m for mankind

Okay.

January 23, 2018 by Broderick Barker at 4:06 pm

So The Shape of Water (my review, for what it’s worth, is here) got a whole bunch of Oscar nominations. I’m gonna use that as my spur for writing Volume Two of Lives of Famous Catholics. See if I can get it done in time for the ceremony in early March. No title yet, but my subject is director Guillermo Del Toro. I know, I know — another film director? But I can’t help myself. For what it’s worth, I still hope to finish Gaga Confidential, perhaps pegged to the release of A Star is Born later this year. I have plans for the other four entries that will make up the eventual seven-story book, but there’s no sense in getting ahead of myself. Let’s see if I can do one.

3 Comments Filed Under: alphonse is kid's stuff, Catholicish writers, Coming Soon, fiction, Korrektiv Press, m for mankind, moviegoing, the day job

Everybody! Everybody! Part Two: Rod Dreher

May 13, 2017 by Broderick Barker at 9:11 am

Good people, when The New Yorker profiles a guy who makes a case for Johnsonville, aka Branch Davidian North, aka JOB’s Driftless Dreamland, shouldn’t we take note and discuss?

Dreher is one of the reasons I sometimes wish I could stop by the Walker Percy Weekend. And oh look, it gets a mention in the piece:

One of Dreher’s favorite writers is Walker Percy, whose novel “The Moviegoer” often refers to a fictionalized version of West Feliciana parish, where St. Francisville is situated. (Every year, Dreher hosts a Walker Percy Weekend, combining lectures from literary scholars with crawfish, bourbon, and beer.) Binx Bolling, the book’s protagonist, is a young stockbroker who finds himself on “the search”—the search being “what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the every-dayness of his own life.” Binx explains, “To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

3 Comments Filed Under: (r)evolution, bookish, Catholicish writers, consumer alert, for self-examination, God, m for mankind, monk-y business, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks, xian sects

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote

March 31, 2016 by JOB at 7:58 pm

The Official Poet of the Year of Mercy

4 Comments Filed Under: Academentia, alcohol, tobacco and/or firearms, backward glances, bookish, breaking into song, Catholic with a capital K, Catholicish writers, chaucer, Diversion, fiction, for self-examination, JOB, litterachur, m for mankind, reportage and/or commentary, Signposts in a Strange Land, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks, travels and visitations, what I'm reading now Tagged With: Buy the book, By the book, Catholic Business Journal, Pilgrimage, Pilgrims, Pope Francis, The Catholic perspective in literature before there was a Catholic perspective, Year of Mercy

Race Relations in Seattle

November 30, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 2:20 am

So I’m waiting for my ride at 5th and Jackson, when my bus driver friend Gary (older black gentleman, very nice, but very formal) drives up in the #14. A lady with tattoos on her face staggers towards the bus as I’m talking to him, so I step back to let her on, rolling my eyes to let Gary know he’s got a real winner coming on board. She’s just trashed, and being Caucasian, I guess that makes her White Trash (in this part of town, it’s probably 50/50 odds the inebriated person is black or white. The Asians are rarely wasted, or they never show it, and I won’t even mention the Native Americans).

Anyway, after the drunk Caucasian lady stumbles past Gary, he looks at me and says, “That’s one of your people, Finnegan.” Then he closes the door and drives on up Jackson.

Maybe you’d need to know Gary, but it was funny as hell.

Now, if our roles were reversed, could I say the same thing, and would it be funny? Obviously no, and I think it could be justifiably considered a racist comment. Doesn’t that mean that Gary’s comment is racist as well? What’s fair (or unfair) for someone on the basis of race must be fair or unfair for someone of a different race, right?

Only if you’re an idiot. The manner in which people of different races, especially blacks and whites, view one another has a long history in this country, and ignoring it, or trying to ignore it, turns us into fools. People are different. We treat different people differently, and that’s just the way it is.

No, it doesn’t mean racism is a laughing matter. Neither, in most or at least many circumstances, are drunkenness and tattooed faces. And I’m not sure how well this story would play in front of a crowd, told by a comedian. In fact, this seems like a pretty good illustration of the difference between what’s funny for professional comedians, and what it means to have a sense of humor in the midst of whatever life happens to throw at you. The former can be enjoyable, but the latter is necessary so that life doesn’t become unbearable.

6 Comments Filed Under: Bus Blotter, Diversion, driver's ed, finnegan, for self-examination, kulture klash, Life, m for mankind, quite possibly funny, reportage and/or commentary, Seattle, side jobs, the day job, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks

By the by…

June 1, 2015 by Broderick Barker at 10:23 am

…I figger it’s high time the rest of us started in blogging again. Otherwise, people might start to get suspicious. They might think we were doing meaningful work behind the scenes. Can you imagine?

