Sunday/Fear

 On this day: 

217 BC
The Romans, led by Gaius Flaminius, are ambushed and defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Lake Trasimene.
1734
In Montreal in New France, a slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique is put to death, having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of the city.
1791
King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes during the French Revolution.
1798
Irish Rebellion of 1798: The British Army defeats Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill.
1877
The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder, are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.
1900
Boxer Rebellion. China formally declared war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan, as an edict issued from the Dowager Empress Cixi.
1942
World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by the Japanese against the United States mainland.
1964
Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
2001
A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.
2004
SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.

***

“We no longer have business cycles, we have credit cycles.” --Boockvar


***

There is a book called Dark Money, about the Koch brothers. It is an awkward topic. The Kochs are generally seen as the bankers of the "Radical Right." But they are pro-gay marriage. They favor liberal immigration policies. They are passionate non-interventionists when it comes to foreign policy. They are against the drug war and are spending a bundle on dismantling so-called “mass incarceration” policies. So, how are they the Radical Right? The answer is probably that they are outspoken opponents of top-down government-mandated change. Real enemy of the powers-that-be. 

Let's call them "Elitist deniers." And such are always high-priority targets in any hierarchy.

***

Brendan Sorsby is withdrawing his lawsuit against the NCAA and will enter the NFL Supplemental Draft later this Summer.

***

Researchers at Beijing's Tsinghua University have designed a new 3D printing method that prints in 0.6 seconds.

***

There are said to be 600,000 homeless in the U.S., 37% are Black, 27% are Hispanic, and 90% are men.

***


Sunday/Fear

"Have no fear" appears, in some form, 365 times in the New and Old Testaments. One of those entrees opens today's "birds of the air" sermon.  

Indeed, the sheep's weakness does not allow for many enemies, but each one generates an ancestry of close or distant fears, trivial or crippling, to haunt his life.

Christ's offer of solace is startling.

Here are two views, Whitman's confident American anxiety before a challenge, Yeats much more grimly existential.

Long, too long America

By Walt Whitman

Long, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

 

The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Sunday/Tension at the Abyss

 On this day:

1645
English Civil War: Battle of Naseby – 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers.
1775
American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.
1789
Mutiny on the Bounty: Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km journey in an open boat.
1800
The French Army of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquers Italy.
1807
Emperor Napoleon I’s French Grande Armee defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (modern Russian Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.
1830
Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers begin their invasion of Algiers, landing 27 kilometers west at Sidi Fredj.
1846
Bear Flag Revolt begins – Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.
1940
The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania resulting in Lithuanian loss of independence.
1940
World War II: Paris falls under German occupation, and Allied forces retreat.
1941
June deportation, the first major wave of Soviet mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, begins.
1947
Roswell UFO incident: A supposed UFO crashes in Roswell, New Mexico

***

Disagreements and protests are inherent to freedom and democracy. But are confrontations inherent to democracy?  Aren't elections the alternative to confrontation?

***

CNN reporter Christine Amanpour stated she was fearful to visit the U.S. to speak at Harvard, comparing her anxiety to that of visiting North Korea. Does that kind of judgment disqualify her opinions elsewhere?

***

Sunday/Tension at the Abyss

There is worry in the writings today, worry over the desperation of mankind.

The gospel opens with, "At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd." 

Christ creates the solution, the Apostles' mission is to go among the people of Israel so, as the Old Testament message in the desert says, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
He is specific, strangely tribal. “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Does he change his mind with time? Is he giving Israel the free choice, only to move on to include the Gentiles?

Paul makes Christ's decision very personal.

"Christ, while we were still helpless,
yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person
one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."

 

Sunday/Manna

 

On this day:
1099
The First Crusade: The Siege of Jerusalem begins.
1494
Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divides the New World between the two countries.
1892
Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the “whites-only” car of a train; he would lose the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson.
1893
Mohandas Gandhi’s first act of civil disobedience.
1899
American Temperance crusader Carrie Nation begins her campaign of vandalizing alcohol-serving establishments by destroying the inventory in a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas
1944
World War II: Battle of Normandy – At Abbey Ardennes members of the SS Division Hitlerjugend massacre 23 Canadian prisoners of war.
1944
World War II: The steamer Danae carrying 350 Cretan Jews and 250 Cretan partisans is sunk without survivors off the shore of Santorini.
1971
The United States Supreme Court overturns the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment.

