Ford Street

The Lusty Month of May

No, it's not what you think.  It's from a movie, silly. 

Every year, on 30 April or 1 May, I send my good friend Kate an email with the lyrics to "The Lusty Month of May" from the movie "Camelot" -- her grandfather, Joshua Logan, directed the movie, you see, and she has a bit part in it, smooching a boy on a hillside.  She was in high school and it was a fun way for a teenager to spend her summer.  So, this year, on a whim, I thought I'd check and see if there was a way that I could liven up the annual email, and lo! not to mention behold, here it is:  (Kate is at :54)

Kate, forever mortified, on YouTube.  God, I love the internets. 

Of Gridlock and Popemobiles

Even for Roaming Catholics, the Pope is the most important man in the world. 

He certainly is to New York City officials.  I’ve seen Important Guy gridlock plenty of times in my life, but not this kind of Important Guy gridlock. 

I left my house much earlier than usual this morning, and got to work in time, so I was not really hassled.  I started to get hassled at one point, when it seemed that I’d be on Third Avenue until summer, but then I started to think. 

He’s the most important man in the world.  I may have had a few quarrels with the Catholic Church in my time – certainly more so recently than in the past – but I still respect the icons of the Church (as I would respect the icons of any religion).  Besides, my mother, wherever she is, would kick my ass if I didn’t. 

I am disheartened with the Church as a whole, but I’m such a cock-eyed optimist that I do believe that if I sat down with the Pontiff, we could have a good chat and I could straighten him out vis-à-vis the problems of his world.  Although he’s technically God’s right-hand man here on Earth, he’s still, I think, a regular guy at heart. 

“Your Excellency,” I’d say, “y’all have got to get your shit together or the Catholic Church as you know it will have ceased to exist in 200 years.  After roughly 2,000 winning seasons, that’s gonna be unpleasant.” 

Nothing can survive unless it adapts, and that includes organized religion, particularly monotheistic organized religion.  (Is anyone in the Middle East listening to me?)  The world is not the same as it was 2,000 years ago, and one cannot apply the same rules and hope to flourish.  Let priests marry, for God’s sake.  (Get it?  For God’s sake?)  Man wasn’t meant to go through this life without a partner.  Let priests marry, and we all can look forward to generations of dedicated, trustworthy holy men, which in turn will make life happier and safer for generations of altar boys.  Let women be priests as well.  God and Jesus did not/do not discriminate in their trusted choices; why does the Church discriminate?  If you want to dedicate your life to serving God and serving people, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re a man or a woman.  And don’t give me that “women can become nuns” malarkey – I thought, at one point in my life, that I’d like to serve God.  The thing is, I’m really good at managing people, so I feel that my talents would have been wasted as a nun.  Give me a church and a large, complicated congregation to run, though, and I would have been happy and productive.

And another thing.  (I’m going to enlist the help of my excellent friend St. Matthew, whose writings I’ve always admired.) 

It’s judgmental and, you should pardon the expression, not Godlike, to state that homosexuals are not welcome in the Church.  (Judge not, lest ye be judged…Matthew 7:1) I remember getting crazy angry, blind angry, when my poor mother confessed to me, after my father died, that she didn’t come to church with me when I was a kid because she thought she wasn’t welcome – she was divorced.  I went nuts.  I told her she could go to church any damn time she pleased, and the God of her belief would welcome her.  Now I, like my mother, am not welcome in the Church, for a different but just as ridiculous reason.  You can’t choose who you fall in love with; I certainly can’t, anyway.  If anyone else can, good on ‘em.  I fell in love with a woman, so I’m second-generation shut out.  I have always been proud to take after my mother…she was one of the best people I’ll ever know, and she lived most of her life outside of the Catholic Church – and ashamed. 

