Saintliness — it’s a concept that encapsulates holiness, godliness, piety, devoutness, spirituality, blessedness, virtue, righteousness, purity, goodness, morality, sanctity, unworldliness, innocence, lack of corruption, ethicality, blamelessness, stainlessness, spotlessness, irreproachableness, guiltlessness, sinlessness. Its antonyms include ungodliness and sinfulness.
One lazy afternoon, as I lay in bed debating between taking a nap or getting up to do something — anything, really — my thoughts wandered to the idea of saintliness. I wasn’t contemplating the religious notion of individuals canonized for embodying the ideals of a particular religion’s ideology. Instead, I pondered the broader essence of saintliness and all the qualities it encompasses. This train of thought reminded me of Father Lafarge, perhaps the most saintly person I’ve ever met, though since then, I’ve encountered many who could be considered saints, would-be saints, and outright impostors.
It’s important to note that true saints, in the strictest sense, may not exist. Rather, there are individuals whose actions and behaviors, when woven into a cohesive narrative that overlooks contradictory events, align with the societal expectations of their time.
I met Father Lafarge around 1962 when I was a senior at Fordham College in New York. He had chosen me to lead the New York Catholic Interracial Council, an organization he founded about 30 years earlier and which, at the time, was one of the largest civil rights organizations. However, it was struggling due to shifts in policy by the Catholic hierarchy, leading to a less active, clergy-controlled entity. I immediately organized one of the largest civil rights conferences of the era, attended by leaders from major civil rights groups, including the NAACP (with Roy Wilkins), the revitalized Urban League under Whitney Young, SNCC, and others.
In my opening speech at the conference, I critiqued the groups for their PR materials, which overly emphasized that integration wouldn’t lead to intermarriage or interracial love. I argued, “How can we aspire to a racially blind nation if love and family remain forever segregated?” Though my comments were initially met with resistance, they ultimately earned me a standing ovation. However, I later faced criticism for attempting to reframe the term “miscegenation” from a negative into a positive. You can’t win them all, I suppose. During my tenure, I hosted smaller meetings and receptions for students who had integrated universities in the South. Many of these students, now well-known figures in civil rights history, accepted my invitations as an opportunity to visit New York City and celebrate. Eventually, I left the organization upon realizing that many of those I aimed to help, both white and black, were more interested in advancing their political careers than in genuine integration. Looking back, I was young and naive.
Returning to Father Lafarge, I only knew him for a few months before he fell ill and passed away. He was the most saintly person I had ever met. We spent many evenings walking through the streets of New York, particularly Greenwich Village, enjoying dinners together. While I admired his empathy for everyone, I was disappointed when I learned that in the early 1950s, he had become a fervent anti-communist and had dabbled in McCarthyism.
During the 1930s, Father Lafarge was a vocal opponent of racism and anti-Semitism. Pope Pius XI had tasked him with drafting an encyclical condemning these prejudices. Unfortunately, the Vatican Curia assigned two conservative prelates to “assist” him, complicating the task. The encyclical, Humani Generis Unitas (On the Unity of the Human Race), was completed and awaiting the Pope’s signature when he died. His successor, Pius XII, deemed it imprudent to promulgate at the time, although he did reference portions of it in his own encyclicals.
In Humani Generis Unitas, Lafarge and his coauthors denounced American racial segregation and Nazi German anti-Semitism, arguing that racism undermines the unity of human society, the human personality, and the true values of religion. They maintained that racism is detrimental not only to a society’s internal relations but also to international relations and interactions between different races.
Regarding anti-Semitism, they highlighted the egregious denial of human rights to millions, including those who had fought bravely for their country only to be treated as traitors due to their heritage. They lamented the forced exile of thousands of Jews, deprived of basic rights and dignity. However, they controversially stated that social separation between Jews and Christians was a religious matter, not a civil one, underscoring the complexity of achieving true saintliness in a world bound by its era’s limitations. Despite this, Father Lafarge’s efforts to challenge prevailing norms and promote equality demonstrate that, in human history, striving for change, even if imperfect, is a commendable pursuit.
“They say that to wait is the most excruciating of life’s torments. “They” in this case refers to writers, who have nothing useful to do, so fill their time thinking of things to say. Any working person can tell you that having time to wait is a luxury.”
