If you've been following cicada news, you know that this is a big cicada year. Broods of two different species of periodical cicadas are expected to emerge this year. The critter pictured above (I hesitate to use the numbers, as they may be a bit confusing, but apparently this is how bug scientists keep track of them) is from Brood 13 of the 17 Year Cicadas. And news outlets are reporting that Brood 19 of the 13 Year Cicadas also have begun to put in their appearance. This is the first year since 1803 that both types of cicadas are emerging during the same year. But according to maps I have seen, while Illinois is home to both types, there isn't much overlap in their territories, at least in our state. The 13 Years are in the southern part of the state.
For the last couple of days, we've seen a few cicadas in our front yard and on one of our trees. And we've noticed birds hopping around in the front yard, presumably devouring them (feast away!). My recollection of previous cicada events is that, as the soil continues to warm, many, many more will be forthcoming, and their noise will become much more than a minor nuisance. And then, after a few weeks, they'll be gone again, until the next generation (Brood 14?) tunnels to the surface in 2041 or thereabouts.
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ReplyDeleteApparently this isn't our year to experience the big cicada numbers here, our turn is supposed to come in 2026. We always have some of them in the summer though. They start singing in July. I have heard different calculations about when to expect the first frost, so many weeks past the first cicada sounds.
ReplyDeleteWe always used to call them "locusts", but that is a misnomer. Locusts are actually grasshoppers, in rogue numbers. The subject of many a scary pioneer story. And one of the Biblical plagues.
According to what I am reading, the cicada explosion is going to make birds very, very happy. They will feast on them, and their numbers will expand. So will butterflies, because the birds won't be eating so many caterpillars.
I remember one time a disabled cicada landed on our deck. The cat was having a very entertaining time batting the cicada around and making it buzz. I thought that was kind of mean so I made her come inside. I spoiled all her fun.
A good day for The Girls is when a June bug gets in the house. I've seen cicadas in Michigan, but not often or in large quantities.
DeleteI fear this is the closest I can come to a firefly report. We do get fireflies in our area, but I haven't noticed any yet this year.
ReplyDeleteOurs typically show up in early June and peak about July 4. Might be early this year because of the warm winter. Humming birds have hit my porch since I put in geraniums last week, and the wasps are back. They keep doing recon missions on the porch ceiling, but Raber filled up the cracks this fall, so hope they move on. Bumblebees in the chives that are at peak flowering. Lots of butterflies.
DeleteWe really went full suburban this year and hired a lawn service, so I don't get outside in the yard as much as I used to. I guess I should pitch in with the gardening.
DeleteHaving asthma makes it really hard to do, much less enjoy, yard work. Raber is back to mowing since his heart attack, but takes him all day. I am constantly running out there with a hat or sunscreen or water and urging him to take a break. My garden is a 6-foot octagon. And I have cut the porch flowers down to 5 pots. I have a lot of ornamental bushes I collected over the years from family and friends. But some years ago the effort to maintain them started to outweigh my enjoyment of them. I was ready to move to the Warehouse of the Living Dead, aka income adjusted senior housing, a few years ago. But the wood shop where Raber was able to putter around a few days a week shut down, and he's grieving that. Making too many changes too fast upsets him. So we move at a snail's pace.
DeleteWe have sucked at yard work for 52 years and counting, and have done as little as possible of it. There are full service lawn outfits around but we can't afford them. We get whichever down-on-his luck friend of a neighbor of a friend is mowing lawns for a few bucks to do the bare minimum to keep the city from ticketing us. Bad stuff always happens if my husband attempts to do yard work so I don't have to talk very hard to discourage it.
DeleteI have a few deck and hanging plants, and a big oak tree in back. I really like oak trees. Pretty close to zero maintenance, and blue jays and cardinals and squirrels live in it. Squirrels love the acorns. They have been known to try to bury acorns in my potted plants.
And we have a Bradford pear in front. It is beautiful for a week in April, the rest of the time it is a pain in the neck. We hold our breath every time there is a strong wind. The wood is weak and tree removal isn't cheap. Don't plant a Bradford pear.
DeleteNot sure if it is squirrels or chipmunks, but we have tons of walnut trees around here, and the little devils always use my porch pots for nut caches in the fall.
DeleteOff topic. Phyllis Zagona at Religion News Service says Barron is a bully, just like trump.
ReplyDeleteI tho't this comment referred to Barron Trump. It's abt Bishop Barron: https://religionnews.com/2024/05/22/the-rise-of-the-catholic-bully/
DeleteI went and read the Religion News Service article, it's not really saying Barron is a bully, more that if he doesn't like being perceived as one that he's using the wrong tactics. It made the point that there is a long history of bishops throwing their weight around, Mother Frances Cabrini was dealing with that too. Said that if Bishop Barron wanted to distance himself from Trump and company, that was a good thing. But again, threatening lawsuits is not a good way to do that.
