Chasing Catholic Cooties Out of a Cathedral

. No disrespect is meant to either Christian denomination mentioned. The sardonic title was chosen merely to indicate one party's strength of feeling about another, but who had to deal in a civil manner for a sales transaction. Please explore this with me as an inquiry into human culture and ritual processes.
. What makes a certain space or location sacred? I remember a prayer from long ago in which this line was included:

"Lord, this place is sacred not because You are here

but because we are here."

That about sums it up: without the reverence of humans, sacredness would be an empty concept.
. Currently many Catholic church buildings are being given up and placed on the market. Unlike other sales citing the square footage, specifying the heating system, etc. there is an important value that cannot be readily shown to buyers: it is a holy place. I encountered such a situation first hand at a church in Massachusetts, where the Catholics there put up for sale a very large, well kept church with generous parking space. Ironically the new tenants were not a commercial firm but a church, but also one with whom relations are historically difficult for Catholics.

. The roots of the animosity go at least as far back as 306 A.D. when Constantine I, Emperor of Rome adopted Christianity for himself and his empire while also moving the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Though the Empire continued to include the West until the "Fall of Rome" in 476, major political and religious power had already passed East to the new capital.

. Europe and Asia Minor continued to adhere to a tradition of Empire, then under Christianity and non-Roman leaders, but in reality fractured into many independent kingdoms. These political divisions continued to haunt the Church appearing, by proxy, as theological disputes culminating in the eleventh century. In 1054 the Pope of Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch excommunicated each other, beginning the formal division of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Interestingly the Catholics continue to accept the validity of Orthodox ordination of priests, a recognition not returned by the Orthodox.

. Which leads me to the present story... One might assume that since it was already consecrated, all the new parish had to do was ask the Catholics not to secularize the building and then just move in.

. That's not what happened. A special two-day Orthodox Rite of the Consecration of a Church was performed. The Metropolitan (like a Cardinal) of the District presided over a Vigil ceremony lasting three hours on the first evening and an all-morning service the next day, cocelebrated by many clergy.

. I was there as part of a non-denominational choir invited to sing the first nine hymns of the vigil liturgy. We had rehearsed these pieces in their original Slavonic, as composed by Rachmaninoff. That is the liturgical language used by the Russian and some other Eastern European Orthodox churches. So our participation was very welcome and fit right in.

. When our half-hour stint was over I was able to turn my attention to the physical surroundings as I was very curious how far they would go in "de-Catholicizing" the building and the worship space. First I noticed that they had left the pews in place, though some Orthodox churches do not install them. I also expected they would remove the fourteen mural depictions called Stations of the Cross, common in Catholic churches. Contrary to their tradition the new owners did not remove them. I speculated that was either because these were not paintings, but bas-relief sculptures architecturally part of the walls and thus difficult to remove; or were left in a spirit of ecumenism and tolerance.

. The organ sits unused up in the choir loft, as all their services are sung a cappella. The rack of votive candles in the foyer was allowed to remain and appeared to be well-patronized, apparently for their parallel custom of lighting a candle as a symbol of a spiritual petition.

. But the altar area was completely reconstructed. The new star of the altar is a beautiful iconostasis, a panel spanning the entire breadth of the altar nave. It was elaborately carved and painted with sacred art by Serbian artisans -- taking three years -- then shipped to the USA.

. The parish hall downstairs was immediately put into use by these lively people as is. The post-vigil evening included a meal, Serbian musicians, singers and dancers.

Going Forward to Yesterday, Part II: I Love to Decode

. My January 16 posting "Going Forward to Yesterday" was about a weak parallel between the excruciating efforts of scholars to decipher text in Aramaic and Hebrew in the faded and/or fragmented Dead Sea Scrolls and my pitiful attempt to restore some text, in English, from some shards of a broken page. Nonetheless it is like "air guitar": one gets a bit of a thrill of imitating the art of the Real People.

. There were four stages to my quest: . 1) assemble the pieces into their likely original places, despite missing sections; 2) do optical character recognition (OCR) to attempt to turn the image into text; 3) correct the mistakes made by OCR --there were many-- and turn it into the maximum recognizable text; 4) identify the original document from which the page fell out.

. Actually the OCR step was not really necessary, but I included it to simulate the lack of clarity even in the reconstructed document. After visually examining the document, comparing to the OCR and extrapolating, here is the clarified text that I guessed was as close to the original as could be made:

. "Our primary need, then, is to continue the faith in a Government which during four consecutive years has given proof of its attachment to the cause of good government, of its sincere and ardent desire to promote everything to perpetuate its tradition of progress, and conduct the Province to the high position which nature destined it to achieve. And with this faith alike in the Government and in the future of our Province, let us continue to invest, with courage, our accumulated wealth, in the development of the Province's resources; let us be true ..."

. Now using any physical and contextual clues I attempted t0 hypothesize what the source document was.

