Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC, the son of King Philip II of Macedonia on the Greek peninsula. His mother, Olympias, told her son that she had been impregnated by a lightning bolt shot into her womb by Zeus – a legend Alexander polished the rest of this life. Story sound like a foreshadowing of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
 The beautiful altar above is located at Josef Ketzer’s Austrian secondary school, a Jesuit institution for boys ages 10-18 when he attended. The significance of the altar is that it was in Napoleon’s home on St. Helena, a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. On June 18, 1815, Napoleon was defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo (Belgium). On July 31, he learned that he would be exiled to St. Helena. He embarked on August 7 and arrived on October 15. “After his mother sent two priests to St Helena, the dining room was transformed into a chapel. At first, Napoleon attended Sunday mass inside the room; later, he watched from his adjoining study. He said it was proper for him at his death to return to the Catholic Church since he had been born within it. Years before, when questioned on his faith, he had replied that he ‘took on the religion of whatever country he was in, because that was the best policy.’” https://mrodenberg.com/2011/07/06/longwood-house-part-5/#:~:text=After%20his%20mother%20sent%20two,had%20been%20born%20within%20it. On May 5, 1821, he died on St. Helena. He was 51. On December 15, 1840, he was reburied at Hôtel des Invalides, Paris. It is now the cathedral of the Diocese of the French Armed Forces, officially known as Cathédrale Saint-Louis-des-Invalides. I visited his tomb in 1997. Napoleon complex?  Napoleon’s Tomb, Paris, photo author Josh Hallett, taken on July 25, 2009, no changes were made
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tomb_of_Napoleon_Bonaparte_-_Crypt_of_D%C3%B4me_des_Invalides_-_Paris,_France_-_25_July_2009.jpg “Meanwhile, one Asian cardinal who lives in an authoritarian dictatorship managed to be bolder. The president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon, Myanmar, spoke of his ‘profound concern about the situation for human rights and threats to religious freedom in Hong Kong,’ saying that Cardinal Zen’s arrest reveals that it is now ‘a police state.’
“Given the customary silence of the Holy See on repression in China, Cardinal Bo has emerged as a singular voice of truth in the region.” Father Raymond J. de Souza Commentaries May 20, 2022, National Catholic Register This matter is about going to communion. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco explained his decision to deny Nancy Pelosi communion - “After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” Cordileone wrote a letter to Pelosi - “As you have not publicly repudiated your position on abortion, and continue to refer to your Catholic faith in justifying your position and to receive Holy Communion, that time has now come,” … “I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance,” -Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, May 19, 2022 Cordileone also communicated the decision in separate correspondences to the priests in his care. Because her residency is in the San Francisco Archdiocese, Cordileone has authority over her. Cordileone has the support of - Archbishop Aquila of Denver, CO Archbishop Coakley of Oklahoma City, OK Bishop Barber (Jesuit) of Oakland, CA Bishop Conley of Lincoln, NE Bishop Ricken of Green Bay, WI Bishop Cary of Baker, OR Bishop Hying of Madison, WI Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, IL Bishop Strickland of Tyler, TX Bishop Vasa of Santa Rosa, CA Bishop Vasa, in whose diocese Pelosi has a winery/vacation home, said, “I have visited with the pastor at (Pelosi’s parish) [not revealed] and informed him that if the Archbishop prohibited someone from receiving Holy Communion, then that restriction followed the person and the pastor was not free to ignore it.” Below is a color-coded map of the US dioceses. It is a complex system marked by straight and squiggly lines with an average of 350,000 Catholics in each diocese, but some are larger, some smaller. As archbishop, Cordelione governs the several dioceses of Northern California, Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii. He has the mutual support of the Latin Mass community of the Sacramento Diocese and beyond.  Geographical Latin rite Roman Catholic ecclesiastical provinces of the United States. Each of the 33 ecclesiastical provinces is a separate color, Eastern rite eparchies/dioceses not shown. Date April 21, 2006, en.Image.Dioceses.GIF by John Kinney, author Closeapple. The National Catholic Register published a column on the ban.
