Some Spooky Poems for Halloween

Since it is Halloween, here is some eerie poetry for your perusal.
This one is by Robert Frost titled "The Witch of Coos":
http://www.bartleby.com/300/2462.html
One detects a touch of tongue-in-cheek here; the mother and son maybe having a little fun at the guest's expense.  I read a footnote somewhere that there was a French Canadian connection,  "Toffil Lajway" probably actually being "Theofil La Joie".
This next one is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Mother's Ghost", in which a deceased wife puts the richly deserved fear of God into her husband for neglect of the children:
http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=2091
This one was in an American Literature anthology when I was in high school, entitled "Old Christmas Morning", referring to the date Christmas was celebrated on the Julian calendar.  My adolescent self found it intriguingly creepy:
https://allpoetry.com/Old-Christmas-Morning
A cautionary tale about blood feuds.

DEER KILLING: SOME THOUGHTS

I have been very busy with many things to post or comment.  Liked Katherine’s beautiful picture and interesting ideas, then everybody begin talking about deer killing which is interesting but another topic all together. 

After the break I will give you some thoughts in the hope that it will start a conversation here, and if that succeeds you might want to move some of your comments over here, and allow myself and perhaps others who might have gone in other directions on the SPIRITUALITY OF FALL not to be lost in a herd of deer. Hunting is an important part of Fall but there is much more. We want to keep that and maybe even elaborate on it but killing is another issue.

SOME HISTORICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES

The Spirituality of Autumn

Autumn is a time of taking stock, of determining if we are ready.  For the winter, for the next stage in life, for life after this one. If you want to have spring flowers, now is the time to plant bulbs.  Actually it’s getting a bit late for that.  Personally speaking, it is getting my ducks in a row in order to retire next June.

We had our first really hard freeze last night, 19°F.  We had been enjoying the fall flowers, the asters and cosmos, marigolds and the last roses.  But that killing frost was a firm dividing line.  From now on, autumn will be increasingly silent.  The summer birds have gone, the crickets are quiet.

For the hunters, it is deer season.  I know several deer hunters at work; was talking with one of them this week.  He showed me some pictures on his phone. Prior to the season actually opening he had gone out to his spot and scoped things out.  There was a picture of a lot of grass and brush, now turned brown.  Barely visible, there was a young buck grazing. He blended into his surroundings perfectly.  The hunter said that he perhaps wouldn’t even try for a deer, unless the perfect opportunity presented itself.  The main pleasure was going out to his tree stand before dawn, and watching the world wake up. He spoke of it happening in stages, the different types of birds, the small animals, the larger ones.

Another coworker is a fisherman.  He spoke of taking his boat out on the lake, he supposed for the last time before winter.  He tends to be kind of hyper, says how calm he feels out on the water.  I asked if he caught anything.  He said one, but he threw it back.  He does mainly catch and release.  The challenge, and the pleasure of being on the water is the main thing for him.

The hunter is a Lutheran, the fisherman is a Catholic.  Both speak of their pastimes as being a spiritual experience, of feeling close to creation.

Religious Halloween movies

In less than a week it will be Halloween and that always makes me think of scary movies. The movies I find the most disturbing are those that have some religious theme, not sure why. Here are ten religious horror films that I thought were interesting, if somewhat theologically and aesthetically challenged ;). If you decide to try any of them, keep in mind the R rating most of them have - usually for violence, but sometimes for sex too.

- The Rite. Rated PG-13 and released in 2011, it stars Anthony Hopkins, Colin O'Donoghue (Captain Hook!), and Ciarán Hinds. The film is based on Matt Baglio's book, The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist. O'Donoghue portrays a young American seminary student, Michael Kovak, who travels to Rome to study exorcism at the Vatican before deciding whether to become a priest. Once there, he meets the resident expert in exorcism, a Jesuit named Fr. Lucas (Hopkins), who eventually becomes possessed by a demon himself. Kovak must find the faith he doubts he has in order to save Lucas. Roger Ebert gave it three stars ...