1) It is from an English-speaking country. 2) Province is capitalized as if referring to a specific political division that would be clear to the reader; 3) a four-year term (not included in excerpt I provided above) evinces a non-parliamentary government or a government official chosen by regular elections.

. From these three clues I surmised it is a document from a Canadian province and that it is either from -- or defending the regime of -- the provincial premier, perhaps one running for re-election.

4) The mention of development as if it were a current issue and the fact that the list includes only natural resources implies a western province or the northern area of an Eastern province 5) the inhabitants have an inferiority complex at that, implying a frontier society; 6) the back of the page, numbered 28, appears to have been stuck to a flimsy cover, as if it were the last page of a very short paperback document; 7) the mention of "accumulated wealth" and "return from otehr lands" are curve balls. Why would citizens leave a place charcterized by wealth, unless perhaps the wirter is speaking of his own wealth, and the common folk left for economic reasons not mentioned, but impled by the apologetic and exhortatory style 8) appears written in the flowery style common in pre-World War II formal writing.

. I'll go out on a limb and guess -- based on the above and the flimsy extrapolation from the fact there is no French translation and no francocisms crept into the writer's vocabulary, that it is: Ontario (or possibly neighboring Saskatchewan).

On the Trail: Enough for Me and You?

. What is it about the planning of hiking and camping menus that brings out the "duh!" in people? The following stories are all true. But first a lousy poem I composed just for this occasion:

The hiker takes the stew:

Enough for me and you.
How about the other guys?
What are we to do?

He should have planned for eight.
For shopping it's too late.
We're miles and miles from anywhere

To make up his mistake!

Story 1: A threesome goes out for a full day of horseriding on country tracks and trails. The host, and owner of the horses, says that she'll pack some food for everybody. It might seem that riding horse is a no-energy pastime. But just ask the horse people and they will enlighten

you. When lunchtime rolled around the hungry riders turned to the host who handed them each a tiny pack of Oreo cookies, and showed them the "bags of potato chips for later" (which the other riders noticed were the teeny-weeny kindergarten size.) All arrived back at the host's house starving, but squelched their annoyance because they were nonetheless grateful for the opportunity for an otherwise pleasant bucolic trip.

Story 2: At the Grand Canyon a couple planned to go down to the Colorado River and back up the next day. One suggested to the other "Let's save the weight of food and a stove. We'll only bring water bottles, OK?" On certain backcountry trips like that a Ranger sometimes questions the hikers on their gear and may even asks to inspect their pack in order to give advice or warnings to greenhorns. Since the couple looked like they knew what they're doing he merely asked a couple of questions about gear and then said "You have enough food and water for the two days, right?" Needless to say the two liars came back up the following day thirsty, starving and exhausted.

Story 3: A seven-day trip in the wild and remote Canadian Northwest. The planning for different needs -- permits, maps, gear, fuel, food, etc was distributed among the half dozen trekkers. Everything went well until the fourth day when someone had a look at the food bags. "I thought you packed food for 7 days. It does not look like enough," said the astonished backpacker. I swear that the food person's response given is true and verified by the others: "I was planning that we could fast on one of the days." She is known to have survived the trip, but as they say, if looks could kill...

Story 4: My barber, always a reliable source of information and anecdotes about human nature told me about the following trek. Four of his nephews undertook a four-day hike in the willy-wacks (as we call wilderness in Maine sometimes). On the morning of the second day it was noticed that no one had brought breakfast food. Upon further

investigation it was found that, in fact, only two had thought to bring any food, and it was not enough to nourish four grown men for the rest of the trip. "We thought everybody would bring some," one of them said. Did it ever occur to them to check with each other on something so important before they left?

Solutions. First, all participants in a group hike, and even solo hikers should give recognition to the importance of food to provide energy for strenuous activity. Second if responsibility for amassing the food is given to one person he or she should plot out a menu for three daily meals, plus morning and afternoon snacks. This should then be reviewed by all right away to correct for food preferences, allergies, dietary restrictions, whatever. After this quantities should be determined for the portions for each person at each meal.

. The next posting will cover suggested foods honoring both nutrition and the need for variety and how to calculate food quantities for backpacking.

Why the Mosquito?

A pentimento ... is an alteration in a painting, ... showing that the artist has changed his mind." I recalled this art term this morning from the dim depths of the past. I looked it up in Wikipedia and found that I had remembered the spelling almost exactly, give or take a vowel.
. Moving on to a seemingly unrelated subject, but comparing Creation to a work of art: I've always wondered about the purpose of the mosquito in the scheme of Nature. All I can think of is that it must be somebody's food (inasmuch as we appear to be its favorite food). We have adopted every reasonable measure to keep them away from us during mosquito season. This year that season has broken all records, continuing even to this week, about a month and a half past normal. This great continuous hatch is probably due to the "monsoon" we've had for most of the last three months. I despise these flying, humming annoyances so much I was thinking of building one of those bat houses in order to enlist the aid of our furry winged friends in doing them in.
. Today I realize that they are actually a mistake in the Creation.... . That statement is hard to prove except by inference, but I have it figured out. God never goes back -- being the Supreme One, after all. But God felt really bad about going too far in creating things that make humans miserable. So what he conceived of next is, by analogy, a pentimento. He gave us CHOCOLATE to try to make it up to us!

