Long Weekend!

Goodness me. Blogger has changed its interface without warning. But thank heavens, I have found a message from Sinead (not Siobhan), accent on the 'e'. She's fine, and I want everyone to know that I always put in the accents on the names in my work articles. 

I do not like changes in my technology because I am a bear of very analogue brain. Sometimes I miss simply typing out my ramblings and circulating them among friends at church and school. An Eighties' Child, that's me. 

Apologies to everyone who has sent me comments in the past month that I did not see. I will go through the com boxes and respond. 

Meanwhile, it's the August Holiday long weekend in Canada, and I opted for the Canadian Bank Holiday Mondays (as B.A. usually had to work the British ones), so I am free! That said, my break from the computer lasted as long as it took me to make a blackcurrant vodka cocktail and have a look at the explosion of fluffy purple flowers in my garden. It looks like an invasion from space. 

I told a colleague that today was supposed the hottest day of the year in Scotland, hotter than Lanzarote. At lunchtime B.A. and I walked to the parish church in the sun and then to the ice-cream store. It was marvellous. My colleague asked how hot, and I looked online to see. 75 F. He then laughed merrily, as he is in Virginia, where it is in the 90s but the humidity makes it feel like the 100s. 

Now I get to think about what to do with my time now that I don't have to read or write news. Naturally I will study Polish, read Italian, and finish a book I'm reviewing. I will make some suggestions about a pupil's "Chapter One," and I will even write a "Chapter One" myself, so as not to make my students do anything I'm not doing myself. I will read up on New Criticism, so I can get some insight into what it is that I am teaching decades after being taught it myself. 

I will do some housework--the hard scrubbing and hoovering stuff, not just the dishes and the laundry. Oooh, I think the charity shops are open, so I can have a real rid-out at last. 

For the moment, I'm on the stoop at the top of our stairs and I've just had a chat with the downstairs neighbour. She's says she's back at work at the hotel--just 15 hours a week to keep her in chocolate and Gin-and-Tonic.

"Life's little essentials," she said. 

The marvellous thing about our street of row houses is that every flat has its own private garden. Several of them--including ours--are full of washing, as the neighbourhood takes advantage of 75 degree weather. You would think that the Scots would all invest in drying machines, given our usual weather, but no! Well, perhaps the New Town can laugh off the utility bills, but we cannot. 

Anyway, B.A. and I may go on another country walk although this is not certain as the poor man has developed plantar fasciitis. He can no longer bicycle, and he refuses to be put in a bicycle trailer, so our options are limited.  

Now I will read your comments--I hope.

A Way of Life

I meant to write a long and luxurious post on the above topic, but all I have time to do is catch up.

On Saturday Benedict Ambrose and I went on a splendid walk from East Linton to Dunbar. This represented the last leg of the John Muir Way. Apparently some Americans are trying to cancel our Johnnie for saying rude things, but he'll never be cancelled in Dunbar. He was born there, his birthplace is now a museum, his statue in in the middle of town, and he was voted their "Man of the Millennium." I wouldn't suggest anyone go to Dunbar to fiddle with his legacy, for Dunbar is what B.A. calls "rather rough."

On Sunday B.A. and I went to Mass and did not pass out and die when the congregation of 40 absentmindedly sang their usual half of the Credo. Afterwards we enjoyed a Gin and Tonic of Togetherness and then went with a London-based pal (Andrew Cusack) to Bar Napoli to relive his student days and eat lunch. After Andrew ran for his train home, B.A. and I sauntered to our own bus stop, untempted by the luxuries of George Street.

On Monday after work B.A. and I went to the Historical House, secure in the permission of the Head Gardener, to harvest blackcurrants for next year's blackcurrant vodka. Someone had done a number on the rhubarb, so I picked the last forlorn pink stalks and took them home for crumble. I washed and dried the black currants and today, during my lunch hour, I bought a bottle of Absolut (on sale at £16) to pour over them.

Now we have three bottles of blackcurrant vodka in various stages: a bottle of creme de cassis, a bottle of straight czarna porzeczka for Christmas 2020, and today's mixture, to be left until  Christmas 2021. I am drinking creme de cassis with soda at this very moment.

