Today we honor Saint Timothy (died 97) and Saint Titus (died c. 96), Bishops.

Born about AD 17, Timothy’s father was a Greek gentile, and his mother Eunice was Jewish. He was converted to Christianity by Saint Paul the Apostle around the year 47, and became the partner, assistant and close friend of Paul. After a career as a missionary, he became head of the Church in Ephesus, and was the recipient of two canonical letters from Saint Paul. Martyred for opposing the worship of Dionysius, he is the Patron Saint invoked for intestinal disorders. Titus was a disciple of Saint Paul as well, and First Bishop of the Church in Crete. Born sometime in the first century, he was also the recipient of a canonical letter from Paul, and is the Patron Saint of Crete. There is a minority opinion that “Titus” is another name for “Timothy”, and that both names refer to the same person. In any case, the Church has chosen to remember these companions of Paul on the day after the Feast of the Conversion of Paul.

First up, last night our LSU Men’s Basketball team was beaten by #18 Mississippi State by the score of 71 to 76.

I woke up this morning at 9:00 am, started my laundry, and read the morning papers while eating my breakfast toast. Back on the computer, I was wrestling with a BlackBerry synchronization problem (my Desktop Software won’t let me synch my BlackBerry address book with the Outlook Express on the PC), and finally put in a request to help on the CrackBerry forums online. I then did my Devotional Reading and said the Second Day of my Novena to St. Blaise. I then ironed my casino shirts, finished my laundry, and played my trivia games.

At 1:00 pm I headed out into town; my first stop was at D.C.’s Sports Bar and Steakhouse, where I ate my lunch and continued reading Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield. I then went to the Hit-n-Run to get my Powerball and Louisiana Lotto lottery tickets for the Saturday evening drawing, then went to Wal-Mart to get salad supplies. Once home at 2:15 pm, I found that my new BlackBerry battery had been delivered, and I gathered up the aluminum cans to put in the garage. I then continued reading Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield until about 3:30 pm, when I made my lunch salads for tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. At 4:30 pm Richard and I watched Jeopardy! and ate the last of the gumbo for dinner. He has now gone on to bed; I will finish this Daily Update, take a bath to read the next chapter in The Book: A History of The Bible by Christopher de Hamel, then read one or two short stories in The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Edited by Charles Neider before I go to sleep.

Tomorrow we return to work; after work we will talk with the Scheduling Department about our proposed October vacation and get our flu shots at the Clinic. And in the afternoon I really would like to lock myself in this room and do the filing of papers.

This Thursday afternoon we have a Parting Quote from Viktor Schreckengost, American industrial designer, sculptor, and artist. Born in 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, his father worked at a ceramics factory from which he brought home material for his six children to model. Every week he held a sculpture contest among the children, the winner of which accompanied his father on his weekend trip into the local big city of Alliance, Ohio. Only years later did Schreckengost realize that his father systematically rotated the winner. In the mid-1920s, he enrolled at the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art, or CIA) to study cartoon making, but after seeing an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art he changed his focus to ceramics. He graduated from the college at the Cleveland School of the Arts (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) in 1929 at which time he earned a partial scholarship to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna. To make the trip, he borrowed $1,500 from two owners of Gem Clay, an industrial ceramics manufacturer in Sebring. When he returned six months later, having built a reputation as both a ceramist and as a jazz saxophonist, Schreckengost paid back his loans — a fortuitous event for the men from Gem Clay, since separate bank failures during the Great Depression had otherwise wiped them out. A year later, at the age of 25, he became the youngest faculty member at the CIA. In 1931, Schreckengost won the first of several awards for excellence in ceramics at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and his works were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and elsewhere. By the mid-1930s he had started to pursue his interest in industrial design. For American Limoges, he created the first modern mass-produced dinnerware, called Americana. Along with engineer Ray Spiller, Schreckengost designed the first-cab-over-engine truck for Cleveland’s White Motor Company. By the end of the decade he became the chief bicycle designer for Murray-Ohio, a position held formerly by the famous Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky. In 1939 he released his first design, the 1939 Mercury Bicycle, which was displayed along with four of his sculptures (The Four Elements) at the New York World’s Fair. In the early 1940′s Schreckengost began quietly revolutionizing the manufacture of children’s pedal cars as well. World War II interrupted his design and ceramic work when he joined the US Navy. His talents were soon recognized and he was recruited to develop a system for radar recognition that won him the Secretary of Navy’s commendation. After the war Schreckengost resumed his industrial design career creating products for Murray, Sears, General Electric, Salem China Company, and Harris Printing, among others. Approximately 100 million of his bicycles and pedal cars were manufactured by Murray, which made it the largest bicycle-maker in the world. He retired from industrial design in 1972, but continued teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Art, serving as Professor Emeritus at the institute. In April 1991, at the age of 93, Schreckengost travelled with Henry B. Adams, then curator of the CIA, to Norfolk, Virginia to address the Hampton Roads chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Broad in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings. The centerpiece of the exhibit was the Jazz Bowl, created in 1930. The industrial design portion included many of his famous designs such as safer and cleaner printing presses, economical pedal cars, cab-over-engine trucks, banana-seat bicycles, electric fans, and lawn chairs. Then in his 90s, Schreckengost made many personal appearances at the exhibit. For his 100th birthday in June 2006, The Viktor Schreckengost Foundation planned more than 100 exhibits of his work, with at least one in each state, to celebrate the milestone. The exhibits opened in March 100 days before his 100th birthday. He attended an exhibit in New York City to open the shows, and the night before his birthday he was honored at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights by a large and appreciative crowd. Also in 2006, Schreckengost was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor the federal government can bestow on an American artist. He and the nine other winners were feted in an Oval Office ceremony by President George W. Bush and the First Lady Laura Bush on November 9, 2006 (died 2010): “I remember picking up one request from a gallery in New York City asking a large punch bowl with a New York theme. I thought about it awhile and felt that the City of New York reflected the excitement and energy of jazz music. I listened to a lot of it when I had visited the city. I also felt that the bowl should be blue to mirror the strange blue tinged light that rose over the city at night. I started with plaster, creating a bowl and then went to white porcelain and started to use a rather primitive method of scratching (etching) an image on the surface of the bowl. This was a black and white technique. I then put on the bowl translucent copper and cobalt blue glazes that were then baked on. A week after the bowl was shipped, the gallery called to say that the lady who ordered it was so pleased that she wanted to order two more. She said that her husband Franklin loved it, too. One was to be sent to her house in Hyde Park, New York, and the other was to the White House in Washington. The lady was, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of Paul, Apostle. Today also is the Eighth and Final 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 United in the Reign of Christ, And today is the birthday of our former friend Tim here in town, who has alienated himself from everyone in town (1956).

The story of Paul’s conversion from the virulently anti-Christian Saul to the Apostle Paul is told no less than five times in the New Testament; on the road to Damascus to persecute the Christians there, Saul was blinded by a light from heaven, fell to the ground, and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” When Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?” the answer came back, ”I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” He regained his sight upon being baptised, changed his name to Paul, and became the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Christian theological implication of the Conversion of Paul is that it witnesses the absolution of sin that is offered by faith and grace through belief in Jesus Christ. The magnitude of Paul’s transgressions, such as his attempts to completely eradicate Christianity, indicate that any sinner may be forgiven, no matter how terrible his sins, except for the Unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. Today also is the Eighth and Final Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  For today, we highlight United in the Reign of Christ, and we pray, “Almighty God, Ruler of All, teach us to contemplate the mystery of Your glory. Grant that we may accept Your gifts with humility and respect each person’s dignity. May Your Holy Spirit strengthen us for the spiritual battles which lie ahead, so that united in Christ we may reign with Him in glory. Grant this through Him who humbled Himself and was exalted, who lives with You and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.” Today is also the birthday of our former friend Tim; he has, unfortunately, alienated everyone in town (to the point that he was pointedly not invited to the wedding of our son) (1956).

Not surprisingly after our long day yesterday (even though I did take a four-hour nap between 1:00 am and 11:00 pm), I did not wake up until 10:30 am today. My first order of business was to read the morning paper; I was surprised to see that our LSU Women’s Basketball team beat East Tennessee State 71 – 68 in overtime, as the last text alert from ESPN that I got last night told me that our Lady Tigers had lost the game. I then got online, did my Trivia games, printed out the 2011 application from my National Parks Travelers Club to apply for the appropriate certificate for all the parks I visited (and got stamps for) in 2011 (I have to submit my application by February 29), did my Devotional Reading and said the First Day of my Novena to St. Blaise, and addressed and mailed birthday cards out to Callie’s mother Lisa here in town and to my friend Linda in West Virginia.

At 1:15 pm I headed out into town; my first stop was at the thrift store, where I left off a Hefty bag of jeans and jeans shorts. After I got my Powerball and Louisiana Lotto lottery tickets for tonight’s drawing at the Hit-n-Run convenience store, I ate lunch and read at McDonald’s. I then went to Wal-Mart, where I got the stuff that Richard had put on a store list for me. I got home a little after 2:30 pm, did a couple of Advance Daily Update Drafts through next Thursday, then occupied myself with reading until I had finished By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen. After Richard and I watched Jeopardy! I did my book review for this weblog and for my Goodreads and Facebook accounts for By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen. I then started reading Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield and fixed myself some toast, while a very large and nasty thunderstorm system started to move slowly through our area. Blackjack had come in earlier; when the lightening and thunder started she insisted on going outside and immediately went under the house. I then got on the computer to work on today’s Daily Update (saving every few minutes, as the storms are still coming through), and I printed out a claims form for our medical plan flexible spending account. As the storms seem to be abating, I think it’s safe for me to take a bath and to start reading The Book: A History of The Bible by Christopher de Hamel, and then to read some stories in The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Edited by Charles Neider before I go to sleep.

Tomorrow I will try to get up relatively early to do my laundry; I will also at some point during the day get my salad supplies and make lunch salads for the early park of my upcoming work week.

Today’s Parting Quote comes to us from Philip Johnson, American architect. Born in 1906 in Cleveland, Ohio, he studied at Harvard University as an undergraduate, where he focused on history and philosophy, particularly the work of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. Johnson interrupted his education with several extended trips to Europe; these trips became the pivotal moment of his education, as he visited Chartres, the Parthenon, and many other ancient monuments, becoming increasingly fascinated with architecture. In 1928 Johnson met with architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was at the time designing the German Pavilion for the Barcelona exhibition of 1929. The meeting was a revelation for Johnson and formed the basis for a lifelong relationship of both collaboration and competition. He returned from Germany as a proselytizer for the new architecture. Touring Europe more comprehensively with his friends Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Henry-Russell Hitchcock to examine firsthand recent trends in architecture, the three assembled their discoveries as the landmark show “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922″ at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1932. The show was profoundly influential and is seen as the introduction of modern architecture to the American public. It introduced such pivotal architects as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. The exhibition was also notable for a controversy: architect Frank Lloyd Wright withdrew his entries in pique that he was not more prominently featured. Johnson continued to work as a proponent of modern architecture, using the Museum of Modern Art as a bully pulpit. He arranged for Le Corbusier’s first visit to the United States in 1935, then worked to bring Mies and Marcel Breuer to the US as emigres. During the Great Depression he resigned his post at MoMA to try his hand at journalism and agrarian populist politics. His enthusiasm centered on the critique of the liberal welfare state, whose “failure” seemed to be much in evidence during the 1930s. As a correspondent Johnson observed the Nuremberg Rallies in Germany and covered the invasion of Poland in 1939. The invasion proved the breaking point in Johnson’s interest in journalism or politics, as he returned to enlist in the US Army. After a couple of self-admittedly undistinguished years in uniform, he returned to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to finally pursue his ultimate career of architect. Johnson’s early influence as a practicing architect was his use of glass; his masterpiece was the Glass House (1949) he designed as his own residence in New Canaan, Connecticut, a profoundly influential work.  The building is an essay in minimal structure, geometry, proportion, and the effects of transparency and reflection. After completing several houses in the idiom of Mies and Breuer, he joined Mies van der Rohe as the New York associate architect for the 39-story Seagram Building (1956). Johnson was pivotal in steering the commission towards Mies, working with Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of the CEO of Seagram. This collaboration of architects and client resulted in the bronze-and-glass tower on Park Avenue. Completing the Seagram Building with Mies also decisively marked a shift in his career. After this accomplishment, Johnson’s practice enlarged as projects came in from the public realm—such as coordinating the master plan of Lincoln Center and designing that complex’s New York State Theater. Meanwhile, Johnson began to grow bored with the orthodoxies of the International Style he had championed; although startling when constructed, the glass and steel tower (indeed many idioms of the modern movement) had by the 1960s become commonplace the world over. He eventually rejected much of the metallic appearance of earlier International Style buildings, and began designing spectacular, crystalline structures uniformly sheathed in glass. From 1967 to 1991 Johnson collaborated with John Burgee. This was by far his most productive period — certainly by the measure of scale — he became known at this time as builder of iconic office towers, including Minneapolis’s IDS Tower. That building’s distinctive stepbacks (called “zogs” by the architect) created an appearance that has since become one of Minneapolis’s trademarks and the crown jewel of its skyline. In 1980, the Crystal Cathedral was completed for Rev. Robert A. Schuller’s famed megachurch, which became a Southern California landmark. The AT&T Building in Manhattan, now the Sony Building, was completed in 1984 and was immediately controversial for its neo-Georgian pediment (Chippendale top). At the time, it was seen as provocation on a grand scale: crowning a Manhattan skyscraper with a shape echoing a historical wardrobe top defied every precept of the modernist aesthetic: historical pattern had been effectively outlawed among architects for years. In retrospect other critics have seen the AT&T Building as the first Postmodernist statement, necessary in the context of modernism’s aesthetic cul-de-sac. In 1987, Johnson was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Houston (died 2005): “All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.”

This is a marvelous book about fencing by Richard Cohen, a British fencer who competed at three Olympic Games. He goes into just about everything that is possible to discuss about fencing, which has always been a sport that has fascinated me. This history goes into dueling, history, world figures, swords in literature, the stage, and movies, the making of swords – just about the only thing not included is the swordplay in the Kill Bill movies, which came out after the 2002 publication date of this book. (Alas.)