Channelling Rachmaninoff

. Big joy for me this fall. Finally my dream comes true of singing in a performance of Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil a big, musically perfect, joyous and ethereal work for 8-part a cappella choir.
I did not know that it existed until I happened to came across the Shaw Festival Singers recording in my University's library. I have no idea what caught my eye about it. Just good fortune, I guess.
. Musical works may have different meanings to different people, I know. This piece rang something in my soul the first time I heard it and so I instantly fell in love with it. It is not frequently performed. I promised myself that when an opportunity came to sing in a performance I would willingly rearrange my life, travel to anyplace within 100 miles for rehearsals, even take a leave of absence from my Chamber Choir if there were a scheduling conflict in order to do this. I had tried to interest each of the choral conductors at the University to take it on. None yet. So I have waited patiently for a chance.
. Every once in a while I search the web for any mention of All Night Vigil (also simply but imprecisely called Vespers) in connection with Maine. After no such known opportunities in the past 15 years within the mentioned radius, one suddenly appears just as I am readying to retire and thus would have scheduling flexibility unprecedented in my prior life! Hmmm... The wheels of Coincidence seem to synchronize in unexpected ways. I thank God and the Vice-Goddesses of Music: Polyhymnia and Euterpe. The Catholics have Saints Cecilia and Gregory (as in Gregorian chant) right on their heels as close seconds. I thank them too.
. The piece is about an hour long and is sung without intermission and without instruments. The language is Church Slavonic which closely resembles Russian. It is the liturgical language for some Eastern Orthodox Churches -- sort of a parallel with the historical place of Latin in Western churches. Another little irony is that I just came across this first-person account about what it was like to produce that seminal recording that I am still so emotional about, and in fact am listening to as I post this.

"I was one of the 59 hand-picked voices that formed the 1989 Robert Shaw Festival Singers. The emotional intensity of making this recording with Shaw was so overwhelming that I had to distance myself from this music for nearly a decade. Only within the last five years have I begun to listen to the recording again, stunned at its power, overwhelmed by the artistry Shaw brought to it, and convinced that the spirit of Sergei himself was present in that 12th-century cathedral in Gramat, France, on that hot, late July evening 15 years ago, when we recorded this masterpiece in a mere four hours. Something, some guiding presence (besides the all-too-intimidating Shaw himself) was in the room, and all of us felt it."

. How's that for verification of the power of the work? So you can understand why I'm excited about this chance and willing to travel 4 hours round trip every Tuesday evening for rehearsals. And yes, as Murphy's Law would have it one of the two performances will occur on December 13, the exact day of my Chamber Choir's Advent concert. My director knows how much it means to me, kindly allowed a leave of absence and wished me well. . One more thing... Yes, I am taking a risk. The whole thing could be a disappointment for any of a number of reasons. But if we allowed ourselves to give in to worries like that we would never do anything worthwhile: safe but forever unfulfilled.

Slowing Down for the Thule Police

. In some circles "instinct" is a bad word as it implies something unmeasurable. How does one detect something that is basically a program built into a species? It may not have a physical locus that can be pointed to within its biological system. The demonstration is always situationally and environmentally triggered.
. At our former dwelling in town we kept "clandestine" chickens in a home-made coop on the back side of a building, completely shielded from off-property visibility, especially out of view of the city's Code Enforcement officer. (Our neighbors actually loved our having them. No problem there. "Oh, it's like the old days," gushed one of our next-door neighbors who remembered a time of more home-centered food production.) The project turned out to have unexpected benefits besides fresh eggs: a source of amusement, a first-hand lesson in zoology, and more to the point, numerous manifestations of instinct.
. Perhaps deep in the human constitution we too have an embedded image of what we need to hastily retreat from for our survival. The chickens provided a graphic example. In their little poultric (I just made that word up!) brains there must be a hard-wired fearsome picture like the one below left.

. I'll tell you something you might see as a sort of cruel joke, but it was a science education technique like no other, to get the concept across about hard-wired instinct. There were a couple of occasions when we'd pass a broom over the flock so that its shadow would fall in the chicken yard. Try to see this from the chickens' point of view. Instinct virtually says "Don't take chances, act right away, just in case." Is the shadow of a sagging old broom on the right a close enough resemblance to a hawk silhouette to motivate the hens, "just in case"?

