Views from the Outside

 Is there any subject that warms the heart of red-blooded Americans more than that of a plucky underdog having his day?  A real David-and-Goliath struggle of the established bigwigs and a cocky upstart taking them all down.  It's the stuff of legends repeated over the dinner table and across bars all over the country. Books have been written about the subject such as Soul of a New Machine by Tracey Kidder, about a plucky minicomputer company called Data General, which won a Pulitzer Prize Moneyball by Michael Lewis which changed the way Baseball operates and most importantly (for Lewis) was turned into a movie Shoe Dog by Phil Knight about daring upstart sports company you may have heard of called Nike. Car by Mary Walton about the 1996 Ford Taurus which was to lead Ford back to the glory days and fight off not only GM and Chrysler but Toyota and Honda. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, about a plucky horse with a heart of gold and the team that believed in him. and tho...

  “‘Now there was a day,’” murmured Bull, who seemed really to have fallen asleep, “‘when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.’” “You are right,” said Gregory, and gazed all round. “I am a destroyer. I would destroy the world if I could.” A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he spoke brokenly and without sequence. “Oh, most unhappy man,” he cried, “try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.” “My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,” said Gregory. “I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate anything; but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate you!” “I never hated you,” said Syme very sadly. Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. “You!” he cried. “You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last—you are the people in power! You are the police—the great fat, smiling men in blue a...

In all the flurry of excitement over Pope Francis making it into his second decade of Poping around in Rome, and still hurting over the death of Benedict XVI, I have been ruminating on the differences of each man. In truth, Benedict XVI was a genius, deeply insightful and a calm hand on the tiller of Peter's Barque.  But also in truth, he was a frustrating person to me at times.  He was very Christ-centric and, as odd as this may be to say about a Pope, I sometimes thought he as a bit TOO Christ-centric, to the point of useless abstraction. While it is undoubtedly true that Christ is the Answer to war and poverty and injustice, it's a bit more helpful to explain how Christ is the answer to this particular example of war or poverty or injustice.  How does Christ enter into the debate on the minimum wage, or terrorism in the Middle East or crime in the cities?  Is one side right and the other wrong or must we always acknowledge the view of both sides and split the baby...

  I've been trying to develop some artistic talent, and thus have been playing around with various apps on my computer and iPad each of which promise to produce art that is beyond what my talent and taste would normally produce.  But one of the low-effort things I came up with is the photo in this post.  I considered it a variation on Shelley's Ozymandias .  More specifically, an intermediate step along the way to Ozymandias.  While in Shelley's poem, the great king's worldly triumph is entirely erased by time except for his bold pronouncements of greatness.  In the modern parlance, he made claims of grandeur "that didn't age well."  In my drawing, I tried to express the impulsive zeal that accompanies worldly success: perhaps a politician defeats a corrupt incumbent ushering in a new era of hope or satisfying a yearning or change.  Or perhaps a development project is defeated due to community activism.  Regardless "the good guys" won.  ...

 I was going to write another post about the rona, to close the whole thing out, and focus on the Press and their role in stoking panic (the title of the post was going to be "The Devils"), but I just can't bring myself to do it.  It's probably not good for my soul to focus so much energy detailing to evil done throughout 2020 and 2021 (and to a large extent even now in 2023 though the populace seems to have lost interest).  They worship different a different god than I do. Instead I thought I'd start on a few thoughts about my recent battle with Bladder Cancer.  I capitalized that because Cancer dominates your life in a way that I hadn't thought it would.   In the early 2000s, probably 2000 or 2001, I saw a panel discussion on CNBC moderated by Maria Bartiromo (now with Fox Business) with a couple cancer researchers and a director of some large Cancer treatment center (like Memorial Sloan Kettering or MD Anderson).  Early on in the discussion, Ms Bartiromo...

I routinely describe my upbringing as being in the Felt Banner era of Catholic Education.  The protagonists of this era are "Sister Stretchpants" and "Father Sideburns".  I did indeed spend time with Father Sideburns as I was growing up (the 1970s being a hairy decade) but, to be fair, Sister Stretchpants actually came along a year or two after I graduated High School.  If I were to name a single hymn as the Anthem of the Felt Banner Era that I endured, it would be "Let There Be Peace On Earth", a barely-religious pean to Narcissus that perfectly summarizes the age. Let there be peace on Earth And let it begin with Meeeeeeeee! Written in the 1950's for some peacenik international children's choir, it's best sung with a breathy, quivering voice. To take this moment and live each moment in peace etern-uh-LEEEEE ! Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin?!!! huh-with huh-meeeee-heee-meeeeee! I must have sang that song hundred of times in my s...

The Bright Side Running Club, Written by Josie Lloyd, 2022 Published by Alcove Press I came across this book when searching for a podcast using the words "running" and "cancer".  It was published originally in Great Britain as "The Cancer Ladies Running Club" but inexplicably was renamed on this side of the Pond as "The Bright Side Running Club".  The title makes sense from the text of the book as there are several points in which the "Bright Side" is emphasized while running. It's hard to hate on this book, but I'm going to, but I want to talk about the good parts first.  In the book the main character is a 50-something woman diagnosed with breast cancer.  She quickly falls in with a group of fellow breast cancer survivors who meet every week to run around a park.  The group is appropriately mismatched with the Bold One, the Movie Star, the Brooding One and the main character, who I guess you could call the Boring One. On the p...