when I was young with my ma at Yellowstone
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This is the second time. I like reminders on historical dates (always did); they place us in history. The cross represents date of death, and the red drop of blood represents a martyr’s death.
 From left to right, Fr. Angelo Van de Putten, FSSP, Fr. Anthony Sumich, FSSP, Fr. Charles Ike, FSSP, and Fr. Evaristus Eshiowu, FSSP. I met Fr. Ike today at St. Stephen, Sacramento, CA. He is visiting from Nigeria. Fr. Eshiowu, also born in Nigeria, is assigned to St. Stephen. The photo, snapped at the time of Ike’s ordination, is courtesy of the Latin Mass Society, Wrexham, Wales.
From their blog: “… members of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter [FSSP] do not take religious vows. However, at the priest’s ordination, he solemnly promises to obey his Ordinary, or Ecclesiastical Superior. For the FSSP priest this means he must obey his FSSP Superior in matters regarding the internal life and discipline of the Fraternity – and the Diocesan Bishop in other matters regarding the apostolate where he is assigned. “Each member incardinated in the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter also has a solemn obligation to preserve perpetual celibacy, the same as other priests in the Latin Rite of the Church. In addition, each member must strive to practice the spirit of poverty according to the Constitutions. Thus, the priest’s salary is quite modest, and he strives to live simply, detached from worldly comforts and possessions.” It’s hard to imagine what heaven is like. Read Jimmy Akin, convert and theologian at Catholic Answers. He refers to Scripture and the Catechism. Jimmy looks like a crazy nut, but, actually, he is very sensible, perceptive, and well-read. I just wait my time.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-is-heaven-really-like “Some animal cried out in the night outside.” Realism. Listen all the way to the end.
Here is a link to Catholic artists and musicians currently working. I know one of them. The directory includes bookbinders and illustrators, and one does illustrations to enhance works of literature. https://catholicartistsdirectory.com
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday regarding college race-based admissions related to the University of North Carolina and Harvard. Beverly A. Pekala@Pekalalaw states: “In polling by Pew Research, 75% of Americans, incl. majorities of every racial group, say race/ethnicity should not be factors in admissions.” For the sake of all the students I have tutored, I oppose race-based admissions. One of my students is the subject of research on brain development conducted by Stanford University Medicine. His parents are keeping me informed.
 Mauna Kea rainbow - photo sent by my sister and taken by her friend
Alon Amit, PhD in Mathematics and Mathcircler, gives a fantastic answer to the following question: What is the practical usefulness of learning the Nth root of a number? My soon-to-be 7th grade son asked me: If I/we could think of good reasons for finding 2nd and 3rd root but not the Nth. Any good explanations? Alon relates his math to the piano and a bicycle wheel. Interested? Read the deal … Quora.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-practical-usefulness-of-learning-the-Nth-root-of-a-number I’m adopting a new patron, Robert Southwell, SJ (1561-1595). He was a poet-martyr and came from a distinguished family, some of whom knew Shakespeare. He boarded at the English College at Douay and studied at the Jesuit College of Anchin, both of which were associated with the University of Douay. With Rheims, Douay produced the first English Bible. There have been other notable Roberts in history, none I can think of in American history, except Robert Frost. The Jesuits of today can claim Southwell as one of their own no longer. They no more resemble him than a sling shot resembles a patrone.  Patrone 88; clip for the Mauser Rifle 88 (WWI); 9 September 2011; author RidgebackAttack
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clip_Mauser_Gewehr_88.jpg One Euro is about one dollar. Distillery/refinery - OMV refinery at Schwechat.
 I know a walnut farmer and a bean farmer in the area of Colusa, CA, and they take good care of their land because livelihoods are at stake.