. Now I might share something about my own instinctive silhouette of fearsomeness which I attribute to being stopped on the highway en route to the Woodstock Festival of 1969 for no crime other than having a beard and having friends riding along who had long hair. The state trooper was polite enough, but insisted on searching the car. We were innocent kids and had none of the stuff he was obviously looking out for. When he finished the search he made some small talk about "the jam in Sullivan County" and let us go.
. This is stupid, but ever since then my instinctive silhouette of nameless fear looks like the image above left. On the right is an unwitting imposter which, from a distance bears a striking resemblance to a police car. I instantly respond by slowing down my car even without looking at the speedometer to see if I may be driving at legal speed and need take no action. The roof racks made by Thule and other manufacturers have a heavy frame, and this is the kicker, have a clear space just below. When the stimulus approaches nearer I can discern the true nature of the rooftop device, and lo, realize I have just slowed down for the "Thule Police"!

Winter Is Coming...And It's MY Fault!

. Every year they take me by surprise -- the crickets. Since they are a "normal" background sound, that's where they stay: unnoticed until finally something brings them to my attention. I always welcome that moment, like the return of an old friend. It probably doesn't hurt either, that my associations are pleasant ones, especially as influenced by one of the animated film critters seen during my boyhood, Jiminy Cricket, an amiable character. It's usually sometime in August that the crickets come to the fore, though they may have been singing much earlier in the year.

. There is something a bit melancholy, yet attractive about late August in New England. On the one hand, the lazy, hot days of July, bringing long daylight and extravagant plant growth, have passed. But in August the insects are mostly gone (except my beloved crickets and the ladybugs, also depicted favorably in the old animated films). When hiking one finds that the streams are lower and easier to ford, and the somewhat cooler temperatures and drier air are more pleasant for a trek. The month has a special lighting that is a little more intimate, especially the morning and afternoon illumination in the forest.

. Yet it is tinged with the knowledge that summer is coming to an end, and I always regret it, especially here in Maine where winters may linger for six months. As you know the constellations sort of wheel around during the passing of the year so that the ones you see rising at dawn in the summer, are the same ones setting and gone in the winter twilight. If you stay up late enough you can get a sort of "sneak preview" when winter constellations rise just before dawn.

. I have a pseudo-superstition that the appearance of Orion in the morning twilight is what brings on the winter! I am often up just before sunrise. So I theorize that if I am careful to not look southeast I can delay winter.
. But every year he tricks me! This morning in my darkened living room I heard what sounded like my cat furiously and continuously licking himself. But then I remembered he is visiting in my neighbor's house. Then I thought "Oh no. That may be leaf-eating insects. People say the noise of many eating together is clearly audible. So I rushed out to see if I could save my viburnum bush which I had been babying. Fortunately, no bugs. It was my garden hose reel dripping loudly since someone accidentally left the valve on. Oops! Looking in the direction of the hose caught me off guard and smack-dab in view was the Mighty Hunter. Damn! So I am to blame, I admit. I just hope winter is short and mild, the heck with the skiers!

What's Intelligent in the "Design"?

. Steven Jay Gould may not be known for mystic insights, in fact he was characterized as one among "celebrity atheists". I think it was in his Ever Since Darwin that I encountered an extraordinary statement that seemed quite out of character for him. Gould was trying to parse out where in natural systems that most significant structure is introduced. By process of elimination and logical inference he concluded (I'm paraphrasing) that the environment encompassing the system is intelligent! This set off a decade-long thought train in which I contemplated every facet of his idea, comparing it with all my existing beliefs.

. Besides my reading material I seem to consistently rely on another source for answers to major questions about what is real and true: intuition and inspiration. By this I mean thoughts that appear spontaneously and do not seem to relate to anything I already know or could reasonably be expected to conclude on my own at that point in my life. Some of the best of these appear when I am alone in good natural settings, especially in the hills and mountains or near water bodies.

. As I descended South Bubble mountain in Acadia National Park I was musing about why God would bother creating universes. Immediately the insight came "For the joy of creation!"

. On another occasion I was particularly fed up with everything and took a "mental health day" off from work. I went to Schoodic Point and sat on the shore of a cove that faced the open ocean. Large waves arrived and crashed on the gravel beach. Their precise regularity and demonstration of sheer power led me to think "They are like thoughts in the mind, except not intelligent." Immediately the unbidden words formed "But they are intelligent!" It was a shocking concept and it arrived in an eerie way, to boot.

. These may initially seem unrelated to Gould's insight, but each of these rang true, and since then everything has come together. To sum it up as best I can:

. .There is none other than God.

.. God is without a reason to be or not be and is beyond the question of being and nonbeing.

.. God exists in the Now, which is without beginning and without end.

.. All that exists is none other than God. The very substance of created things is of God, and nothing exists apart from God.

.. Though this seems a paradox, without any necessary condition of Consciousness, God is the very fabric of what Intelligence is.

.. Consciousness, awareness and vision come into existence through Creation. We are the manifestation of these things.

.. God is thus conscious, aware and self-knowing through us and all other sentient beings.

.. There is no reason for this. It just is. To create is to allow Other and consequently the contemplation of Self.

.. Perhaps from these flow the Joy of Creation?