https://www.ncregister.com/news/nancy-pelosi-banned-from-communion-5-key-takeaways?utm_campaign=NCR&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=213848542&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8-HbMEW3-4tX9dW9dnnPt52TbtRWrAhvhQySumqeo2eqrSWHzRE_bjAiJa435SibkbhkgEF0cTXc-eKX-d8m7heNLuuw&utm_content=213848542&utm_source=hs_email Cordelione has protective security. God holds us all in His hands, and, ultimately, all credit goes to Him. Some Basic Facts (rounded worldwide totals) 1.3 billion Catholics 3,000 Dioceses 6,500 Bishops 415,000 Priests 800,000 Religious sisters US Catholics: 71 million From Wikipedia - "The Catholic Church is the world's oldest continuously functioning international institution. It is also the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world, while the diplomatic status of the Holy See facilitates the access of its vast international network of charities. Some of these entities include 5,000 hospitals, 10,000 orphanages, 95,000 elementary schools, and 47,000 secondary schools.” In the US, over 720,000 students attend 221 Catholic colleges and universities. Priests are spread throughout the world in all but a few countries, probably five. It is safe to say, on the basis of the number (415,000), Mass with distribution of Holy Communion is being said at every moment of every day. About time I said something.
Hesitated to venture into this realm. When was the Douay-Rheims published? New Testament 1582, Old Testament 1609 – translations from the Latin Vulgate, which are translations from all the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts largely due to the efforts of St. Jerome (345-420) and declared to be the authentic Latin version of the Bible by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). When was the King James published? New and Old Testaments 1610 – translations of the New Testament from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. What are the Apocrypha? (Not the Apocalypse) Many of these texts are considered canonical Old Testament books by the Catholic Church, affirmed by the Council of Rome (382) and later reaffirmed by the Council of Trent. Apocrypha are well attested in surviving manuscripts of the Bible. See Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Vulgate, and Peshitta. Both the King James and the Douay-Rheims are eloquent from a literary point of view. The D-R is approved. One of my student’s parents bemoaned his poor penmanship. She was talking about his printing, not cursive or joined-together letters or script, whichever word one chooses to use. Students use google docs for assignments and there they are corrected. I stopped using cursive in 2004 when none of my students could read what I wrote.
Someday he must be able to sign his name to checks or contracts. Not true, I discovered. Major banks in Britain did away with paper checks, and here in the US, one can sign a contract online. I have. However, one must sign his or her name to an absentee ballot. Mail-in ballot? My sister has handwriting that is as good as calligraphy. She practiced a lot. Whatever the case might be, what upstages it all is proper punctuation, especially hyphens, those pleading orphans and pesky interlopers.  By Raffaele Monti (1818-1881), photo creator Minneapolis Institute of Art. The following explanation is provided by Collectionsartsmia.org: “We can’t see through stone, but through tricks of light and polish, Raffaele Monti created the illusion that we can. On his Veiled Lady, the top of the head and shoulders are polished smooth to reflect light. But where the veil falls across the face, the marble is less polished. It reflects less light, suggesting the texture of fabric… .” **the veil technique**
Now, apparently, there are problems with the 2020 Census. How can this be happening?
N. Athrappuly, https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-naveen-athrappully, news reporter covering business and world events at The Epoch Times, wrote: “Meanwhile, Rhode Island Republican Party National Committeeman Steve Frias slammed the ‘aggressive census counting tactics,’ warning that the count will undermine people’s confidence in the administration. “Democracy only works if people trust the system,” Frias said in a statement to AP. “Double counting 55,000 people in order to hold on to a congressional seat destroys that trust.” I lifted the quotes from the end of Athrappuly’s story dated May 20, 2022. One thinks the bad news will slow down, but it seems to speed up. Alexander and I read Passage 4, p 468, Reading Comprehension, from the Princeton Review’s 900 Practice Questions for the Upper Level SSAT & ISEE (2014). The passage is from the Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE) given to 8th graders.