***

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has three terms, not one, and only the last has to do with income – though no Founding Father, and certainly not the Virginians, nor for that matter any political economist at the time, predicted the enormous fruit in economic growth from primary liberalism. Life and liberty reject supervising human masters.--mccloskey

***

The impact of the Iran War on gas prices in the U.S. is said to threaten to move elections. How is that different from years of policies designed to substitute unconventional energy for fossil fuels, which have led to a sharp increase in costs as well? Both are attacks on national wealth and the well-being of ordinary people.


***

A new report showing that real hourly wages have risen by 3% since 2019 while profits have risen by 50% has some worried “about the political stability of an economy in which ever more output flows toward shareholders instead of employees.”
Old rhetoric. Nothing prevents employees from being shareowners. More than half of American workers already own corporate shares through their retirement plans. Nor could it be easier.


***

In 'Under the Skin', a sci-fi movie starring Scarlett Johansson, an alien creature, "the Female," takes on human form and hunts the streets of Scotland, looking for men.
Many scenes were unscripted, filmed with hidden cameras, including those at the nightclub, the shopping center, and those in which the Female picks up men in her van. The crew purpose-built their own cameras to pull this off, hiding eight cameras in the Female's van that could accurately capture the reactions and responses of both her and her prey. The unsuspecting men were informed later that they had been filmed and gave permission for their scenes to be included in the movie's final cut.
'Under the Skin' is truly an exploration of the human condition, brought to the fore by the fact that Johansson was interacting with real people, unaware they were being filmed. --from CBR

***

Sunday/Manna

In today's gospel, Christ hammers away at His Bread of Life metaphor; He just will not give it up.

Today is the continuation of the manna/"bread of heaven" writings, starting with the very difficult:
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;..."
This is very upsetting and must have caused a crisis among those listening. It is, in retrospect, pointed to as support for communion and the organization of the Church. But the audience did not know that at the time. What could they have thought? "The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?'”
And Christ gets more specific, more graphic:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day."

This is grisly stuff. Isolated, it sounds very much like a reference to the ancient human sacrifice period among the early Jews.
It is.

In juxtaposing the manna from heaven and the Bread of Life, Christ is distinguishing the material from the immaterial, the physical from the spiritual, in the debate that has repeated itself since recorded time. He is saying that the materialists have a firm grasp of one appendage of the elephant of life.

The fatal one.

Sunday/Trinity

On this day:

1279 BC
Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
526
A devastating earthquake strikes Antioch, Turkey, killing 250,000.

1162 

Happy Birthday, Genghis Khan, Khagan of the Mongol Empire
1678
The Godiva procession through Coventry begins.
1889
Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
1921
Tulsa Race Riot: A civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, the official death toll is 39, but recent investigations suggest the actual toll may be much higher.
1935
A 7.7 Mw earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead.
1941
A Luftwaffe air raid in Dublin, Ireland, claims 38 lives.

1962

Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel.
1970
The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.

***

The Flat Earth Facebook group has more than 100,000 members. They vote.

***

Biblioclasm: the destruction of books, especially the Bible. — biblioclast.

***

Sunday/Trinity

Today is Trinity Sunday, and its gospel is the gospel of John 3:16--18, made famous by baseball caps and signs held up in endzones by strange, bearded men with rainbow hair. It is also famous in the seminary. No one wants to give a sermon on this gospel; it always risks heresy.

John's lines summarize the two great difficulties in Christianity: the Trinity and Christ's motive. Muhammad was so bewildered by the Trinity that he solved it with polytheism. The Old Testament scholars expected a leader in the messiah. Conflict and victory.

But the New Testament offers neither. Rather, it creates an incomprehensible spiritual circular genealogy and the Christ who promises no justice, no judgment.

Mystery. And a mercy.

Sunday/Pentecost

The unemployment rate for those seeking work has risen for recent college graduates above that of older workers for the first time in history. This is also true of the non-college-graduate age group.