. Now on to the currently discussed question of "Intelligent Design" for which the title of this piece is a play on words. There are three fatal flaws in that proposal. Foremost is that, by their own begrudging admission, the proponents set out the idea first as a tenet of religion -- a rallying point for people of faith, a given, a basic assumption not needing proof to persons who already believe anyway.

. Second is that, even if it were not religious in intent a priori, Intelligent Design starts with the assumption that created things have an existence apart from God, an odd position for believers, since this not a necessary belief for faithful people, and will lead to logic troubles when followed through in discourse.

. Third is that Scriptures (both Genesis and John) say "In the beginning ..." This is thus a story of Creation which, having a beginning, is therefore ephemeral. It means there was, is and will be an Unmanifest God. Why then does intelligence need to come into play at all?

Photo credits. snow crystal-U.C. Davis; sunflower-Lock Haven U.; water droplets-Vancouver Aquarium; ocean waves-Indiana U./Purdue U. Fort Wayne; candle flame-candlestick.org; M81 galaxy-spacetelescope.org (Hubble)

That's Nice, You're Going Backpacking... Um, WHERE?

(Map courtesy of Tripleblaze.com)

. As I had mentioned in the last posting I've been section-hiking the Appalachian Trail each of the past 15 years. The trips run several days , generally sometime between early May through late August, and cover 30 to 60 miles. I've hiked about 815 of the AT's 2178-mile length. I'm in no rush, so at this rate there will plenty of new trail miles left to enjoy for a long time.

. This odyssey has brought me through six states, and next in line would be southwest New York. However this summer it was advantageous to skip ahead to Northern New Jersey. The chief reason was that one of my usual hiking partners has a brother there who could offer his home as a pre- and post-trek "base camp" and get us to and from the Trail.

. When I begin to tell people about the upcoming backpacking trip I can see that their minds immediately go to glamorous destinations like El Capitan, the Sierras, Smokies or the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. The reaction to the utterance of my actual destination is either that it is oxymoronic: "Backpacking? New Jersey?!" Or in the case of the more knowledgeable ones, "Is there actually someplace to backpack in that state?" I love blowing their minds. Yes, New Jersey and the other densely populated states through which the AT runs -- Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York -- each have a scenic and very backpackable corner within their boundaries graced by the Appalachians. We have the preceding generation to thank, who had the foresight to fight for preservation of hikeable lands before they were eaten up by ever-encroaching development.

. I have to admit to having to overcome misimpressions that I, like many other people, initially had about the open spaces of that state. But my confidence in the AT founders was amply rewarded.

Feeling the "Sprit of Place" at Special Times

. Just about every year I have section-hiked a week or so on the Appalachian Trail, generally southbound, having started in 1993 at Mount Katahdin. Since I'm not a thru-hiker sometimes I have repeated sections just for the pleasure of it.
. For the past few years I have volunteered for the cadre that maintains the AT in this state, the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. At a recent meeting of the Club, the Overseers' PowerPoint slide show of the past year's work got me reminiscing about backpacking in the Saddleback Range in Maine. In particular I remember when I tented near the Poplar Ridge Leanto, which is located North of, and below the mountaintop. Summing it up, a number of wonderful things "happened" if that is the right word. Mostly they were very special feelings and impressions.
. The weather was good and I slept well. I arose and got hiking very early. That happened to be a trip where I hiked alone, which I'm sure contributed some to the pensive mood. So that morning I was particularly open to the feeling of the place.
. I was packed and ready to go but waited before starting out to watch the sunrise. Just before it I could literally see the sunrise gradually coming down to the location, as evidenced by the rosy coloring on some low scattered cumulus immediately above me. They felt so close I felt I could almost touch them. (Not far from the truth as I was on a mountain, after all.)
. The conditions were right and I finally saw the very short-lived "green flash" solar phenomenon at the very first moment of sunrise.
. There is "something" about that ridge. As I climbed, some remarkable insights about our human nature came to me, which I can only attribute to the particular combination of time and place. For example one was about the dynamic tension between the eternal "Mr. Mystic" who (which) follows no temporal rules, and offers guidance to the other aspect: the in-the-moment "Irritable Me" whose rule is: avoid pain, seek pleasure.
. I reached the peak and, despite the gale, I hung around the summit area for a few minutes to enjoy the view. I was wishing there was someone to operate my camera so I could have a picture to take back. To my complete surprise two gentlemen dressed in white showed up -- I swear I did not see them approaching on the trail -- and they kindly agreed to take a snapshot. They gave an odd reply when I thanked them. One of them said "That's what we're here for."
. I had put on every article of clothing I had to stay warm. But they were dressed in summer shorts and short-sleeve shirts. The cold didn't seem to bother them. Soon they headed back down southward on the AT. In a few minutes I saw them impossibly far away and then they vanished. I wondered how they did that so fast.
. Anyway there is no doubt there are times when you feel especially keenly the spirit of a place. Perhaps you might agree that one experiences "more than meets the eye" anyway when up on a mountain, and that this was a heightened experience of such.
. Soon I will be off to the New Jersey section of the AT to backpack with friends, one of whom said he is "getting psyched for this little adventure." And one never knows... you prepare for what you can reasonably expect, the rest is up to chance, which always makes such trips an adventure.