After a Prologue, the book has several main sections: From Egypt to Waterloo (containing a chapter on France In The Age of The Musketeers), The Search for Perfection, The Duels High Noon, Wounded Warriors (the chapter Scars of Glory has to do with the specialized dueling at German universities), Great Powers, and Faustian Pacts (about cheating at this most honorable of sports).

The author, being a fencer of renown himself, goes into great detail about world champion and Olympic champion fencers of the past and present, possibly into too much detail. At the same time, I would have appreciated very basic photos and explanations as to the differences between foil, épée, and sabre, both in terms of the weapons themselves and what parts of the body are legitimate targets (which information, of course, one can get online).

With those caveats, this is a dandy book, giving you everything you ever wanted to know about swords, sword-fighting, and fencing.

Today we honor Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor (died 1622). And today is the Seventh 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 the Good Shepherd. 

Born in 1567 at Château de Thorens, Savoy (part of modern France) to a well-placed Savoyard family, the parents of today’s Saint intended that Francis become a lawyer, enter politics, and carry on the family line and power. He studied at La Roche and Annecy in France, was taught by Jesuits, and attended the Collège de Clermont in Paris, France at age 12. In his early teens, Francis began to believe in pre-destination, and was so afraid that he was peremptorily condemned to Hell that he became ill and eventually was confined to bed. However, in January 1587 at the Church of Saint Stephen, he overcame the crisis, decided that whatever God had in store for him was for the best, and dedicated his life to God. He then studied law and theology at the University of Padua, Italy, and earned a doctorate in both fields. He returned home and found a political position as Senate advocate. It was at this point that he received a message telling him to “Leave all and follow Me.” He took this as a call to the priesthood, a move his family fiercely opposed, especially when he refused a marriage that had been arranged for him. However, he pursued a devoted prayer life, and his gentle ways won over the family. Becoming a priest, in 1593 he was appointed provost of the diocese of Geneva, Switzerland, a stronghold of Calvinists. His simple, clear explanations of Catholic doctrine, and his gentle way with everyone, brought many back to the Roman Church. He even used sign language in order to bring the message to the deaf. Becoming Bishop of Geneva in 1602, he travelled and evangelized throughout the Duchy of Savoy, working with children whenever he could, and was the friend of Saint Vincent de Paul. He turned down a wealthy French bishopric to continue working where God had placed him, and with Saint Jeanne de Chantal he helped found the Order of the Visitation. A prolific correspondent, many of his letters have survived; he is also the author of Introduction to the Devout Life (still in print), addressed to Christians in all walks of life, not just to those in a professional religious vocation. Besides being the Patron Saint of the deaf, he is also the Patron Saint of authors and confessors. And today is the Seventh Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; for today, we highlight Changed by the Good Shepherd, and we pray, “Father of all, You call us to be one flock in Your Son, Jesus Christ. He is our Good Shepherd who invites us to lie down in green pastures, leads us beside still waters, and restores our souls. In following him, may we so care for others that all see in us the love of the one true Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.”

While I was blow-drying my hair this morning my hair dryer died, and I had to finish drying my hair with my travel hair dryer. On our way to work I did my Devotional Reading, and Richard’s truck reached 250,000 miles on the odometer. Once at work, we signed the Early Out list as the #1 and #2 dealers on the A side. Richard was on Mini-Baccarat, and I was the relief dealer for Pai-Gow and Mini-Baccarat. To our surprise, we got out at 4:00 am.

We arrived home at 5:00 am; I started the Weekly Computer Maintenance, finished reading The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel, and took a nap from 5:45 am to 10:15 am. When I woke up I read the morning paper, then finished the Weekly Computer Maintenance. I then did my book review for my weblog and for my Goodreads and Facebook accounts for The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel, requested The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (the next Sci-Fi Fantasy Book Club book, even though I won’t be able to attend the meeting) and The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton (our next Third Tuesday Book Group at Barnes & Noble book) from the Lafayette Public Library, did some Advance Daily Update Drafts through Friday, and worked on the photos for my Daily Updates.

I left the house at 1:15 pm and ate lunch at D.C.’s Sports Bar and Steakhouse, where I read in By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen while eating my lunch. I then went to Wal-Mart, where I got a new umbrella for the truck, a new hair dryer, and a large cuff for my blood pressure monitor. I arrived home at 2:30 pm and did more photo work and Advance Daily Update Drafts (through next Monday) for my weblog; I also got a call from the pharmacist at Wal-Mart letting me know that they now have the large cuffs for blood pressure monitors in stock.

After we watched Jeopardy! Richard and I left the house at 5:00 pm. At 6:00 pm we were at the Lafayette Public Library – Southside Branch, where I returned The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel (and paid an overdue fine of $1.50), and took out The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, and Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield, which were both on the Hold shelf for me. We then headed for Baton Rouge. Just as we parked the truck at Perkins Rowe, I got the text message that our LSU Women’s Basketball team was beaten by East Tennessee State by the score of 61 to 63. From 7:45 pm to 9:00 pm Richard and I had a very good meal to celebrate our upcoming 28th anniversary at Texas de Brazil. We got home just before 11:00 pm, and now I am going to go to bed.

Tomorrow I will do laundry and do filing; so I am planning a fairly low-impact day.

Our Tuesday Evening Parting Quote comes from Pernell Roberts, American stage, movie and television actor and singer. Born in 1928 in Waycross, Georgia, during his high school years, he played the horn, acted in school and church plays and sang in local USO shows. He attended, but did not graduate from, Georgia Tech. While serving for two years in the United States Marine Corps, he played the tuba and horn in the Marine Corps Band, although he was also skilled in the sousaphone and percussion. He later attended, but also without graduating, the University of Maryland, where he had his his first exposure to acting in classical theater. He appeared in four productions while a student, including Othello and Antigone, but left school to act in summer stock. In 1949 he made his professional stage debut with Moss Hart and Kitty Carlysle in The Man Who Came to Dinner at the Olney Theatre in Olney, Maryland. Roberts moved to Washington D.C. in 1950, supporting himself in a variety of jobs while performing with the Arena Stage Theater. In 1952 he relocated to New York City where he appeared first off-Broadway in one-act operas and ballets with the North American Lyric Theater, with the Shakespearewrights at the Equity Library Theater, and later on Broadway with performances in Tonight in Samarkand, The Lovers opposite Joanne Woodward, and A Clearing in the Woods with Robert Culp and Kim Stanley. He won a Drama Desk Award in 1955 for his performance in an off-Broadway rendition of Macbeth, which was followed by the role of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Roberts then moved to Los Angeles and made his television debut in 1956 in the “Shadow of Suspicion” episode of Kraft Television Theater, followed by guest starring roles in The Whirlybirds, Gunsmoke, Sugarfoot, and Cheyenne. He signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1957 and made his film debut a year later as one of Burl Ives’ contentious sons in Desire Under the Elms (1958). The film was nominated for a Best Cinematography Academy Award. He also landed character roles in such features as The Sheepman (1958). He continued to guest star on television shows such as episodes of Shirley Temple Storybook Theater (“The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “Rumplestiltskin”, “The Sleeping Beauty”, and “Hiawatha”), the live-broadcast Matinee Theater where he starred in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and later in The Heart’s Desire, Trackdown, Buckskin, and episodes of Zane Grey Theater. in 1959 he continued his TV work and co-starred with James Coburn in the film Ride Lonesome. That same year he was cast in the television series Bonanza as rancher Ben Cartwright’s eldest son, Adam. Roberts, having been a highly trained stage actor, was not happy with the limited role of his character in the series, especially that his character, a man in his 30′s, had to continually defer to the wishes of his widowed father. Finally, after disagreements with writers and producers over script quality, characterization and Bonanza’s refusal to allow him to perform elsewhere while on contract, Roberts left the series in 1965, largely to return to legitimate theater. During Roberts’ Bonanza years, he recorded Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies, a folk music album for the Bonanza box set albums. The series ran until 1973, with his character’s storyline kept open in case he returned, which he never did. After Bonanza Roberts played the straw hat circuit, regional theaters, and episodic TV, which gave him the opportunity to play a wide variety of roles. He later returned to Broadway and toured with Ingrid Bergman in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, in which he played the title role. He continued television work, and in 1979 starred in the television series Trapper John, M.D. (1979–86), receiving an Emmy nomination in 1981; and playing the character twice as long as Wayne Rogers had (1972–1975) on the CBS M*A*S*H series. In the 1980s and 1990s, playing off his Trapper John M.D. persona, Roberts acted as TV spokesman for Ecotrin, a brand of analgesic tablets (died 2010): “I feel I am an aristocrat in my field of endeavor. My being part of Bonanza was like Isaac Stern sitting in with Lawrence Welk.”

I had always understood that during the time when the Nazis were in control of Germany the Christian Churches were lonely bastions of sanity, defending human rights against the evil Nazis and only accommodating to the Nazis insofar as was absolutely necessary for the survival of the Churches. This very scholarly book tells a very different story, and I am very glad I read it, although, since the book reads very much like a thesis, it is not at all a book for the popular press.

The Germans had lost the First World War, and there were many elements within Germany who blamed the Jews for the outcome. The Nazis came to power on a platform of saving Germany and making Germany great again by eliminating non-Aryans, especially those non-Aryans who were Jewish (and who thus were determined to destroy Germany). Meanwhile, the Christian Churches (almost entirely Lutheran) had a turf war, between those who felt that the Old Testament should be retained and those who felt that the Old Testament should be thrown out as being too Jewish. At this same time, theologians, working with the pervasive anti-Semitism within the church, worked to determine that Jesus was not Jewish, and that it was his opposition to the Jews that got him crucified. In 1939 theologians opened the Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des J’udischen Einflusses auf das Deutsche Kirchliche Leben (Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life), which worked closely with the government and the University of Jena in producing papers, conferences, and a New Testament that were shorn of Jewish content, in accordance with Nazi racism.

Essentially, the entire German people were subject to a pervasive anti-Semitism in favor of what was truly German. (We in America have no grounds to be smug; racism against people of color was simply accepted as the prevailing way of life until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960′s.) The Nazis essentially took this anti-Semitism to a whole new level, pledging to make Germany great by removing all Jews and Jewish influence on German life, and the churches had no problem at all with this policy. As Jesus had fought valiantly against the Jews, so Hitler was fighting valiantly against the same Jews who wished to destroy Germany.

This is a very complex book, with a horrifying subject; I had no clue that organized religion worked so closely with the Nazis, although organized religion did not want to know the details of just how the Jews were being “removed” from German life. But I feel better for having learned about this subject (forewarned is forearmed), and I would recommend this book to anyone who is willing to wade through the forest of details contained in this book.

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.”

Today is the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. Today we honor Saint Vincent, Deacon and Martyr (died 304). Today is also the Fifth 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 the Peace of the Risen Lord. And as today is the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision of Row v. Wade, today would normally be a Day of Prayer and Penance for Life, but this Day will be postponed until tomorrow, since today is a Sunday.

Born in Heusca, Aragon (in modern Spain), today’s Saint was a friend of Saint Valerius of Saragossa in Spain, and served as his deacon. Imprisoned and tortured in Valencia, Spain for his faith during the persecutions of Diocletian, he spent part of his time being burned on a gridiron. While in prison, he converted his jailer. He was finally offered release if he would give up the scripture texts for burning, but he refused. After further torture, he was released to the care of his friends; they cleaned him up and put him in a bed, where he promptly died. He is the Patron Saint of  Lisbon, Portugal, and of all things having to do with wine and wine-making. Today is also the Fifth Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; for today, we highlight Changed by the Peace of the Risen Lord, and we pray, “Loving and merciful God, teach us the joy of sharing in Your peace. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit so that we may tear down the walls of hostility separating us. May the risen Christ, who is our peace, help us to overcome all division and unite us as members of His household. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, to whom with You and the Holy Spirit be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.” And, as today is the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, today would normally be a Day of Prayer and Penance for Life, but this Day will be postponed until tomorrow, since today is a Sunday.

On Saturday night I charged up my spare BlackBerry battery, and charged up my camera. Also our LSU Men’s Basketball team lost their game with #17 Florida by the score of 64 to 76.

Today I did my Devotional Reading on our way to work; once at work, Richard was dealing on Let It Ride, and I was the relief dealer for Pai-Gow, Mini-Baccarat, and (for one rotation) a Blackjack game. Otherwise, our day at work was uneventful.

Once home from work, I read the Sunday papers and ate my lunch salad; I then took a nap. While I slept, our LSU Women’s Basketball team lost their game with Arkansas by the score of 52 to 72, I did not go to Mass (this is the second weekend I’ve missed), and Michelle came in; Richard reported that she seemed much better in mental outlook. I woke up about 8:00 pm, and figured that I’d better do my Daily Update before going back to sleep.

Tomorrow is Monday; besides working, I need to get a haircut in the afternoon and to do the Weekly Computer Maintenance.  