***

This $1.8 billion fund for people aggrieved over politically motivated legal action seems like a stupid response to a serious problem.

***

Why must Independents, a sizable portion of the American voters, be forced to vote for an antagonistic political party?

***

Sunday/Pentecost

Today is Pentecost, observed 7 weeks after Easter. It is a complex day in the Church in history and meaning.
Literally, Pentecost means "fifty," as the fiftieth week of the year. It, in the Old Testament, refers to the giving of the Ten Commandments and, in the New Testament, signifies its new direction. Christ reappears to the fearful apostles, reinvigorates them and then breathes upon them, infusing the spirit of the New Testament and the abilities to carry out their evangelism. "Whose sins you forgive..." essentially creates a church structure.

In England, it is--or was--the feast of Whitsun, so changed after the Norman Conquest. Whitsun is a contraction of "White Sunday," attributed to the white vestments worn by catechumens on the day. Eventually, white (hwitte) began to be confused with wit or understanding, not entirely inappropriate for the occasion. It was a significant holiday and celebration in its time and began to substitute for more secular spring celebrations.

The word for "Spirit" in Greek has several meanings; it also can mean "wind" and "breath." Christ does breathe on the apostles, and the Spirit is often described as a great wind. One ancient writer describes the Holy Spirit as Christ's last expired breath on the cross.

Breath is, of course, different from wind, which can be destructive, even in the scorching Middle East. But Christ's breath is gentle; it seems there is no downside here, no risk. Unless to the recipient who internalizes it. Of the apostles--who all abandoned Christ to die alone--after Pentecost, all, save John, died for Christ's message.

In our cautious and uncertain world, Pentecost might be more safely observed from a window. Or online.

Sunday/The Ascension

The national debt is a constitutional crisis. A government of free men requires a balancing responsibility, and we have met only half of our requirements.

***

The Liberation Caucus describes itself as “a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist caucus in Democrat Socialists of America.” That is to say, they believe in an inherent destructive conflict of castes among men which can be resolved only by the extermination of one class, their children, and their future.

***

NASA's Psyche spacecraft flew by Mars on Friday (May 15). The precisely timed maneuver was not designed to study Mars, but rather to use the planet as a celestial slingshot on its journey to its namesake, the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. The spacecraft passed within about 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) of Mars to boost Psyche's speed and, more importantly, to shift its trajectory toward its destination, the asteroid 16 Psyche, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter.

***

Mortgages are up, and talk is appearing about the national debt as if it is something recent. 

A typical 30-year mortgage costs over $500 more per month than it did in 2019. When the Federal Reserve cut rates by a full percentage point in late 2024, mortgage rates barely moved. Treasury yields, pushed up by the government’s relentless borrowing, overwhelmed the Fed’s easing entirely. The same dynamic drives up auto loans, credit card rates, and small business borrowing costs.
That is called "crowding out." It is not going to improve.

***

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and neighbouring Uganda a “public health emergency of international concern” after the virus killed nearly 90 people.

***

Sunday/The Ascension

The otherworldly Ascension of Christ is a curious event as reported in the gospels. It is the last event of Matthew's gospel. In Luke, it is mentioned but is elaborated on later in the Acts of the Apostles. More than miraculous, it is a culmination, the culmination, one would think, that would be emphasized. But the management of the Ascension is strangely distant. Almost unsure. Added on. Indeed, the old Church celebrated the period from Easter to the Ascension as a single event, as a unit.

The reporting during this period reflects the humanity of the reporters. What were they to think? The complexity of Christ's message, His spiritual world, was overwhelming. Revolutionary. Now the Messenger was gone. 

As always, there is humor in this relationship, a strange, understanding irony, gentle and personal, that prods us.
"While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?" 

Things have shifted. To you. This is just the beginning. There is so much more to come.

The Ascension is described by men who have seen the Resurrection, yet seem stunned.

Sunday/Emmaus

On this day:

1529
The Second Diet of Speyer bans Lutheranism; a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, beginning the Protestant Reformation.
1587
Francis Drake’s expedition sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbor
1775
American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1961
The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in success for the defenders.
1971
Charles Manson is sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders.
1993
The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1995
Oklahoma City bombing: The A Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to one of the bombers, Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.

