Mary got her new car today.I still drive my little black Japanese something or other car that I bought 12 years ago for $500. It runs like a charm. Never had any trouble with it and it's still got only 102,000 miles on it.
MISTAKES
“Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a
collection of mistakes is what is called experience.”— Denis Waitley
It is long
ere we discover how rich we are. Our history we are sure is quite tame: we have
nothing to write nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the
despised recollections of childhood and always we are fishing up some wonderful
article out of that pond; until by and by we begin to suspect that the
biography of the One foolish person we know is in reality nothing less than the
miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.Emerson
300 quotes from Emerson: To
view more Emerson quotes or read a life background on Emerson please visit the
books blog spot. We update the blog bi-monthly emersonsaidit.blogspot.com
“Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility
of love, contentment, or even common sense.” C.S. Lewis
KINDNESS
“The simplest acts of kindness are by far more
powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.” Mahatma
Gandhi
“Kind
words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”
Mother Teresa
I bought this little guy in a junk shop yesterday. His ear is chipped and one of his spoons is missing but he has presence doesn't he? And he fits perfectly on the kitchen counter.
We
must reform the bail system used by the courts
Changes promised for Rikers
Island come too late to save Kalief Browder
by: ROHAN SMITH
NEW York City is mourning the
loss of a tortured young life but the city’s mayor says Kalief Browder did not
die in vain.
Browder, 22, was arrested and
accused of stealing a backpack — a crime he said he did not commit and was
never convicted of — on May 15, 2010. He was locked up at New York’s Rikers
Island Juvenile Center where he was subjected to beatings by guards and inmates
and spent two years in solitary confinement.
He attempted to take his life
several times before finally being released in 2013 when the charges against
him were thrown out. He suicided at his mother’s home on Saturday after
struggling with the mental scars of more than 1000 days in prison and his lost
adolescence.
Tragically, Browder’s time
behind bars could have been avoided with a $3000 bail payment, one his family
could not afford at the time.
Speaking to the media on
Tuesday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said the justice system needed “some type of
bail reform”, promising to make an “announcement” in the coming months.
“Once his story became public,
it caused a lot of people to act and a lot of the changes we’re making at
Rikers Island right now are the result of the example of Kalief Browder. So I
wish, I deeply wish, we hadn’t lost him, but he did not die in vain,” Mr de
Blasio said.
Kalief Browder spent two years
in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. Source: Supplied
But the vague promise of change
is cold comfort to many who feel they’ve come far too late.
The New York Times staff wrote
a strongly-worded editorial declaring that an agreement between the Justice
Department and the city “will come too late to save Kalief Browder”.
“Mr. Browder’s death makes it
all the more imperative that reforms have teeth.”
Things were bad at Rikers
Island long before Kalief Browder’s story emerged.
A Justice Department
investigation found during the period between 2011 and 2013 the number of
injuries sustained by adolescents was “staggering”. Almost 44 per cent of the
young male population at Rikers Island had been subjected to use of force by
guards.
Some changes have been made.
Last year, the city eliminated solitary confinement for adolescents at Rikers.
But there’s plenty more to do. Talking about it is a good start.
“I think his case was an
eye-opener to New Yorkers across the board,” Mr. de Blasio said.
“There’s just no reason that
someone should be held for a long period of time if they can’t pay bail and we
can help, (especially with) a modest bail level like ($3000).”
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE
Thesaurus \thih-SOR-us\Treasury, storehouse, a book of
words or of information about a particular field or set of concepts; especially
: a book of words and their synonyms. A list of subject headings or descriptors
usually with a cross-reference system for use in the organization of a
collection of documents for reference and retrieval
In the early 19th century,
archaeologists borrowed the Latin word thesaurus to denote an ancient treasury,
such as that of a temple. Soon after, the word was metaphorically applied to a
book containing a "treasury" of words or information about a
particular field. In 1852, the English scholar Peter Mark Roget published his
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, in which he listed a treasury of
related words organized into numerous categories. This work led to the common
acceptance of the term thesaurus for "a book of words and their
synonyms." Finally, during the 1950s, thesaurus began being used in the
field of word processing to refer to a list of related terms used for indexing
and retrieval.
The photographer Sally Mann has a new book out. She's a wonderful artist. The link above will take you to wikipedia so you can learn more about her if you like.
I run two photography sites as well. One is made up of photos I've taken in my travels across the US and Europe. Here's the address;.