Our Parting Quote on this Third Sunday in Ordinary Time comes to us from Joe Paterno, American college football coach. Born as Joseph Paterno in 1926 in Brooklyn, New York, after serving a year in the Army, he attended Brown University; where he played quarterback and cornerback. Paterno graduated with the Brown University Class of 1950 and joined his college coach Rip Engle as an assistant coach at Penn State in 1950. Engle retired after the 1965 season, and Paterno was named his successor. For the rest of his professional life, he was the head coach at Penn State. The Pittsburgh Steelers offered their head coach position to Paterno in 1969, an offer he considered seriously. Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham contacted Paterno in 1969 to see if he would accept the vacant Michigan job; Paterno turned down the offer. In 1972 he was offered the head coaching position by the New England Patriots. He accepted their offer, but only three weeks later decided to back out of it. The New York Giants reportedly offered Paterno their head coaching spot numerous times during the team’s struggles during the 1970s and early 1980s. He led the Nittany Lions to National Championships in 1982 and 1986; in the latter year he was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. In 1995 Paterno was forced to apologize for a profanity-laced tirade directed at Rutgers then-head coach Doug Graber at the conclusion of a nationally televised game. Paterno was well-known for his gameday image—thick glasses, rolled-up pants (by his admission, to save on cleaning bills), white socks and Brooklyn-tinged speech. Reflecting the growth in Penn State’s stature during his tenure, Beaver Stadium was expanded six times during his tenure, more than doubling in size in the process (from 46,284 in 1966 to 106,572 in 2001). He was accused of “making light of sexual assault” in 2006 by the National Organization for Women which called for his resignation. In November 2006 Paterno was involved in a sideline collision during a game against Wisconsin. He was unable to avoid the play and was struck in the knee by Badgers linebacker DeAndre Levy’s helmet. Paterno, then 79 years old, suffered a fractured shin bone and damage to knee ligaments. He was was involved in a road rage incident in 2007. Also in 2007 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach, and after five years of court battles, the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) revealed Paterno’s salary in November 2007: $512,664. The figure was not inclusive of other compensation, such as money from television and apparel contracts as well as other bonuses that Paterno and other football bowl subdivision coaches earned, said Robert Gentzel, SERS communications director. In 2008, due to a litany of football players’ off-the-field legal problems, including 46 Penn State football players having faced 163 criminal charges according to an ESPN analysis of Pennsylvania court records and reports dating to 2002, ESPN questioned Paterno’s and the university’s control over the Penn State football program by producing and airing an ESPN’s Outside the Lines feature covering the subject. Paterno was criticized for his response dismissing the allegations as a “witch hunt”, and chiding reporters for asking about problems. On November 6, 2010, he recorded his 400th career victory with a 35–21 victory over Northwestern. Facing a 21–0 deficit, Penn State scored 35 unanswered points, tying Paterno’s largest comeback victory as a coach.  The 2009 season was Paterno’s 44th as head coach of the Nittany Lions, passing Amos Alonzo Stagg for the most years as head coach at a single institution in Division I. In 2009 Paterno was named to Sporting News’ list of the 50 greatest coaches of all time (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, college basketball, and college football). He is listed in position 13. On October 29, 2011, Paterno recorded his 409th career victory with a 10–7 victory over Illinois. Facing a 7–3 deficit, Penn State drove 86 yards on their final drive to score a touchdown. A missed 42-yard field goal by Illinois which would have sent the game to overtime secured Paterno’s 409th victory. With this victory, Paterno passed Eddie Robinson to become the winningest head coach in Division I college football. He trails the leader, John Gagliardi of Division III Saint John’s University (Minnesota), by 73 wins. Paterno holds more bowl victories (24) than any coach in history. He also tops the list of bowl appearances with 37. He has a bowl record of 24 wins, 12 losses, and 1 tie following a defeat in the 2011 Outback Bowl. Paterno is the only coach with the distinction of having won each of the current four major bowls—Rose, Orange, Fiesta, and Sugar—as well as the Cotton Bowl Classic, at least once. Under Paterno, Penn State won at least three bowl games each decade since 1970. On November 5, 2011, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was arrested on 40 counts relating to sexual abuse of eight young boys over a 15-year period, including alleged incidents that occurred at Penn State. A 2011 grand jury investigation reported that then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno in 2002 that he had seen Sandusky abusing a 10-year-old boy in Penn State football’s shower facilities. According to the report, Paterno notified Athletic Director Tim Curley the next day about the incident, and later notified Gary Schultz, director of business and finance, who oversaw the University Police. Prosecutors have stated that Paterno was not accused of any wrongdoing, as he fulfilled his legal obligation to report the incident to his immediate supervisor, Curley. However, he was harshly criticized for not reporting the incident to police himself, or at least seeing to it that it was reported, as many have concluded from the facts that are currently known. On the night of November 8, hundreds of students gathered in front on Paterno’s home in support of the coach. Paterno thanked the crowd and announced the following day that he would retire at the end of the season. Later that evening, however, the Board of Trustees voted to relieve him of his coaching duties effective immediately. On January 12, the board of trustees announced that Paterno would remain a tenured member of the Penn State faculty even though he was no longer a coach, and Penn State was to honor his contract as if he retired at the end of the season. The details of his retirement were still being finalized when he died (2012): “You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional.”

Today we honor Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr (died c. 304). Today is the Fourth Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with the overall theme for 2012 being “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 the Lord’s Victory over Evil. 

Born about 291, according to legend the Prefect Sempronius wished today’s Saint (who was 12 or 13) to marry his son; she did not want to marry but wanted to have God in her life, and on Agnes’ refusal he condemned her to death. As Roman law did not permit the execution of virgins, Sempronius had a naked Agnes dragged through the streets to a brothel. As she prayed, her hair grew and covered her body. It was also said that all of the men who attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind. When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that the blood of Agnes poured to the stadium floor where other Christians soaked up the blood with cloths. Her story was well known in ancient Christianity; an early account of her death, stressing her steadfastness and virginity, but not stressing the legendary features of the tradition, was given by Saint Ambrose (died 397). In modern times, on this feast day two lambs are brought from the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the Pope to be blessed. On Holy Thursday these lambs will be shorn, and from their wool will be woven the pallium which the pope gives to a newly consecrated metropolitan archbishop as a sign of his jurisdiction and his union with the pope.Today is the Fourth Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity;  For today, we highlight Changed by the Lord’s Victory over Evil, and we pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You for Your victory over evil and division. We praise You for Your sacrifice and Your resurrection that conquer death. Help us in our everyday struggle against all adversity. May the Holy Spirit give us strength and wisdom so that, following You, we may overcome evil with good, and division with reconciliation. Amen.”

When I woke up, I was aware that my earliest call-in at the casino (on January 21, 2011) dropped off; I now have only one call-in at work, from back in May. Michelle was not at home (she spent the night elsewhere); we put the root crystals that we had bought yesterday down the sewer pipes to keep the tree roots at bay, and headed off to work with my copy of Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese to lend to my friend and co-worker Christine. Along the way I did my Devotional Reading. Once at work, I spent my eight hours being the relief dealer for Pai-Gow, Mini-Baccarat, and (at various times) Let It Ride and Blackjack; Richard started out on Pai-Gow, then when they closed his table, he was on Blackjack, then ended the day on Let It Ride. On my breaks I posted my Daily Update for yesterday, January 20, 2012.

Once home from work I set up my medications for next week (no prescriptions to renew) and ate my lunch salad while reading the paper; meanwhile, Richard paid the bills (our paychecks hit the bank). I then headed off to the Adoration Chapel for my Weekly Hour of Eucharistic Adoration, during which I read the January 16 – 23, 2012 issue of my Jesuit America magazine and started reading the January / February 2012 issue of The Bible Today. Back home, I checked out my various sites of interest on the Internet and read in By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen. Michelle came home, and indicated that she did not want to talk. At 5:00 pm Richard and I went out to eat dinner at Nick’s on Second Street; we had not been there since the Wedding Rehearsal Dinner in December 2010. (I don’t know why it’s been so long; the food is very good, although the service is a tad spotty.) We got home at 5:45 pm, and I set to work on today’s Daily Update. Once I finish, it’s off to my bath.

Tomorrow is Sunday; work, followed by Weekly Computer Maintenance. And I hope at some point we return to winter-like temperatures; it has been unseasonably warm in SouthWestCentral Louisiana, with the temperature today reaching 81°. (Our average high for January 21 is 60°.)

Our Parting Quote upon this Saturday afternoon comes to us from Paul Quarrington, Canadian novelist, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, musician and educator. Born in 1953 in Toronto, Ontario, he went to the University of Toronto but dropped out after less than two years of study. He began writing novels in 1978 while working as the bass player for the group Joe Hall and the Continental Drift and as the guitar accompanist for Cathy Stewart, a Canadian singer who was popular at the time. His first notable novel was King Leary, published in 1987, which received the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1988, the same year that Whale Music was published. In 1988 he published his first non-fiction work, Hometown Heroes: On the Road with Canada’s National Hockey Team. Quarrington was an influential figure in Canadian literature, not only as an author, but also through his participation in teaching (Humber College and University of Toronto), publishing circles, organizations and events. He won the Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1991 for Perfectly Normal, a comedy that combined ice hockey and grand opera. Quarrington’s adaptation, with director Richard J. Lewis, of Whale Music was nominated for numerous Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, in 1994. Actor Maury Chaykin won best actor for his portrayal of the drug-addled Desmond Howl. Quarrington collaborated with the band Rheostatics on the Whale Music film soundtrack, including a songwriting credit on the band’s most successful hit single, “Claire”. He was also the lead singer/guitarist for the blues/roots/country ensemble Porkbelly Futures. Their first CD, Way Past Midnight, was released in late 2005 by Wildflower Records (owned by singer Judy Collins) and spent six months on the “Americana” charts. Their second CD, Porkbelly Futures, was released by Cordova Bay Entertainment Group in April 2008. It contained many of Quarrington’s original compositions. His novel The Ravine was published in March 2008. Quarrington also worked in the television industry, acting as writer and/or producer on such shows as Due South, Power Play and Moose TV, the latter winning Best Comedy from the CFTPA Indie Awards 2008. He participated in the collaborative “Canadian Songbook” tour in 2008 with Murray McLauchlan, Stephen Fearing and Catherine MacLellan. Even after being diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2009, Quarrington continued his plans to embark on various concert tours with Porkbelly Futures, while continuing to produce his own solo CD and the Porkbellys third release; complete his non-fiction memoir Cigar Box Banjo: Notes on Life and Music (2010), deliver multiple screenplays for episodes of a television series for Shaftesbury Films (Notes on Euphoria) as well as give generously on camera as the featured subject of a documentary film initiated by he and colleague Judith Keenan; the film, Paul Quarrington: Life in Music, is an adaptation tied to his written memoir. In 2009 the Writers’ Trust of Canada awarded Quarrington its Matt Cohen Prize for a distinguished lifetime contribution to Canadian literature. At the time of his death Quarrington had completed a short film adaptation of The Ravine and was collaborating on a television series adaptation of that novel, which he claimed to be semi-autobiographical (died 2010): “[The Ravine' s] about a writer who squanders his talents in television, drinks too much, screws around and ruins his marriage. The reason it’s ‘semi-autobiographical’ is the guy’s name is ‘Phil’.”

Today we honor Saint Fabian, Pope and Martyr (died c.250), and Saint Sebastian, Martyr (died 288). Today is the Third Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with the overall theme for theme for 2012 “We will all be changed by the Victory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 15:51-58); today we highlight Changed by the Suffering Servant. And since today is the Third Friday in January, today is also the date of the Louisiana celebration of Arbor Day. And starting at sunset tonight is the Eve of Saint Agnes, when according to an old folk superstition a girl could see her future husband if she performed certain rites before going to sleep this night.

Turning first to Saint Fabian, he was a layman and farmer when he came into Rome on a day when a new pope was to be elected. A dove flew into the building where Fabian was observing the deadlocked election proceedings and settled on his head; the gathered clergy and laity took this as a sign that Fabian had been anointed, and he was chosen Pope by acclamation. As Pope, he sent Saint Dionysius and other missionaries to Gaul and condemned the heresies of Privatus. He was martyred in the persecutions of Decius; his relics are long gone, but the stone that covered his grave is still in the catacombs of Saint Callistus in Rome. We also honor Saint Sebastian, Martyr (died 288), one of the Saints whose story owes much to legend. Born about 256 in Narbonne, Gaul (part of modern France), he was the son of a wealthy Roman family and educated in Milan. He became an Officer of the Imperial Roman army, and captain of the guard, thus becoming a favorite of Diocletian. During Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians, Sebastian visited them in prison, bringing supplies and comfort. He is reported to have healed the wife of a brother soldier by making the Sign of the Cross over her, and converted soldiers and a governor to Christianity. Charged as a Christian, Sebastian was tied to a tree, shot with arrows, and left for dead. He survived, recovered, and returned to preach to Diocletian. The emperor then had him beaten to death. During the 14th century, the random nature of infection with the Black Death caused people to liken the plague to their villages being shot by an army of nature’s archers. In desperation, they prayed for the intercession of a saint associated with archers, and Saint Sebastian became associated with the plague. He is also the Patron Saint of  athletes and police officers. Turning to the Third Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, for today we highlight Changed by the Suffering Servant, and we pray, “God of consolation, you have transformed the shame of the cross into a sign of victory. Grant that we may be united around the Cross of your Son to worship Him for the mercy offered through his suffering. May the Holy Spirit open our eyes and our hearts, so that we may help those who suffer to experience your closeness. ; You who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.” Since today is the Third Friday in January, today is also the date of the Louisiana celebration of Arbor Day. Each state has its own date, in accordance with local growing seasons; if you click on the national Arbor Day site and go waaay down to the bottom of the page, you can click on “your state” to find out your local Arbor Day celebration. The National Date is the Fourth Friday in April, by which time all of our Louisiana trees have already budded out, bloomed, and done whatever else trees do in late spring. And starting at sunset tonight is the Eve of Saint Agnes. There was a folk superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; she was to go to bed without any supper, undress herself so that she was completely naked without looking behind her, and lie on her bed with her hands under the pillow and looking up to the heavens. Then her future husband would appear in her dream, kiss her, and feast with her. In 1819 English poet John Keats wrote his long poem The Eve of St. Agnes (published 1820), based on this superstition; the poem begins, “ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.”

On Thursday night I got a text message from Michelle telling me she would be coming in late tonight with a lot of her stuff. Also, our LSU Women’s Basketball team lost their game with #9 Tennessee by the score of 56 to 65.

When we woke up for work, Michelle was sleeping on the couch; when we left the house to go to work, we noticed stuff of hers on the back porch, and her car was full of stuff. As usual, I did my Devotional Reading on the way to work. Once at work, I spent my eight hours dealing Mississippi Stud, with Richard at the next table dealing Three Card Poker. We also got the word that we are no longer to wear our Coushatta Casino Resort football jerseys to work on Sundays.

On our way home from work I read the January 16, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated, and finished reading the January, 2012 issue of National Geographic. We stopped at Oil X-Press so that they could do the radiator flush and put antifreeze in Richard’s truck, and stopped at the hardware store for root crystal stuff (to put down our sewer pipes to keep tree roots out). Once home, I ate my lunch salad and read the paper; then I took a nap until Saturday.