Photo credits. Green flash over Pacific Ocean, Oregon by George Howard 2005; others drawn over collage from MS Office clip art.

¡ Going to Home Depot to Learn Spanish !

¡ Si. Voy a Home Depot para aprender español!

. What clothing stores are for women, hardware and lumber stores are for me. My idea of shopping heaven is a couple of hours leisurely strolling in Home Depot and looking over things besides what I came in to buy. In addition I actually enjoy looking up at the bilingual aisle signs in Home Depot. The vocabulary taught in schools is stingy about technical terms. (I am self-taught in Spanish and find language books to be just as anti-nerdy.) So I am delighted to learn that hardware is ferretería, doors and windows are puertos y ventanos, and other departments roll musically off the tongue: plomeriá y baños, línea blanca y cosinas, iluminación y electricos, and the loveliest in both form and meaning: jardinería.

. I know this is inconsistent, but I often grumble when I see one of those yellow foldup signs in front of the entrance to a men's room here in Maine. Not because of the inconvenience, but because the bilingual sign repeats the message in Spanish, not very sensible in this region. French is the third most-spoken language in the United States. Here in the Northeast it is so prevalent as a second language that we are considered to be part of that mysterious land "Francophonie."

Spanish spoken in the USA	French spoken in the USA

My mischievous sense of humor exacts a fun revenge:

Watch out. ¡Piso Mojado!
Posts the guy who does this chore.
Don't slip inside, amigo
Take care, do not ignore!

I know your need is urgent
You really have to go,
But I used mucho detergent
You might slip upon the floor!

Because I know no Spanish
I'll guess, here at the door:
Mojado must mean Banish:
Don't piso on the floor!

What's So Holy about "Holy Week"?

. When the word "rhythm" is heard the first things that come to mind are repetitions taking place in seconds, as in music. It's an indispensable part of the enjoyment. What about rhythms that run their course in minutes, hours, or days? Annual cycles are rhythms, too, and so ritual observances provide a similar comforting effect.

. Following on what I mentioned in an earlier post about Lent, this time of year marks the death of something and of a transforming rebirth. Yesterday was Palm Sunday. Fronds of palm are given to congregations of many Christian churches. (My mother believed that burning some of these holy palms averts disaster during thunderstorms.) At a time when confetti, flash cameras and the proverbial red carpet were scarce, plentiful palm fronds, available locally served the purpose: welcoming celebrated personages who were honored by having them travel over strewn palm on their path.

. I always wondered why Jesus reentered Jerusalem that day, when he certainly knew what would ultimately happen if he did so. Lately I concluded that he must have wanted to set an example for his followers to stand up for their beliefs, sincerely and bravely, no matter the cost.

. However long it was between his happy arrival and his bitter end, today it is observed in the span of a week. The events of that time have been the inspiration for thousands of works of the visual arts and music. Most recognizable is the Last Supper, which is traditionally commemorated on Thursday of Holy Week.

. Apparently less well-known (or perhaps less well understood) is Good Friday, a remembrance of the Crucifixion. Our Chamber Choir has recently performed a work based just on that one event, Membra Jesu Nostri, composed in 1685 by Dieterich Buxtehude. Modern readers may find the literal translation shocking "Body Parts of Our Jesus". But it was actually based on a medieval Latin poem that the composer set to music. He and the audiences of the time were unlikely to have associated morbid connotations, but simply heard it as a veneration of Christ's sacrifice. The concerts were well attended and it seemed that the audiences soon got into the meditative "zone." (Thanks for this very apt expression, John.) Perhaps this YouTube video might serve as a proxy to convey some of the atmosphere of those meaningful evenings spent communicating this wonderful music to the public.

. As a meditation the theme of the day could mean setting aside a time to confront one's physical mortality and to ponder what it is about ourselves that is imperishable. It might surprise you to learn that Good Friday is a civil holiday in Connecticut and nine other states. Perhaps the State is justified in declaring a holiday under the same logic as for Christmas. Though religious in origin, the State i merely recognizing it as an appropriate day, off given its solemnity for many employees.

. Some people express their reverence by various durations of fasting, and perhaps also observing silence, sometime during the "Triduum" (Latin: "three [significant] days") of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I actually tried the whole enchilada once, with a fast after suppertime Thursday until sunrise on Easter. (Because I was working it was impossible to also observe silence.) Surprisingly there were very few ill effects. I felt quite spacey much of the time, but this state did make it a lot easier to remain recollected during that time.

. Speaking of "recollected", I did not realize the power of that word. On a Friday my boss was bugging me to complete or implement some work that was a bit stressful and did not actually need to be done right then. Maybe the fasting had loosened my inhibitions a little bit. I don't know what I expected, but probably to be told to do it anyway when I said "Sam, it's Good Friday. I just want to stay recollected." To my astonishment he accepted this, almost respectfully, as if deferring to a higher priority. I moved on to other low-key things the rest of the afternoon, but made sure to finish that other job on Monday.