Sanderson, Brandon. Tress of the Emerald Sea: A Cosmere Novel (Secret Projects Book 1) (p. 26). Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC.
I am not a writer, but I do spend a lot of time writing here. I also have few things useful to do. I do not find time to wait a luxury. I consider it a prison. So there Brandon. I am enjoying your book however.
April in California this year is a sigh of relief from this past winter and the COVID years that proceeded it. This week many of the trees in bushes in the Enchanted Forest sport a deep maroon luster as the Japanese Maples and similar trees and bushes spread their leaves. The sun has shined for more than two days in a row. He Who Never Was My President was indicted in NY.
Time has passed. On a Wednesday, I drove into the Golden Hills for lunch with HRM. We went to a Sushi restaurant that he and Christa enjoy. During our lunch he discussed his plan to travel to Thailand after which he would spend some time in India. The next day, I had my dentist appointment where we discussed my implant. The contractors continued to tear apart the exterior of our house.
It all got so noisy with the hammers banging, the saws sawing and the dog barking that Naida I and the dog took refuge at Naida’s daughter Sarah’s house were we examined the yard and preparations for Sarah’s son’s wedding. We also watched Booboo the Barking Dog playing with Sarah’s pets, the poodles Andrew Jackson and George Washington and the large black cat called Archimedes.
The next day, Saturday, we attended the Saturday Morning Coffee. There were the usual opening jokes with only one that I remember:
Why did the ghost take the elevator?
He needed a spiritual uplift.
Not a particularly clever bit of humor but, there you are.
For the remainder of the day we alternated, watching TV, walking the dog, napping, reading and typing on the Mac silly things like this. Tomorrow I expect will not be better but, it probably will not be worse. At our age that is probably a good thing.
After reading a number of novels including, Caimh McDonell’s latest Bunny McGarry novel, Escape from Victory; Tress by Brandon Sanderson; Backyard Dungeon; Tad Williams’ The War of the Flowers; Carl Hiaasen’s Skinny Dip; and perhaps one or two others, I began the third volume of the James Benn Billy Boyle mystery series, Blood Alone. In this episode Billy finds himself in Sicily before the allied invasion of that island in WWII attempting to negotiate with the island’s Mafia leaders their support of the Allied Invasion.
The area around which the action in the novel takes place happens to be that where I lived in 1968 and 69. The town I lived in was named Canicatti. It was the town in which my mother was born and where I still had a number of relatives. During the war about 11 or so residents were assassinated by the American Army in an effort to get other members of the community to reveal where in the town were the German troops which the American commander erroneously believed were hiding. Even when I lived there the bullet holes still remained in the wall where the innocent townspeople were lined up and shot.
Despite the 25 years or so that had passed from WWII to the time I arrived, the culture and economy had remained stagnate and almost medieval. The Mafia was still an essential element of the society as it was in Benn’s novel. I have written previously here is T&T about the night I spent negotiating with the local Cosa Nostra dons to dissuade them from killing my brother the next morning.
Another story I do not believe I have written about, concerns the time my uncle’s store in Canicatti had been robbed of about $100,000 of merchandise. My family negotiated with the local Mafia to restore the value of the merchandise for a 10% fee. Instead of returning the money the their fled to Switzerland. The mob honored their commitment paid the family $90,000 then tracked the thief down and killed him.
“It is complicated to be Sicilian,”
Benn, James R.. Blood Alone (Billy Boyle World War II Mystery Book 3) (p. 219). Soho Press.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading in the novel about the sights, locations and peoples mores that I knew so well. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday.
On Easter Morning I woke up and walked downstairs and was struck with extreme dizziness and collapsed on to the sofa in studio room. Naida thought it would be helpful if I drank some coffee. So she made some and added a bit of truffle powder and other things to make it past stronger. After a while, I felt better and we then drove to have Easter breakfast with her daughter Sarah and her family. In addition to Sarah’s poodles George Washington and Andrew Jackson we were joined by Sarah’s son’s large poodle Clair. I was a pleasant day and we had breakfast of the deck. After a couple of hours my dizziness and headaches returned so we left and returned home. I went to bed for most of the rest of the day.