Today is July 28, exactly a year after my last tincture-making. As B.A. and I went off berrying yesterday, it occurred to me that this has become a tradition in our Way of Life. Our Way of Life is not the ideal for married Catholics--the absence of children still rankles my soul--but harvesting fruit for cordials and puddings is very pleasant.

Our Way of Life clearly involves long walks in the countryside, the Traditional Latin Mass, meals with friends (whenever possible), the making of alcoholic drinks from flowers and fruit, the reading of books and The Spectator,  the study of Polish and Italian (me), and the study of 18th century Scotland (B.A.).

Sinead, check in!

I have read that Ireland's health workers have the world's highest rate of Covid-19, so please check in Siobhan Sinead. I'm worried about you.  Reader response is (obviously) low these days (moral of story: don't  put up and close down blogs every couple of years), but occasionally I wonder how my old readers are doing. 

Meanwhile, I have finished my review for Peter Kwasniewski's Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright (Angelico Press, 2020). I possibly went overboard on the feasting analogy, but I discovered it was the best way to describe the structure and properties of the book. One day I hope to write something with as much substance--something as meaty, as it were.  But what I most admire about Peter K is that he works on his writing craft day after day. 

Kwasniewski is prolific, but he's not cranking it out. He's thinking, structuring, and polishing those lovely or striking metaphors. Back in Jesuit theology school, I was taught to mark up books with symbols denoting desolation, consolation, new ideas, important information, and questions. For PK I have added a little daisy for phrases or sections I find particularly lovely. It's moving that in promoting the Traditional Latin Mass, Kwasniewski is striving to write about it as beautifully as he can. 

"Beauty will save the world," said Fyodor Dostoevsky. I learned that in Jesuit theology school, too. 

Now on the top of my pile is Fr. Armand de Malleray's X-ray of a Priest in a Field Hospital.  What works in a homily does not necessary work in a book, so I have no idea what to expect. I've reviewed three Kwasniewski books now, so I will begin reading his next with a general idea. I was going to say that nobody (except Peter and Angelico Press) will want me to review PK's next one, but it occurs to me that I am developing much background knowledge. I can say authoritatively "This is an improvement on his last" or "This element that so distinguished his last is sadly MIA." 

My undergraduate English professors at the University of Toronto were very old fashioned, fortunately for me, and I believe they were all New Critics. What this meant, in practise, is that they trained us to read every word of the books we read and judge the works on their beauty, balance, shapes--I'm not articulating this correctly. At any rate, I can tell you that the last words in Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright are "Printed in the United States." That's how hard "read every word" was banged into me as an undergrad.  Naturally I am teaching my homeschoolers to read every word, too, and to look at how essays, stories and novels are structured.  

I have just pondered what a feminist critique of Kwasniewski's works would look like and shuddered.  On the other hand, I have been out of academia so long, I don't know what the latest fashion is. Possibly students of English Literature no longer write essays but defecate on books in public and then set fire to them as their classmates film the acts and post them to Instagram. When one of the hopeful sprigs of the local TLM indicated a desire to study English Literature at university, all the university-educated adults in earshot shrieked in horror.

On second thought, though, I suppose a student might be well-served by the English Department at a Newman-approved college. Also, I do read and write for a living, so my B.A. in English Lit/Classical Civ. was not useless, however I feel about my appalling English Lit M.A.  Still, my undergrad professors were New Critics, and may God's perpetual light upon them. May those no longer with us rest in peace. (Special mention of Fr. Charles Leland, CSB, whose rendition of the first lines of A Streetcar Named Desire, once heard, could never be forgotten.)

The £11 Hamburger, or Keeping Institutions Alive

Benedict Ambrose and I have been worried about our local Latin American restaurant. It has excellent steaks at affordable prices and dulce de leche cheesecake. Before lockdown it was busy on weekends but usually rather quiet during the week. After lockdown it was deserted, of course.

Now that lockdown has been greatly eased, we decided to abandon parsimony for an evening and have a meal at the steakhouse. B.A. put on his tweed jacket, and I put on my Sala Stampa dress, and off we went. To our surprise, the restaurant was rather busy.