. Every year I seek a sunrise service on Easter morning. Not all churches offer this, and the ones that do may not have one every Easter. So I have to scan the newspaper to find one. Each time I end up in a congregation of strangers, which makes me feel lonely, but also "connected" with others for whom the time means as much to them as to me. Sometimes these services are held outdoors. I like this because indoor noises like people shifting around, whispering or coughing are all dampened in the open air. More important the rising Sun in the background, given the underlying context of Resurrection, adds to the poetic unity of the occasion.

. A couple of memorable Easters stand out in my mind. One year the leader closed the outdoor service by inviting the people to shout the traditional phrase with which Greeks greet each other all that day: "Xριστοs ανεστι! Αλιθοσ ανεστι!" (Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!" = Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.) The Orthodox chant of the same phrase is quite lovely. Here are examples as sung by an individual and by a choir. I found a similar one in Aramaic, the liturgical language of the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon and of some other Eastern Catholic churches.

. At another Easter, a congregation consisting mostly of University students arrived for a 4 am service at the local Newman Center. After some opening ceremony small candles were distributed to everyone and soon all were invited outside. It was peaceful at that early hour. At the door of the church someone brought out a lighted Paschal candle and, without speaking, lit those of two adjacent persons, who in turn lit two others and so forth. The effect was quite moving. In the quiet darkness the symbolism of refreshment of the souls of those gathered was unmistakable.

. My friends in France and Québec have already wished me "Joyeuses Pâques". (I like that the greeting is in the plural, as if wishing many more.) So let me pass this Happy Easter greeting on to you too, knowing you will help it along on its journey around the world!

. Pax Christi,

Frank

Announcing New Search Engine!

. Computer genius Iam Savvi announced his new Internet search engine, Giggle™. Savvi claims some of the improvements over competing Internet finding aids include establishing an extensive list of 'stopwords'.

. "Most search engines ignore words like 'the', 'of', ' in' and the like. But we have programmed our search engine to ignore hundreds more, so Giggle™ runs much faster than competing services. Of course people need to be more thoughtful and precise in their choice of keywords. But isn't that an improvement of the intellectual atmosphere in the world?" he opined.

. "We don't want to be finding any webpages that are depressing or boring or unhappiness-making, so this affects our choices of stopwords, like "violent", "calamity", "harm" et cetera," said Savvi, an informal guy who asked us to use his nickname "Savvy".  "They are saying 'Everything is in a name'. Good for the business, too!" he quipped. Savvy avows an interest in making Giggle™ a truly international service in token of which he has adopted the following mottos for his company:

. "Quid pro quo, vere. Sed tamen qui est quid?"

. "Tanzen und singen, die Frühling zu bringen."

. "Es muy macho a decir '¡Viva yo!' "

. "Le roi des poissons? C'est en effet le Poisson d'avril!"

. "Talking and reading, please dear customer, that is how we are doing business," he says from his small office in Varanasi. "Yes, we are telling you truly how up to date we are. You see, our city was called Benares. But going back to the roots is so 'in' now so we readopted the original ancient Sanskrit name Varanasi. Isn't that so frightfully good thinking?"

. When asked how he was able to start up his company so quickly, he replied: "Oh yes, we are being very thankful to the gracious workers at our call centers for working so cheaply. You see, India is now so prosperous that labor costs are flewing the coop, like right over the Himalaya!"

. "But we were able to be establishing our user assistance call centers cheaply, in poorer countries. Presently we are having one in Millinocket, Maine and another in Detroit, Michigan. Soon another is being set up hastily in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and right after that, another in Riverside, California.  The town fathers and mothers of Cambridge, Massachusetts are trying convincingly to have us set up a call center there, too.  (It is very tempting, as I have heard that those talented, but poorly paid citizens, have among them capability to speak 123 languages!)  Isn't that so very nice? We are having agreeable partnerships with America! This makes me very happy, to make friends in the other hemisphere. I feel so totally global now, just right for this modern age, yes?"

. "Being desirous of a representative Asian opinion we looked for someone with a broad perspective. When I asked for a comment on Giggle™ His Humbleness the Dalai Llama was kind enough to explain." Savvi quotes Him as follows:

. "Wherever I go, my main interest or commitment is in the promotion of human values such as warm heartedness – this is what I consider the key factor for a happy life at the individual level, family level and community level. In our modern times, it seems that insufficient attention is paid to these inner values. Promoting them is therefore my number one commitment. Therefore, it's important to use the good potential to be a happier human being. That is what I found so beautiful about Giggling."