Monday because the sawing and banging of the workers on the outside of the house was driving us crazy, we decided to escape and do some of Naida’s banking among which was payment of property taxes that were due today. Since Naida can no longer drive, I drove her along with the dog around on her errands. Upon our return, the workers were still at it, nevertheless despite the noise Naida and I decided to take a nap. No sooner had we laid down than the dog began hysterical barking at the workers and the odd squirrel. We decided to leave the dog alone to see how long he would go on. Naida turned off her hearing aids and I kept them on. About an hour later we gave up. It was a new family record for ceaseless barking. We then decided to get up and I busied myself on medical things.
My primary care physician referred me to an ear, nose and throat physician because of my continued dizziness and headaches. The ENT physician’s office said he would not be free until the end of October about five months from now, another physician would however could be available in about than three months. I called my PC physician to complain and see if another referral was possible. They apologized, but said not only were there no other ENT specialists on their list but, in general, specialist referrals in the Sacramento area take at least two months to secure an appointment. She assured me she fully shared my anguish.
Later Naida and I watched the movie “The Sum of All Evil.” It brought back memories of when I was living in Rome practicing law with a large American international law firm. Among my clients was one of the two major illegal arms dealers in the Middle East and North Africa. I never met him. Another client was a large respected American corporation that wanted to sell helicopter gunships to both sides of the Israeli/Arab conflict in contravention of American law. They failed. We also represented an American financier who pre-dated Madoff and bore the same first name and had a similar ending to his scam. And finally, we represented a geologist who repeatedly defrauded nations in the Middle East and North Africa about the location of petroleum reserves. Nothing changes only the people.
Tuesday, I drove Naida to Kaiser Hospital to meet with the neurologist. His report was relatively positive — take your medicines and avoid screaming at the computer. Wednesday I traveled into the golden hills for lunch with Hayden. He told me he planned to go to Thailand this summer with his friends Big Jake and Little Jake after which they will spend a few days in Japan. I guess they decided to skip India this year. I do not recall much about that evening but the next day I drove Naida to the Social Security office to apply for a replacement for the SS card that she lost when her wallet was stolen a few weeks back. I recalled something from yesterday evening. I noticed that if I don’t write something down here about the day within a few days, I forget all. Does that mean it does not exist? For me it certainly not longer exists.
At about six o’clock that evening Naida and I took the dog for a nice long walk through the Enchanted Forest to the lake and back. The sun was low on the horizon and the temperature hovered nicely in the mid-sixties. Many of the flowering plants were in bloom. Some appeared confused by the recent weather. The camellias were blooming late in the year and the azaleas early. The dogwoods were in bloom. It was a two bench-rest walk. Last year in was only one. I am getting older and more decrepit.
Friday, the Bang Bang Boys were at it again, nailing the boards against the wall of the house, sawing wood, and making all the other noises that drove the dog into a frenzy of barking and me to remove my hearing aids. At 3:30 the finished for the week, leaving us to enjoy a quiet weekend. They appear to have another two or three days before they finish. We still do not have either heat or air conditioning. Naida is handling getting them back.
On Saturday it was sunny and the temperature reached into the 70s. We attended the Saturday Morning Coffee as usual. I couldn’t hear the punch lines of Gerry our leader’s bad jokes also as usual — so I will tell one I did hear at a previous Coffee:
What is the difference between ignorance and indifference?
I don’t know and I don’t care.
I was feeling quite bad all morning — the usual headache, dizziness, and fatigue — so I paid little attention to much of the proceedings other than to note how well attended it was.
After the meeting, Naida began a discussion with the Mormon art teacher. Knowing it would be a long conversation, I went out to the pool area, sat on one of the lounge chairs, dozed and now and then contemplated patterns and change.
After the conversations and wool gathering we drove back home where Naida and I had a rare contretemps over ephemera. I set off in a huff and walked the mile of so to the nearest Starbucks where I contemplated the similarity between my navel and the vagaries of life. On my walk, I passed one of my favorite spots in the Enchanted Forest, the place that I call the Azalea Den. The azaleas were in bloom and I spent a bit of time there healing my ephemeral sulk with the wonder of natures fleeting beauty.
I returned home and took a nap, my balm for all of life’s irritations and mortifications.