The other is for students of photography and here's the address for that;
From Richard III
(Gloucester
speaks)
Was
ever woman in this humour woo’d?
Was
ever woman in this humour won?
I’ll
have her; but I will not keep her long.
What!
I, that kill’d her husband and his father,
To
take her in her heart’s extremest hate,
With
curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The
bleeding witness of her hatred by;
Having
God, her conscience, and these bars
against
me,
And
I nothing to back my suit at all,
But
the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And
yet to win her, all the world to nothing!
Ha!
Hath
she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward,
her lord, whom I, some three months since,
Stabb’d
in my angry mood at Tewksbury?
A
sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,
Framed
in the prodigality of nature,
Young,
valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,
The
spacious world cannot again afford
And
will she yet debase her eyes on me,
That
cropp’d the golden prime of this sweet prince,
And
made her widow to a woful bed?
On
me, whose all not equals Edward’s moiety?
On
me, that halt and am unshapen thus?
My
dukedom to a beggarly denier,
I
do mistake my person all this while:
Upon
my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself
to be a marvellous proper man.
I’ll
be at charges for a looking-glass,
And
entertain some score or two of tailors,
To
study fashions to adorn my body:
Since
I am crept in favour with myself,
Will
maintain it with some little cost.
But
first I’ll turn yon fellow in his grave;
And
then return lamenting to my love.
Shine
out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That
I may see my shadow as I pass.
I’m trying to teach myself Spanish and this is
what I learned today……..
Exigente (Ex-ee-hehn'-the)
Demanding
Examples
1. El gerente
es muy exigente. Espera que los empleados trabajen los fines de semana.
The manager is very demanding. He expects employees to work
on weekends.
Living
Denise Levertov
(https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Denise_Levertov)
The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.
The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.
A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily
moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.
Each minute the last minute.
“If
you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind wanders.” Unknown
GREAT
WRITING
No, as soon as I saw that article”— she picked up the Times
and tapped it significantly—“ I said to myself: ‘No man ever planned this.’”
“But why?” asked Helena. “No grown-up man,” said her mother, “will ever put on
a tuxedo unless a woman makes him. No man, whatever his politics, Helena, is
going to put on a tuxedo to go out and sympathy-strike, or whatever they call
it, unless some artful woman is egging him on.” Mary McCarthy, The Group
“There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must
take a stand for human right or justice, or you never feel clean again.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Square
BY TATYANA TOLSTAYA
In 1913, or 1914, or maybe
1915—the exact date is unknown—Kazimir Malevich, a Russian painter of Polish
descent, took a medium-sized canvas (79.5 cm. x 79.5 cm.), painted it white
around the edges, and daubed the middle with thick black paint. Any child could
have performed this simple task, although perhaps children lack the patience to
fill such a large section with the same color. This kind of work could have
been performed by any draftsman
—and Malevich worked as one in his youth—but most
draftsmen are not interested in such simple forms. A painting like this could
have been drawn by a mentally disturbed person, but it wasn’t, and had it been
it’s doubtful that it would have had the chance to be exhibited at the right
place and at the right time.
After completing this simple
task, Malevich became the author of the most famous, most enigmatic, and most
frightening painting known to man: “The Black Square.” With an easy flick of
the wrist, he once and for all drew an uncrossable line that demarcated the
chasm between old art and new art, between a man and his shadow, between a rose
and a casket, between life and death, between God and the Devil. In his own
words, he reduced everything to the “zero of form.” Zero, for some reason,
turned out to be a square, and this simple discovery is one of the most
frightening events in art in all of its history of existence.
Malevich, too, knew what he had
done. A year or so before this significant event, he, along with some of his
friends and likeminded peers, participated in the first All-Russian Congress of
Futurists. It was held at a dacha, in a bucolic wooded area north of St.
Petersburg. They decided to write an opera called “Victory Over the Sun,” and
right there, at the dacha, immediately got to work on carrying out their plan.
Malevich was in charge of scenic design. One of the set pieces was black and
white, and it somehow resembled the future, still-unborn square—it was used as
a backdrop for one of the scenes. What spilled out by itself from his wrist,
impulsively and with inspiration, later in his St. Petersburg studio was
recognized as a fundamental achievement of theory, the apex of accomplishment—a
discovery of that critical, mysterious, coveted point after which, because of
which, and beyond which nothing exists and nothing can exist.