- Frailty. Rated R and released in 2001, it stars Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, and Powers Boothe. The story is about a man who believes he's been instructed by an angle to kill a number of demons who are disguised as normal people. He captures these people and brings them home, enlisting the help of his two young sons, and killing his victims with an axe. Roger Ebert gave it four stars ...

- Fallen. Rated R and released in 1998, this film stars Denzel Washington, John Goodman, and Donald Sutherland. Washington portrays a Philadelphia Police Detective, John Hobbes, who's investigating a string of murders with a demonic theme. Clues lead him to a woman who confides that the murders are being committed by people possessed by a fallen angel. As Hobbes closes in on the demon, the people closest to him become possessed by it, and he is eventually forced to incriminate himself for the killings. Roger Ebert gave it two and a half stars ...

- Constantine. Rated R and released in 2005, it stars Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, and Tilda Swinton. Based on Hellblazer, a graphic novel/comic book, the film revolves around John Constantine (Reeves), a psychic and exorcist. Constantine helps people who are possessed in hopes that he can buy his way into heaven with good deeds, after having tried in the past to kill himself. While investigating the death of woman who has committed suicide, he discovers an ongoing wager between God and Lucifer for dominion of the Earth, and that this wager is being circumvented by Lucifer's son. The religious stuff is unreliable, but the film does include some interesting occult artifacts like the Spear of Destiny, the lance that was said to have pierced Jesus on the cross. Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars ....

- The Order. Rated R and released in 2003, the film stars Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, and Peter Weller. Ledger plays an American Catholic priest, Fr. Alex Bernier, who belongs to a (fictitious) religious order whose superior has mysteriously died. Bernier travels to Rome to investigate the death and discovers within the Vatican a Cardinal who's secretly a sin-eater. Sin-eating, a practice by which one person consumes the sins of another person, is considered by the church to be heretical magic and Bernier faces multiple dangers, including demons, in trying to bring the truth to light ...

- The Seventh Sign. Rated R and released in 1988, the film stars Demi Moore, Michael Biehn, and Jürgen Prochnow of Das Boot fame. The plot involves a pregnant woman (Moore) discovering that Jesus (Prochnow) has returned to break the seven seals, those mentioned in the Book of Revelation, thus causing the the end of the world, the apocalypse. With the help of a young Jewish scholar, she tries to change Jesus' mind, but she's constantly impeded by a mysterious Catholic priest. Roger Ebert gave it just two stars ...

- The Rapture. Released in 1991 and rated R, the movie stars David Duchovny, Mimi Rogers, and Patrick Bauchau. The story tells of a telephone operator, Sharon, who leaves her life as an after-hours swinger to become a born-again Christian, marrying and having a daughter. When things begin to go very wrong in her life, she questions her faith and goes into the desert with her daughter to await the Rapture, the end time when the chosen ascend to heaven. They wait and writ but nothing happens, and in despair, Sharon makes a terrible decision that seals her fate. Roger Ebert gave it four stars ...

- Night of the Demon (Curse of the Demon). Unrated and released in 1957, the film stars Dana Andrews and was produced in the United Kingdom. The plot was adapted from a short story by M.R. James, Casting the Runes, and tells of an American psychologist, Dr. John Holden, who travels to England to attend a convention and meet a friend there. Holden finds his friend has been mysteriously killed and suspects the killing was accomplished with the use of magic, as his friend had been investigating satanic cults. Holden eventually learns of the existence of a parchment with a magic rune upon it that, when surreptitiously given to someone, calls up a demon to kill them. This one has a cat named Grimalkin in it :) ...

- Stigmata. Rated R and released in 1999, it stars Patricia Arquette and Gabriel Byrne. Byrne portrays Fr. Kiernan, a Vatican postulator, a priest who investigates miracles. He meets Arquete’s character when she shows evidence of having the stimata, marks on her body like those of the crucified Jesus. Behind all this they discover a mysterious gospel that the Catholic church has been keeping under wraps, afraid it would destroy the church The sayings in this mystery gospel, such as “Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there” seem to come, in part, from the real-life non-canonical gospel of Thomas. Roger Ebert gave it two stars ...