Last night at about 4AM, I woke up and realized that when a fairy tale ends with “and they lived happily ever after” it means the tale is over — the lights go out and the music stops. I have lived many fairy tales and always looked forward to the next — but no more. I now only await February.
It was sunny and warm this morning. We got up late, about 11AM. We watched the 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate. It stared Denzil Washington who went through the same drama program as I did at Fordham University. I studied under Vaughn Deering. (Deering who died in 1978 coached Lucille Ball, Burt Lahr, Frank Fay and Bela Lugosi.) It also stared Jon Voight who attended high school and performed in musical comedies with me at Stepinac HS in White Plains NY. I ate my usual breakfast of a bagel with lox and cream cheese and coffee while watching the movie.
Since the Bang Bang Boys disconnected our heating and air-conditioning system in order to replace the external siding of the house and could not get it working again, inside the house was colder than outside so we spent some of the afternoon outside in the backyard standing wherever we could find the sun shining through the trees.
In the early evening, Naida and I took the dog for his walk. Along the way we were warned by another dog walker that there was a coyote on the prowl along the paths of the Enchanted Forest. We walked to the Azalea Den and then returned towards home. Along the way, we rested on a bench savoring the gentle descent of dusk on the Forest.
Following a night of terrible dreams I woke up at about 10:30AM to the sounds of the Bang Bang Boys hammering and sawing and the barking of the dogs. I turned on my phone to verify the time and was greeted with the announcement that at 12:30 AM last night something called Pod Save America announced that “Little Ronny Pudding Fingers” was available for viewing. About the same time, Naida began playing a rousing rendition of Saint Louie Woman on the piano downstairs. I decided it was time for me to get up and see what this day was all about. I was intrigued but not overly optimistic.
Recently a few of the pools in the Enchanted Forest have been opened for swimming. I signed up for the 8AM slot today. When I arrived this morning I found I had signed up for tomorrow not today. So it goes. It’s always something. Tomorrow is another day.
Getting old is difficult — being old even more so. Like most old men I sometimes believe that if I can remember the past and visualize what the future will be, I can put off the end for a long time. But, in reality, I have very little to say about it. Death is not a matter of hopes, dreams or intellect. Death is purely physical.
Today, I went for my first swim in almost two years. It felt glorious. It was 8AM in the morning and the temperature hovered around the high 50s. No one else was there. I guess it was too cold for the other person who signed up for this hour to show up. There was a stiff breeze making it feel even colder. I began to doubt my decision to swim today, but when I put my foot into the pool the water felt warmer than the air so I went right in.
I had never liked swimming. I never was a good swimmer. Then, in my 70s while living in Thailand, I began to go to the health club pool almost every day. I am not sure what suddenly made swimming so attractive to me. Perhaps, the buoyancy of my body after 70 or more years of being weighted down by gravity made me feel younger. Anyway, after about 15 or so minutes of swimming I felt great and got out of the pool and returned home. Tomorrow I will swim longer.
One day I drove into the Golden Hills to visit Hayden. I asked him if he was happy. “Very much,” he responded. “That’s great,” I said, “the teenage years are often not very happy ones.” “I know,” he said, “our brains begin to change and we become very self-absorbed. Most teenagers worry whether they fit in or not. Because I know what’s causing it, I ignore it and stay happy. When I see it happening to one of my friends, I tell them it’s not all about them, so stop worrying.”
Hayden Hayden youth full laden, how does your garden grow?
It has now been over a week since I began swimming again. I go every morning at about 9AM. One day my shoulder muscles were quite sore so I skipped that day. Otherwise, I have been enjoying it very much.
Did you know, humans are the only animals, even among other apex predators, who generally die of old age rather than being killed and eaten?
Today, Naida set off to play tennis for about the first time since the beginning of the Trump Plague. Her two daughters, Sarah and Jennifer, and Sara’s son Charlie a tennis pro and his girlfriend agreed to get together and play following social-distancing guidelines. Naida was excited and happy when she left. I, on the other hand, went swimming. There was another man in the pool with his 3 year old daughter. This made me grumpy. Why I get grumpy in the presence of people I do not know, I don’t understand. I have always been like that. Perhaps it is because I have always been too shy or arrogant to think of something to say to people I do not know and knowing that makes me grumpy. Or, perhaps, I believe it keeps me from being killed and eaten.