***

Flyers did not look like the team that played into the playoffs. The Pens were overwhelmed with speed and intensity, and they tried hard.


***


Sunday/Emmaus

Today's gospel is the brilliant Road to Emmaus gospel, where two of Christ's apostles are discussing Christ's death on their way to the town of Emmaus. They are joined by Christ, whom they do not recognize. He joins the conversation, explains the life and death of Christ, particularly in the context of prophecy.

The travelers reach a point in the road where it seems the new man who joined them is going to go his own way. The men encourage him to continue with them to Emmaus. They eventually recognize him at the breaking of the bread at dinner.

This story is especially interesting in its connection to the Eucharist but what is fascinating is the journey of men, met by Christ whom they do not recognize and the moment where they, the travelers, must initiate the true development and enhancement of their understanding.

Without their positive efforts, Christ will move on alone.

Sunday/Thomas

On this day:

1204
The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.
1550
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, English politician (d. 1604), is born

1861

American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
1864
American Civil War: The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
1934
The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire
1945
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.
1961
The Russian (Soviet) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
1970
Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board.

***

"I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else."
--Winston Churchill

***

It is estimated the average college graduate has a working vocabulary of 3000 words. The poet Ben Jonson's vocabulary was estimated at 7,500. The estimate of the playwright Shakespeare was 20,000. Many argue this astonishing number proves Shakespeare was more than one man. (Or an alien.) Of the other heretical ideas about his 'true' identity, deVere is a strong candidate.

***

New perspective since I can't get cable. The BBC thinks:
--that Iran's nuclear ambitions are defensive.
--that Iran's preconditions are reasonable groundwork for peace, when I think they caused the war in the first place.
--that Melania's request that the Epstein accusations be specific and based on testimony and not hearsay is unreasonable.
--that Starmer's move toward the EEU is statesman-like and not desperate


***

Sunday/Thomas

Today's gospel is the "Doubting Thomas" gospel. It could be a short story. Unfortunately, it is an insight that has become a cliché, and for the wrong reason.

The Thomas of the gospels is not a fickle guy; he is a brave, committed man. When Christ wants to return to a town where they had previously tried to kill Him, Thomas, after losing the argument against going, announces he will go with Christ so they can die together. His caution over the talk of Christ's resurrection stems from only one thing: his desire for the truth.

"Thomas" means "twin." Doubting Thomas is a twin. ("Doubt" has its origin in "duo.") The other side of doubt is belief, the product of doubt. Doubt and belief are linked. Twins. But that is not true for all.

Solipsism is the position in metaphysics and epistemology that the mind is the only thing known to exist, and that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. It is a skeptical hypothesis that leads to the belief that the entirety of reality, the external world, and other people are merely representations of the individual self, lacking independent existence, and might not even exist. It is not the same as skepticism (the epistemological position that one should refrain from making truth claims at all).
Some people make their living talking like this.

Several modern currents of thought are rushing us toward the rapids. One is doubt itself, as a philosophy, a tenet of modern life. For many, doubt is the endpoint.

When Descartes asked, "What can I know?" he described us as isolated individuals whose knowledge was individually subjective. But this comes at a price. I can doubt the existence of the external world, and I can doubt the existence of what appears to be my body. But when I try to also doubt the existence of my inner self, my thinking, then I find that I am still there--as a doubting mind. Doubting is the thing that, in the end, I cannot doubt. Doubting, however, is thinking, and the existence of thinking implies the existence of a thinker. Hence, Descartes' famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am." So the self sees us as isolated individuals, prioritizing our subjectivity above all else. The agent of thought is doubt. And, unlike Thomas, those doubts are never answered.

This has implications for more than the individual. "Community" implies shared beliefs, things held in common. So doubt, as an endpoint, is as destructive, isolating, and paralyzing as any heresy. It is the redoubt(!) of the immobile and the somnolent. Like the pacifist, doubt requires the efforts and the sacrifices of others to exist.

When Christ appeared the second time, He was probably really happy to see Thomas.

Lazarus

On this day:1621
The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.1622
Jamestown massacre: Algonquian Indians kil
l 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony’s population.1765
The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.
1916
The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicates the throne and the Republic of China is restored.
1943
World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.
1984
Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.