Groping about in the dark with
the brilliant intuition of an artist and the prophetic insight of a Creator, he
found the forbidden figure of a forbidden color—so simple that thousands had
walked past it, stepping over it, ignoring it, not noticing it.… To be fair,
not many before him dared to plan a “Victory Over the Sun”; not many dared to
challenge the Prince of Darkness. Malevich did—and, just as is supposed to
happen in credible tales of yearning Faustuses and of bargaining with the
Devil, the Master gladly, and without delay, whispered in the artist’s ear the
simple formula of nothingness.
By the end of that same year of
1915—the First World War was already in full swing—the sinister canvas was
displayed alongside others at a Futurists exhibition. All of his other works
Malevich displayed on the walls in the traditional manner, but “The Black
Square” was afforded a special place. As can be seen in one of the surviving
photographs, the painting is displayed in the corner, under the ceiling—right
where it is customary to hang Russian Orthodox icons. It’s doubtful it eluded
Malevich—a man well versed in color—that this paramount, sacral spot is called
the “red corner,” the word “red” here, in the original Russian, having the
additional meaning of “beautiful.” Malevich quite consciously displayed a black
hole in a sacred spot: he called this work of his “an icon of our times.”
Instead of red, black (zero color); instead of a face, a hollow recess (zero
lines); instead of an icon—that is, instead of a window into the heavens, into
the light, into eternal life—gloom, a cellar, a trapdoor into the underworld,
eternal darkness.
Alexandre Benois, a
contemporary of Malevich and an excellent artist in his own right, as well as
an art critic, wrote this about the painting: “This black square in a white
frame—this is not a simple joke, not a simple dare, not a simple little episode
which happened at the house at the Field of Mars. Rather, it’s an act of
self-assertion of that entity called ‘the abomination of desolation,’ which
boasts that through pride, through arrogance, through trampling of all that is
loving and gentle it will lead all beings to death.”
Many years before that, in
September of 1869, Leo Tolstoy went through a strange experience that had a
powerful effect on the rest of his life, and which served, it appears, as a
turning point in his entire outlook. He left his house in high spirits to make
an important and profitable purchase: a new estate. They were riding in a
horse-drawn carriage, happily chatting. Night fell. “I dozed off but then
suddenly awoke: for some reason I felt afraid.… I suddenly felt that I don’t
need any of this, that there is no need to ride this far, that I’ll die right
here, away from home. And I felt frightened.” The travellers decided to spend
the night in a little town called Arzamas:
We finally approached some
lodge with a hitching post. The house was white, but it seemed horribly sad to
me. And so I felt a great sense of dread.… There was a hallway; a sleepy man
with a spot on his check—that spot seemed awful to me—showed me to my room.
Gloomy was that room. I entered it and felt even more dread.…
A whitewashed square room. As I
remember, it was particularly painful to me that this room was square. There
was one window with a red curtain … I grabbed a pillow and lay down on the
sofa. When I came to, the room was empty and it was dark.… I could feel that
falling back asleep would be impossible. Why did I decide to stop here? Where
am I taking myself? From what and where to am I running? I’m running from
something frightful that I can’t run away from … I stepped out into the
hallway, hoping to leave behind that which was tormenting me. But it came out
after me and marred all. I was just as scared, more scared even.
—What nonsense, I said to
myself. Why do I feel anguish, what am I scared of?
—Of me, came the soundless
voice of death. I am here.…
I tried to lie down but as soon
as I did, I jumped up in horror. The anguish, the anguish—the same dread as
comes before nausea, but only spiritual. Frightening, terrifying. Seemingly
it’s fear of death, but if you recollect, think about life, then it’s a fear of
a dying life. Life and death were merging into one. Something was trying to
tear my soul into pieces but was unable to do it. I went to look once again at
those who were sleeping; I tried falling asleep myself; same kind of dread—red,
white, square. Something being torn apart but not tearing. Painful, painfully
dry and malicious, not a drop of kindness could I sense within myself. Only an
even, calm anger with myself and with that, which has made me.
This famous and mysterious
event in Tolstoy’s life—which was not simply a sudden, serious depressive
episode but an unforeseen kind of meeting with death, with evil—was named “the
Arzamas horror.” Red, white, square. Sounds like a description of one of
Malevich’s paintings.