When It's Lent

. Lent is a period of time whose dates vary each year, but it always occurs near the beginning of Spring. Church history gives various accounts of its origin. The basic idea is a commemoration of Jesus' withdrawal to the desert of Israel which custom counts as "40 days." Its meaning to moderns has this in common: a seasonal retreat anchored by Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday at the beginning and Easter at its end, and involving some personal interpretation of these three: contemplation or prayer; social justice or charitable action; and self-abnegation -- a personal discipline like some form of fasting or giving up something or some habit that is indulgent or extravagant.

. I'm acquainted with numerous people who are not all that religious, yet find a personal meaning in such a time of year. They treat it in a similar spirit to making New Year's resolutions, but with a more solemn intent.

. What does it mean to me? I think I have observed Lent in some way since I was old enough to understand it, probably age 7. The usual discipline was giving up chocolate for the duration, and later in life: beer! In Lent I believe we rediscover something within ourselves that stands above the ordinary in some way, morally, ethically or spiritually. I have used it as a kickoff for things I wanted to do but for which I needed extra motivation. The longstanding rhythm of annual practice enables me to call up resources that would seem harder to gather during other times.

. This year I decided to tackle obesity. As usual with my projects I overdid the preparation: setting up a special calendar, daily log forms to record foods consumed, even a graph of calorie deficit and so forth. The liturgical color of the season is purple, so I bought a purple folder to keep my materials in, including Nutritive Value of Foods, and all-inclusive 71-page table of calorie and fat content and such things.

. Over and above having something with which to observe Lent this year, I desired a "gift to myself" which seems a contradiction since I am missing something but contrarily am pleased about.

. The average daily caloric intake to maintain weight for a male of my age, height and build, without incorporating significant exercise regimens is 2500 calories. Any day I fall below that is "frosting on the cake. " (If taken literally that is something I won't see much of until my Easter basket arrives from the Chief Bunny!) According to my calculations I have lost seven pounds since Lent began on February 25. My wife says this appears to be working because it appeals to my love of science and quantification. To that I would add a personal resonance with religious mystery.

. Is it really possible that I will be 195 pounds by the end of July? Nothing would make me happier. Maybe hiking will become a pleasure again, rather than a trial.

We Humans

.   Someway or other I wanted to meet these other humans, mentioned in my post of September 2008, face-to-face, so to speak. As paleoanthropology progressed from its beginnings with the first recognized discovery of ancient human remains, the famous Neanderthal skull in 1856, more complete skeletons were found, and accompanying artifacts have given some hints of how the other hominids lived.
.   I wrote "lived" in the past tense, but I have a nagging feeling that some may still be around in the most remote recesses of the world. Maybe the source of stories about the yeti?)
.   In that post I shared my astonishment that three members of the human genus, homo could possibly have coexisted far into the current era, as late as 30,000 years ago and maybe even later. On the left are reconstructions (except for the top right individual -- a photograph) of the three human species supposedly still extant then.
.   If that were not enough of a shock, anthropologists Peter Brown and Michael Morwood recently discovered, on Flores Island in Indonesia, the skull of a small hominid. Given this and other evidence they discounted the explanation that this was merely a dwarf individual and concluded that it was a newly discovered species. The creature soon became popularly know as the "hobbit, " but the scientific name they gave was homo floresiensis after the name of the island of discovery. (On right is a comparison of height of modern adult female to reconstruction of newly discovered  homo floresiensis adult female.) Then I encountered this statement of the anthropologists:

      "Parts of seven other individuals... all diminutive, have been recovered as well as similarly small stone tools from horizons ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago."

.   Could this get any more astounding? Perhaps yes...

     "Even more intriguing is the fact that Flores' inhabitants have incredibly detailed legends about the existence of little people on the island they call Ebu Gogo. Yet there are hints H. floresiensis could have lived on much later than this. The last legend featuring the mythical creatures dates to just 100 years ago."

. This would imply that four human species shared the Earth at least until the end of the Ice Age, maybe later?

   "Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine, goes further. He speculates that species like H. floresiensis might still exist, somewhere in the unexplored tropical forest of Indonesia."

.   A companion legend/sighting, of a similar creature that locals named Orang Pendek, is this from neighboring Sumatra:
    
   "Orang Pendek (Indonesian for "short person") is the most common name given to a cryptid, or unconfirmed animal, that reportedly inhabits remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra. The animal has allegedly been seen and documented for at least one hundred years by forest tribes, local villagers, Dutch colonists, and Western scientists and travelers. Consensus among witnesses is that the animal is a ground-dwelling, bipedal primate that is covered in short fur and stands between 80 centimetres (31 in) and 150 centimetres (59 in) tall."

.   I wish there were a photograph of either creature (they may be the same). That's almost on a par with discovering life on Mars!  Until then this reconstruction of an adult male "hobbit" by John Gurche  will have to do!  Gurche has done many other such reconstructtons and thus styles himself as a "paleo-artist." He incorporates any clues from environment and scientific findings to optimize his sculptures.

(Credit: John Hawks Blog for March 14, 2005 commenting on an image as shown in the National Geographic Explorer program the previous night. )