- The Prophecy. Rated R and released in 1995, it stars Christopher Walken, Viggo Mortensen, and Virginia Madsen. The plot describes a civil war between Heacen's angels, as described in the Book of Revelation. Walkien portrays the archangel Gabriel, who's searching for a particularly bad soul located on Earth, but who comes into conflict with other angels and a police detective who had once trained to be a Catholic priest. Though the movie received poor reviews, it later became a cult classic and spawned a number of sequels. Especially spooky - Viggo as Lucifer ...

The Catholic Space or Price as Politics

When talking about unions in the United States, it is important to realize you are talking about Sen-Sen, blacksmith shops and rotary phones. This moving map shows what I mean:

ww.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map

The shrinkage in membership is partly a result of Ds taking union support for granted but mostly the result of management learning how to keep employees more frightened of losing their jobs than angry about being exploited.

Tom Blackburn

Please bear with me on this one.

Some months ago, I was reading up on current Republican theories on why all public and state subsidized options should be eliminated in American healthcare.  And I was reading a paper produced by a prominent libertarian economist written for a conference at the University of Chicago.  His basic argument is that the our whole system is dysfunctional because of regulation; regulations meant to protect the public, but more importantly regulations meant to protect business interests.  Were these to be stripped away, the Invisible Hand would emerge, prices would fall and quality would increase and we would all live happily ever after Hallelujah Amen. 

I read this with interest because it was a rare study of how regulation supports business interests.  But then I ran into something that took my breath away. It was so obvious that I felt stupid and diminished for not having seen it clearly before. I feel as though it might be important, but since I read it I have been unable to develop it (I believe) and this has had a bad affect on my writing  as a whole.  But I would like to give you what I have here.

This economist was bright enough to know that he can talk theory all day long, but he needed a case study to back himself up.  So he chose the deregulation of the airlines under Reagan.  He pointed out that the airlines were heavily regulated, in terms of quality standards, the protection of unionization, the assignment of routes, etc.  Reagan pushed through a massive deregulation in the name of the free market and all of these things were opened to "innovation".  And he points out rather correctly that prices for airline tickets immediately fell.  (He also notes that a number of large carriers disappeared, such as Pan American, Eastern, Braniff, etc.  But this was the "creative destruction" of businesses that could not adapt and innovate).

He listed a number of things that contributed to the fall in prices and as I read them I sort of ticked off in my head what their percentage contributions might have been.  When I got to the largest one, I had what Japanese Zen Buddhists might call a moment of "satori" or "clarity".  Because from this simple thing, so much that happened later arose.

Kelly's defense of Trump

The New Yorker comments on Kelly's defense of Trump, who was criticized by a congresswoman for his condolence call to wife of a fallen soldier ...

John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for Trump

[...] Kelly, who rarely speaks publicly, stepped into the briefing room yesterday to defend the President. The most newsworthy comments he made concerned Wilson, who he said was an “empty barrel” who had once turned a ceremony meant to commemorate the deaths of two F.B.I. officers killed in the line of duty into a celebration of her ability to steer tax dollars to her district ....

As was quickly reported, the video of Wilson’s nine-minute speech is online. Wilson did tell a story about how she; John Boehner, the House Speaker at the time; and Obama worked together to make sure that the building was named after the two slain F.B.I. agents in time for the event. She said nothing about securing funding (she was, in fact, not in Congress when the money was authorized) and nothing about “how she took care of her constituents.” She asked law-enforcement officials present to stand up “so we can applaud you and what you do,” adding, “we’re proud of you, we’re proud of your courage.” She then told the tragic story of the two agents who lost their lives. The speech bears no resemblance to the speech Kelly described. The White House chief of staff maligned a congresswoman, whose only crime seemed to be criticizing Trump, with a series of lies.