The new femme maitre d' was cheerful behind her plastic visor and informed us that the restaurant has been popular since it reopened. We professed ourselves happy to hear this and ordered supper. B.A. reacted with exaggerated expressions of shock when I ordered a hamburger instead of a steak. It was delicious. Replete and satisfied that the restaurant would survive if we didn't have dessert, we decided not to have the dulce de leche cheesecake. Instead we went home to sleep as well as we could, given the entire bottle of Montanes we drank. I woke up at 5 AM.

(An aside: what is the point of eating beef and drinking red wine at 7 PM - 9 PM at night? Wouldn't it make more sense to have these things at lunchtime, so as to tackle the rest of the day with vim?  Or at least to have them for supper only if a night of dancing or some other vigorous activity is planned?)

I have finished reading Kwasniewski's Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Tradition, and in it he asks the reader to invite as many people as possible to the Traditional Latin Mass, so that they too can worship God in this beautiful and fitting way. He begs us to be nice to the people who arrive with purple hair or black fingernails, suggesting that they will get the hang of correct dress in time.

(Another aside: whereas purple hair strikes me as banal, I don't mind black fingernails myself, even on men. If a tall Goth-like chap in a long black trench coat and shiny black nails turns up at Mass, I will certainly buzz up to him in the carpark afterwards and invite him into the parish hall for a cup of tea.)

I agree with Kwasniewski's pleas, and one of my proudest accomplishments is evangelising people with my blog. One would-be convert, shocked by her local Mass, went online to find out about Latin Masses and found my blog. She was inspired by my  descriptions of the TLM it to seek out her local Oratorians. The Oratorians take would-be converts very seriously, and so today this lovely girl is a Catholic.

However, I feel that I must add somewhere that a TLM can be incredibly off-putting for the first-timer.

TLMers can also be incredibly off-putting, too. Thirty years ago (!) I was surprised at Mass in the ordinary form when a party of pro-lifers I knew suddenly knelt beside me while I was standing. I had stood at that part of the Mass all my little life. If I remember correctly, one of the pro-lifers my age tugged at my hem so I would kneel too. She explained later that the Mass itself was wrong, and I thought she was off her rocker. She explained about there being an Old Mass and that the Old Mass was the Right Mass, but I still thought she had gone over the edge into the Extreme.

However, I was curious enough about the Old Mass to go to one in my incredibly ugly and banal parish church. My childhood parish used to have a beautiful cruciform church on the principal street of our city. It was built around 1949. The land it was on, unfortunately, was worth millions by the 1980s, and so it was sold and a squat new church complex was built for us on a side street. Its only architectural connection with the old church is the stained glass windows. I'm very fond of those windows, and I learned about the Seven Sacraments from them before I could read.*

My pastor was, I now realise, a crypto-trad, and he had arranged (or allowed) for what was then called the Indult Mass to be said in his church once in awhile on Sunday afternoon. So one day I went, and it was the most boring thing ever. There were no instructions to be found. If I remember correctly, there was no sheet of paper with the readings. I didn't know such things as TLM missals existed. The church, being hideous, didn't raise my mind to heaven. I was disappointed and, what's more, didn't see the point. I didn't set foot in a TLM for the next 18 years.

The only reason why I went back to the TLM at all was because I went on holiday to Scotland and my host, who was about to be received into the Church, was a TLM enthusiast. I found everything very strange, and even rather frustrating, but I was very impressed by the intense silence. Everyone there seemed to be intently focussed on what was happening at all times. Having been liturgically brought up to focus on the community, I was very impressed by the piety of this community. Then I married my host, so good-bye to Bugnini.

Peter Kwasniewski thinks the Catholic Church is doomed without the TLM, and I suspect it will certainly be doomed in the West without the TLM. I will one-up Kwasniewski and say I think the West is doomed without the TLM because the TLM provides the spiritual foundation for parents bringing their children up in the classical tradition.

If there's anything we should have learned from the ecclesiastical debacle of the 1960s and 1970s, it's that a culture cannot survive having its foundations removed.  B.A. and I want our neighbourhood to thrive, and so we spend our money in local businesses. Wanting our Church to survive (and souls to thrive, we support the TLM.

*Nobody should underestimate how much theology children pick up from church art and architecture. My parents unintentionally went to the most lefty church in town when I was an infant and the wooden stations of the cross are carved into my brain. The 1970s baldacchino--a large ring set with light bulbs hanging from the ceiling--reinforced my impression that whatever was happening at the altar was very important.