Our Friday Parting Quote comes to us from Etta James, American singer. Born as Jamesetta Hawkins in 1938 in Los Angeles, California, to a 14-year-old mother, her father is unknown, but possibly was Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone.
James lived with a series of caregivers, and received her first professional vocal training at the age of five from James Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir, at the St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles. In 1950 her mother took her to the Fillmore district in San Francisco. Within a couple of years James began listening to doo-wop and was inspired to form a girl group called the Creolettes (due to the members’ light skinned complexions). The 14-year-old girls met musician Johnny Otis, who took the group under his wing, helping them sign to Modern Records and changing their name from the Creolettes to the Peaches; he also gave the singer her stage name, reversing Jamesetta into Etta James. Their song “Dance with Me, Henry” (originally “Roll With Me, Henry” but changed to avoid censorship due to the subtle title) was released in 1955. In February of that year the song reached number one on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Tracks chart, and its success gave the group an opening spot on Little Richard’s national tour. James reportedly went steady with B.B. King when she was 16, and she believed the hit single “Sweet Sixteen” by B.B. King was about her. While on tour with Richard, pop singer Georgia Gibbs angered James by recording her version of “Dance with Me, Henry”, which was released under the title “The Wallflower” and became a crossover hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. After leaving the Peaches, James had another R&B hit with “Good Rockin’ Daddy”, but struggled with follow-ups. When her contract with Modern came up in 1960 she decided to sign with Leonard Chess’ namesake label, Chess Records, and shortly afterwards got involved in a relationship with singer Harvey Fuqua, founder of the doo-wop group The Moonglows. James
had her first hit singles with Chess Records under duets with Fuqua, including “If I Can’t Have You” and “Spoonful”. Her first solo hit was the doo-wop styled rhythm and blues number, “All I Could Do Was Cry”, becoming a number two R&B hit. Leonard Chess had envisioned James as a classic ballad stylist who had potential to cross over to the pop charts and soon surrounded the singer with violins and other string instruments. The first string-laden ballad James recorded was “My Dearest Darling”, which peaked in the top five of the R&B chart. James was notable singing background vocals on label mate Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA”. Her debut album, At Last!, was released in late 1960 and was noted for its varied choice in music from jazz standards to blues numbers to doo-wop and R&B. The album also included James’ future classic “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “A Sunday Kind of Love”. In early 1961 James released what became her signature song, “At Last”, which reached number two on the R&B chart and number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100. Though the song wasn’t as successful as expected, it has become the most remembered version of the song. James followed that up with “Trust in Me”, which also included string instruments. Later that same year James released a second studio album, The Second Time Around. The album took the same direction as her previous album, covering many jazz and pop standards, and using strings on many of the songs spawning two hit singles, “The Fool That I Am” and “Don’t Cry Baby”. James started adding gospel elements in her music the following year releasing “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”, which peaked at number four on the R&B chart and was also a top 40 pop hit. That success was quickly followed by “Stop the Wedding”, which reached number six on the R&B charts and also had gospel elements. In 1963 she had another major hit with “Pushover” and released the live album Etta James Rocks the House, which was recorded at the New Era Club in Nashville, Tennessee. After a couple years scoring minor hits James’ career started to suffer after 1965. After a period of isolation, she returned to recording in 1967 and reemerged with more ballsy R&B numbers thanks to her recording at the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama releasing her comeback hit “Tell Mama”, which was co-written by Clarence Carter and reached number ten R&B and number twenty three pop. An album of the same name was also released that year and included her take of Otis Redding’s “Security”. The B-side of “Tell Mama” was “I’d Rather Go Blind”, which became a blues classic in its own right and was recorded by many other artists. Following this success James became an on-demand concert performer though she never again reached the heyday of her early-to-mid 1960s success. Though James continued to record for Chess, she was devastated by the death of Chess founder Leonard Chess in 1969. She continued to chart in the R&B Top 40 in the early 1970s with singles such as “Losers Weepers” (1970) and “I Found a Love” (1972). James ventured into rock and funk with the release of her self-titled album in 1973 with production from famed rock producer Gabriel Mekler, who had worked with Steppenwolf and Janis Joplin, who had admired James and had covered “Tell Mama” in concert. The album, known for its mixtures of musical styles, was nominated for a Grammy Award. The album didn’t produce any major hits, neither did the follow-up, Out On the Street Again, in 1974, though like Etta James before it, the album was also critically acclaimed. James continued to record for Chess releasing two more albums in 1978, Etta Is Betta Than Evah and Deep in the Night, which saw the singer incorporating more rock-based music in her repertoire. That same year, James was the opening act for The Rolling Stones and also performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Following this brief success, however, she left Chess Records and didn’t record for another ten years as she struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism for the better part of a decade. Though she continued to perform, little was heard of Etta James until 1987 when she was seen performing “Rock & Roll Music” with Chuck Berry on his Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll documentary. In 1989 James signed with Island Records and released the albums Seven Year Itch and Stickin’ to My Guns, produced by Barry Beckett and recorded at FAME Studios. James participated with rap singer Def Jef for the song “Droppin’ Rhymes on Drums”, which mixed James’ jazz vocals with hip-hop. In 1992 James released The Right Time produced by Jerry Wexler on Elektra Records and the following year she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She signed with Private Music Records in 1993 and recorded the Billie Holiday tribute album. Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday. The album later set a trend for James’ music to incorporate more jazz elements. The album won James her first Grammy Awards for best jazz vocal performance in 1994. In 1995 she released the David Ritz-co authored autobiography A Rage to Survive and recorded the album Time After Time. Three years later she issued the Christmas album Etta James Christmas in 1998. By the mid-1990s, James’ earlier classic music was included in commercials including, most notably, “I Just Wanna Make Love to You”. Due to exposure of the song in a UK commercial, the song reached the top ten of the UK charts in 1996. Continuing to record for Private Music, she released the blues album Matriarch of the Blues in 2000, which had James returning to her R&B roots. In 2001 she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the latter for her contributions to the developments of both rock and roll music and rockabilly. In 2003 she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Her 2004 release, Blue Gardenia, returned James to a jazz music style. James’ final album for Private Music, Let’s Roll, was released in 2005 and won James a Grammy for best contemporary blues album. In 2004 Rolling Stone Magazine ranked her #62 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2008 James was portrayed by Beyoncé Knowles in the film Cadillac Records loosely based on the rise and fall of James’ label of 18 years, Chess Records, and how label founder and producer Leonard Chess helped the career of James and other label mates, though it was noted that James was successful prior to her signing with Chess Records. Though James and Knowles were later seen at a red carpet event following the film’s release embracing each other, James expressed her displeasure with Knowles at a Seattle concert in January 2009, a few days after Knowles sang her song, “At Last”, at the first inaugural ball for Barack Obama. James later said that her remarks about Knowles were a joke but admitted she was hurt that she was not invited to sing her song and that she could’ve performed it better. In April 2009 the 71-year-old James made her final television appearance performing “At Last” during an appearance on Dancing with the Stars. In May 2009 James received the Soul/Blues Female Artist of the Year award from the Blues Foundation, the ninth time James had won the award. James carried on touring but by 2010 had to cancel concert dates to her gradually failing health after it was revealed that she was suffering from dementia and leukemia. In November 2011 James released her final album, The Dreamer, which was critically acclaimed upon its release. James announced via her manager’s statement that this would be her final album (died 2012): “I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.”

Today is the Second Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with the overall theme theme for 2012 is “We will all be changed by the Victory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 15:51-58), and for today we highlight Changed through Patient Waiting for the Lord. In the world of history, on this date in 1917 German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sent a telegram to Mexico proposing a German-Mexican alliance against the United States, with eventual bad consequences for Germany.

Our emphasis on this Second Day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is Changed through Patient Waiting for the Lord; we pray, “Faithful God, you are true to your word in every age. May we, like Jesus, have patience and trust in your steadfast love. Enlighten us by your Holy Spirit that we may not obstruct the fullness of your justice by our own hasty judgements, but rather discern your wisdom and love in all things. ; You who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.” Turning to 1917 and German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann, he sent the telegram in anticipation of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the German Empire on February 1, an act which German chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg feared would draw the neutral United States into war on the side of the Allies. The telegram instructed the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt, that if the United States appeared likely to enter the war he was to approach the Mexican government with a proposal for military alliance. He was to offer Mexico material aid in the reclamation of territory lost during the Mexican-American War, specifically the American states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Eckardt was also instructed to urge Mexico to help broker an alliance between Germany and Japan. The Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted and decoded by the British cryptographers of Room 40; the revelation of its contents in the American press on March 1 caused public outrage that contributed to the United States’ declaration of war against Germany and its allies on April 6.

I woke up at 9:00 am today; my first order of business was to start my laundry, then I read the morning papers while eating my breakfast toast. I then retreated to the computer and did some more Advance Daily Update Drafts, so that I am set through next Wednesday; then I did my Devotional Reading.

At 11:45 am Richard and I left the house; our first stop was at the Hit-n-Run convenience store so that I could get my Powerball and Louisiana Lotto lottery tickets for Saturday night’s drawing. We then went to Wal-Mart to get my salad supplies, cat food, and the stuff Richard needed to cook dinner for tonight. We then went to Jimbo’s; to my surprise, Richard had us go through the drive-through, rather than eating inside. We arrived home at 1:00 pm and ate our lunch from Jimbo’s; I then finished my laundry, ironed my casino shirts, washed my hat (Woolite, air dry), and fixed my lunch salads for tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. I then went to the computer to get started on today’s Daily Update, then took a half hour to read some more in By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen. After Jeopardy! Richard and I settled down to have chicken and sausuage jambalaya with black-eyed peas over rice. And after I finish this Daily Update and my dinner, I will take a bath and read the next chapter in The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel, which I want to have finished by next Tuesday so that I can take it down to the library on Wednesday and return it and pay the fine (it was due yesterday; being an Inter-Library Loan book, I can’t renew it). I will then read a couple of short stories in The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Edited by Charles Neider.

Tomorrow we return to work; in the afternoon I hope that I will be motivated enough to spread papers all around me on the bed and thus do the filing of papers.

This Thursday Afternoon our Parting Quote comes to us from Suzanne Pleshette, American actress. Born in 1937 in Brooklyn Heights, New York City, she graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts and then attended Syracuse University for one semester before transferring to Finch College. She began her career as a stage actress, making her Broadway debut in Meyer Levin’s 1957 play Compulsion, adapted from his 1956 novel inspired by the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping and murder case. Two years later she was featured in the comedy Golden Fleecing starring Tom Poston, who eventually would become her third husband. That same year, she was one of two finalists for the role of Louise/Gypsy in the original production of Gypsy. In February 1961, she replaced Anne Bancroft opposite 14-year-old Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker. Pleshette’s first television role was in the episode “Night Rescue” (December 5, 1957) of the CBS adventure/drama series Harbourmaster, starring Barry Sullivan and Paul Burke. Her movie credits include The Geisha Boy, Rome Adventure (the lead actor was Troy Donahue, who became her first husband in 1964, for eight months), Fate Is the Hunter, and Youngblood Hawke, but she was most recognized at that time for her role of schoolteacher Annie Hayworth opposite Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic suspense film The Birds. Her early television appearances included Playhouse 90, Have Gun – Will Travel, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Channing, Ben Casey, Naked City, Wagon Train, and Dr. Kildare, for which she was nominated for her first Emmy Award. She guest-starred more than once as different characters in Route 66, The Fugitive, The Invaders, The F.B.I., and The Name of the Game. In 1968 she married Texas oilman Tom Gallagher. Pleshette was one of the stars of the popular CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) for all six seasons, and was nominated twice for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She reprised her role of Emily Hartley in the memorable final episode of a subsequent comedy series, Newhart (which had Tom Poston as a main character), in which viewers discovered that the entire series had been a dream of Bob Newhart when he awakens next to Pleshette in the bedroom set from The Bob Newhart Show. Her 1984 situation comedy, Suzanne Pleshette is Maggie Briggs, was cancelled after seven episodes. In 1989 she played the role of Christine Broderick in the NBC drama, Nightingales, which only lasted one season. In 1990 Pleshette portrayed Manhattan hotelier Leona Helmsley in the television movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean, which garnered her Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations. In addition, she starred opposite Hal Linden in the 1994 sitcom The Boys Are Back. Her second husband died in 2000, and in 2001, she married Tom Poston. She had a recurring role in Good Morning, Miami, as Mark Feuerstein’s grandmother Claire Arnold, played the mother of Katey Sagal’s character in the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter following John Ritter’s death, and appeared as the estranged mother of Megan Mullally’s character Karen Walker in three episodes of Will & Grace., which was her last role. On August 11, 2006, her agent announced that Pleshette was being treated for lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She was later hospitalized for a pulmonary infection and developed pneumonia, causing her to be hospitalized for an extended period. She received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television on January 31, 2008, on what would have been her 71st birthday (died 2008): “I don’t sit around and wait for great parts. I’m an actress, and I love being one, and I’ll probably be doing it till I’m 72, standing around the back lot doing Gunsmoke.”

Today begins the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; 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), and today we highlight Changed by the Servant Christ. 

The celebration of this week began in 1908 as the Octave of Christian Unity, and focused on prayer for church unity. The dates of the week were proposed by Father Paul Wattson, cofounder of the Graymoor Franciscan Friars in England. He conceived of the week beginning on the Feast of the Confession of Peter, the Protestant variant of the ancient Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, on January 18, and concluding with the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul on January 25. Pope Pius X officially blessed the concept, and Pope Benedict XV “encouraged its observance throughout the entire Roman Catholic Church.” The theme for 2012 is “We will all be changed by the Victory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 15:51-58), and each day of the Week highlights a different aspect of how we can be witnesses. For today, we highlight Changed by the Servant Christ, and we pray, “Almighty and eternal God, by travelling the royal road of service your Son leads us from the arrogance of our disobedience to humility of heart. Unite us to one another by your Holy Spirit, so that through service to our sisters and brothers, Your true countenance may be revealed; You, who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.”

I was very tired upon coming home from Lafayette last night, so vowed to sleep as late as my body wanted to today; consequently, I do not apologize or feel any shame for not having wakened up until 11:30 this morning. I read the morning paper, then Richard and I left the house at 1:00 pm to eat Chinese at Peking. Upon returning home, I did my Daily Update for yesterday, January 17, 2012, then did Advance Daily Update Drafts through next Sunday, then did my Daily Devotional reading. After we watched Jeopardy! Richard and I headed out, first stopping so that I could get my Powerball and Louisiana Lotto lottery tickets for tonight’s drawing. (Since Saturday, the price of Powerball tickets has gone up from $1 to $2; on the plus sides, my chances of winning the full jackpot have improved from 1 in 195,249,054 to 1 in 175, 223, 510.) We drove to Ville Platte looking for a restuarant one of our co-workers told us about, but, not finding it, we came back to town and ate lunch at D. C.’s Sports Bar and Steakhouse. We got home at 7:30 pm, and once I finish tonight’s Daily Update I will take a hot bath and read. (I am very much enjoying my latest book that I am reading, By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen.)