***

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. -Henry van Dyke, poet (10 Nov 1852-1933)

***

The investigations and trials from the McMartin child abuse case took seven years and cost more than $15 million. It was, and currently remains, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. It developed its own vocabulary and terms on its way to being an industry.

***

This year’s Venice Biennale looks as polarised as ever, with the EU threatening to cut funds if the organisers go ahead with plans to approve a Russian pavilion, while over 200 artists want Israel barred.

***

Pakistan’s ICBM program is on track to go intercontinental (ie, reach the US).

***

Lazarus

Today's gospel is the raising of Lazarus. You would think that would be enough but Christ magnifies the event. On hearing Lazarus is ill Christ says ambiguously, 'This sickness will not end in death, but it is for God's glory so that through it the Son of God may be glorified.' Mary and Martha will be rewarded, but not just yet.

Back to Bethany.

Bethany was dangerous territory for Christ. "The disciples said, 'Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews were trying to stone you; are you going back there again?'"
And Thomas, just a great human guy: "Then Thomas -- known as the Twin -- said to the other disciples, 'Let us also go to die with him.'"

In it, Christ is upsettingly emotional. Seeing Christ cry is unnerving as the gospels never report He ever laughed. But His intensity points to one thing: death is the linchpin in all of life's discussions. This passage does not recoil from the ironic horror that Kazantzakis exploits later in The Last Temptation of Christ, where Lazarus follows Christ around as a living, decaying man.

Sunday/Blind

On this day:
44 BC
Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
1545
First meeting of the Council of Trent.
1781
American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse – Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.
1783
In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'état never takes place.
1917
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar.
1933
Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the Austrofascist dictatorship 

1952

In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in a 24 hour period, setting a new world record (March 15 through March 16).
1985
The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

***

"Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind." This is Washington, putting on his glasses and reading his response to the "Newburgh Conspiracy" raised in his officer corps against the American civil government.

***

The great problem in assessing recent years is not that Trump is a resurgence of the common man. Nor is his assumption of power greater than the government's assumption during the Biden Regency. Biden was non compos but someone--or many someones--thought they were competent to run the government without public approval or oversight, too. One is a governing blusterer, the other a governing, blustering shadow.

***

Researchers discover ketogenic diet prevents seizures by altering gut bacteria, stabilizing brain activity in epilepsy patients.

***

The nighttime habit that wrecks memory? Checking your phone and sleep fragmentation. Even brief awakenings and light exposure can impair the brain’s overnight memory consolidation.

***

This year, there will be over 9 billion--BILLION--trips from China.

***

This is not a war. And the border is closed.

Are these people any different, ever?

***

Sunday/Blind

Today was known as Lumen Christi, "The Light of Christ." It was accompanied by a ceremony of light-bearing and exchange.

Today's gospel is rich with metaphor, symbolism, and a hint of revolution, all delivered in a peculiar vaudevillian tone. It mixes light and dark, the physical and the immaterial, the visible and the invisible. In it, Christ encounters and heals a blind man on the Sabbath. First, He dismisses the old idea that the man's infirmities are due to his or his parents' sin. Then, the man presents himself to the priests, who are divided—some are amazed, others indignant that the healing was done on the Sabbath. Finally, Christ flips the lesson, suggesting that sin is a kind of blindness of the soul that hampers the spirit. Throughout, there is the revolutionary idea of human freedom and responsibility, and the danger of rigid social constructs—this was two thousand years ago.
The debate is funny, almost a parody of bureaucracy and decision-making. and eventually, the blind man's provenance is established by Christ's detractors.

And there's another provocative thing: After the blind man is cured, Christ seeks him out.



Going Blind by Rainer Maria Rilke

She sat just like the others at the table.
But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup
a little differently as she picked it up.
She smiled once. It was almost painful.

And when they finished and it was time to stand
and slowly, as chance selected them, they left
and moved through many rooms (they talked and laughed),
I saw her. She was moving far behind

the others, absorbed, like someone who will soon
have to sing before a large assembly;
upon her eyes, which were radiant with joy,
light played as on the surface of a pool.