Speaking of eating, this evening Naida and I decided we had enough eating dinner at home. So, we went to a restaurant where we sat on the outdoor patio, properly distanced from other diners. I ordered a steak and was happy.
While walking through The Enchanted Forest one day, we ran into a social-distance appropriate 100th year birthday party for someone named Herb. Many years ago, Herb, while attending Temple University, had represented the United States in the Olympics high hurdles. Way to go Herb.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: NAIDA, HERB, HERB’S DAUGHTER, AND HERB’S GRANDSON. HAPPY 100TH HERB.
Independence Day, July 4 passed without much notice in our house except for the sounds of a few random firecrackers exploding somewhere nearby in the night after we went to bed and were trying to fall asleep, and discovering the patriotic get up on the cement duck as we passed by on our evening walk through the Enchanted Forest.
The cement duck in the Enchanted Forest dressed for the Fourth of July celebration.
Last night I dreamt I was a partner in a private detective firm with Jimmy Durante. (For those under 70 years of age who do not know who Jimmy Durante is you might as well stop reading now). We were both a bit elderly. We had two problems with the firm. The first was that both our wives thought we were having an affair with our beautiful blond secretary. The second was that we had no clients. The second was solved when one morning while I was reading the Sunday comics, a young man who had been helped by us in the past walked in and hired us.
Durante and the comely blond secretary set off for the building where whatever happened, happened. In the lobby of the building Durante embarks on a Durante-esque soliloquy about his wife’s concern about his relationship with the comely young secretary.
Suddenly the scene shifts (It is a dream after all) to Durante at the piano where Un-Durante-esque, he plays two magnificent jazz concertos after which I totally forgot the plot. Annoyed, I woke up. The dog began barking and a new day had begun.
Tonight, as we often do, Naida and I were sitting on our recliners watching television. Now and then, usually during news programs, one or another of us would forcefully express our opinions to the images on the screen. I sadly recognized that we had become those archetypical old folks sitting in front of their TV every night and shouting at it. I never thought my life would come down to this.
MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:
Recently, my sister Maryann decided to straighten-up the room at the top of the converted water-tower at her home in Mendocino. The room contains what we call the “family archives.” They include the thousands of slides (Does anyone remember them?) taken by my father over the years along with the many cans of 16 mm film he also took and projectors to show them. The room also contains my mothers diaries, thousands of photographs, and tons of other memorabilia. A day or two ago, Maryanne sent me a few photographs with the direction that I tell the stories that go along with them. Here are a three:
The story about the above photograph is not much of one. It is the late 1970s I believe. On the right in the photo is my father and in the middle my mother. They had just visited California for the first time. I am the bearded fellow on the left. I was dressed in my Spaghetti-western come hippy outfit and had taken my parents for a tour through Muir Woods. Of course, given the current state of my memory, we might not have been at Muir Woods, or in California at all and the people in the photo not who I say they are.
The above photograph was taken at my high school senior prom. The boy on the right is Bob Cavallo. Bobby and I went off to Georgetown University for college and roomed together. There we dabbled in running crooked card games, drinking, and music promotion. Bobby dropped out of college in his junior year to open up a well-known night club in DC called The Shadows. Bobby went from there to developing, managing and promoting musical acts. He discovered and managed, The Loving Spoonful, Earth Wind and Fire, Prince, Elvis Costello and a few others. He also produced the movie 12 Monkeys and two other films. The woman on the right was his childhood sweet-heart who he married and was still married to her when I last visited them about 15 years ago.
I am the skinny guy on the left. At Georgetown in addition to the things Bobby and I did together, I dabbled in theater, getting arrested for disorderly conduct, and politics by running my then friend Pat Buchanan for his first office in Georgetown student government, We cheated and he won. I left Georgetown because it was too expensive (I had to steal my food to survive) and returned to NY to attend Fordham University. There, I continued my theater work, avoided the police, took up promoting bands for college performances, and ran my travel business providing spring break vacations to Bermuda and Puerto Rico for college students.
The young woman with me was the daughter of a well known and respected judge and lived in a very exclusive area of Westchester County. Before dating her, my entire family had to visit with her father because he was concerned about his daughter dating an Italian. She told me she was very excited to date me because none of her friends had ever dated and Italian before. It was a very brief relationship.