I am not ashamed.  (Let your light so shine before men…Matthew 5:16)

Why judge me when there are so many more important things to focus on?  Why are there so many poor people in the world?  Why can’t the Church give up some of its dosh to build community farms, and irrigation systems?  (Lay not up for yourselves treasures on Earth…Matthew 6:19)

I didn’t always agree with the actions of the Church when I was an active part of the Church, so in one way it makes no sense for me to part ways with the Church because we disagree on lifestyle choices.  I should get more involved, and try to change things.  It’s tough, though, when Rome states that I’m clearly not welcome.  I may have been a troublemaker before but at least I was (relatively) mainstream. I shouldn’t let the anger of others guide my actions.  (Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…Matthew 5:22)

Part of me wants to go see the Pope this weekend, but I have a lot to do and I won’t have time.  And yes, the Church won’t make allowances for me and my lifestyle, so it’s hard for me to justify getting up early to get a good spot on Fifth Avenue so see the most important man in the world.  I respect the Pope, but I won’t go to see him, and that makes me sad. 

Here’s another thing that makes me sad – maybe I’m being an ugly American here but I believe there was a time when the President of the United States was the most important man in the world. Not these days, though.

Spring fever

First glorious day of the year here in NYC.  All of the office buildings in midtown, which stay stuffed to the gills in bad weather, empty out at midday.  People sitting wherever they can park themselves for ten minutes, half an hour, eating sandwiches, sucking on Starbucks, basking...for just a bit, till they have to go back inside.  And everyone going back inside with the same gloomy face.  It's so sad, really.  One of my colleagues suggested calling it a day at about 2:00.  Who could blame her? 

We celebrated with frozen yogurt.  I overheard someone say, "Oh, shit, the nice weather's here.  I have ten minutes to lose twenty pounds!" 

Jefferson Davis -- a hero???

I am taking two courses right now (still plugging away trying to get my Master’s in history) – the Civil War and Reconstruction.  I’m about halfway through the Civil War class and have just begun the Reconstruction class.  The timing could be a tiny bit better – I would have loved to start the latter class in a couple of weeks – but no matter.  It’s a fascinating period in American history and I’m loving spending time immersed in it.  I’ve learned a whole lot, naturally, and some of it has been hard to swallow.  For one assignment, I had to defend Jefferson Davis’ position vis-à-vis the Civil War, and while it was easy to compile research, it was tough to write.  It was a great assignment, though, because the only reason I couldn’t get my head around Davis, or the South’s entire position, was slavery.  It’s tough to side with the folks who, according to history, seceded from the Union over the issue of slavery. 

But of course that wasn’t really the case – it was so much more than that.  The South went to war because they believed they were fighting for the same principles that their forefathers fought for; they thought themselves revolutionaries.  States had every right to secede if they did not agree with the government they were a part of; Why did Lincoln think that the South was breaking the spirit of the Constitution – the document clearly states, in the 10^th Amendment, that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”   So the states could secede if they so chose.  This is a portion of Davis’ inaugural address, as President of the Confederate States of America;

“Our present political position has been achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations. It illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established. The declared purpose of the compact of the Union from which we have withdrawn was to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;" and when, in the judgment of the sovereign States composing this Confederacy, it has been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot box declared that, so far as they are concerned, the Government created by that compact should cease to exist.”

So, to the South, and to many students of the Civil War, Jefferson Davis was a patriot and a hero.  Davis didn’t ask to be President; he was chosen by his peers as the right man to lead a new nation into the future, and attract new states into the nation as well. To the South, slavery was not immoral; it was a successful system that employed Negroes, most of whom would not have been able to find a place in any society except their own. (Remember, not my own opinion here.)  While many, particularly those in the North, thought of slavery as an abomination, many Southerners had grown up with slaves and thought of them as part of the family. I found this quote in one of my course books – it would be hilarious, except for the fact that it was likely a prevailing opinion 150 years ago:

“For the slave also there were advantages and disadvantages in his lot, not to be found in other labor systems…of most importance was the fact that he was relieved of all personal direction and material care…Responsibility for his care and well-being and for the direction of his efforts was assumed by his master. The slave had no worries about loss of time or unemployment. Against losses from sickness, injury, and old age, he was secure…As long as his white folks ate, he too would have his rations…Life could be serene and unhurried.” (Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War, 82)

The economy of the South depended on the slave trade, since large plantations required a great deal of manpower to maintain.  The South knew that it was a minority in the United States, but it was a strong minority that had every chance at succeeding as a nation of its own. The South needed to ensure the survival of slavery in order to ensure its own survival. The North essentially backed the South into a corner on the slave issue and the continued existence of a lifestyle and a future. And, as I mentioned, slavery and the North’s supposed vehement opposition to it could not be the only motive for war. The South was in a prime position to take advantage of its climate, labor system and location, and establish an economy that far surpassed that of the North.