She followed slowly, taking a long time,
as though there were some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome,
she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.


On His Blindness by John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

Sunday/The End of History

On this day:

1618
Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
1722
The Safavid Empire of Iran is defeated by an army from Afghanistan at The Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.
1736
Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.
1775
An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes “African Slavery in America”, the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.
1917
International Women’s Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (so named because it was February on the Julian calendar)
1920
The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.

***

Keplar's three laws state that:

--The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
--A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
--The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

***


More than 7,000 Middle East flights were cancelled between Saturday and Tuesday alone, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers in what aviation experts are calling the worst global travel disruption since Covid grounded the world.

Dubai International Airport, normally the world's busiest international hub with millions of passengers transiting annually, sits empty.

Private jet brokers report charging up to $350,000 for flights from Riyadh to Europe.

***

The Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case that AI-generated art does not qualify for copyright protection.

***

At 4:52 p.m. Wednesday, with eight minutes left before Montana’s candidate filing deadline closed, Kurt Alme walked into the Secretary of State’s office and filed for the United States Senate.

He had never run for office. He had no campaign. He had no publicly released platform. He had no announcement, no press conference, no town halls, no conversations with voters. What he had — the only thing he needed — was Steve Daines on the phone and Donald Trump at the ready on Truth Social.

That is how Montana’s next Republican nominee for U.S. Senate was chosen. Not by you. By them. (Just in case anybody out there thinks the Republicans chose differently than the party that chose Hilary and Kamala.)

***

Sunday/The End of History

Today's gospel contains the focused drama of a short story; it is a virtual advertisement for the quality of the writing in the New Testament.
In it, Christ meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well.

In this most social of places, she is alone, as is He. He asks her for a drink of water. And they talk. And something is wrong.

Just a few paragraphs, and there is so much going on. She is a Samaritan-- of Jewish heritage yet disdained by the Jews--at a well originally owned by a Jewish patriarch of the Old Testament. It is noon, the heat is at its height--why is she there at that time of day? And why alone?

She is uncomfortable with a Jew--and a man--asking her for water. She begins to spar a bit with Him as to how worship should be performed. Christ asks her to bring her husband; she says she has none, Christ agrees with her yet corrects her: She has had five and her current man is not her husband.

Now it is clear. The woman goes for water at the worst time of the day to avoid the criticism of the others; she is alone because she prefers it. She is an outcast among outcasts.

But Christ does not press her on her social circumstances. At the ancient Well, there is no history. There is no lecture, no scolding, no offer of forgiveness. And as we learn more of her, she learns more of Him.

The entire story--indeed her eventual conversion--is one of coming to knowledge, to understanding. And the transcendence of History.

Sunday/Temptation

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

***

From Glanmore:

The corrugated iron growled like thunder
When March came in; then as the year turned warmer
And invalids and bulbs came up from under,
I hibernated on behind the dormer,
Staring through shaken branches at the hill,
Dissociated, like an ailing farmer
Chloroformed against things seasonal
In a reek of cigarette smoke and dropped ash.

Lent came in next, also like a lion
Sinewy and wild for discipline,
A fasted will marauding through the body;
And I taunted it with scents of nicotine
As I lit one off another, and felt rash,
And stirred in the deep litter of the study. (Seamus Heaney)

***

Sunday/Temptation

First Sunday of Lent

Today's gospel is The Temptation in the Desert. Christ is asked by the Devil to change stone into bread, is offered dominion over the earth, and is offered the opportunity to summon angels. 

Sustenence. Glory. Power.

The temptation of God is unsettling even if we can rationalize it under Christ's duality. This event has been translated as the temptation of Israel but there is a peculiarity here that does not go away: Who is Christ proving Himself to? He is not being asked to change stone to bread because He is hungry but to prove He can do it. Ditto the display of throwing Himself from the precipice. These are displays of proof, confirmation of His divinity. And, as Christ does not need the Devil for dominion, one thinks the Devil is superfluous.

What the devil is going on?

What this really looks like is a heavenly internal debate (and a joy to the Manichees): "I could do it this way, but won't. This way, but won't. Nor this way." 

But Christ is not being asked by the Devil for proof.

The Devil is us.