Card-less in the Cash-free Toon

It's Professional Development Day for me, so I went to see my Spiritual Director. This was the first time I had been by for over four months, thanks to the lockdown. It wasn't as simple as getting on the bus, for on Sunday I lost my bank card on another bus and had to cancel it pronto. Thus, this morning I emptied out jars of change looking for pound coins, 50 pence pieces and, indeed, 20 p pieces to make up bus fares with.  I also had two lottery tickets worth £5 in my pocket, for the McLeans enjoy their little flutter and occasionally win something. 

Out I went into our (almost) cash-free society with my pocket of coins and lottery tickets.  Oh, and my mask. The front part of my mask is denim, so it matches my new indestructible maxi-skirt of feminine traddery. 

My journey through the town was like this: I walked to a bus stop and took the bus (£1.80) to the West End. Then I walked through the pouring rain to my Spiritual Director's house, arriving 20 minutes early. Next I had a long chat with my Spiritual Director before deciding to walk in the now-gentle rain towards Waterstone's bookshop on Princes Street. On the way I noticed that various cafes I might have stopped in were not accepting cash, so I didn't stop in any. 

Waterstone's had a sign saying that it would take only cash payments. After ascertaining that they don't have Assimil Italian (is Assimil ever in shops?), I continued on. I caught a bus to the Bridges (£1.80) and cashed my lottery tickets at Sainsbury's. Then I had a look at my favourite cafe which, unfortunately, is not only still shut, there is a large wooden board over the doorway. This bodes ill. Next I stopped by Central Library, whose ornate gates are still shut, and so proceeded to the Bow, past Walker Slater to La Barantine, a cafe-bakery on my "Acceptable Croissants" shortlist. 

There were a few tourists about, obvious from their cameras and need to photograph "The Elephant House: Birthplace of Harry Potter", but for once there were tables free at the Bow's La Barantine. The waitress did not want me to pay with cash, however, so we came to a compromise where I bought a croissant with exact change (£1.80) and toddled off. Munching my croissant, I examined the tweed-filled shop windows of Walker Slater and then went to Blackwell's Books. 

Blackwell's had more staff around than customers. A masked young salesman in the foyer greeted me and explained the shopping protocol: gel for hands, mask on face, one-way system: the now-usual. I had hoped to find a nice comfy chair in an isolated corner in which to discreetly read more of Kwasniewski's Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright, but it soon clear that chairs are now hard, obvious and few. I had a distinct feeling that using  reading a non-Blackwell's book would not be smiled upon.  Thus, after some melancholy wandering upstairs and downstairs, I went back upstairs, picked up the Dummies Guide to Polish and had a skim. (It's quite good, and it would serve as an expanded phrasebook for the studious/committed.) 

After that I got on a bus and went home (£1.80). My trip to and about the ancestral city cost £7.20, and I never dipped into our lottery winnings. I wasn't much tempted to, either, thanks to social disapproval of cash and also the doleful closures. The was a "For Sale" sign on "Mother India", which is a terrible shame, as that was our favourite Indian restaurant.  

I'm feeling rather low about my favourite cafe. It was the scene of so many of my Polish conversations and last-minute bouts of Polish homework doing. I even wrote Polish letters while sitting in one or the other of the big red leather chairs and deciphered Polish Pretend Son's letters by copying them out by hand, word by word. 

Months ago I wrote to the cafe ask what I could do to support them, and the respondent suggested I support the coffee company that now owns the joint. I signed up for the company's coffee subscription, so at least I have been drinking good coffee.  I now see that my cafe is selling vouchers for future drinks. Having seen the wooden panel in the doorway, though, I'm a little nervous of doing that. But, as a matter of fact, I can't do that until I get my new bank card. 

 

You'll Have Had Your Te Deum

Today we went together to a publicly celebrated Mass for the first time since St. Joseph's Day. Benedict Ambrose wore a suit. I wore my brown silk dress and velvet jacket. We were cheerful, and not even the sight of closed cafes along our way could dim our joy for long. Some of the cafes are just closed on Sunday now. Some ... Well, we'll see.