The story is about Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017), President of the Independent Chinese Center and the magazine Democratic China and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. I was browsing the ISEE to find something good, and when I found Xiaobo and read the story, I learned more about China. He said that the westernization of China is a good thing. Here is the Wikipedia entry on Xiaobo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo Assignment – write a short story in 10 minutes.
Here is what I wrote and what Alexander (8) wrote. He decided location: Nevada; point of view, 1st person; and tense, past. Alexander gave me permission to post his story in my blog. Me – I parachuted into a swarm of locusts over the Nevada training base. It was in the flattest desert in the whole United States so that no one would get snagged on a mountain top. It was also in the driest place so that no one would drown in ten feet of water. I heard the distant sound of crackling gun shots. The parachute drop was three miles from the CIA practice range. “Alexander, over here,” I shouted to my parachute partner. He was tough as nails, a toughness gained from mining gold in the harsh environment of Mars. I sank into a hole as deep as my disappointment over the failed promotion. Alexander got it. Yet, he was my partner. How do I regulate my emotions? Do I pretend I have none or do I say something? … Alexander – I infiltrated the Death Star over the main room. I smiled at my luck. It seemed that finally I would steal the plans. Suddenly, someone shouted, “Hey you.” Turning around, I saw a security guard. He sounded the alarm. I ran quickly to the exit. My contact radioed me, but I could not check it, because someone tased me. My vision turned black, but not before my partner, Bob, flashed a cocky smile. We wrote our stories independently! Whose playbook is it now?
The harassment charges against Musk are the radical left’s playbook. When the argument is lost, the radical left attacks people personally. Justice Thomas, Justice Cavanaugh, now Musk. However, the radical left has a made a tactical error. Now, it’s our playbook. Altman and Vigano got it right. The people of the radical left are the vilest people on earth. Faithful Catholics and patriotic Americans now own the playbook, only ours doesn’t attack anyone. It attacks lies. The leftist bishops and the pope are on notice. Never should the Church have reached settlements in the abuse cases. It needed to all come out in open court, and it was the leftist bishops who controlled all that and all the money. We know who you are, and we recognize the agenda. No to settlements. No to the radical left. No to silence. I will let my website be used for our playbook. Any faithful Catholics and patriotic Americans who wish it, may post, and just ask, or add comments to my blog. Anyone who believes the Musk charges is part of the radical left or, to use Dostoyevsky’s words, an imbecile. I heard the fog horns at night if my bedroom window was open. My uncle fulfilled his duties as sergeant on the Chinatown Squad, and my aunt returned from her army service in Japan. A friend modeled for I Magnin, Union Square.  c. 1935 Paramount publicity photo
I watched When Were You Born, (1938) a fast-moving comedy/crime. Wong was the star, quite good and quite elegant. Turner Classic Movies is stuck on racism…wokeism. They are missing the point, which Catholics understand, and my parents understood. Christ gives each person a challenge, a cross, to tailor that person unto His likeness. My parents’ approach to raising children was made to order, fitting exactly into His quadrating hands. They said, “If you have a problem, overcome it. If you can’t, live with it. It will make you a better person. Otherwise, you will turn into a crybaby, whining, ‘Poor me.’” Christ has a lot of work to do on the TCM hosts. Hired for a documentary were Asian American “professors” and Hollywood actresses to proclaim the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans in WWII, bring that forward to the present, and conclude that Asian Americans are still mistreated. Then these woke women moved on to the Vietnam War, in which they did not participate. I have a very dear friend who lived through the war and fled Vietnam. She is a huge Trump supporter. The “professors” and actresses are expressing mere opinions, unqualified opinions at that. I listen to people