Tomorrow I will be doing my laundry and filing of papers, and otherwise being productive; I should be, since I effectlvely had a low-impact day today.

Our Parting Quote this Wednesday evening comes from Sargent Shriver, American politician. Born as Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. in 1915 in Westminster, Maryland, he attended high school in New Milford, Connecticut; he was in the school’s baseball, basketball, and football team, became the editor of the school’s newspaper, and participated in choral and debating clubs. After he graduated in 1934 Shriver spent the summer in Germany as part of the Experiment in International Living, returning in the fall of 1934 to enter Yale University. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1938, having been a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter) and the Scroll and Key Society. He was chairman of the Yale Daily News. Shriver then attended Yale Law School, earning an LL.B. degree in 1941. An early opponent of American involvement in World War II, Shriver was a founding member of the America First Committee, an organization started in 1940 by a group of Yale law students, also including future U.S. President Gerald Ford and Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, that tried to keep the United States out of the European war. Nevertheless Shriver volunteered for the United States Navy before the attack on Pearl Harbor, saying he had a duty to serve his country even if he disagreed with its policies. He spent five years on active duty, mostly in the South Pacific, serving aboard the USS South Dakota (BB-57), reaching the rank of lieutenant (O-3). He was awarded a Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds he received during the bombardment of Guadalcanal. Shriver’s relationship with the Kennedy family began shortly after his discharge, when the family patriarch Joseph Kennedy, Sr. hired him to manage the Merchandise Mart, part of Kennedy’s business empire, in Chicago, Illinois. After a seven-year courtship, Shriver married Eunice Kennedy, a sister of then-Senator John F. Kennedy, on May 23, 1953 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City; the life-long marriage produced five children. A devout Catholic, Shriver attended daily Mass and always carried a rosary of well-worn wooden beads. When John F. Kennedy ran for president, Shriver worked as a political and organization coordinator in the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries. During Kennedy’s presidential term, Shriver founded and served as the first director of the Peace Corps. After Kennedy’s assassination, Shriver continued to serve as Director of the Peace Corps and served as Special Assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Under Johnson, he created the Office of Economic Opportunity with William B. Mullins and served as its first Director. He was known as the “architect” of the Johnson administration’s “War on Poverty”, and founded numerous social programs and organizations, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Legal Services, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (now the Shriver Center), Indian and Migrant Opportunities and Neighborhood Health Services, in addition to directing the Peace Corps. Shriver served as U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970, becoming a quasi-celebrity among the French for bringing what Time magazine called “a rare and welcome panache” to the normally sedate world of international diplomacy.politics. He was associated with the Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson law firm in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in international law and foreign affairs, beginning in 1971. Shriver returned to elective politics in 1972, when George McGovern chose him as his Vice Presidential running mate after McGovern’s first pick, Thomas Eagleton, resigned from the Democratic ticket following revelations of past mental health treatments. The McGovern-Shriver ticket lost to Republican incumbents Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Shriver unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for President in 1976. His candidacy was short and he returned to private life, continuing his association with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. In 1981 Shriver was appointed to the Rockefeller University Council, an organization devoted exclusively to research and graduate education in the biomedical and related sciences. In 1984 he was elected President of Special Olympics (which had been founded in 1968 by his wife) by the Board of Directors; as President, he directed the operation and international development of sports programs around the world. He retired from his law firm in 1986, and in 1990 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Special Olympics. In 1993 Shriver received the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom From Want Award. On August 8, 1994 Shriver received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003. In January 2008 a documentary film about Shriver aired on PBS, titled American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver. In August 2009 he attended the funeral of both his wife and of his brother-in-law Edward Kennedy (died 2011): “Do the job first. Worry about the clearance later.”

Today we honor Saint Anthony, Abbot (died 356). 

Born about 251 in Heracleus, Egypt, the parents of today’s Saint died when he was about 20; Anthony insured that his sister completed her education, then he sold his house, furniture, and the land he owned, gave the proceeds to the poor, joined the anchorites who lived nearby, and moved into an empty sepulchre. At age 35 he moved to the desert to live alone; he lived 20 years in an abandoned fort. Anthony barricaded the place for solitude, but admirers and would-be students broke in. He miraculously healed people and agreed to be the spiritual counselor of others. His recommendation was to base life on the Gospel. Word spread, and so many disciples arrived that Anthony founded two monasteries on the Nile, one at Pispir, and one at Arsinoe. Many of those who lived near him supported themselves by making baskets and brushes. Anthony briefly left his seclusion in 311, going to Alexandria, Egypt to fight Arianism, and to comfort the victims of the persecutions of Maximinus. At some point in his life, he met with his sister again. She, too, had withdrawn from the world, and directed a community of nuns. Anthony retired to the desert, living in a cave on Mount Colzim. Descriptions paint him as uniformly modest and courteous. His example led many to take up the monastic life, and to follow his way. Late in life Anthony became a close friend of Saint Paul the Hermit, and he buried the aged anchorite upon his death; he himself died at the age of 105. He is the Patron Saint of basket weavers, of gravediggers, and of swine and swineherds.

First, some backtracking; on Sunday night I ran the Weekly Virus Scan. On Monday, at work, I had my Annual Performance Review; I was happy with the raise I got, and Richard was unhappy that my raise was not high enough in his opinion. (Difference between the glass being half-full and the glass being half-empty, I suppose.) Finally, on Monday evening Richard brought in the flag I had put up for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, even though I had told him that I would bring it in Tuesday morning before we went to work.

On Tuesday I freshened up my casino shirt for the day, and Richard and I headed off to work, with me doing my Devotional Reading along the way. Once at work, Richard was the dealer on Mini-Baccarat; I was the relief dealer for Mini-Baccarat and Pai-Gow, and was also relieving a dealer who at various times was on a Blackjack table, was a Roulette Check Racker, and finally was on Mississippi Stud. On my last break I called the library, to see if they were still holding a book for me; they said that as the last date they were to hold it for me was January 15, they had returned it to the main library. (Drat; I was going to call them on the 15th, but didn’t, and when I tried calling on the 16th, they were closed for the holiday.) Shortly after we left the casino on our way home, I finished reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

We stopped at McDonald’s again to pick up our lunch on our way home from work; once home, I read the morning paper while eating my burger and fries, then took a nap from 12:30 pm to 4:00 pm. I then posted my book review for this weblog and for my Goodreads and Facebook accounts for Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. After printing out discussion questions for the book from LitLovers.com, I watched Jeopardy! with Richard, then left for Lafayette. I arrived at Barnes & Noble at 6:00 pm, did some looking around (Immaculée Ilibagiza, survivor of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, had just given a talk and was signing books), and at 7:00 pm we had our Third Tuesday Book Club meeting to discuss Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. We had a very good meeting, with about eight people in attendance; we also decided that since the Third Tuesday in February is Mardi Gras, we will instead have our Third Tuesday Book Club Meeting on the Second Tuesday of February to discuss The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton, which is February 14th. (This means that I will have to miss the Sci-Fi Fantasy Book Club meeting to discuss The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Christopher Tolkien, as that meeting is on the same day.) Upon leaving Barnes & Noble, I had a text message advising me that our LSU Men’s Basketball team beat Auburn by the score of 65 to 58 in Overtime. When I got home at 9:30 pm I was so tired I went straight to bed, joining Richard, who was already asleep.

Our Parting Quote this Tuesday evening comes to us from Don Kirshner, American song publisher and rock producer. Born as Donald Krishner in 1934 in The Bronx, New York, he attended Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey. He achieved his first major success in the late 1950s and early 1960s as co-owner of the influential New York-based publishing company Aldon Music with partner Al Nevins, which had under contract at various times several of the most important songwriters of the so-called “Brill Building” school, including Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Jack Keller. As a producer-promoter, Kirshner was influential in starting off the career of singers and songwriters, including Bobby Darin (his high school classmate,with whom he collaborated on a number of advertising jingles and pop ditties, their first was called “Bubblegum Pop”), Neil Diamond, Carole King, and Sarah Dash of Labelle, as well as discovering the occasional rock act such as Kansas. Kirshner also had three record labels. The first was Chairman Records, a subsidiary of London Records. Although he was responsible for scores of hits in the 1960s, he was only to have one on the Chairman label, 1963′s “Martian Hop” by The Ran-Dells, which reached #16 nationally. Kirshner later had two other record labels, Calendar, which had early hits by The Archies and the Kirshner label, which had later hits by The Archies and Kansas. Calendar/Kirshner recordings were first distributed by RCA Records, then CBS Records. He was also involved in Dimension Records. He was described by contemporaries as playing only one instrument. the telephone, which he used throughout the day for business. In 1966 Kirshner was hired by the producers of The Monkees to provide hitworthy songs to accompany the television program, within a demanding schedule. Kirshner quickly corralled songwriting talent from his Brill Building stable of writers and musicians to create catchy, engaging tracks which the band could pretend to perform on the show. This move was not because of any lack of Monkee talent — Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were already experienced musicians, and Davy Jones was an established musical performer; but as a working band they had little experience, and Micky Dolenz was completely new to drums — but to churn out ready-to-go recordings to give each new episode its own song. Each Monkee was retained for vocal duties, but they were not allowed to play on the records. The formula worked phenomenally well: the singles “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m a Believer” were hits, and the first two Monkees albums were produced and released in time to catch the initial wave of the television program’s popularity. Future Taj Mahal and John Lennon guitarist Jesse Ed Davis sat in on guitar. After a year, the Monkees wanted another chance to all play their own instruments on the records. They also wanted additional oversight into which songs would be released as singles. Further, when word belatedly came out that the band had not played on the first season’s songs, a controversy arose, and the public expressed a desire to hear the television stars perform their own music. The matter reached a breaking point over a disagreement regarding the Neil Diamond-penned “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” in early 1967. The song, released by Kirshner as a single without Columbia Pictures’ consent, led to his dismissal. The initial B-side was replaced with a Nesmith song, performed by the Monkees, and they performed on the next year’s recordings, featured in the show’s second season. Allegedly, Monkees record sales dropped by nearly half after Kirshner’s departure. Kirshner’s later venture was The Archies, an animated series where there were only the studio musicians to be managed. In the fall of 1972 Kirshner was asked by ABC Television to serve as executive producer and “creative consultant” for their new In Concert series, which aired every other week in the 11:30 p.m. slot normally showing The Dick Cavett Show. The following September, Kirshner left In Concert to produce and host his own syndicated weekly rock-concert program called Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. With its long-form live performances, as compared to rehearsed, often lip-synced performances that were the staple of earlier television shows like Shindig!, it was a new direction for pop music presentation. The program presented many of the most successful rock bands of the era, but what was consistent week-to-week was Kirshner’s deliberately flat delivery as the program host. In its final season Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was mostly hosted by Kirshner’s son and daughter, whose delivery was the same as their father’s. The last show aired in 1981, the year that the MTV music video channel was launched. Kirshner’s wooden presentation style was later lampooned on Saturday Night Live by Paul Shaffer, most notably in Shaffer’s introduction of the Blues Brothers during the duo’s television debut. Shaffer and Kirshner worked together on the short-lived situation comedy A Year at the Top (1977), which Kirshner co-produced with Norman Lear, and in which Shaffer starred. For the next twenty years he was a staple on rock documentaries and rock retrospective shows. Kirshner received the 2007 Songwriters Hall of Fame Abe Olman Publishing Award. He was a creative consultant for Rockrena, a company founded by Jack Wishna, launching in 2011, to promote new music talent online (died 2011): “I can hear a kid hit a note and know if he has it or not.”

I finished this wonderful novel, set mostly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a medical setting and told by one of two identical twins, just in time to discuss it at our Third Tuesday Book Club meeting tonight. The book contains love, war, tragedy, comedy, abandonment, and redemption, and I loved every moment of reading it.

In 1954 two identical twins are born in the Mission Hospital in Addis Abba (which is called the Missing Hospital by one and all); they are mirror image twins, and grow up at the mission. Their mother dies in childbirth, and their father abandons them by leaving Missing and never returning, so they are raised by the Indian gynecological and obstetrician surgeon at Missing. Growing up in a medical setting (all the poor of Addis Ababa come to their clinics), the twins witness the changes wrought in Ethiopia by coup and revolution. Born of an English father and an Indian mother, the twins, although born and raised at Missing, are considered to be foreigners by the general populace of Ethiopia, and most of the characters are in some sort of exile.

This was a stunning book, and hard for me to put down; the plot takes unexpected twists and turns, and does the unexpected with its characters, who remain totally in character. And I anticipate a good Book Club meeting tonight.

Today is  Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a Federal Holiday celebrated on the third Monday in January to mark the observed date of Dr. King’s birthday (which occurred on January 15, 1929). And this date in 1995, the facility now known as Coushatta Casino Resort (and also known as My Employer) just north of Kinder, Louisiana had their Grand Opening.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law, and was assassinated in 1968; the campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed in 1986. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000. (And about time, too.) On this date in 1995 the facility now known as Coushatta Casino Resort just north of Kinder, Louisiana had their Grand Opening. As their website states, “Louisiana’s premier casino resort features a 100,000 square foot gaming floor, over 500 luxurious hotel rooms, a luxury RV resort, six fabulous restaurants, live entertainment and more. Opened in 1995, Coushatta Casino Resort today is a magnificent complex that employs 2,600 people and remains an integral part of the area’s economy. Throughout its history, the resort has continued to expand both in size and services, reflecting the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana’s sincere commitment to comfort and convenience for its guests. Efforts implemented by the Coushatta Tribe, including major utilities improvements and educational opportunities, have helped to greatly enhance the lives of resort employees and their families. Coushatta Casino Resort’s dedication to superior service may best be proven by, among many other things, transportation and accommodations for executives and preferred guests to and from the resort.” And I salute the casino, as my employer for the last 12 years, and as Richard’s employer for the last 11 years; without Coushatta Casino Resort, we would probably be saying, “And would you like fries with your order, sir?”