At any rate, we were two of the fortunate thirty-five who signed up to go to Mass this morning.  Five others turned up without leave, so they were especially fortunate there were places left. There was a large blond Austrian scientist with a clipboard at the door, checking off names.

As we were already wearing masks, the Sacred Bouncer just indicated the bottle of hand sanitiser beside the box of disposable masks and asked us to leave the long pews in the centre of the church for families. He also explained that we now have a one-way entrance-exit system, so we would have to leave the church through the sacristy door afterwards.

The loos, being in the parish hall, were unavailable.

When B.A. and I went into the church, we saw that pairs of pews had been tied closed (as it were) with long blue cloth tape, and that worshippers had to sit, therefore, in every third pew. The faithfuls' door to the sacristy was open and the sacristy door to the car park was also open. There were a few open windows, too, so the church was certainly well aired.

It was lovely to be back in church before the Blessed Sacrament and to see people we haven't seen in person for months and to guess who they were. Some were obvious, even wearing masks, but others were less so. I was feeling quite gleeful, in fact, until the priest came out and gave a pre-Mass homily in which he declared that we should be angry at the injustice done to us by governments and that there would be no Te Deum as we had nothing to be thankful about, etc.

He also explained that there would be a Low Mass, and no singing, and that the [Eastern] Orthodox have only sung liturgies, so this no-singing rule affected them most severely. He then read the regulations about masks, so that we knew the actual letter of the mask law.

Then we had a Low Mass, complete with an organist in the back playing deedle-deedle, which made it more difficult for people with early onset age-related deafness (e.g. me) to hear, but B.A. liked it.  There was no homily after the Gospel.

Between the checklist, the masks, the halved congregation, the blue cloth tape, the regulations, the unknown five, and the instruction to fume, I was strongly reminded of the Penal Times.  I was not around during the Penal Times, naturally, but it really did seem that the government, casting around for someone not the CPP to blame for Covid, had hit on the idea that public worship should be deemed particularly dangerous and discouraged as much as possible.

One thing I noticed was that people in the church were much more spaced apart than people are on Scottish buses. The pews were naturally cleaner than the buses, as they were disinfected after the up-to-forty people at the Novus Ordo left the building. I don't know how many times a day the buses are disinfected, but it is almost certainly not after the first 40 passengers have all left. Scottish bus passengers do not sit, stand or kneel in silence, but chat away as usual. Presumably Scottish bus passengers could also sing, if they were so minded. Oh, and many Scottish bus passengers don't bother to wear their masks the whole time they are on the bus.

Don't get me started on the supermarkets.

Anyway, an offertory basket was set up at the door, and it looked like we didn't disgrace ourselves, so that was cheerful. Also cheerful was standing around 2 metres apart from our unmasked friends, chatting in the sunshine.  Eventually a party of us strode off in the direction of the train station, most of us turning off, however, on an elegant street to have a three-household picnic lunch. It was supposed to be in the private park in the middle of the square, but the weather was uncertain, so we had it in the drawing/dining room instead.

In the kitchen (wonderful view!) our host caught his finger on the edge of the tin he was opening and exclaimed something highly mysterious, heartfelt and Austrian. It seemed to involve cats, but I am not sure. I am mentioning this only for colour. But I must say, although it is unlucky to cut oneself on a tin, it is lucky if the first words out of your mouth afterwards are in a dialect no-one around can understand.

Benedict Ambrose says that objectively speaking it was better to be present at Mass than in our sitting-room watching the Warrington Mass over the computer. I agree that this is objectively true, but I note that I was a lot more distracted than I have been watching the Warrington Mass, even though everyone around was at least outwardly attentive. A Low Mass on Sunday is not what I'm used to, and also I wasted a lot of time pondering the government regulations, the sad absence of half the congregation, the comparative danger of bus travel, how germy the mask my mother made me might be by now and what temperature I ought to wash it at, what emotions one ought feel at Mass, was that the thurifer in the pew ahead of us and will he eventually bring his new fiancée.

Now Polish Pretend Son is preparing to type "How just like a woman" which will be unfair, as I am sure St. Therese the Little Flower, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Theresa Benedetta of the Cross and probably even Mother Teresa never got so distracted during Mass. My point is that life is nowhere back to normal although I am very happy indeed to have been back in our church and to have seen some of our friends again.