DeletePretty sure C'weal would have been happy to give Bishop Barron space to write a response to Faggioli about the error of conflating traditional and orthodox Catholicism with the MAGA wing of the GOP. Or even with the regular GOP.
DeleteBishop B's decision to take the I'll-sue-your-ass! route right out of the gate instead of copping a teachable moment strikes me as MAGA-like: Act take umbrage, cast yourself as a victim, and make threats.
Yeah, I wish he had done as you say and had written a response to Faggioli's article. I think Commonweal would have published it.
DeleteI'm still not sure what Word on Fire's issue is. They keep claiming that the article and then the retraction were mean to them - but how?
DeleteJust a thought: Word on Fire was spun up when Barron was a priest. Now that he has his own diocese to run, it might behoove him to introduce one or two degrees of separation between himself and the ministry. He could stay on the board, even as a Chairman Emeritus or some such.
I understand Barron is, from one point of view, a media star (bearing in mind that media is very fragmented these days!). Just suggesting that continuing to be yoked so closely to the organization may not always be beneficial for him.
Jim, I agree that a degree of separation might be a good idea.
DeleteI had read that some people thought Barron got demoted when he was moved from L.A. to Minnesota. But I don't think that's true, he was an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of L.A. He is now the diocesan bishop of of Winona-Rochester. That means he's the ecclesial CEO of that diocese. Probably leaves less time to be a media star. And seems like it would be a higher calling.
Remember that Barron was one of the bishops elected by American bishops to the Synod. Below is America's summary of them:
DeleteThe U.S.C.C.B. president, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the Archdiocese for Military Services USA, will attend, and joining him will be Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Tex., who heads the conference’s doctrine committee and who has been managing the synod preparation for the bishops.
Also elected by the bishops were Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who chairs the conference’s religious liberty committee, and Bishop Kevin Rhoades, the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who will take over the same committee later this year. Bishop Robert Barron, the bishop of Winona-Rochester, Minn., and the founder of the popular Catholic media enterprise Word on Fire, was also elected.
The selection of bishops elected by their peers to attend the synod largely reaffirms the recent priorities of the body, a roster of heavy hitters who have been public figures in battles over religious liberty, abortion and immigration.
While one might argue that Trump and the American Bishops are aligned on religious liberty and abortion; they certainly are not when it comes to immigration. They are probably even more opposed than the Democrats.
I can understand why Barron who probably sees himself as an elected leader of the "centrist" American bishops would be very concerned about being labeled as a far-right bishop like the disgraced Strickland.
As auxiliary bishop of L.A. he served a subarea with more priests and Catholics than he does now, but really could not make policy or personnel decisions. As bishop he could try to create a model diocese. However, dioceses like parishes tend to have their own character. So, his media empire will still be the center of his activity.
I think Faggioli made a real mistake, and Word on Fire jumped on it and tried to make sure that other media outlets did not make the same mistake.
Ross Douthat has some interesting information today about the traditionalist movement ( Latin mass) and how it organizes, and how it is different from mainstream conservative Catholicism (oxymoron?)
ReplyDeleteThat was an interesting column. Ross Douthat has from time to time given me a large pain. But I thought his analysis of "do it yourself traditionalism" was good.
DeleteAnd he had some book recommendations that seemed worth checking out.
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Delete(Edited for length and typos)
DeleteLink?
Douthat made an effortless-seeming slide from hardcore evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism. I kind of envy him.
But I do detect Douthat's former evangelical need for authority and inerrancy lurking underneath a lot of his commentary on Catholicism, and I wish more Catholics would recognize this.
Like most conservatives, Douthat mistrusts imagination, inspiration, and mystery. He likes to use Biblical authority and tradition to eradicate gray areas. He likes things tidy and predictable. Transactional even.
Not what Catholicism is all about for me, but somebody famous once said that in America, even the Catholics are Protestants.
Here is the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/opinion/harrison-butker-catholicism.html
DeleteThanks.
Delete"No less than any progressive form of Catholicism, Butker and his movement are the fruits of a weakened hierarchy, a disillusioned-but-empowered laity and a democratic age."
Um, no.
It's one thing for parishes to reach into the wealth of the Churches worship styles to say, hey, this speaks to us, let's bring this back for awhile. There are many enjoyable and lovely aspects of medieval Catholicism.
But it's a whole other thing to say its more "pure" or "authentic" than postVat2 practices and touting themselves as better than everyone else.
And if the trads want to be real authentic, they'd go whole hog and bring back the pardoners and agitating for trial by ordeal.
