Saturday, March 11, 2023
In bed at 11, up at 6. 28℉, overcast sky, high of 34℉, wind NNE at 9 mph, 7 to 11 mph during the day, gusts up to 19 mph, wind chill is 19℉, ranging from 18 to 27℉ during the day, sunrise at 7:09, sunset at 5:52, 11+42.
Monster Day. It's Rupert Murdoch's 92nd birthday and the anniversary of the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." Reminds me of Fox News and Artificial Intelligence. Also takes me back many years to my era of binge-reading reading Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It followed (or succeeded?) binge-reading epic sagas Beowulf, El Cid, Chanson de Roland, and The Iliad. Oh, to be able to binge-read again.😔
It's also the anniversary of the first day that cases of the great Spanish flu pandemic were reported in the U.S. at Fort Riley, Kansas. It was the worst pandemic the country would know until we encountered covid-19. Little was reported about the 1918 flu in large part because of censorship laws passed in Woodrow Wilson's administration during WW I. Reminds me of Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider which I read sometime after the start of our covid-19 pandemic.
LTMW at the goldfinches and snowbirds looking for food at my feeders which need filling, woodpeckers working on the shrinking suet cake, white-bellied nuthatch nabbing a sunflower seed.
Tom and Sue stayed until 5 p.m. It was a good visit, with lots of schmoozing about Aquavia and Oliverio and Ferrone family history, always interesting to me. Tom left his phone here but Geri will mail it to him.
Women Talking. While Geri and Sue were engaged in genealogical talk, Tom and I watched Sarah Polley's unusual film based on real events in Bolivia where, in 2009, 8 men were convicted of rape and sexual assault of about 100 women and girls in a Mennonite colony. The men drugged the women and girls with a sedative intended for cows and raped them after the medication took effect, a Bill Cosby kind of crime. The film is surely unusual, as is, thankfully, the real-life events on which it is based. To me, it was quite an indictment of Christianity and the notion of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving "Father" though I have no idea if the author of the novel or the director of the film had such an intention. Eternal theodicy.
Prayer Requests at a Mennonite Church
by Todd Davis
Pray for the Smucker family. Their son Nathaniel's coat and shirt were
caught in the gears while grinding grain. Nothing would give, so now
he is gone. We made his clothes too well. Perhaps this is our sin.
Pray for the Birky family. Their son Jacob fell to his death in the
granary. He was covered in corn before they could stop the pouring—
chest crushed by the weight, seed spilling from his mouth. We hope
something will grow from this, besides our grief.
Pray for the Hartzler family. Their youngest has left the church and no
longer believes that Christ died for her sins. She buys clothes at the
mall. Tongue pierced, nose as well. Her shirt shows her belly where a
ring of gold sprouts. We pray she will remember that her Lord's side
was pierced, that His crown held no gold, only the dried blood of His
brow.
Pray for the Miller family. Last week their daughter, who lives in
Kalona, lost her baby at birth. Child only half-formed: head turned the
wrong way; heart laid on the outside of her chest; one leg little more
than an afterthought. Lord, help them know that life may come again,
that we are all made whole in heaven.
Pray for the Stutzman family. Their son fights in the war. We call him
back to the Prince of Peace, to our Savior who knelt to gather the
slave's ear, brushed the dirt away, lifted it to the side of his flushed face.
May we leave no scars. May we ask no blessing for the killing done in
His name.
Robert Frost:
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