I put out the flag in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and Richard and I dumped a bag of trash as we left for work; on the way to work I did my Devotional Reading. Once at work (the last Heavy Business Volume Day for the holiday) Richard dealt Blackjack all day, while I was on Four-Card Poker. The Third Quarter Moon arrived at 3:08 am, and on my breaks I continued my reading of Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. On our way home we stopped at the drive-through at McDonald’s for our lunch; I ate my while reading the morning paper once we were home, then returned to my book reading.

I continued reading through the afternoon; Richard took a nap starting at about 1:30 pm. At 2:00 pm I left the house for Mamou for my 2:30 pm dental appointment. My check-up and teeth cleaning went well, and my next appointment is on July 25 at 1:30 pm. I arrived back home at 3:30 pm, and got back to my reading; Michelle left at 4:00 pm to return to Baton Rouge, Richard woke up, we watched Jeopardy! at 4:30 pm, and Richard went out to get fried chicken for his dinner. I opted to instead make peanut-butter crackers to eat for my dinner, as I feel I have reached a good point in my book; I am not yet done, but I have only 100 pages to read, which I should be able to do tomorrow before we get home from work.

Speaking of tomorrow, it is our Friday at work. In the afternoon, after I eat lunch and read the paper, I will do my Book Review entry for Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, then take a nap; at 5:00 pm I will go down to Lafayette to the Third Tuesday Book Club Meeting to discuss the book.

Our Parting Quote on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day comes from Andrew Wyeth, American painter. Born in 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, he was the youngest of the five children of illustrator and artist N.C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth. He was home-tutored because of his frail health, and learned art from his father, who was also responsible for his son’s love of rural landscapes, sense of romance, and a feeling for Wyeth family history and artistic traditions. He started drawing at a young age, and with his father’s guidance, he mastered figure study and watercolor, and later learned egg tempera from brother-in-law Peter Hurd. He studied art history on his own, admiring many masters of Renaissance and American painting, especially Winslow Homer. In 1937, at age twenty, Wyeth had his first one-man exhibition of watercolors at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City. The entire inventory of paintings sold out, and his life path seemed certain. His style was different from his father’s in that it was sparer, “drier,” and more limited in color range. In October 1945 his father and his three-year-old nephew were killed when their car stalled on railroad tracks near their home and was struck by a train. Wyeth referred to his father’s death as a formative emotional event in his artistic career, in addition to being a personal tragedy. Shortly afterwards, his art consolidated into his mature and enduring style; characterized by a subdued color palette, realistic renderings, and the depiction of emotionally charged, symbolic objects and/or people. It was at the Olson farm in Cushing, Maine that he painted Christina’s World (1948); perhaps his most famous image, it depicts his neighbor, Christina Olson, sprawled on a dry field facing her house in the distance. Wyeth was quite inspired by his neighbor, who, because of an unknown illness resulting in her inability to walk, spent much time on the property surrounding her house. Also in 1948, he began painting Anna and Karl Kuerner, his neighbours in Chadds Ford. Like the Olsons, the Kuerners and their farm were one of Wyeth’s most important subjects for nearly 30 years. The Olson house has been preserved, renovated to match its appearance in Christina’s World, and is open to the public as a part of the Farnsworth Museum. The Kuerners’ farm is available to tour through the Brandywine River Museum, as is the N.C. Wyeth home and studio. Dividing his time between Pennsylvania and Maine, Wyeth maintained a realist painting style for over fifty years. He gravitated to several identifiable landscape subjects and models. In 1958, he and his wife purchased and restored “The Mill,” a group of 18th-century buildings that appeared often in his work, including Night Sleeper (1979). His solitary walks were the primary means of inspiration for his landscapes. He developed an extraordinary intimacy with the land and sea and strove for a spiritual understanding based on history and unspoken emotion. He typically created dozens of studies on a subject in pencil or loosely brushed watercolor before executing a finished painting, either in watercolor, drybrush (a watercolor style in which the water is squeezed from the brush), or egg tempera. When Christina Olsen died in the winter of 1969, Wyeth refocused his artistic attention upon Siri Erickson, capturing her naked innocence in Indian Summer (1970). In 1986, extensive coverage was given to the revelation of a series of 247 studies of his neighbour, the Prussian-born Helga Testorf, painted over the period 1971 – 1985 without the knowledge of either Wyeth’s wife or John Testorf, Helga’s husband. Helga was a musician, baker, caregiver, and friend of the Wyeths; she met Wyeth when she was attending to Karl Kuerner. She had never modeled before, but quickly became comfortable with the long periods of posing, during which she was observed and painted in intimate detail. The Helga pictures are not an obvious psychological study of the subject, but more an extensive study of her physical landscape set within Wyeth’s customary landscapes. She is nearly always unsmiling and passive; yet, within those deliberate limitations, Wyeth manages to convey subtle qualities of character and mood, as he does in many of his best portraits. This extensive study of one subject studied in differing contexts and emotional states is unique in American art. His art has long been controversial. As a representational artist, Wyeth’s paintings have sharply contrasted with abstraction, which gained currency in American art in the middle of the 20th century. Museum exhibitions of his paintings have set attendance records, but many art critics have been critical of his work. Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The Village Voice, derided his paintings as “Formulaic stuff, not very effective even as illustrational ‘realism.’ ” Common criticisms are that Wyeth’s art verges on illustration and that his rural subject matter is sentimental. Admirers of his art believe that his paintings, in addition to sometimes displaying overt beauty, contain strong emotional currents, symbolic content, and underlying abstraction. Most observers of his art agree that he is skilled at handling the media of egg tempera (which uses egg yolk as its medium) and watercolor. Wyeth avoided using traditional oil paints. His use of light and shadow let the subjects illuminate the canvas (died 2009): “Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing – then a work of art may happen.”

On this Second Sunday in Ordinary Time we have no Saints to honor. On this date in 1919 occurred the Boston Molasses Disaster (try saying that five times fast).

That day in Boston in 1919 was unusually warm, with the temperature at 40˚. At the time, molasses was the standard sweetener in the United States, and also fermented to produce rum and ethyl alcohol, the active ingredient in other alcoholic beverages and a key component in the manufacturing of munitions at the time. The stored molasses was awaiting transfer to the Purity plant situated between Willow Street and what is now named Evereteze Way, in Cambridge. Near Keany Square, at 529 Commercial Street, a huge molasses tank 50 feet tall, 90 feet in diameter, and containing as much as 2,300,000 gallons collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed, there was a loud rumbling sound like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by. The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 feet high, moving at 35 mph, and exerting a pressure of 2 ton per square foot. The molasses wave was of sufficient force to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway’s Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet. A truck was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor. Approximately 21 people and several horses were killed (some were crushed and drowned by the molasses) and 150 people injured. The wounded included people, horses, and dogs; coughing fits became one of the most common ailments after the initial blast. First to the scene were 116 cadets under the direction of Lieutenant Commander H. J. Copeland from USS Nantucket, a training ship of the Massachusetts Nautical School (which is now the Massachusetts Maritime Academy), that was docked nearby at the playground pier. They ran several blocks toward the accident, and worked to keep the curious from getting in the way of the rescuers while others entered into the knee-deep sticky mess to pull out the survivors. Soon the Boston Police, Red Cross, Army and other Navy personnel arrived. Some nurses from the Red Cross dove into the molasses, while others tended to the wounded, keeping them warm as well as keeping the exhausted workers fed. Many of these people worked through the night. The injured were so numerous that doctors and surgeons set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Rescuers found it difficult to make their way through the syrup to help the victims. It took four days before they stopped searching for victims; many dead were so glazed over in molasses, they were hard to recognize. It took over 87,000 man hours to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes. The harbor was still brown with molasses until summer. Local residents brought a class-action lawsuit, one of the first held in Massachusetts, against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA), which had bought Purity Distilling in 1917. In spite of the company’s attempts to claim that the tank had been blown up by anarchists (because some of the alcohol produced was to be used in making munitions), a court-appointed auditor found USIA responsible after three years of hearings. USIA ultimately paid out $600,000 in out-of-court settlements, and did not rebuild the tank. The property became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), and is currently the site of a city-owned baseball field. (So remember this, the next time you hear of something being “as slow as molasses in January”.)

We remembered to bring the deviled eggs as we left for work; as usual, I did my Devotional Reading along the way. Once at work, with it being the Second of Three Heavy Business Volume Days, we had the Graveyard Shift Pot Luck Dinner, with all of the food items being placed as usual on the counter in the Table Games Shift Office. We started out with Richard dealing Mississippi Stud, and with me relieving three Blackjack tables. On my breaks I worked on my weblog, and Richard put in for four hours of Paid Time Off, using his 8 Hour PTO certificate to cover when he had to call in on Friday. At 7:00 am they moved Richard to Mini-Baccarat, and at 8:00 am I was moved to the second Mississippi Stud table.

On our way home we stopped at Wal-Mart; I got some new carabiner clips, as the old one I use to attach my cover for my BlackBerry to my jeans belt loop broke. (Who knew a carabiner clip could break?) Once home from work, I read the Sunday papers while eating my lunch salad. I then did my Book Review for Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg for this weblog and for my Goodreads and Facebook accounts, and posted my Daily Update for yesterday, Saturday, January 14, 2012. I had started reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese on our way home from work, and I continued reading it while doing the Weekly Computer Maintenance and taking a bath; and our LSU Women’s Basketball team lost their game with Florida by the score of 58 to 62. (Drat; it’s been a bad week for Louisiana sports.) And I am now tired, and I think I will turn in early.

Tomorrow we go to work again, and at 2:30 pm I have my twice-yearly checkup with my dentist. That sounds like a fun-filled day to me.

Our Sunday Parting Quote comes to us from Brad Renfro, American actor. Born in 1982 as Bradley Renfro in Knoxville, Tennessee, he was raised from the age of five by his paternal grandmother. He played in a school production sponsored by DARE, a program in which young people learn about the danger of drugs. Discovered by Mali Finn, a casting director for Joel Schumacher, when he was 10, and cast by Finn for Schumacher’s The Client, Renfro acted alongside Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. Based on the bestselling John Grisham novel, it became one of the top-grossing films of 1994. In 1995 he won Hollywood Reporter’s “Young Star” award, and was nominated as one of People‘s “Top 30 Under 30.” That year, he played Huckleberry “Huck” Finn in 1995′s Tom and Huck with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. He also won a second “Young Star” award that same year, as well as the “Young Artist” award, for his performance in The Cure. In 1996 he was cast in Sleepers, based on the novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra. The film was directed by Barry Levinson and also starred Robert De Niro, Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman and Brad Pitt. In 1998 he starred opposite Ian McKellen in Apt Pupil, directed by Bryan Singer. That same year, he played Leon S. Kennedy in a live-action preview of Resident Evil 2. On June 3, 1998, Renfro, then 15, and his 19-year-old cousin were arrested and charged with drug possession. He was carrying two small bags of cocaine in a cigarette box and a bag of marijuana in his sock. He avoided trial by agreeing to be screened randomly for drugs and evaluated for any substance abuse problems in his plea bargain. He auditioned for the part of Gabriel Martin in The Patriot (2000), which eventually went to Heath Ledger, On August 28, 2000, Renfro and his friend Harold Bond tried to steal a 45-foot yacht from Fort Lauderdale harbour. They were arrested at the same night and Renfro was charged with grand theft and criminal mischief. In January 2001, Renfro was sentenced to probation of two years and ordered to pay repair costs of the vessel to its owner and investigative costs to Lauderdale Police Department. That same year he appeared in Ghost World and Bully. On January 14, 2002, Renfro violated his probation and was arrested on charges of public intoxication and driving without a valid license in Knoxville. He was put into a three-month substance abuse treatment program as a result. His acting career continued with appearances in 2002′s Confessions of an American Girl and 2005′s The Jacket. In December 2005 Renfro was arrested by LAPD officers during an undercover drug sweep of skid row and was charged with attempted possession of heroin, and a photograph showing him in handcuffs made the front page of the Los Angeles Times. Renfro admitted to a detective that he was using heroin and methadone. In court, he pleaded guilty to the charges, and was sentenced to three years’ probation. In 2006 he appeared in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and spent 10 days in jail for convictions of driving while under the influence and attempted heroin possession. In 2007 he completed filming on the film The Informers (2008), co-starring Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder and Billy Bob Thornton (died 2008, of acute heroin/morphine intoxication): “If you’ve never tried drugs, DON’T. And if you have, pray.”

Today is the last day in the National Vocation Awareness Week; with no Saints, we note that today is the anniversary of the ratification of the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784 at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland by the Confederation Congress.

National Vocation Awareness Week ends today; we pray, “God our Father, we thank you for calling men and women to serve in your Son’s Kingdom as priests, deacons, religious, and consecrated persons. Send your Holy Spirit to help us respond generously and courageously to your call. May our community of faith support vocations of sacrificial love in our youth. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” Turning to the Ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784, this act officially ended the American Revolution and established the United States as a sovereign entity. The Journals of the Continental Congress had reported that the Confederation Congress issued a proclamation on April 11, 1783, “Declaring the cessation of arms” against Great Britain. The preliminary articles of peace were approved by Congress on April 15, 1783, and the Treaty was concluded and signed in Parish on September 3, 1783. Due to the severe winter of 1783-1784 (now known to be a consequence of the volcanic eruption of Laki in Iceland) only delegates from seven of the thirteen states were present when Congress convened in January 1784. According to the Articles of Confederation nine states were required to enter into a treaty. One faction believed that seven states could ratify the treaty; arguing that they were merely ratifying and not entering into a treaty. Furthermore, it was thought unlikely that the required delegates could reach Annapolis before the ratification deadline. However, Thomas Jefferson’s faction believed that a full nine states were required to ratify the treaty. Any less would be trickery which Britain would eventually find out, giving it an excuse to nullify the treaty, and would be a “dishonorable prostitution” of the Great Seal of the United States. Jefferson was elected to head a committee of members of both factions and arrived at a compromise. Assuming that only seven states were present, Congress would pass a resolution stating that the seven states present were unanimously in favor of ratification of the treaty, but were in disagreement as to the competency of Congress to ratify with only seven states. Therefore, although only seven states were present, their unanimous agreement in favor of ratification would be used to secure peace, and the vote would not set a precedent for future decisions. The document would be forwarded to the US ministers in Europe who would be told to wait until a treaty ratified by nine states could arrive, and to request a delay for three months. However, if Britain insisted, then the Ministers should use the seven-state ratification, pleading that a full Congress was not in session. In the event, delegates from Connecticut and South Carolina arrived at the last moment, so that nine states were able to ratify the treaty after all. Copies were sent back to Europe for ratification by the other parties involved, the first reaching France in March. British ratification occurred on April 9, 1784, and the ratified versions were exchanged in Paris on May 12, 1784. It was not for some time, though, that the Americans in the countryside received the news, due to the lack of communication.