I was in my mid to late twenties in the above photograph. I was living in Rome Italy. I believe this photo was one of several promotional photo’s sent to Federico Fellini’s studio’s seeking an audition (it might have been for Satyricon. My cousin, who had a role in the movie and was a friend of Fellini’s, encouraged me to audition). I never went through with the audition. I also thought of joining the circus with my four-year-old son Jason. I believed a father-son clown team would be great. Alas, the wait for the interview was so long I got bored and fed-up and left. So It goes with living. Destiny trips along behind you as you stumble on through life.
While rummaging through the internet one day, I found a site produced by my old university, Fordham, intended for use by historian’s and students (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/india/indiasbook.asp). In the site, I found the following poem, a portion of the Rig Vedas. Along with the poem, an interesting introduction was written by someone identified only as Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Autumn of 1996. Enjoy.
Introduction
There is a certain amount of controversy surrounding the exact history of the Veda, the most ancient of Hindu scripture, which was first translated into European languages in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At this time, it was the contention of the expanding scientific, philosophical and religious doctrines of western European culture, that these writings simply could not be more ancient than the classical roots of European civilization. Whereas this hypothesis was strongly held by the expanding western educational regime, in recent times there has been cause to re-examine its claims.
In any event, although further references to this controversy are presented at the conclusion of this document, there is no doubt that these ancient Hindu scriptures are older than 1000BC. The word “Veda” is a Sanskrit word which means “knowledge” or “wisdom”. There are in fact four Vedas: the Rig Veda” or “Veda of Hymns”, the Samah-Veda or the “Veda of Chants”, the Yajur-Veda or the “Veda of sacrifice” and the Atharva-Veda, which is later in date than the earlier three.
Although the Vedas are the earliest of the Hindu scriptures, they are by no means the only body of writings to have originated from the ancient sub-continent of India. The Katha Upanishad is part of a large set of literature known as the Upanishads, and in the presentation of this, you will find some interesting mappings between the science of the east and that of the west.
The reference work which I have used in the presentation of the following selection of verses from the Rig Veda is one from the “Everyman’s Library” and entitled “The Hindu Scriptures”. It is translated and edited by R.C. Zaehner as recently as 1966.
For a more in-depth research concerning the Rig Veda, I would recommend reviewing Hymns to the Mystic Fire, an extensive publication in 1946 by Sri Aurobindo – in particular, the introductory sections in which he outlines the Doctrine of the Mystics.
I wish all research students the optimum of courage and determination concerning the pursuance of their common goals and have pleasure in presenting the following texts from the Rig Veda.
Peace,
The Sacrifice of Primal Man
[1] A thousand heads had [primal] Man,
A thousand eyes, a thousand feet:
Encompassing the earth on every side,
He exceeded it by ten fingers’ [breadth].
[2] [That] Man is this whole universe, –
What was and what is yet to be,
The Lord of immortality
Which he outgrows by [eating] food.
[3] This is the measure of his greatness,
But greater yet is [primal] Man:
All beings form a quarter of him,
Three-quarters are the immortal in heaven.
[4] With three-quarters Man rose up on high,
A quarter of him came to be again [down] here:
From this he spread in all directions,
Into all that eats and does not eat.
[5] From him was Viraj born,
From Viraj Man again:
Once born, — behind, before,
He reached beyond the earth.
[6] When with Man as their oblation
The gods performed their sacrifice,
Spring was the melted butter,
Summer the fuel, and the autumn the oblation.
[7] Him they besprinkled on the sacrificial strew, –
[Primeval] Man, born in the beginning:
With him [their victim], gods, Sadhyas, seers
Performed the sacrifice.
[8] From this sacrifice completely offered
The clotted ghee was gathered up:
From this he fashioned beasts and birds,
Creatures of the woods and creatures of the village.
[9] From this sacrifice completely offered
Were born the Rig- and Sama-Vedas;
From this were born the metres,
From this was the Yajur-Veda born.
[10] From this were horses born, all creatures
That have teeth in either jaw;
From this were cattle born,
From this sprang goats and sheep.
[11] When they divided [primal] Man,
Into how many parts did they divide him?
What was his mouth? What his arms?
What are his thighs called? What his feet?