The government of the North was not “right” simply because it was the government of the majority. When faced with overwhelming pressure from the North to change their way of life – when new states were being admitted to the Union with the stipulation that they not engage in the slave trade – the South, and Jefferson Davis, did what any good American would have done. They fought to defend their right to be free.

Congratulations to Dan

My friend Dan passed a huge milestone yesterday -- he flew his one-thousandth hour as a private pilot.  This may not seem like a lot of time, but think about one thousand hours.  What have you spent one thousand hours doing (other than sleeping or eating) that you'd like to brag about?  That's more than 41 days straight, out of Dan's life.  He has collected many fine memories along the way, and I've shared in a lot of those memories.  More to the point, I think, is the fact that Dan keeps learning along the way and doesn't become the sort of fellow (and the sort of pilot) who takes anything for granted.  That's how one becomes a dead pilot, and with all due respect to the dead pilots that I know, I don't want Dan to become one of them.  He has just as much respect for the plane, and the process, as he did when he was a brand-new pilot.  He also still has all of the golly-gee-whiz attitude of a brand-new pilot; he still acknowledges, every time he takes off, how flipping cool it is that he's FLYING.  This is why I'll still be flying with Dan many years from now -- because he's safe, and because he loves to fly. 

Dan wrote a post for our other blog that very nicely expresses his feelings on the subject -- I'll let him speak for himself.  That's Dan on the left up there, and Pete, the other co-owner of NY Approach, on the right.  and me, in the back, wishing I were up front.  We were on our way to Yellowstone National Park, on one of the grand adventures that we've shared.

I'm dogless now

 

My dear little Clancy has gone to wherever doggies go.  I fed him a royal breakfast of chicken cutlet, chocolate milk and Raisinets.  He had no idea why I was being so kind to him, but he was no fool, he asked no questions and enjoyed his last meal immensely.  Then I took him to the vet’s and Rebecca and I stood, weepy, while he went to sleep.  Very, very quickly. 

I love the idea of your dog(s) – pets, I should say – waiting for you when you get to Heaven, if Heaven is what you believe in.  But would Clancy’s idea of Heaven really jive with mine?  I think I’d like him to be in his own Heaven…let’s see…

Everything smells slightly rotten

There are many squirrels and they run slightly slower in Heaven than they did on earth

There is no dry dog food

The garbage cans have no lids

Bacon grows like grass

All car windows are rolled down, the better to stick out one’s head and surf

There are many trees, all of which require being peed on several times a day

None of the furniture is off limits, especially the beds

There is a never-ending supply of sweat socks that need laundering

Clancy was a very good dog.  He was not a pushover – he was not one of those fellows that enjoyed obeying, for example.  He’d do what you asked him to do, promptly, and then bare his teeth at you.  This caused no end of mirth in doggie training school, when the teacher would use him as an example whenever she taught a new trick.  He’d do it immediately, and she would offer young Clancy as proof that her teaching skills were superior.  All of the attendees would giggle and she never knew why.  She couldn’t see Clancy, at her side, softly snapping at her…he was no fan of behaving.  I think he resented the fact that he was not a person, sometimes.  Not always – he had a pretty good self-image.  But he wanted to drive the car, not sit in the back seat like a sissy.  He wanted thumbs, so he could sneak into the kitchen and open little cans of cat food and eat them, one by one, while staring at the helpless thumbless cat. 

He wanted money to buy steaks. 

I’m going to add that to the list above.  Money to buy steaks.  That’s Clancy’s Heaven, and I like to think that I’d be part of it, too.