When a reporter at the White House on Friday asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the glaring discrepancy between Kelly’s account and the actual speech, she said that the White House stood by his remarks. “There was a lot of grandstanding,” she said. “He was stunned that she had taken that opportunity to make it about herself.” The reporter pressed: “He was wrong yesterday in talking about getting the money. The money was secured before she came into Congress.”

Sanders shot back with the kind of statement that would be normal in an authoritarian country, suggesting that Kelly’s previous military service placed him beyond criticism. “If you want to go after General Kelly, that’s up to you,” she said. “But I think that that—if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”

No, it is not .....

I was watching the press briefing when Kelly spoke - it was just creepy - at the end, when reporters usually ask questions, Kelly refused to take questions from any reporters who didn't personally know a "gold star" family. Trump, with three generals in his administration, seems to be trying to overcompensate for his weakness by identifying himself with the military. Banana republic, here we come :(

More from The New Yorker: John Kelly and the Language of the Military Coup

History Lesson

Some years ago I spent a year or two doing graduate study in Japan. My Japanese wasn't bad in those days, although it depended on what the topic was. If someone wanted to talk about baseball, they were out of luck. If someone wanted to talk about the development of the Japanese legal system in the context of the larger development of capitalism in Japan in the 19th century, I was their man. My memories of my time there seem to involve a very few very long conversations.

I mostly talked to professors. Once, I met a professor who came from an ancient (by ancient, I mean "trace my lineage back 1,200 years" ancient) noble family. He seemed to be someone that I should cultivate. But sucking up to professors was hard. On one hand, small talk (which I hate) was important. On the other hand, I had to try to look like a scholar. It was very easy to slip the rails here.

A topic to try to avoid was World War 2. In general the War doesn't excite strong emotions in people there, who mostly view it as a universal tragedy. But sometimes I would run into people who had been maimed themselves or who had had their families and property obliterated in our bombings. I suppose one needs an eye for history (as I used to have) to look around Japanese cities and see that there are almost no pre-War buildings anywhere, since we destroyed them all. So some people hate us, although they don't go out of their way to say anything as a rule.

The professor from the noble family was a historian of modern Japan and that was my problem. Could I have an in-depth but yet facile conversation about the War (which had resulted, among other things, in the fall of families like his) if it came up? Would he have strong feelings about the War that he would transfer to me? Would other people at the conference, seeing him talking to an American, come up and join in out of curiosity?

We exchanged business cards to establish our ranks and occupations as all Japanese do. We established some shared connections in Japan and the university I was going to. We noted that there was weather outside and many people inside. Then we somehow slipped into the topic of art. Rocky shoals here, because Japanese art is something that I may not know much about but I know what I like. But we were able to converse smoothly, keeping it pretty shallow, like a teardrop on a mirror. It looked like smooth sailing until he brought up the War.

"My family has a few good, ancient pieces still. But alas, we really lost everything in the War."

Was this an ambush? Did he bring this up to open the gate to expressing strong feelings to the foreign barbarian?

"The War? Do you mean World War 2? Where was your family living?"

"Oh, he sighed. I mean the Onin War."

The Onin War was in 1467.

Virtue Is Its Own Reward

Unagidon here.

[I now have access and I deeply appreciate it.

I have not written for Commonweal for some time.  When they changed their format, they started paying me for my articles. But while they paid me for a group of four or five that I sent them in June, they have not published any of them.  I know that this entirely depends on what's happening in the current edition and is not a reflection on the articles themselves.  Unfortunately, this happened while I was having a crisis of confidence about my writing.

What I would like to do here is to post as I did on the blog, but to also post things that I would probably not submit to Commonweal.  I hope you will bear with me.]