Richard was feeling well enough to drive us to work; along the way I did my Devotional Reading. Once at the casino, it was the first of three Heavy Business Volume Days for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend; Richard was dealing Flop Poker, and I was the relief dealer for Mini-Baccarat and the two Pai-Gow tables. During the day I was called into the Shift Manager’s Office and was written up for an error I had made on the Pai-Gow table this past Monday. On my breaks I posted my Daily Update for Friday, Jan 13, 2012 via WordPress for BlackBerry.

On our way home I finished reading Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg. Once home, I set up my medications for next week (no prescriptions to renew) and ate my lunch salad while reading the morning paper. I then went to the Adoration chapel for my weekly hour of Eucharistic Adoration; during my Hour I read the January 2 – 9, 2012 issue of my Jesuit America magazine and read to the end of a chapter in The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel.

Back home, I took a nap; I was going to try to wake up to watch the Saints play, but went back to sleep. While I slept the New Orleans Saints lost their divisional playoff game with the San Francisco 49ers by the score of 32 to 36. Richard made deviled eggs for Sunday’s Graveyard Shift Pot Luck Dinner, which I had totally forgotten about (thank you very much, Richard), and our LSU Men’s Basketball team lost their game with Arkansas by the score of 60 to 69, so that our Tigers are now 11 and 6, and 1 and 2 in Southeastern Conference play.

Our Parting Quote this Saturday afternoon comes to us from Ricardo Montalbán, Mexican-born American radio, television, theatre and film actor. Born in 1920 as Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino in Mexico City, he grew up in Torreón. As a teenager he moved to Los Angeles to be with his brother, the actor Carlos Montalbán. The two went to New York City in 1940, and he earned a minor role in the play Her Cardboard Lover. In 1941 he appeared in his first motion pictures, three-minute musicals produced for the Soundies film jukeboxes. He appeared in many of the New York-produced Soundies as an extra or as a member of a singing chorus (usually billed as Men and Maids of Melody). His first starring film was He’s a Latin from Staten Island (1941), in which the young Latin (billed simply as “Ricardo”) played the title role of a guitar-strumming gigolo, accompanied by an off screen vocal by Gus Van. Late in 1941 Montalbán learned that his mother was dying, so he returned to Mexico. There, he acted in a dozen Spanish-language films and became a star in his homeland. Montalbán recalled that when he arrived in Hollywood in 1943, studios wanted to change his name to Ricky Martin. Many of his early roles were in Westerns in which he played character parts, usually as an “Indian” or as a “Latin Lover”.  His first leading role was in the 1949 film Border Incident with actor George Murphy. He was the first Hispanic actor to appear on the front cover of Life magazine on November 21, 1949. In 1950 he was cast against type, playing a Cape Cod police officer in the film Mystery Street. During the filming of the 1951 film, Across the Wide Missouri, Montalbán was thrown from his horse, knocked unconscious, and trampled by another horse, resulting in a painful back injury that never healed. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was one of only a handful of actively working Hispanic actors. He frequently portrayed Asian characters – mostly of Japanese background, as in Sayonara (1957) and the Hawaii Five-O episode “Samurai” (1968). From 1957 to 1959 he starred in the Broadway musical Jamaica, singing several light-hearted calypso numbers opposite Lena Horne. Montalbán starred in radio, such as the internationally syndicated program Lobo del Mar (Seawolf), in which he was cast as the captain of a vessel which became part of some adventure at each port it visited. This 30-minute weekly show aired in many Spanish-speaking countries until the early 1970s. In 1975 he was chosen as the television spokesman for the new Chrysler Cordoba. The car became a successful model, and over the following several years, was heavily advertised; his mellifluous delivery of a line praising the “soft Corinthian leather” upholstery of the car’s interior, often misquoted as “fine or rich Corinthian leather”, became famous and was much parodied, and Montalbán subsequently became a favorite subject of impersonators.  His best-known television role was that of Mr. Roarke in the television series Fantasy Island, which he played from 1978 until 1984. For a while, the series was one of the most popular on television, and his character as well as that of his sidekick, Tattoo (played by Hervé Villechaize), became pop icons. Another of his well-known roles was that of Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which he reprised a role that he had originated in the 1967 episode of Star Trek titled “Space Seed”. There were some questions initially as to whether Montalbán had had prosthetic muscles applied to his chest during filming of Star Trek II to make him appear more muscular; director Nicholas Meyer replied that even in his sixties Montalbán was “one strong cookie” and that his real chest was seen on film, and that Khan’s costume was specifically designed to display Montalbán’s physique. He appeared in many diverse films including The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) as well as two films from the Planet of the Apes series. In addition, he appeared in various musicals, such as 1966′s The Singing Nun, also starring Debbie Reynolds. Over the course of his long career, he played lead roles or guest-starred in dozens of television series. Montalbán’s autobiography, Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds, was published in January, 1980. The pain from his back increased as he aged, and in 1993, Montalbán underwent 9½ hours of spinal surgery which left him paralyzed below the waist and using a wheelchair. Despite constant pain, the actor persevered; filmmaker Robert Rodriguez created a role for him as “Grandfather Cortez” in the popular 2000′s Spy Kids film series, and wrote the part specifically including his wheelchair – which was jet-propelled to allow him to move throughout the scenes (died 2009): “If you shake your fist, the other guy will shake his too. But if you extend your hand to shake their hand, then they will extend theirs also, and you’ve made a friend.”

This slender little book is about the author’s attempt to have the reader consider a Labyrinth as not just a circular path of many turns to the center, but as a metaphor for life. I found it very fascinating, as I enjoy labyrinths myself.

In the first third of the book the author and his wife, being between jobs, put their furniture in storage and leave their native Innsbruck, Austria in a travel trailer and with their two year old daughter in search of labyrinths in Western Europe. In the second third, he goes to see labyrinths while considering designing one, and in the third half, he sees more labyrinths while constructing a couple of temporary labyrinths in Innsbruck using candles to mark the paths.

Each very short chapter is headed by a sketch of a labyrinth and an affirmative saying from the author; the chapter detail the author’s goal of defining life as a labyrinth. To him, life is not a maze, where there are many wrong possible turnings and an uncertainty of success; rather, it is a single path, albeit with many turnings towards and away from the center until one finally reaches the center. Once at the center, one follows a single path, again with turnings, to exit that particular labyrinth; and when one exits, or feels that one has exited, a labyrinth, one essentially enters another one. The basic question posed by a labyrinth is, “Do you stop here, or do you move on?”

With thirty-eight chapters, there are a lot of affirmational sayings; my favorite is “If life is viewed as a maze, every mistake is an unnecessary detour and a waste of time. If life is a labyrinth, then every mistake is a part of the path and an indispensable master teacher.” And later this week, I will go visit the only nearby labyrinth I know, in Grand Coteau; and that, I think, is a measure of how much I enjoyed this book.

Today we honor Saint Hilary, Bishop and Doctor (died 368). National Vocation Awareness Week continues, today is Friday the 13th, and today is the birthday of my friend Dwanna, who I first met online, and then met ‘in real life’.

Born c. 300 in Poitiers, France to wealthy, polytheistic, pagan nobility, the early life of today’s Saint was uneventful as he married, had children, and studied on his own. Through his studies he came to believe in salvation through good works, then in monotheism. As he studied the Bible for the first time, he literally read himself into the faith, and was converted to Christianity by the time he had finished reading the New Testament. Hilary lived the faith so well he was made bishop of Poitiers from 353 to 368. He opposed the emperor’s attempt to run Church matters and was exiled; he used the time in exile to write works explaining the faith. His teaching and writings converted many, and in an attempt to reduce his notoriety he was returned to the small town of Poitiers where his enemies hoped he would fade into obscurity. However, his writings continued to convert pagans. He introduced Eastern theology to the Western Church, fought Arianism, and was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1851. He is the Patron Saint of backward children, and is invoked against snakes and snakebites. One also runs across his name in English novels; in the context of English educational and legal institutions Saint Hilary’s festival lies at the start of the Hilary Term which begins in January. National Vocation Awareness Week continues; we pray, “God our Father, we thank you for calling men and women to serve in your Son’s Kingdom as priests, deacons, religious, and consecrated persons. Send your Holy Spirit to help us respond generously and courageously to your call. May our community of faith support vocations of sacrificial love in our youth. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” Today is Friday the 13th. The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia, frigga, meaning “Friday” and triskaidekaphobia, or paraskevidekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (meaning “Friday”), and dekatreís (meaning “thirteen”), attached to phobia (from phóbos, meaning “fear”). The word was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by a fear of this day. Some people are so paralyzed by fear that they avoid their normal routines in doing business, taking flights or even getting out of bed. (But not my brave Five or Six Loyal Readers.) Finally, today is also the birthday of my friend Dwanna, who I first met online, and then met ‘in real life’.

Thursday after I finished my Daily Update, I packaged and addressed my monthly stuff to send to Liz Ellen. Also, our LSU Women’s Basketball team beat #24 South Carolina by the score of 58 to 48; our Lady Tigers are now 13 and 3, and 4 and 0 in Southeastern Conference play. Finally, Michelle came in at 11:00 pm.

When I woke up for work after a restless sleep, Richard told me that he had called in at work. I drove myself to work in my car (wearing my coat) thinking it was a good thing that I gassed up the car yesterday. Once at work (they had five call-ins, including Richard, plus a dealer with a death in her family) I was the relief dealer for Mississippi Stud, Three Card Poker, and a Blackjack table. On my breaks I did my Devotional Reading and called the Pharmacy to renew two prescriptions; but I did not have a chance to read my books.

After work I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions; it took a few moments to find them, as they were mixed up with the prescriptions for my döppleganger. However, my United Health Care Flex Account worked. On my way home Richard called; he said he felt marginally better. At the post office I mailed Liz Ellen’s package to her, and at the bank I cashed some United Health Care Flex Account checks.

Once home I ate my lunch salad and read the morning paper; I then took a nap until it was time to wake up for work on Saturday.

Our Parting Quote on this Friday the 13th comes to us from Teddy Pendergrass, American soul singer and songwriter. Born in 1950 as Theodore Pendergrass in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, his father left the family early, and was murdered when his son was twelve years old. He grew up in a local Philadelphia slum and sung often at church, becoming a junior deacon, and took up drums. He dropped out of high school in eleventh grade to pursue a musical career; he became a drummer for local groups, eventually ending up in The Cadillacs. In 1970 Blue Notes founder Harold Melvin invited him to play drum for his group; however, upon hearing Pendergrass sing from his drum set during a performance, Melvin promptly made him the lead singer. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes landed a recording deal with Philadelphia International Records, in 1971; their first single the next year was “I Miss You”, followed by their biggest hit “If You Don’t Know Me by Now”, which brought the group to the mainstream with the song reaching the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 while also reaching number-one on the soul singles chart. By 1975, Pendergrass and Melvin were at odds, mainly over monetary issues and personality conflicts. Despite the fact that Pendergrass sang all of the group’s songs, Melvin was controlling the group’s finances; and at one point, Pendergrass wanted the group to be renamed Teddy Pendergrass & the Blue Notes because fans kept mistaking him as Melvin. Pendergrass left the group in 1977 and released his self-titled album, which went platinum on the strength of the disco hit, “I Don’t Love You Anymore”. His single “Close the Door” was a hit the next year, with “Love TKO” becoming a solid hit single in 1970. Between 1977 and 1981, Pendergrass landed five consecutive platinum albums, which was a then-record setting number for a rhythm and blues artist. By early 1982 he was the leading R&B male artist of his day usurping competition including closest rivals Marvin Gaye and Barry White. On March 18, 1982, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on Lincoln Drive, the brakes failed on his 1981 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit, causing the car to hit a guard rail, cross into the opposite traffic lane, and hit two trees. Pendergrass and his passenger, Tenika Watson, a nightclub performer with whom he was acquainted, were trapped in the wreckage for 45 minutes. While Watson walked away from the accident with minor injuries, Pendergrass suffered a spinal cord injury, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He got well-wishes from thousands of his fans during his recovery. Philadelphia International released two more albums, including material recorded before his accident; these albums did not achieve chart success, but completed Pendergrass’s contact with the record company. Pendergrass decided to return to the studio to work on new music and struggled to find a recording deal, eventually signing a deal and completing physical therapy, He released Love Language in 1984, which included the pop ballad “Hold Me”, featuring a then unknown Whitney Houston. On July 13, 1985, Pendergrass made an emotional return to the stage at the historic Live Aid concert in Philadelphia in front of a live audience of over 99,000 and 2 billion television viewers. It was the 35-year-old’s first live performance following his 1982 accident. He tearfully thanked the audience for keeping him in their well-wishes and then performed the Ashford & Simpson classic, “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)”. In 1988, Pendergrass scored his first R&B number-one hit in nearly a decade when the new jack swing-styled “Joy”, off his album of the same name, was released. A video of the song was in heavy rotation on BET. It was also his final Hot 100 charted single, peaking at number 77. Pendergrass kept recording through the 1990s. One of the singer’s final hits was the hip-hop leaning “Believe in Love”, released in 1994. In 1996 he starred alongside Stephanie Mills in the touring production of the gospel musical Your Arms Too Short to Box with God. In 1998 he released his autobiography, Truly Blessed. He did a concert at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, California on February 14, 2002 entitled “The Power of Love”. The concert became the album From Teddy, With Love, which was released on the Razor & Tie record label later that year. It was his second live album (after Live! Coast to Coast, 1979) and final live album. In his later years, “Wake Up Everybody” (from his Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes days) has been covered by a diverse range of acts from Simply Red to Patti LaBelle and was chosen as a rallying cry during the 2004 Presidential campaign by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds to mobilize voters. In 2006, Pendergrass announced his retirement from the music business. In 2007, he briefly returned to performing to participate in Teddy 25: A Celebration of Life, Hope & Possibilities, a 25th anniversary awards ceremony that marked his accident date, but also raised money for his charity, The Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, and honored those who helped him since his accident (died 2010): “Life didn’t promise to be wonderful.”