I suspect the governments, Westminster and Holyrood, don't actually know what they are doing and, indeed, that they have been very badly advised. Naturally they have been running roughshod over our inalienable right to public worship, which is an utter outrage, as human beings owe worship to God as a matter of fundamental justice. But on the other hand, most of them are ignorant of this, some, no doubt, invincibly.

Those who cannot be invincibly ignorant of this are the Catholic Bishops. The most charitable interpretation of the Bishops' behaviour over the past four-and-a-half months is that they were terrified of their priests and flocks dying on ventilators en masse and then, once they noticed the busy supermarkets, they realised they had been conned and began to negotiate to get the churches open again. One does wonder what they will say to St. John Ogilvie, St. John Fisher, St. Edmund Campion, St. Margaret Clitherow, and the Carthusian Martyrs of London when they see them, but I suppose that's their business. No doubt quite a few saints have some choice things to say to me.

Our Deep Roots

I was up too late last night. I somehow--I don't now remember how--stumbled on online photographs of daguerreotypes of a set of my German great-great-great-grandparents. It was rather a shock seeing the face of an ancestor born in the 18th century. More clicking around brought more photographs, albeit mostly of gravestones, and biographies of other ancestors, and the names and relationships of people I know only from scraps of my father's and his mother's stories.

There were two sad stories in all of that biographical data. The oldest concerned a son of my abovementioned German great+grandparents. Not many years after he arrived in the USA--the family settled in the 1850s--he joined the Union Army and died of pneumonia in the first year of the Civil War. His obituary described the military endeavour he had joined as a Holy Cause.

The other story was the death of illness, at 45, of  my "Irish" great-grandfather. His father was born in Ireland, but his mother was of pioneer stock, and like her he was born in the USA. But one scrap of story I heard from his daughter-in-law (who, of course, never knew him) was that his youngest son, my grandfather, was so poor he got only an orange for Christmas one year. The loss of a father had been an economic, as well as a personal, tragedy.

This story doesn't quite mesh with stories about my grandfather and his older brother wandering into a poorer Irish neighbourhood, much to the disgust of their mother and nanny, but economic ups and downs were not unknown to my family. The Germans had done quite well for themselves in Germany--they emigrated in First Class--and they continued to do quite well in the USA until, ahem, 1929. The Irish--very cleverly, I thought--married into the aforementioned pioneer stock and then into my grandmother's German-American clan.

I went to bed, quite late, thinking about all of these ancestors and their siblings, and I wondered if any of my siblings' descendants will look at a photograph of me in 2200. Perhaps my life will have been colourful enough for one of them to have any interest in it, just as my eye was caught by that young German man who died at Camp Yates.

That's not really important for me, but it might be important for the descendants. I would hate a child of my family to grow up thinking that they sprung, fully formed, from a place of shameful privilege, or that their ancestors were boring and bad. It is much better to have a grasp of the ups and downs in their ancestors' lives, to know that even the times of prosperity brought the heartbreak of loss and that the times of poverty had their good side, too. Apparently my German-American great-grandfather got a job as a travelling salesman after the Crash of '29 and drove up and down his state scattering cigar ash out the window. What a great example.

Then there's Great-Aunt Meta, who had a crush on the Kaiser's brother, making a scene at a Red Cross dinner during the run-up to the American entrance into the First World War because someone insulted the German Royal Family. Imprudence or guts? Whichever, she's certainly someone to remember the next time someone trashes me on Facebook for my lack of Wokeness.

All these wonderful stories that root me in history. And I am just one person. Whole cultures or nations are also rooted into history by stories. It is important to know our stories and to love our ancestors, even if we unearth stories about them that make us uncomfortable. To take Pope Francis' most famous phrase egregiously out of context (as everyone else does), "Who am I to judge" someone born in completely different circumstances than I? We can judge that an act performed or a belief held by a particular, individual ancestor was in itself wrong, but I don't think we justly make a judgement against that particular ancestor.* Naturally what we think can't hurt him or her now, but sneering at our own ancestors hurts us. Cutting ourselves off at the roots makes us a very sick tree.

A very sick tree, and easy to topple.