and five different shirts, and has at least two different guitars.)
On our way home I read the January 23, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated; we stopped at Champagne’s for gumbo supplies, stopped at the bank to pay on our loan, and mailed some letters at the collection boxes outside of the post office. Once home, I had some peanut-butter crackers while I read the morning paper, then took a nap from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. After we watched Jeopardy! we considered when we would like to take our trip this fall (more anon), and we got our dinner of Chicken Sausage Gumbo, which I am now eating as I work on today’s Daily Update. I will then take my bath and read the next chapter in my overdue inter-library loan book, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel, and then read a short story or two in The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Edited by Charles Neider before going to sleep.
Tomorrow is our Friday at work; after work, we will go over to the Scheduling Office to see if we can take the time off that we would like to take off in October for our trip. In the afternoon I really need to do the Weekly Computer Maintenance and to do filing of papers. (Stupid papers.)
Our Parting Quote this afternoon comes to us from Jack LaLanne, American fitness, exercise, and nutritional expert. Born as Francois Henri LaLanne in 1914 in San Francisco, California, his older brothers nicknamed him “Jack”. He grew up in Bakersfield, California and later moved to Berkeley when he was still a child. His father died at the age of 58 of a heart attack, caused in part by poor nutrition. As a boy LaLanne was addicted to sugar and junk food. He had violent episodes directed against himself and others, and also suffered from headaches and bulimia, and temporarily dropped out of high school at age 14. The following year, at age 15, he heard health food pioneer Paul Bragg give a talk on health and nutrition, focusing on the “evils of meat and sugar.” Bragg’s message had a powerful influence on LaLanne, who then changed his life and started focusing on his diet and exercise. He went back to school, where he made the high school football team, and later went on to college in San Francisco where he earned a Doctor of Chiropractic degree. He studied Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body and concentrated on bodybuilding and weightlifting. In 1936 he opened what is considered the nation’s first health and fitness club in Oakland, California, where he offered supervised weight and exercise training and gave nutritional advice. His primary goal was to encourage and motivate his clients to improve their overall health. LaLanne designed the first leg extension machines, pulley machines using cables, and the weight selectors that are now standard in the fitness industry. He invented the original model of what became the Smith machine. LaLanne encouraged women to lift weights (though at the time it was thought this would make women look masculine and unattractive). His gym ownership led to a brief professional wrestling career in 1938. The Jack LaLanne Show was the longest-running television exercise program. It began in 1951 as a local program on San Francisco’s ABC television station, KGO-TV, with LaLanne paying for the airtime himself as a way to promote his gym and related health products. LaLanne also met his wife Elaine while she was working for the local station. In 1959, the ABC network picked up the show for nationwide broadcast, which continued until 1985. The show was noted for its minimalist set, where LaLanne inspired his viewers to use basic home objects, such as a chair, to perform their exercises along with him. Wearing his standard jumpsuit, he urged his audience “with the enthusiasm of an evangelist,” to get off their couch and copy his basic movements, a manner considered the forerunner of today’s fitness videos. LaLanne published several books and videos on fitness and nutrition, appeared in movies, and recorded a song with Connie Haines. He marketed exercise equipment, a range of vitamin supplements, and two models of electric juicers. LaLanne celebrated his 95th birthday with the release of a new book titled Live Young Forever. In the book, he discussed how he kept healthy and active well into his advanced age (died 2011): “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut. The doctors were against me—they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.”