Today we honor Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, Religious (died 1700), and National Vocation Awareness Week continues. And today is the birthday of my good friend Christine, who is also one of my co-workers at the casino (1960).

Today’s Saint was born in Troyes, France in 1629 the sixth of twelve children of devout parents. After her mother died, Marguerite at 19 took care of her brothers and sisters. Her father, a candle maker, died when she was twenty-seven. A few years later, the governor of Montreal, Canada, Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, was in France looking for teachers for the New World. He invited Marguerite to come to Montreal to teach school and religion classes in 1653. She accepted the offer, gave away her share of the inheritance from her parents to other members of the family, and sailed for New France. On arriving she initiated the construction of the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. She opened the first school established at Ville Marie (Montreal) in 1658. She first worked with rich children, but soon started working with poor and rich people. She returned to France the next year to recruit more teachers, convincing four to accompany her. In 1670 she went to France again and brought back six more women. Having braved dangerous travel and pioneer conditions, these women became the first Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame. Bourgeoys and her sisters helped people in the colony survive when food was scarce, opened a vocational school, taught young people how to run a home and farm. Bourgeoys’ congregation grew to 18 sisters, seven of them Canadian. They opened missions, and two sisters taught at the Native American school. Soon after, Bourgeoys received the first two Native American women into the congregation. In 1693 Mother Marguerite handed over her congregation to her successor, Marie Barbier, the first Canadian to join the order. The congregation’s religious rule was approved by the Church in 1698. Marguerite spent her last few years praying and writing an autobiography. On December 31, 1699, as a young sister lay dying, Mother Marguerite asked God to take her life in exchange. By the next morning of January 1, 1700, the sister was completely well. But, Mother Marguerite had a raging fever, suffered 12 days, and died in Montreal, well known as “The Mother of the Colony”. In 1982 she was canonized as Canada’s first female saint. National Vocation Awareness Week continues; we pray, “God our Father, we thank you for calling men and women to serve in your Son’s Kingdom as priests, deacons, religious, and consecrated persons. Send your Holy Spirit to help us respond generously and courageously to your call. May our community of faith support vocations of sacrificial love in our youth. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” And today is the birthday of my good friend Christine, who is also one of my co-workers at the casino (1960).

First up, last night our LSU Men’s Basketball team lost their game against Alabama by the score of 53 to 69. (Our Tigers are now 11 and 5, and 1 and 1 in Southeastern Conference play.)

I did not wake up this morning until 10:00 am, much to my annoyance. My day was not improved by finding out, when I tried to burn my December 2011 photos to CD, that my CD drive was messing up. I abandoned it and went to read the morning papers; then I went back to the computer and established that the CD drive would let me play audio CDs, and to look at data on data CDs, but would not burn a CD. I unplugged everything from the front and the back of the hard drive, and Richard put the hard drive in the car for me.

Leaving the house at 12:00 pm, my first stop was our computer repair shop, where I left off the hard drive after paying a deposit. I then ate lunch at D. C.’s Sports Bar and Steakhouse, and read in Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg. I then got gas for my car, and drove to the rectory; as I got there I got a call from my dentist confirming my appointment with them on Monday afternoon. The rectory was still closed for lunch; in the half hour that I waited, I was able do to my Devotional Reading. When Deacon Gary opened up the office, he recorded that I need a contribution statement for 2011 for my taxes, and also recorded in the 2012 Mass Book the masses that I requested for my parents, Richard’s parents, and Richard’s sister Pookie (all deceased).

Back home, I washed my new underwear and undershirts for work, and took down the creché (which I should have done on Tuesday). I then got a call from the computer place that our hard drive was ready, so I got in the car again and picked it up. (They replaced the CD drive and ran a scan on the hard drive; they complimented me on doing my Weekly Computer Maintenance every Sunday.). When I got home Richard put the hard drive back under the desk. I made my lunch salads for tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday, collected the cans and tossed the bag of cans in the garage, got rid of my old underwear and undershirts that I was wearing under my casino uniform and put the new underwear and undershirts with my uniforms, and connected up the computer. I then burned a CD of the December 2011 photos for my own purposes and a CD of the December 2011 photos for Liz Ellen, using the new Nero software that our computer people put on the hard drive. I then reconciled the bank statement with our checking account (it had come in today’s mail), and Richard left to get the oil changed in his truck and to pick up pizza pizza from Little Caesars. I finished with the bank statement reconciliation just as Jeopardy! started; Richard arrived home (with the oil changed, but they couldn’t do the antifreeze, as they were shorthanded; more anon) with the pizza, and I ate my share while working on today’s Daily Update. I am annoyed at myself that I did not find the time to finish reading Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg; but once I finish this Daily Update I will do the stuff I normally do online first thing after I wake up; I will then get the stuff together to mail to Liz Ellen and address the If It Fits It Ships box. Then I will take a bath, read the next chapter in The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel, then go to bed, reading a short story or two in The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Edited by Charles Neider.

Tomorrow is Friday, and we return to work; Richard’s cold had gotten better yesterday, but he was in a bad way today with it, and I hope he will be able to work tomorrow. On my breaks I will finish reading Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg, and then start reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. On our way home from work we will get the antifreeze changed in Richard’s truck at the Oil Change place, and I will mail Liz Ellen’s box at the post office. In the afternoon I will do my book review for Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg.

This afternoon’s Parting Quote comes to us from Daniel Bensaïd, French philosopher. He was born in 1946 in Toulouse, France, to a father who was a Sephardic Jew from Algeria. In response to the February 8, 1962 Charonne massacre of Algerians in Paris Bensaïd joined the Union of Communist Students. Irritated by the party orthodoxy, he swiftly became part of a left opposition within the union, and was among the dissidents expelled from the party in 1966. That same year he began studying at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, where he helped found the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire, which became the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR). With Daniel Cohn-Bendit he helped to found the Mouvement du 22 Mars (Movement of March 22) which was involved in the protests of May 1968 in France. He became a leading theorist of the LCR and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. Bensaïd and the Fourth International tradition have come under attack from sections of the far left for the strategy they have advanced in the social movements; in particular, for seeing reform and revolution as a false dichotomy, and proposing the formation of “broad parties”. In one such critique, Luke Cooper, of the journal Fifth International, criticised Bensaïd for arguing that in certain, specific circumstances it maybe permissible to enter a capitalist government, and seek to use the existing state as an instrument of revolutionary transformation. Bensaïd also debated revolutionary strategy with other Fourth International members, and the British Socialist Workers Party’s Alex Callinicos. He was also a Fellow at the International Institute for Research and Education, and was known for his studies of Walter Benjamin and Karl Marx, and for a recent analysis of French postmodernism (died 2010): “Clearly one cannot imagine a revolutionary process other than as a transfer of legitimacy which gives preponderance to “socialism from below” but which interacts with forms of representation, particularly in countries with parliamentary traditions going back over more than a century, and where the principle of universal suffrage is firmly established.”

As National Vocation Awareness Week continues, we note, with no Saints to honor, that on this date in in 1863 ended the Battle of Fort Hindman, near the mouth of the Arkansas River at Arkansas Post, Arkansas, as part of the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. 

National Vocation Awareness Week continues; we pray, “God our Father, we thank you for calling men and women to serve in your Son’s Kingdom as priests, deacons, religious, and consecrated persons. Send your Holy Spirit to help us respond generously and courageously to your call. May our community of faith support vocations of sacrificial love in our youth. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” Turning to the 1863 Battle of Fort Hindman, the fort was manned by approximately 5,000 men, primarily Texas cavalry dismounted and redeployed as infantry and Arkansas infantry, in three brigades under Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Churchill, to protect the Arkansas River and prevent Union Army passage to Little Rock. By the winter of 1862–63, disease and their life at the end of a tenuous supply chain had left the garrison at Fort Hindman in a poor state. Union Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand ordered General Grant’s subordinate, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, to join the troops of his corps with McClernand’s, calling the two corps the Army of the Mississippi, approximately 33,000 men. McClernand on January 4, 1863 then launched a combined army-navy movement on Arkansas Post (with the cooperation of Naval Flag Officer David D. Porter) rather than on Vicksburg as he had told President Lincoln he would do; he also did not bother to inform General Grant or the general in chief, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, of his change of announced plans. Union boats began landing troops near Arkansas Post in the evening of January 9 and the troops started up river towards Fort Hindman. General Sherman’s corps overran the Confederate trenches and the enemy retreated to the protection of the fort and adjacent rifle-pits. Flag Officer Porter, on January 10, moved his fleet towards Fort Hindman and bombarded it, withdrawing at dusk. Union artillery fired on the fort from positions across the river on January 11, effectively silencing most of the Confederate guns in the fort, and the infantry moved into position for an attack. Union ironclads commenced shelling the fort and Porter’s fleet passed it to cut off any retreat. As a result of this envelopment and the attack by McClernand’s troops, the Confederate command surrendered in the afternoon, despite orders to Brig. Gen. Churchill to defend the fort at all costs. The defeat at Arkansas Post cost the Confederacy fully one-fourth of its deployed force in Arkansas and was the largest surrender of Rebel troops west of the Mississippi River prior to the final capitulation of the Confederates in 1865. Grant was furious at McClernand’s diversion from his overall campaign strategy, ordered him back to the Mississippi, disbanded the Army of the Mississippi, and assumed personal command of the Vicksburg Campaign.

I woke up this morning at 9:30 am, started my laundry, and ate my breakfast toast while reading the morning paper. After I did several Advance Daily Update Drafts for this weblog (through next Tuesday, I ironed my casino shirts and finished my laundry.

At 12:30 pm I left Richard recovering from his cold and headed for Lafayette. In Scott I activated my new ATM card at the ATM. I ate lunch at Piccadilly Cafeteria in Lafayette, where I also did some reading; I then went to Barnes & Noble, where I did my devotional reading, got caught up on my Liturgy of the Hours for today, did some more reading (in Labyrinths Walking Toward the Center by Gernot Candolini, Translated by Peter Heinegg), and purchased Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (which I will start reading on Friday or thereabouts, as we will be discussing the book in my Third Tuesday Book Club meeting next Tuesday night) and Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide 2012. At 3:00 pm I was at the Wal-Mart on Ambassador Caffrey, where I got most of the stuff I needed to get. I then went to the Post Office up on Bertrand for two If It Fits It Ships boxes (medium size). I then went to the Wal-Mart in Crowley, where I got the rest of the stuff I needed (between the two Wal-Marts, I got my salad supplies, vitamins, bread and some other groceries, and new underwear and undershirts to wear under my casino uniform). When I got back into my town I stopped at the Hit-n-Run to get my Powerball and Louisiana Lotto lottery tickets for tonight’s drawing.

I got home just after 5:00 pm; at 6:00 pm Richard and I went to Opelousas to eat Chinese at the Creswell Lane Restaurant, returning home at 7:30 pm. And I am now doing tonight’s Daily Update, to be followed by a bath and another chapter of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel, to be followed by a few short stories from The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Edited by Charles Neider before I go to sleep.

Tomorrow I will be doing Photo CDs of my December 2011 photos, and mailing Liz Ellen’s monthly package of stuff to her. Otherwise, I will be making lunch salads and catching up on some stuff.

Our Parting Quote this Wednesday evening comes to us from Miep Gies, Dutch office worker. Born as Hermine Santrouschithg in 1909 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, she was transported at the age of 11 to Leiden from Vienna in December 1920 to escape the food shortages prevailing in Austria after World War I. In 1922 she moved with her foster family to Amsterdam. In 1933 she met Otto Frank when she applied for the post of temporary secretary in his company, Opekta. The company sold a pectin preparation used for making jams. She initially ran the Complaints and Information desk in Opekta, and was eventually promoted to a more general administrative role. She became a close friend of the Frank family, as did Jan Gies, whom she married on July 16, 1941 after she refused to join a Nazi women’s association and was threatened with deportation back to Austria. Her knowledge of Dutch and German helped the Frank family assimilate into Dutch society, and she and her husband became regular guests at the Franks’ home. With her husband, and her family friends, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, and Bep Voskuijl, Gies helped hide Edith and Otto Frank, their daughters Margot and Anne, Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer in a secret upstairs room that was not used in the company’s office building on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht from July 1942 to August 4, 1944. Gies and the other helpers could have been executed if they had been caught hiding Jews. On the morning of August 4, 1944, acting on information provided by an informant, the Grüne Polizei arrested the people hidden at Frank’s place of business, as well as Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman. A few days later, Gies unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Austrian Nazi officer to release her friends. Before the hiding place was emptied by the authorities, Gies retrieved the diaries of Anne, the Frank’s younger daughter, and saved them in her desk drawer. Gies did not read the diaries, and later remarked that if she had she would have had to destroy them because they contained the names of all five of the helpers as well as their black market suppliers, making them dangerous to keep during the rest of the war. Once the war was over Gies gave the collection of papers and notebooks to the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, Otto Frank. After transcribing sections for his family, his daughter’s literary ability became apparent and he arranged for the publication of Het Achterhuis (The Backhouse; often translated as The Secret Annex) in 1947. Gies and her husband had a son in 1950 and found themselves the subject of media attention, particularly after the diary was translated into English in 1952 as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and adapted for the stage and screen. They attended memorial ceremonies and gave lectures about Anne Frank and the importance of resisting fascism. Gies lived in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland, and her husband died in 1993. In December 1994, during the making of the documentary film Anne Frank Remembered, Gies was introduced to Werner Pfeffer, the son of Fritz Pfeffer, who had been one of the people hidden with the Franks. He had been sent to London in 1938 by his father to live with his uncle, and by the end of the war he had lost most of his close family, including his father and mother. Pfeffer had then moved to the United States and California, where he founded a successful office supply business. Upon meeting Gies he expressed his thanks to her for attempting to save his father’s life; he died of cancer two months later. Gies lived to celebrate her 100th birthday, and her son reported that she was still keeping up with the news on television (died 2010): “I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more – much more – during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.”