Leo Tolstoy, who personally experienced
the red-white square, couldn’t foresee, nor control, what happened. It appeared
before him and it attacked him, and under its influence—not right away, but
steadily—he renounced the life that he led before; he renounced his family,
love, the understanding of those close to him, the foundations of life around
him; he renounced art. This “truth” that was revealed to him led him into
nothingness, into the zero of form, into self-destruction. On a “spiritual
quest,” toward the end of his life, he found only a handful of banalities—a
version of early Christianity, nothing more. His followers, too, walked away
from civilization, and likewise didn’t arrive anywhere.
Drinking tea instead of
vodka, abstaining from meat, rejecting family ties, making one’s own
boots—poorly, crookedly—that, essentially, is the result of this personal
spiritual quest that passed through the Square. “I’m here” came the soundless
voice of death, and life went downhill from there. The struggle went on; “Anna
Karenina” (mercilessly killed off by the author, punished for her desire to
live) was still ahead of him. Still before him were several literary
masterpieces, but the Square won. Tolstoy banished from within himself the
life-giving power of art, moving on to primitive parables and cheap moralizing.
He let his light go out before his physical death, in the end astonishing the
world not with the artistic prowess of his later works but with the magnitude
of his genuine anguish, his individual protest and public self-flagellation on
a hitherto unprecedented scale.
Malevich also wasn’t expecting
the Square, although he was searching for it. In the period before the
invention of “Suprematism” (Malevich’s term), he preached “Alogism,” an attempt
to escape the boundaries of common sense; preached “the struggle against
Logism, naturalness, philistine sensibilities and prejudices.” His call to
action was heard, and the Square appeared before him, absorbing him in itself.
Malevich had every right to be proud of the celebrity afforded him by his deal
with the Devil. And proud he was. I don’t know if he noticed the ambiguity that
came with this celebrity status. “The painter’s most famous work” means that
other works were less famous, less important, less enigmatic; in other words,
they were less worthy. And it’s true—next to “The Black Square,” all his other
works lose lustre. He has a series of canvases of geometric, brightly colored
peasants with empty ovals for faces that look like transparent, unfertilized
eggs. They are colorful, decorative paintings, but they come across as a tiny
and insignificant stew of rainbow colors, before they, swirling for the last
time, mix in a colorful funnel and disappear into the bottomless pit that is
“The Black Square.” He has landscapes—pinkish, impressionistic, very run of the
mill—the kind painted by many, and often better. Toward the end of his life, he
tried to return to figurative art, and those attempts look predictably bad:
these aren’t people but, rather, embalmed corpses and waxed dolls, tensely peering
out from the frames of their clothing, as if they’ve been cut out of colorful
bits of fabric, scraps and leftovers from the “Peasants” series. Of course,
when one reaches the top, the only way is down. The terrible truth was that, at
the top, there was nothingness.
Art critics write lovingly
about Malevich: “‘The Black Square’ absorbed all painting styles that existed
before it; it blocks the way for naturalistic imitation, it exists as an
absolute form and it heralds art in which free forms—those that are
interconnected and those that are not—make up the meaning of the painting.”
It’s true that the Square
“blocks the way,” including blocking the way for the artist. “It exists as an
absolute form”—that’s true as well, but that also means that all other forms
are unnecessary by comparison, since they are, by definition, not absolute. “It
heralds art”—this bit turned out to be false. It heralds the end of art, its
impossibility, its lack of necessity; it represents the furnace in which art
burns, the pit into which art falls, because the Square (to quote Benois again)
is “an act of self-assertion of that entity called ‘the abomination of
desolation,’ which boasts that through pride, through arrogance, through
trampling of all that is loving and gentle, it will lead all beings to death.”