Anyway, we had our parish priest over for dinner last night. He gave a fine homily for Trinity Sunday about the necessity for experiencing the dynamic of love within the Trinity as being rather more important than understanding its workings, and he closed with a bit from a book written by a father raising a severely autistic boy. On a day when the readings made explicit reference to believers as children of God, it was easy to substitute myself (and all of fallen humanity) for the afflicted son. I recast it thusly:

The Horse and the Boy

The child is simple – anyone can see it
The way he blindly flails about the barn
– in here, where blade and beast might do him harm
and him without the beastly sense to flee it

It’s not his fault – the flaw’s been there since birth
or further back; it’s left him largely with himself
for company, untroubled by the wealth
of words and rules that circumscribe the earth

Thank God, old Betsy has the patience of a saint
Another horse, with some less gentle spirit
Might kick, and stop his cry before I’d even hear it
(If his mother knew I brought him here, she’d faint)

But once I’ve helped him up upon her back
He flashes forth the longing to be known and know
the world beyond himself in just two words: first “up” then “go”
to seek and find what he and I and you still lack

8 Comments Filed Under: animalia, barker, bloggerel verse, blogging during mass, for self-examination, God, m for mankind, pomes penyeach

from Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis

May 20, 2015 by Quin Finnegan at 12:51 pm

I’ve been rereading this 1899 novel by Machado de Assis, and came across this passage, which seems somewhat related to the conversation JOB and I have been having over the last month or so.

God is the poet. The music is by Satan, a young and very promising composer, who was trained in the heavenly conservatory. A rival of Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, he resented the preference they enjoyed in the distribution of the prizes. It could also be that the over-sweet and mystical style of these other pupils was abhorrent to his essentially tragic genius. He plotted a rebellion which was discovered in time, and he was expelled from the conservatory. And that would have been that, if God had not written an opera libretto, which he had given up, being of the opinion that this type of recreation was inappropriate to His eternity. Satan took the manuscript with him to hell. With the aim of showing that he was better than the others—and perhaps of seeking a reconciliation with heaven—he composed the score, and as soon as he had finished it, took it to the Heavenly Father.

“Lord, I have not forgotten the lessons I have learned,” he said. “Here is the score, listen to it, have it played, and if you think it worthy of the heavenly heights, admit me with it to sit at your feet …”

“No,” replied the Lord, “I don’t want to hear a thing.”

“But, Lord …”

“Not a thing, not a thing!”

Satan went on pleading, with no greater success, until God, tired and full of mercy, gave His consent for the opera to be performed, but outside heaven. He created a special theater, this planet, and invented a whole company, with all the principal and minor roles, the choruses and the dancers.

“Come and listen to some of the rehearsals!”

“No, I don’t want to know about it. I’ve done enough, composing the libretto …”

If we imagine that the score is by Schoenberg, maybe the passage will make even more sense!

5 Comments Filed Under: backward glances, bookish, breaking into song, Catholicish writers, cut and paste, Diversion, Earth, finnegan, God, Heaven, Hell, kulture klash, litterachur, m for mankind, the devil and/or his minions, the God problem, thought experiments

Cinematic Sacerdotes

September 18, 2014 by Angelico Nguyen at 8:45 am

Steven D. Greydanus is compiling a list of priest movies —

HERE.

Thanks for doing our work for us, SDG!

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Earth, God, m for mankind, priest movies Tagged With: one or more of the seven sacraments

Paging Dr. Percy

September 8, 2014 by Broderick Barker at 12:58 pm

“English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards. The latter, upon reading upon her dissecting board, ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang’ might catch fire at the beauty of it.”

— Walker Percy, “The Loss of the Creature”

1 Comment Filed Under: Academentia, driver's ed, Earth, m for mankind, reportage and/or commentary, Shakespeare, snapshots, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks

Pending

July 12, 2014 by Angelico Nguyen at 9:45 pm

12 July 2012

A slipper hangs from tiny toes: Our Lord –
A little child – has seen His cross and spear,
Has sped to her whose heart will know a sword.
She holds Him close. Her gaze is dark and clear.
They hang in golden silence…. Twitterings
Of careless birds bring day. Dawn fades the dark.
The clockwork clicks. The hammer hangs, then rings.
The planet turns, and swings along its arc….
The morning sun glides silent up the sky.
The moments pass beneath its sightless ray.
Some few hang solid like an ambered fly;
The rest, like Polaroids, fade fast away….
The noonday sun hangs high. Three things are all:
The point, the palm, the hammer poised to fall.

3 Comments Filed Under: alphonse is kid's stuff, backward glances, barker, Earth, for self-examination, God, help, m for mankind, me, my back pages, Nguyen, Saints, the God problem, the problem of pain, word mongering, you Tagged With: be not afraid, Domina nostra perpetui auxilii, Forever Overhead, God's hooks, Good Friday, Mary, Mono no Aware and/or Weltschmerz and/or Lacrimae Rerum, seraphim and/or cherubim and/or thrones and/or dominations and/or virtues and/or powers and/or principalities and/or archangels and/or angels, Sonnet, That'll be the day., Written after spending many mornings in a small space in which hung a print of the icon described hereinabove, You can't stop what's coming.

Annuntiatio Domini

March 25, 2014 by Angelico Nguyen at 12:00 am

Cell 3 of the Convent of San Marco
by Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), 15th Century

From the Office of Readings in today’s Liturgy of the Hours, an excerpt from a letter by Pope St Leo the Great:

To pay the debt of our sinful state, a nature that was incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer. Thus, in keeping with the healing that we needed, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, was able to die in one nature, and unable to die in the other. [… ]

One and the same person – this must be said over and over again – is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man.