Those who follow the religion called Libertarianism love to talk about the Libertarian version of the Holy Spirit that they call Innovation.  They claim that higher profits, deregulation, lower wages for workers, and tax cuts as things that will release the Forces of their Holy Spirit, as though there are people out there with revolutionary ideas who are holding back waiting for profit margins to go up 100 basis points before they unleash their creativity.

I would like to talk about how innovation actually works in large corporations, based on my own observations and experience.  Corporations love the idea of innovation, including the misty eyed dreams of greater profit.  And corporations do innovate from time to time.  But the picture is not like the one painted by the Libertarians (which is after all, as I have said countless times on Commonweal, an Infantile Disorder).

Paul Moses in Egypt!

Paul Moses, CWL writer, journalist, newspaper man, and all around nice guy, wrote The Sultan and the Saint (Francis). A good read: it is now a movie currently showing in Egypt!. Here's the story on Al Monitor: "Film about interfaith dialogue opens in Egypt to praise." 

Bravo Paul!

P.S. For those with time (and 2 hours of patience), a panel discussion with Paul Moses about the book and the event of Francis meeting Sultan Malik Al-Kamil. 

This is a video tape of a forum sponsored by the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture:  When the Saint Met the Sultan: A Medieval Summit with 21st Century Lessons

Marshall

Listening to Trump answer questions from reporters today. One of the things he mentioned was the number of judges he is appointing all up and down the judicial system - this is actually one of the scariest things he's doing (Trump’s Real Personnel Victory: More Conservative Judges).

That reminded me of a review I saw on the PBS NewsHour a few days ago about Marshall, a movie on the first Black Supreme Court Justice ...

The film looks like it will be worth a watch, both as compelling contemporary history and because Marshall is being played by Chadwick Boseman, aka the Black Panther.

Who Is the "Other Side"?

For many years, I read George Will and a handful of other conservative columnists (e.g., Jennifer Rubin, Charles Krautammer, Peggy Noonan) so I could find out what the "other side" was saying. But here are a few choice quotes from George Will's latest column:

With eyes wide open, Mike Pence eagerly auditioned for the role as Donald Trump’s poodle. Now comfortably leashed, he deserves the degradations that he seems too sycophantic to recognize as such. . . . 

Trump’s energy, unleavened by intellect and untethered to principle, serves only his sovereign instinct to pander to those who adore him as much as he does. Unshakably smitten, they are impervious to the Everest of evidence that he disdains them as a basket of gullibles. . . . 

With Trump turning and turning in a widening gyre, his crusade to make America great again is increasingly dominated by people who explicitly repudiate America’s premises. . . . 

With Trump turning and turning in a widening gyre, his crusade to make America great again is increasingly dominated by people who explicitly repudiate America’s premises. . . .  

I find I don't disagree with most conservative columnists. Where do we go nowadays to read "the other side"?  

Unprecedented, for sure

 Mollie Wilson O"Reilly has a strange, short rant where we used to hang out. She picks on one of the jillions of odd things the President of the United States has said and demonstrates that he doesn't know what he is talking about. She continues:

There is no precedent for covering a president as incompetent as Trump. And so reporters go on treating him like they would any other commander-in-chief, instead of making his unprecedented incompetence the headline story it should be.

 The first sentence is true, oh yes. But I take issue with the second. Even the staid, down the middle Associated Press has been adding "unsupportedly"s to "Trump said," or pointing out that there is no evidence for something he says or that it has been thoroughly disproved. More after the break.

Harvey Weinstein

Rachel Maddow discusses Harvey Weinstein (and Trump) and interviews journalist Ronan Farrow about his New Yorker article: From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories ...