Pictures sent to me by Dr. Josef Ketzer, Vienna, my friend and tutor. The pictures are of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, 1892-1934. Joe lamented, “A very fine painting of ‘Hero Chancellor’ or ‘Martyr Chancellor’, as he was sometimes called, hung until a few years ago in the parliamentary office of the Austrian People’s Party and now hangs in the provincial museum of Lower Austria in her capital of St. Pölten, named after a rather unknown Saint Hippolyt.” Wikipedia on the Austrian People’s Party: “The ÖVP … has also been described as a catch-all party of the center-right … For most of its existence, the ÖVP has explicitly defined itself as Catholic and anti-anarchist, anti-communist, anti-socialist and anti-liberal, with the ideals of subsidiarity as defined by the encyclical Quadragesimo anno and decentralization.” Dollfuss, trained in law at the University of Vienna and in economics at the University of Berlin, opposed Nazism, communism, and socialism. His widow, Alwine (d. 1973), and two surviving children, Eva (d. 1993) and Rudolph (d. 2011), fled to Switzerland after his murder. For more about the Austrian Heimwehr, see
https://www.jstor.org/stable/259652 Who is Arroyo? Fox News contributor and host on EWTN. Who is Schneider? Auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, which used to be part of the former Soviet Union. He ordained Father Curtis, pastor, St. Stephen, Sacramento. Who is Anthony Stine? https://www.crisismagazine.com/author/anthony-stine
EWTN doesn’t do enough investigative reporting. Francis and his sycophants want the Catholic Church to be a co-player in step with all the other world players, and there is a long list of them: Biden, Pelosi, Soros, Gates, and more. Faithful Catholics want the Church to be The Player - The Authority, so far as God wills it, and so we resist modernism. We dislike the cronyism in the Vatican and USCCB, too. Traditionalist-Trady-Trad These are popular labels, but I do not want them for myself. I'm not into labels. Nevertheless, they signify something important. Francis and his ilk reject the traditions at the heart of the faith, just as all the other dissenters in history did. The beautiful Latin Mass, which is at least 1,700 years old, is merely representative of what he is attempting to wipe out. I knew down deep that when the modern Mass was introduced in 1969, something was wrong. I and others have reported on the statistics. Polls show that in the modern Mass community, well under 30% go to Mass every week, while in the Latin Mass community, 99%, which is basically 100%, go every week. All Catholics know that missing Mass on Sunday is a mortal sin. Third Commandment. Does Francis care if people go to Hell? Fathers Curtis, McWhirter, Braun (with Joseph, one of 110 altar boys), and Eshiowu  Did you know that people have tongue prints as unique as fingerprints? According to interestingfacts.com, “Where fingerprints can be altered, eyes affected by astigmatisms or cataracts, and voices changed just by the all-too-common cold, the human tongue is relatively protected from external factors.” I wonder if tongue prints will ever be used in law enforcement. Nay to digital IDs (human biometric authentication): the IDs collect information that vastly exceeds what is on microchip implants for dogs.
Richard Ferrara, Quora contributor, Software Engineer, Catholic, conservative Republican, Scrabble player, MS Mathematics & Physics, University of Copenhagen (1971), MSc Mathematics, University of Bristol (1990)
What is an uncountable infinity? Let’s say you die and go to Hell. You insist that there has been some mistake and file an appeal with Saint Peter. He convenes a panel of archangels to consider your case. Eventually, a compromise is reached: you can win your soul back, but to do so, you must beat the devil in a guessing game. I. Here’s how it works: the devil writes down a whole number on a piece of paper. This number never changes. It can be any positive whole number — there is no upper limit. It can be 52, a trillion, a googolplex, whatever. [Nine-year-old Milton Sirotta coined the term googol, 10 to the 100 power, and then proposed the term googolplex to be “one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired.”] Each day you get one guess. If you correctly pick the devil’s number, you go free. Otherwise, you’re stuck there for another day. (We assume that you have some foolproof way of keeping track of what numbers you’ve previously chosen, the piece of paper is big enough to fit any number, the devil doesn’t cheat and change it, etc.) What do you do? Well, the bad news is that there’s no telling how long you’ll be in perdition. But the good news is that a simple strategy will get you free. On the first day you guess one. If that’s the devil’s number, great, you’re free. If not, then on the second day you guess 2, then 3, 4, 5, and so on. It may take eons, but eventually you will reach the right number and escape. That’s because even though there are an infinite number of positive integers, it’s a countable infinity — a set whose members can be arranged in order so that you can hit every one of them. The devil cannot pick a number so high or complex that you will never reach it. II. Now let’s change the rules of the game: this time the devil can pick any integer (positive, negative, or zero). Obviously, you can’t follow the same strategy, because you will miss all the negative numbers. However, you can still win. Just start with zero, then plus 1, then minus 1, plus 2, minus 2, and so on. Even though it looks like more choices have been added, the result is still a countable infinity. In math terminology, we say that the cardinality of the set hasn’t changed. (It’s called “aleph-null” if you want to get technical.) III. Now let’s change the rules again: this time the devil can pick any rational number (i.e., any number that can be expressed as a fraction). At first glance, it looks like the game is now unwinnable. What’s the fraction with the smallest value greater than zero? One half? No, one third is less. And one fourth is less than that. And what’s the first number greater than one fourth? 