who have real experience, not imaginary hurts and self-pity. I have written extensively about the Vietnamese diaspora. My intimate contacts in San Francisco and San Jose informed the novel, short stories, and blog entries. These friends are some of the finest people I have ever met, and I will defend them to the last man, woman, and child. Read my entry titled, China Censorship. I quote a conversation between a China-based publisher and my friend who is now living in America. She told me that her column was reduced from 4,000 words to 2,200 words to eliminate anything favorable to the West. TCM, I pray for your enlightenment, though I have little hope for it. God must make the first move. All I can do is make my little protest here. https://www.canceledpriests.org/ Father Altman makes a clear distinction between politics and religion. They are not the same. However, the Catholic faith guides us on how to exercise our civic responsibility. Politics and religion intersect there. His statement is quite strong, but Catholics who accept the Catechism in its entirety are thinking what he says. His YouTube video has 1.37 million views. I do not look for perfection in anyone. People who have different views from my own, yet are in my affections, remain in my affections, but truth must be told. A retired cop who is Catholic sent me this observation: Conservative-leaning people did not take the melody out of music, the pride out of appearance, the courtesy out of driving, the romance out of love, the commitment out of marriage, the responsibility out of parenthood, the togetherness out of the family, the learning out of education, the service out of patriotism, the Golden Rule from rulers, the civility out of behavior, the refinement out of language, the dedication out of employment, the prudence out of spending, the ambition out of achievement, or God out of the government and school.
Egyptian Catholics sing the French song, Chez Nous Soyez Reine,
With Us Be Queen, at Our Lady of Heliopolis Co-Cathedral in Cairo. Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense giant.
confidential source spaceplace.nasa.gov/light-year/en/
The above link explains what a light year is. Great site for everyone. I have tutored some earth science, not my forte. California Requirements https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/hs/hsgrscience.asp “California Education Code Section 51225.3 (a)(1)(C) specifies, in order to receive a high school diploma, a student must successfully complete at least two courses in science, including biological and physical sciences. “A course is one year long or two semesters. While the law is not explicit, one course generally focuses on the biological sciences and the other course focuses on physical sciences. Physical sciences may include physics, chemistry, or earth science. Two years of integrated science would also fulfill this graduation requirement, as long as biological and physical sciences are included.” Twitter and Facebook are filled with bots. What are they?
Ben Lutkevich, Technical Writer, and Alexander S. Gillis, Technical Writer and Editor, from techtarget.com explain: “A bot -- short for robot and also called an internet bot -- is a computer program that operates as an agent for a user or other program or to simulate a human activity. Bots are normally used to automate certain tasks, meaning they can run without specific instructions from humans.” Bots can be fake accounts. www.mcafee.com/blogs/family-safety/spot-fake-facebook-account/ What is a bot account on YouTube? It is designed to make money for the owner simply by redirecting traffic from YouTube to a website with whom the owner has a relationship. Bots spread affiliate links and that is why, when anybody clicks on the link and performs the desired action, the bot’s creator gets a commission. September 9, 2021 I dumped Twitter and Facebook. People get scammed out of money. We learn. Children learn. As I have said before, do not use Tik Tok. Everything I post, I check and recheck for authorship. Quora is different from social media, but any spammy stuff I hack with a shiny, long knife. The story of the martyrdom of Margaret Clitherow (1556-1586), known as “the Pearl of York”, is unthinkable. She was pressed to death by her own door for refusing to enter a plea to the charge of harboring Catholic priests. The Jesuits, etc. Act 1584 made harboring and maintaining priests a capital offence.