What interested me is that the trads have actually developed a systematic blueprint for infiltrating parishes to get more Latin masses. Douthat, like a whole lot of celebrity Catholic converts from evangelical christianity,( Scott Hahn, many Catholic bloggers, the guy whose Bible study program seems to have taken hold in many Catholic parishes etc) seem to retain Their evangelical approach to faith but love the trappings of Catholicism. Jean is right - they don’t like gray but want someone to create a certainty that nobody can create - not even a pope. Evangelical Christianity with liturgy - and an absolute authority. Every pastor of evangelical churches has their own interpretation . Catholics have a catechism even if not all Catholics believe every interpretation found in it.
DeleteI think this is the part that Douthat gets right (but doesn't seem to understand the implications):
Delete"...this kind of church-within-a church dynamic is exactly the justification offered by church authorities for their attempts to suppress or limit access to the traditional liturgy..... The fear is that the traditional Mass creates a sect of believers that operates without normal ecclesiastical supervision, which then recruits from among the much larger population of conservative Catholics — through, say, a traditionalist commencement speech at a conservative college — and draws them into its alienated ranks.....If you don’t sympathize at all with the desire to maintain the old liturgy, if you regard traditionalism as entirely retrograde, you’ll see it the way many of Pope Francis’s allies do: as a dangerously divisive force within the church."
Where I part company with Douthat is that he doesn't seem to see that creating a sunset of believers within parishes which draws priests and believers from the larger population of conservative Catholics, who end up alienated from the larger group, as a problem. Of course Pope Francis views it as a "dangerously divisive force within the church"!
The Anglicans have high, low, and broad parishes; modern and traditional liturgies in the BCP; and tolerance for Anglo-Catholics (mostly). This gets them away from some of liturgical squabbles that might get inflated to the level of doctrinal differences (mostly). When I was at Cambridge, there were prayers before and after meals and at vespers in Latin. The presider got to ding a little gong before and after. On Sundays, we could go to the local church, and those services were in English.
DeleteDouthat is either out of date or out of touch, or both.
DeleteWhen B16 authorized the Extraordinary Form, i.e. the Old Latin Mass, he said any priest could use it without needing the permission of a bishop or even of a pastor, and that Bishops and priests should accommodate those who wanted the old Latin Mass. So, the more aggressive TLM people did try to get pastors to permit the Old Latin Mass in the way that Douthat describes.
However, when Francis essentially revoked Benedict's EF, he said that the Old Latin Mass could only be used with permission of the local bishop, that it could NOT be in parishes, and that young priests were not to be trained in its use. Essentially it said that only existing Latin Mass communities could be served by existing priests but NO LONGER in parishes. They would have to find a non-parish chapel, e.g. with a religious order.
Now the reality being that bishops do see themselves as responsible for the liturgy in their own diocese, many did not respond well to Benedict's rules encouraging more of the Old Latin Masses, and now many are not responding well to Francis discouragement of them. In other words, many bishops just wish the problem would go away.
Really it should not be a big issue. The new liturgical forms authorized by Vatican II can be done completely in Latin or completely in English or anything in between by any priest anytime he wants. Why some people think it important to use the old liturgical books before Vatican II is the problem. As Francis has said, that demand often has underneath it a rejection of the Council, its teachings, and the reformed Liturgy whether in Latin or English.
I have not seen much EF activity in this diocesan, although it was very slowly growing in the manner that Douthat describes. Only a couple of parishes in my county ever had it, and then only in very limited form (like a week- day Mass every once in a while). However, there are one or two SPSS parishes, i.e. the group that left communion with Rome to be under their own illegally consecrated bishops. One has just constructed a new church, so they must be doing well. Francis has essentially recognized their sacraments, e.g. marriages, and has treated them like the Orthodox, e.g. we are allowed to receive sacraments from the Orthodox although the Orthodox do not admit us to their sacraments.
If young priests are not supposed to be trained in the Extraordinary Form, I wonder what the status of the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter) is going to be?
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestly_Fraternity_of_Saint_Peter
Their US seminary is in Denton, Nebraska. Which is is the Lincoln Diocese (not Omaha, which is our archdiocese).
I think Douthat is right that traditionalists have borrowed from the progressive playbook in promoting the Latin mass. In the same way, the pro-life movement borrowed tactics from the civil rights movement.
DeleteI wonder what the status of the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter) is going to be?
DeleteMy understanding is that religious orders which have the EF as part of their mission will be permitted to continue. I think part of the thinking about excluding the EF from parishes was that religious orders would take up caring for the EF people. For example, some Benedictines have kept the monastic office as it was before Vatican II along with the EF for the Mass.
In our diocese, before Francis introduced the restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass, there were two or three parishes which offered it regularly. I guess they are run by religious orders, although they also function as normal neighborhood parishes. I don't think anything has changed I'm the wake of Francis's new guidelines. There may have been individual priests offering Latin masses on their own in other places, but I haven't heard about it.
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