I first heard of Ronan Farrow when he wrote an essay in The Hollywood Reporter about his sister's allegations against their father, Woody Allen .... My Father, Woody Allen, and the Danger of Questions Unasked (Guest Column)

Making the Tax Cut Great Again

 Whilst I was enjoying my morning repast today my man called my attention to a startling item in the newspaper. It seems that the obscenely wealthy people who actually run this country have proven willing to give up part of their next tax cut to the merely incredibly wealthy people. Well, I have to say that is extraordinarily (what is the word I am looking  for?) extraordinarily white of them.
 I have decided to write to Mr, Trump informing him of my approbation for this move by the obscenely wealthy people who run this country. At the same time, it occurs to me that it would be unfair to make them bear the burden for their largesse. I believe that the tax cut should be enlarged so that they can, whilst sharing with their less fortunate incredibly wealthy neighbors, continue to receive the tax cut they so richly deserve. I shall ask Mr. Trump to have that Mike fellow who works for him make such provision in the final tax bill. Surely there is still some money earmarked for widows and orphans that could be used for the purpose. So using it would, as Paul Ryan never tires of pointing out, restore to the widows and orphans the dignity of getting by without government help. My plan seems like a winner all the way around, what?

"Only One Thing Will Work With N.K.!"

Between President Trump's ominous Tweets about the calm before the storm, and this one that just showed up: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/10/07/donald-trump-north-korea-tweetshowed up:  s/743135001/ , don't we have enough to invoke the 25th amendment by now? Seriously, please!  The guy is going to end up with millions getting killed, he's just as crazy as the Vegas shooter.  Does anyone among the readers know what has to happen for the 25h amendment to be invoked; or do we actually have to fall off the cliff first?

Tom Petty

From America magazine: Elegy for a Heartbreaker: Tom Petty and the simple beauty of song

For the past 48 hours I have received numerous condolence calls, emails and text messages regarding the death of someone I had never met—some from people I haven’t heard from in years. It feels like being on the receiving end of a strange blessing. Tom Petty died on Monday at age 66, and anyone who knows me well understands that it is a personal loss ...

I will miss him too. I did see him once in person here at the state fair. Here's a bit from PBS NewsHour about him ...

One of his early songs ...

Here he is later with the Traveling Wilburys (George Harrison, et al) ...

And even later, he was part of a tribute to the songs of Bob Dylan, doing My Back Pages with Harrison, Dylan, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn, and Neil Young ...

Vox: The Gun Suicide Problem

Vox has again done a good job of reminding us of the gun facts:

America's Unique Gun Violence Problem

Although America’s political debate about guns tends to focus on grisly mass shootings and murders, a majority of gun-related deaths in the US are suicides. As Dylan Matthews explained for Vox, this is actually one of the most compelling reasons for reducing access to guns — there is a lot of research that shows greater access to guns dramatically increases the risk of suicide.

Guns are much deadlier than alternatives like cutting and poison. Just stalling an attempt or making it less likely to result in death makes a huge difference.

“Time is really key to preventing suicide in a suicidal person,” Harkavy-Friedman said. “First, the crisis won’t last, so it will seem less dire and less hopeless with time. Second, it opens the opportunity for someone to help or for the suicidal person to reach out to someone to help. That’s why limiting access to lethal means is so powerful.”

The most interesting story about gun suicide prevention comes from the Israeli military. They had a military suicide problem. Most of it was when their soldiers went home on the weekends. They decided to not let them take their weapons with them. Result a 40% drop in gun suicides.

Think of that. If there is one place in the world  you might think you would need a gun to protect yourself from a terrorist, yet the Israeli military decided their soldiers were safer (from themselves) without their guns!

Its also ironic that most of the gun suicides are not "poor" Blacks or Hispanics. They have relatively low rates. Its the middle aged White less educated population that is committing suicide by gun, along with alcohol, and drugs. The very population that is the heart of Trump's support. Blacks and Hispanics look around and see their lives improving. Middle aged Whites look around them and see everything deteriorating.  

Had enough? Get ready for more

 Is there any competent American who heard about the Pulse nightclub mass shooting (49) and didn't say, "That is the biggest until next time"?
 Which is what we said after Virginia Tech (32).
 After all the kids in Sandy Hook, some of us dumber Americans said, "Well, that will prove to be enough for them."
 But it wasn't.
 And Las Vegas will be the biggest. Until next time.