According to Wikipedia, “She sent her older son, Henry, to the English College, relocated in Reims, to train for the priesthood. Her husband was summoned by the authorities to explain why his oldest son had gone abroad, and in March 1586 the Clitherow house was searched. A frightened boy revealed the location of the priest hole.” … “She refused to plead, thereby preventing a trial that would entail her three children being made to testify, and being subjected to torture. She was sentenced to death. Although pregnant with her fourth child, she was executed on Lady Day, 1586, which also happened to be Good Friday that year.” … “The two sergeants who should have carried out the execution hired four desperate beggars to do it instead. She was stripped and had a handkerchief tied across her face, then laid across a sharp rock the size of a man’s fist, [and] the door from her own house was put on top of her and loaded with an immense weight of rocks and stones so that the sharp rock would break her back. Her death occurred within fifteen minutes, but her body was left for six hours before the weight was removed.” If you would like to know more about her and the history of the period, visit www.maristmessenger.co.nz/2012/07/01/saint-margaret-clitherow/ My sister alerted me to fiscal responsibility efforts: https://conventionofstates.com/
Now others are criticizing the government. Bezos: “In fact, the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn’t help the country.” - CBS News Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said to CBS on last Sunday that an economic downturn is “a very, very high-risk factor.” There is some disagreement among the experts, but the market is turning bearish. English is 9-6-4 (of my choosing)
9 Latin loan words: bone fide, caveat emptor, ad nauseum, modus operandi, prima donna, quantum, quorum, quid pro quo, status quo 6 French loan words: carte blanche, faux pas, bon voyage, fait accompli, deja-vu, facade 4 German loan words: kindergarten, angst, uber, Volkswagen Find the next term in 9, 6, 4. This is a geometric sequence since there is a common ratio between each term. In this case, multiplying the previous term in the sequence by 2/3, which is the ratio, gives the next term. The next term is a repeating decimal, 2.66666667. That is how far my calculator will calculate the solution. Conclusion: the next language of influence after German is Math. Got Math? Today, I received a message from a friend born in China and now living in the US. She is a widely known and read writer for a publication in the West. She submitted a column to a publication based in China. Following is the online conversation she had with the editor of the publication based in China. Editor: “I loved it!” Shortly after a staff meeting … Editor: “We’ll we need more adaptations. We will hide your life experience in the US because it would make the audience feel bad. “We will delete the part that you made an assumption that a food which is popular in China could have been inspired by Mexican Concha because nothing could be greater than Chinese culture. “We will also delete the part you depicted the life in Hong Kong because this word is forbidden.” My friend: “As you wish. I am done. It is what it is, whatever you’d like to modify.” Editor-in-chief: “Please add love to your words to make Chinese culture great. Don’t forget to dig out the pessimistic part of the overseas life to indicate China is great. Emmm, make China great again.” That was the message the editor-in-chief sent to my friend after publication in anticipation of any other columns she might submit in the future. Deus vult libertatem indu Hongcongum. God wills freedom for Hong Kong.
I am hearing a lot about Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School and graduated from Dunedin High School in 1997. He studied history at Yale University and, as captain of the varsity baseball team, he had the team’s best batting average, .366. While at Yale he worked a variety of jobs, including electrician’s assistant and baseball camp coach. DeSantis graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A. Magna cum laude. After spending a year as a history teacher at the Darlington School, he attended Harvard Law School and graduated in 2005 with a J.D. cum laude. In 2004, during his second year at Harvard Law, DeSantis was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy and was assigned to the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG). In 2005, he completed Naval Justice School. Later that year, he received orders to join the JAG Trial Service Office Command South East at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, as a prosecutor. In 2006, he was promoted from lieutenant, junior grade to lieutenant. He worked for the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo. In 2007, DeSantis reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in Coronado, CA, where he was assigned to SEAL Team One and deployed to Iraq with the troop surge as the Legal Advisor to the SEAL Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah. In 2008, he was appointed as Special Assistant U.S. Attorney. He has received many military medals. He became the 46th governor of Florida on January 8, 2019. DeSantis is a Roman Catholic and is married to Casey Black, a former television host for the Golf Channel and WJXT. They have three children. |
Categories
All
Archives
May 2022
|
RSS Feed