A “pre-Square” artist studies
his craft his entire life, struggling with dead, inert, chaotic matter, trying
to breathe life into it; as if fanning a fire, as if praying, he tries to
ignite light within a stone; he stands on his tippy toes, craning his neck in
an attempt to peek where the human eye cannot reach. Sometimes, his efforts and
prayers, his caresses, are rewarded: for a brief moment, or maybe for a long
while, “it” happens, “it” “appears.” God (an angel, a ghost, a muse, or
sometimes a demon) steps back and acquiesces, letting go from his hands those
very things, those volatile feelings, those wisps of celestial fire—what should
we call them?—that they saved for themselves, for their wondrous abode that is
hidden from us. Having solicited this divine gift, the artist experiences a
moment of acute gratitude, unhumiliating humility, unshameful pride, a moment
of distinct, pure, and purifying tears—both seen and unseen—a moment of
catharsis. But “it” surges, and “it” retreats, like a wave. The artist becomes
superstitious. He wants to repeat this moment, he knows that, next time, he may
not be granted a divine audience, and so his spiritual eyesight opens up, he
can sense with deep inner foreknowledge what exactly—avarice, selfishness,
arrogance, conceit—may close the pearly gates in front of him. He tries to
wield his inner foreknowledge in such a way as to not sin before his angelic
guides; he fully understands that he’s a co-author at best, or an
apprentice—but a crowned co-author, a beloved apprentice. The artist knows that
the Spirit blows wherever it pleases. He knows that he, the artist, has done
nothing in his earthly life to deserve being singled out by the Spirit, and so
if that happens to pass then he should joyfully give thanks for this wonder.
A “post-Square” artist, an
artist who has prayed to the Square, who has peeked inside the black hole
without recoiling in horror, doesn’t believe the muses and the angels; he has
his own black angels, with short metallic wings—pragmatic and smug beings who
know the value of earthly glory and how to capture its most dense and
multilayered sections. Craft is unnecessary, what you need is a brain;
inspiration is unnecessary, what’s needed is calculation. People love innovation,
you need to come up with something new; people love to fume, you need to give
them something to fume about; people are indifferent, you need to shock them:
shove something smelly in their face, something offensive, something repugnant.
If you strike a person’s back with a stick, they’ll turn around; that’s when
you spit in their face and then, obviously, charge them for it—otherwise, it’s
not art. If this person starts yelling in indignation, you must call them an
idiot and explain to them that art now consists solely of the message that art
is dead—repeat after me: dead, dead, dead. God is dead, God was never born, God
needs to be treaded upon, God hates you, God is a blind idiot, God is a
wheeler-dealer, God is the Devil. Art is dead and so are you, ha ha, now pay
up! Here is a piece of excrement for it; it’s real, it’s dark, it’s dense, it’s
locally sourced, so hold it tight and don’t let it go. There is nothing “loving
and gentle” out there and there never was, no light, no flight, no sunbeam
through a cloud, no glimmer in the dark, no dreams, and no promises. Life is
death; death is here; death is immediate.
“Somehow life and death have
merged into one,” Leo Tolstoy wrote in horror, and from this moment on, and
till the end, he fought back as best he could—it was a colossal battle of
biblical proportions. “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with
him until the breaking of the day.” It’s terrifying to witness the battle of a
genius with the Devil: first one seems to overcome, then the other.
“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” is
such a battlefield, and it’s difficult to say who won. In this novella, Tolstoy
says—tells us, repeats it, assures us, hammers it into our brains—that life is
death. But, in the end, his dying hero is born into death as if into a new
life; he’s freed, turned around. Enlightened, he leaves us for a place where,
seemingly, he’ll be given consolation. “New art” derides the very idea of
consolation, of enlightenment, of rising above—it derides it while deriving
pride from that derision, as it dances and celebrates.
Conversations about God are so
endlessly complicated that it’s scary to even engage in them, or, on the
contrary, very simple: if you want God to exist—He does, if you don’t—He
doesn’t. He is everybody, ourselves included, and for us He is, first and
foremost, us. God does not impose himself on us. Rather, it’s His distorted,
falsified image that’s imposed upon us by other people, while God simply and
quietly exists within us, like still water in a water well. While searching for
Him, we search for ourselves; while refuting Him, we refute ourselves; while
mocking Him, we mock ourselves—the choice is ours. Dehumanization and
“desacralization” are one and the same.
“Desacralization” was the
slogan of the twentieth century; it’s the slogan of ignoramuses, of mediocrity
and incompetence. It’s a free pass doled out by one dimwit to another bonehead
while trying to convince the third nincompoop that everything should be
meaningless and base (allegedly democratic, allegedly accessible), and that
everyone has the right to judge everyone else; that authority can’t exist in
principle, that a hierarchy of values is obscene (since everyone’s equal), and
that art’s worth is determined solely by cost and demand. Novelties and fashionable
scandals are surprisingly not that novel and not that scandalous: fans of the
Square keep presenting various bodily fluids and objects created from them as
evidence of art’s accomplishments. It’s as if Adam and Eve—one suffering from
amnesia, the other from Alzheimer’s—were attempting to convince each other and
their children that they are clay, only clay, and nothing but clay.
