Sunday/A Question

 On this day:

79
Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
1305
Sir William Wallace is executed for High Treason at Smithfield in London.
1572
Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris – St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
1775
King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion.
1839
The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
1914
World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
1927
Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
1929
Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
1939
World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.
1942
World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.

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"The caroms of trade aggressions and retaliations call to mind an experience Gulliver had when his travels took him to the grand academy of Lagado. There he met a man who had worked "eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers." To those who say this is as plausible as trying to produce prosperity with protectionism — correctly likened to pursuing wealth by blockading one's own ports — today's trade warriors respond: Have patience. Given sufficient time, protectionism will pay.

But as the comedian Steven Wright says, " Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." (will)

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), a 2028 presidential hopeful, had welcomed data centers as an economic-development boon, boasting last year that an Amazon plan to build $20 billion in AI infrastructure was the "largest private sector investment in the history of Pennsylvania."
On Tuesday, Shapiro, whose Republican opponent in November is campaigning on halting data-center development, went from AI cheerleader to critic and signed an executive order imposing stringent new requirements for data-center developers.

***

A 15th-Century epic poem by Blind Harry (Harry the Minstrel) was responsible for much of the legend of William Wallace. It was nine books long and was said to be second only to the bible in Scottish homes.

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Sunday/A Question

Today's gospel is the declaration of Peter. It contains a rare use of the word "church," in the Greek meaning a religious assembly. It also contains a startling question by Christ, for what does Christ not know?


“But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.


This is, again, another example of Christ's demanding a determination from what has been seen, a collection of observations leading to a result. It is an edgy problem, creating local conclusions from small events when a gigantic, far-reaching event could have convinced the world. And it allows for a profound uncertainty, "Who do you say that I am?" as if part of the story is the quest.



The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,–the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.


Gerard Manley Hopkins