[12] The Brahman was his moth,
The arms were made the Prince,
His thighs the common people,
And from his feet the serf was born.
[13] From his mind the moon was born,
And from his eye the sun,
And from his mouth Indra and the fire,
From his breath the wind was born.
[14] From his navel arose the atmosphere,
From his head the sky evolved,
From his feet the earth, and from his ear
The cardinal points of the compass:
So did they fashion forth these worlds.
[15] Seven were his enclosing sticks
Thrice seven were made his fuel sticks,
When the gods, performing sacrifice,
Bound Man, [their sacrificial] beast.
[16] With the sacrifice the gods
Made sacrifice to sacrifice:
These were the first religious rites (Dharma),
To the firmament these powers went up
Where dwelt the ancient Sadhya gods.
Fordham University Campus, Rose Hill, the Bronx, New York City.
Keating Hall in winter. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I walked in the blazing heat of the Bangkok sun to the health club today; heels striking the pavement heavily, shoulders hunched, head down checking the sidewalk in hopes of avoiding falling through a hole into one of those inky black and disgustingly dangerous sewers that were at one time canals. My neck jutted out parallel to the ground like that of a turtle or a chicken as I walked. Plodding along, I, as old men often do, ruminated through the parched grasses of memory. I surprised myself by finding I had become fixated on Winston Churchill.
No, not the balding, rotund, cigar smoking, alcoholic, bigot who many believe won World War II single-handedly despite the death of millions of allied soldiers and the unlimited aid of American industrial might, as well as the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of mostly non-white colonial serfs who gave up their lives at the request of the Free French generals in order to liberate a nation most of whose population had settled down happily and comfortably under the tyranny of the SS. No, not him, but Winston Churchill (of some number, I think III) a scion of an American offshoot of the legendary British family who attended Fordham College with me back in the late 1950s and early 60s. (This was also the period when the 45th President of the United States of America attended that university. He was neither among the brightest nor most distinguished members of the student body. In fact, to use one of his often used phrases, “He was a nobody.”)
Fordham was a Catholic, Jesuit run university at a place called Rose Hill in the Bronx at the edge of a large Italian ghetto. Winnie, as he was called, enrolled at this second-rate Catholic university instead of ivy-coated halls of Harvard or Yale to which his ancestry and wealth entitled him because his fanatically Catholic mother insisted that he bide his time under the watchful eyes of the Jesuit order before receiving the rewards due a Churchill.
There was no question in anyone’s mind, least of all Winnie’s, that he was destined for great things. In addition to his name and heritage, he was clearly one of the five or six smartest students at the university. He also was tall as befitted a child of the nordic-germanic races as opposed to us much shorter Celtic and mediterranean types that peopled the campus. He was blond, blue-eyed and handsome in a pretty sort of way. The only blemish on his appearance that I could recall was his blade thin nose that erupted from his face like a knife after slicing through a round of camembert. For someone who came from a race of either bulbous or beak-like probosci, Winnie’s nose simply appeared unimpressive to me. His nostrils were so narrow I wondered how he got enough air through them to survive. I half suspected that he had a bottle of compressed oxygen secreted nearby and would now and then slip out for a nip like a Bowery denizen would nip at a bottle of Thunderbird encased in a brown paper bag.
However, what mostly set Winnie apart from the rest of us, and if you would have asked me at the time the rest of humanity, was his abiding belief that what was good for Winnie, was… well, all that really mattered. Now, this did not mean that Winnie was mean or callous; no not at all. If an old woman walking in front of him on the sidewalk tripped and fell, Winnie would not hesitate to stop and help her up. And in response to the old woman’s expression of thanks, flash his broad smile as though her gratitude was his due. Of course, if the old woman tripped and fell into a puddle of mud, he would most likely walk right by. Wouldn’t anyone?
Anyway, in our senior year, many of us took the LSAT examination required for those of us planning to go on to law school. That year they introduced an additional day of exams directed at testing our general knowledge. When the results came back I scored 800 out of 800 on the general knowledge portion of the exam which was the highest in the school (Winnie was second but far behind me) and obviously no one in the New York had gotten higher since that was as high as the scoring system went.