I’m considered an “expert” in
contemporary art by an arts fund in Russia that’s subsidized by foreign money.
They bring us art projects and we decide if said projects should get funding or
not. There are actual experts working alongside me on this panel, true
connoisseurs—old art, “pre-Square.” All of us can’t stand “The Black Square”
and the “self-assertion of that entity called ‘the abomination of desolation.’
” Yet they keep submitting projects that consist of “the abomination of
desolation,” solely of the abomination, and nothing else. We are obligated to
spend the money that has been allocated to the fund or else it will be closed.
We try our best to fund those who come up with the least pointless and annoying
ideas. One year, we funded an artist who placed empty picture frames along a
riverbank, and another artist who wrote “ME” in big letters that cast a
beautiful shadow, as well as a group of creators who organized a campaign to
clean up dog feces in St. Petersburg’s parks. Another year, it was a woman who
affixed stamps to rocks and mailed them to various cities in Russia, as well as
a group that made a pool of blood in a submarine, which visitors had to step
over while listening to the letters of Abelard and Heloise via headphones.
After our meetings, us members of the panel step out for a silent smoke, where
we try to avoid making eye contact with one another. We then silently shake
hands and hurriedly walk home.
(Translated, from the Russian,
by Anya Migdal.)
Half
the lies they tell about me aren't true.”
THE BOOK OF FUNNY, ODD AND INTERESTING THINGS THAT PEOPLE
SAY
Compiled by
John William Tuohy
Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.
"My
son is under a doctor's care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute
him."
"Please
excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick, and I had her shot."
"Dear
School: Please ekscuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also
33."
"Please
excuse Gloria from Jim today. She is administrating."
"Please
excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and
misplaced his hip."
"John
has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face."
"Carlos
was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the
growing part."
"Megan
could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close
veins."
"Chris
will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side."
"Please
excuse Ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels."
"Please
excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots
leak."
"Irving
was absent yesterday because he missed his bust."
"Please
excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault."
"Please
excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper
off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday."
"Sally
won't be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral."
"My
daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with
the Marines."
"Please
excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well."
"Please
excuse Mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps."
"Gloria
was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover."
"Please
excuse Burma, she has been sick and under the doctor."
"Maryann
was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache, and
upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever, and sore throat, her brother
had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat
and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last
night."
“Our God is the God of all,
The God of heaven and earth,
Of the sea and of the rivers;
The God of the sea and of the moon
And of all the stars;
The God of the lofty mountains
And of the lowly valleys.
He has his dwelling around heaven and earth,
And sea, and all that in them is.”
St. Patrick
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SAINT PATRICK
Saint Patrick was
probably born in 385 AD
He lived in England and his actual name was Sucrate, which
is Latin for "clever in war"
Patrick's father was a fairly high placed Roman official. He
was also a Deacon in the Church.
In the event someone should ask you, his name
was Calpurnius.
When Patrick was 16
years old, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates who brought him back to Ireland
and sold him in to slavery to a local King who put the boy to work as a sheep
herder.
Patrick escaped from Ireland six years later, aboard a ship
carrying dogs to market in London. He had a vision that told him to escape.
Several years later, Patrick traveled to Gaul entered the
Priesthood and was risen to the level of Bishop.
Since he spoke Irish,
Patrick was sent to Ireland to convert the Irish to Christianity.
He arrived in Ireland
in 432.
There were already enough Christians in Ireland in 431 A.D
for Rome to send several missionary teams there, but all of them disappeared in
to the country and were never heard from again.
There were never any snakes in Ireland, but Patrick gets
credit having tossed them out anyway.
Patrick did use the three leafed shamrock to explain the
simplicity of the Holy Trinity to the Celts.
The Celts already worship something close to the Trinity as
it was so the point was easily made.
Patrick confined his
work to a small area of about 25 square miles. One time, while converting a
local Chieftain, Patrick accidentally thrust the sharp end of his walking staff
through the Chieftains foot. After the service Patrick saw what he had done and
said
"My God! Why didn't you say something?"
"Because" said the Chieftain "I thought it
was part of your ceremony”
Patrick died in or
about the year 461 AD.
Holy men in ancient Ireland led a pretty good
life, while Patrick lived in Ireland, and well after he died a small army of
imitator’s roamed Ireland calling themselves Patrick.