2/7? 3/11? You are in trouble now. Or are you? See, there’s a trick: although you need to find some way to order your guesses, you don’t necessarily need to order them by value. A fraction is just a pair of numbers: a numerator and a denominator. Imagine those two numbers as X and Y coordinates on a plane. You can now win the game by starting from the origin and working outward in a spiral. First you guess all the fractions whose numerator and denominator add up to 1. There’s only one of them: 0/1. Next, the ones that add up to 2, which are 0/2 and 1/1. Then 0/3, 1/2, 2/1. And so on. It took some thinking this time, but once again you’ve escaped. IV. Okay, one more: this time the devil can pick any irrational number. It can be pi, or e [Euler’s number, an irrational number with a non-recurring decimal that stretches to infinity], or the 20th root of a billion, or the square of the cosine of the cube root of the natural logarithm of the hyperbolic tangent of … you get the idea. This time you’re screwed. Going in value order won’t work. Going in a spiral won’t work. Going in alphabetical order by the description of the number won’t work. The number may have an infinitely long description or even none at all. The set of irrationals is an uncountable infinity — there’s no way to order them so that you hit them all. A fellow named Georg Cantor proved it in 1874. Whatever strategy you use, you’re going to miss some numbers. Of course, you could still get lucky. The devil could pick something simple like the square root of 2, and you could just happen to guess it. But you’re no longer guaranteed to win the game. So … enjoy perdition. You’re going to be there for a while. The New Zealand prime minister gave the commencement address at Harvard in 2022. She is a childish left-winger from a peanut country wholly dependent on American power. In her unpleasant accent she belittles religion by saying that she comes from a town dominated by Mormons, Catholics, and rugby. She is good at filling the trough of sheep chewing on her slopes, there or here.
I met a Catholic woman the other day and when I told her I belong to a Latin Mass parish, she said, “Oh, so you found your niche.” As she walked away, if I had a bow and arrow, I could’ve sprung a pointy one in the direction of her asset.
Back to Francis. Go to blazes, Christopher Lamb (Francis’ chief proponent) of The Tablet (London), October 11, Twitter. He says the Church is open to sinners for we are all sinners. Dumb cluck, we are open to repentant sinners. Frannie says, “Christians with a funeral face will not do …” He means us. Now I have a funeral face. That is No. 23 in the list of accusations.  The photo was taken in the Cathedral of St. Paul, Münster, Germany, after the Allied bombing had ruined this most beautiful cathedral. Greetings from Germany. From the diocese of Münster where I live … Oremus pro invicem. Let us pray for each other. – photo identified by Nico, the person speaking (provided by catholicgentleman.com )
Münster is close to the Netherlands. “In the entrance area (southwest transept) is a statue of St. Barbara which is not very prominently displayed. She holds a round tower with three windows in her hands. The legend has it that the saint was locked in a tower by her father to keep her from marriage and Christian influence. Because of the cramped nature of the tower and its stairway, she is now patron saint of miners – the cramped tower symbolizes the way through the narrow door of death to eternal life.” Quote from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Cathedral From Steve Baker, Quora: “Learning ‘dust control’ is going to be important for Mars missions … Mars dust is more abrasive than Earthly sand but not as bad as Moon dust … but Mars dust adds the extra joy of being poisonous.” Dust grains below.  Namib sand dune (downwind side) on Mars (Curiosity rover; December 17, 2015).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIA20281-MarsCuriosityRover-NamibSandDune-DownwindSide-20151217.jpg A good friend from St. Stephen directed my attention to Sacra Tridentina, On Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion, approved and issued by Pope Saint Pius X on December 20, 1905.
Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, and Marshall McLuhan were daily communicants. Andy Warhol declined, but his mother received every day. I read an interesting story about his Catholicism. If interested in reading the Pius document, and it is an important one, the link is here: https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/decree-on-frequent--daily-reception-of-holy-communion-2174 A most significant section is No. 2, which states, “A right intention consists in this: that he who approaches the Holy Table should do so, not out of routine, or vain glory, or human respect, but that he wish to please God, to be more closely united with Him by charity, and to have recourse to this divine remedy for his weakness and defects.” I don’t have to accept Francis’ pronouncement about the environment and his Sister Earth/Mother Earth garbage. He is not an environmental scientist, and Druids worship nature. The Church told Galileo to stick to scientific matters. “Francis, stick to religious matters.” For more about infallibility, see www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/32194/infallible-informal-how-binding-is-the-new-encyclical-on-catholics Meanwhile, the WH continues to deplete the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
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