7/1/23

Saturday, July 1, 2023

In bed at 9 and up at 4 with a nasty backache.  67℉, high of 78℉, cloudy all day, wind WNW at 5 mph, 3 to 6 mph today with gusts up to 11 mph, AQI of 70 = Moderate.  No rain is expected until Wednesday, except it rained at 8:30 a.m.  The sun will rise at 5:15 and set at 8:35, 15+19.

Seraphine of Senlis.  I watched this biographical film on OVID last night.  Seraphine Louis and Camille Claudel both end up in asylums.  Camille was placed there by her brother Claude, the diplomat, poet, playwright, and Big Catholic.  I should watch the Isabel Adjani/Gerard Depardieu film again.

Patio time.  I sat on the patio for about half an hour this morning, 6:30 to 7:00, listening to the birds and the distant sounds of the world passing by on the freeway.  It's a dark morning from the overcast skies and it's also quiescent, with no sign of a single squirrel, chipmunk, bunny, or deer.  I wondered if they were all sick from the hazardous air they have been breathing for the last few days, foul enough to keep me away from the patio and hiding indoors.  Merlin told me there were some cedar waxwings in the area.  Could this be true?

LTMW and thinking these English sparrows have become a nuisance.  If they attended school, their report cards would bear failing grades under "plays well with others."  They are pesky, aggressive, unfriendly little creatures compared to most birds.  They often arrive in droves, each one fighting for pride of place on the suet feeder, driving all the other birds in the area away.  I wonder whether I should stop filling the suet feeder.

More thoughts on Affirmative Action & life at the law school. (1) Dean Boden called me into his office one day to tell me that Eleazar Galaviz had filed an official complaint about the law school and accused me of accusing him of being "unable to read."  This stemmed from me saying to him in answer to some question about a statute "What does the statute say?"  When he asked again, again I said again, "What does the statute say?" because the answer to his question was clear on the face of the statute. (2) Tutoring Leroy Jones and Freddie St. Clair, former police officers admitted by Dean Mentkowski, then chairman of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, appointed by corrupt mayor Henry J. Maier.  St. Clair was appointed to the circuit court bench and Jones was repeatedly disciplined by the state supreme court from 1978 to 2008, the year he died.  Leroy was wounded by John Oraa Tucker in 1967.  I rue my complicity in his graduation and licensure.  Messy business and lots of people hurt.

Evangelical Jesus-mongers.  For the last few weeks, my Throne Room reading has been a collection of essays by Martin Amis in a volume bearing the title The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America.  One chapter is called "Too Much Monkey Business: The New Evangelical Right," published in 1980.   One of the televangelists Amis writes about is Pat Robertson who died at age 93 only a few weeks ago.  

Pat Robertson, chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, the great Sanctimony genius of Portsmouth, Virginia,  . . . heals and rewards his flock over the airwaves.  In the miracle-facility section of his show, the kneeling Robertson is granted visions of various recoveries, reunions, and windfalls throughout the land.  Robertson describes the miracles, and people ring in to claim them.  His poorer viewers send him their rent cheques and disability allowances - because the gamble works better "if you give out of your need".  Like all the TV preachers, Robertson also does big business in what the trade calls 'the pretty-pretties': sacred key-rings, beatified pen-clips and whatnot.  CBN takes in over $1 million a week.

What a guy!  During the week of September 11, 2001, Robertson interviewed Jerry Falwell, who expressed his own opinion that "the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this" in addition to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians [who have] helped [the terror attacks of September 11th] happen." Robertson replied, "I totally concur." 

Niebuhr, Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.  

1919. . . . .  I do believe that Jesus healed people.  I can't help but note, however, that a large proportion of his cures were among the demented.  If people ask me, I tell them that religion has more therapeutic value in functional than in organic diseases. . . . 

1920.  I went to the funeral of Mrs. T. at St. Cecilia's church.  It must be a grateful task to deal as a priest with the definite symbols which the Catholic Church uses and to dispense the absolute certainties with which she assures the faithful. . . .  Religion is poetry.  The truth in the poetry is vivified by adequate poetic symbols and is therefore more convincing that the poor prose with which the average preacher must attempt to grasp the ineffable.  Yet one must not forget that the truth is not only vivified but also corrupted by the poetic symbol, for it is only one step from a vivid symbol to the touch of magic.  The priest, after all, does deal with magic.  When religion renounces magic, it finds itself in the poor workaday world trying to discover the glimpses of the eternal in the common scene.  That is not an easy task, but it is not an impossible one.  Wherefore, let us envy the priest, but pity him too, meanwhile.  He has been betrayed by his magic.  He has gained too easy a victory over life's difficulties and he helps his people to find a premature peace.  The rivers of life in the Protestant religion are easily lost in the sand, but if they really run they carry more life than holy water.

I share his belief that religion and poetry share the same roots, that each is similar to the other as a way of knowing, an experience of Being.  I suspect that most priests and most ministers aren't particularly good at either poetry or religion.