Now I scored so high on this exam not because I was particularly smarter than anyone. I was not. My scores on the other two days or the exam proved this since they were barely adequate to get me into a second-rate law school. No, it was that my reading regime and obsessions with factoids gave me an advantage. That and the fact that this portion of the exam was multiple choice and I firmly believed that anyone that could not get at least 90 percent right on a multiple choice test, even if the test were in a foreign language that you did not understand, was mentally deficient.
Nevertheless, I was sort of pleased with the results. Not pleased enough to tell my mother, but pleased enough to hope some of the young women around campus would hear about it and think that I was interesting enough to date. This was the end of the 50s after all. Alas, it never happened.
As I contemplated my forlorn hope, I received a message from the Dean of Students requesting I come immediately to his office to discuss the results of the LSAT exam. Now, I do not remember how the message was delivered. This was after all before computers and mobile communication. I guess it was the usual method of communication available at the time; another student shouting at me as I walked across campus, “Hey Joe, the Dean wants to talk to you about the LSAT right away.”
So off I went with the hope of some official recognition that would intrigue the girl of my dreams.
Now, it is important to understand Jesuit management as laid down centuries ago by the order’s founder Ignatius of Loyola, a frustrated Basque ex-soldier who because of an injury suffered in battle could no longer do what he knew best, kill people, decided to apply his soldierly skills on behalf of the Pope and make war on people’s minds. His management system required that the head guy (it had to be a guy) must be beloved. So his job was to say in public only things that made people happy and made them love him. His second in command had to be the prick and do all the dirty work. It was essential that the prick was deeply loathed by everyone so that the head guy looked even better by comparison.
At Fordham, as far as I knew, the second in command was the Dean of Students (actually I may have his title wrong it may have been the Dean of Discipline, but whatever). The Dean of Students was a prick.
I entered the Dean’s office. Although outside it was a bright spring afternoon the office was gloomy, curtains drawn. A small lamp on the desk provided most of the light. The dark almost black wood furniture in that gothic style that Catholic religious of the time seemed to like so much filled the room. Winnie was there, sitting in a chair off to the side in an elegant upper-class slouch, his knife nose pointed towards the ceiling a few feet behind the Dean’s desk. His face absent its usual slightly supercilious smile, his blue eyes blazing with annoyance or anger or something else that I could not guess at.
I took a seat before the Dean. The chair was one or those uncomfortable, tall-backed, wooden chairs with twisted columns holding up a cross-piece of dark reddish-brown wood about a foot above my head. The wood slat had a lion’s head carved into it to go with the claws on the base of the chair’s legs. A similar larger set of claws held up the Dean’s desk.
The Dean a man of average height, with a round face and eyes that peered out at you through slits. Slits not so much like the epicanthic narrowed eyes of Asians but simply slits through which one could not see the eyes behind, only blackness. He wore a black cassock and a shawl of some sort. He leaned forward and asked in a low nearly inaudible voice, “Do you know your marks on the General Knowledge section of the LSAT exam?”
“Yes, father,” I responded.
“Who do you think you are,” he continued in that same low voice? “I know all about you. You never come to class. You do not complete your assignments. Your grades are barely even mediocre. What right do you have getting a higher mark than those students like Winston here who work so hard?”
Now, Winnie did turn in his assignments and I did not. That is so. But if truth be known, his attendance record was not all that better than mine.
Anyway, I did not get to say anything, because with a flick of his hand the Dean dismissed me.
“Thank you, father,” I mumbled. I got up, passed Winnie who now had a broad leer on his face and I left the room.
I felt neither good nor bad, neither humiliated or angry, but only concerned about how I was going to go about meeting girls now…. After all, I was barely more than a teenager, the Sixties actually did not begin in earnest until at least 1965 and no one really smoked dope except musicians. (to be continued)
(NOTE: I wrote the above, I am sure you all recognize as entertainment. Although the events were as described, Winnie as I knew him then was far more complex and sensitive than I describe him here, as I hope so was I. The Dean of Students, however was a prick and will always be a prick.
As long as I am on the subject, why is it OK to call a man a prick but not OK to call a woman a cunt? Who decides these things anyway? I am sure that in the all girls Catholic schools of the time the nun counterpart to the Dean of Discipline (or Students or whatever) was a cunt and was so referred to as by any student that had run afoul of her.)
Papa Joe's Tales, Fables and Parables 