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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, Fathers Angelo Van de Putten, Anthony Sumich, Charles Ike, and Evaristus Eshiowu. I met Father Ike today at St. Stephen, Sacramento, CA. He is visiting from Nigeria. 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. 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.” Listen 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.
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 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 had a bow and arrow, I could’ve sprung a pointy one in the direction of her asset. P. Francis said he doesn't like funeral faces.
 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  One hundred percent natural, the liqueur’s green color derives from the chlorophyll of 130 plants and herbs, and the aroma has notes of mint, pepper, anise (licorice), lemon, and ginger. After dessert, my dad served several types of liqueurs, including Benedictine and Brandy (B&B), but not Grand Chartreuse, for which only two monks know the recipe.
In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom launched pro-abortion billboards in seven states. The billboards advertise abortion.ca.gov, a state-run website inviting women in pro-life states to come to California to end their pregnancies. On the billboards in Mississippi and Oklahoma appear Jesus’s words: “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.” These? Purposely vague language obscures meaning.
I put this video in my blog because the priest’s enunciation and pronunciation of Latin are perfect. He follows what my admonition to actors would be, “Just say your lines.” It’s the way I like narration done, too. Elocution with normal inflection is all that is needed. In fact, understanding every word is not: the sounds of words and voices are enough. Remember, the priest offers the sacrifice; you are not needed. Worship is not a lesson. The four purposes of worship are adoration, thanksgiving, atonement, and petition. https://catholicgentleman.com/2014/10/four-ends-mass/ Wikipedia: “Following the establishment of the Association Law of 1901 and its interpretation that effectively banned religious associations en masse, many notable religious institutions across France, including Grand Chartreuse, were closed by the French government. “While some monks found refuge in Italy until 1929, others settled in the Tarragona region of Spain and relaunched the monastery’s famous liqueur-producing activity. The Grande Chartreuse was sold in 1927 to a group of local entrepreneurs who invited the monks back to their monastery.” It is from them that we get Grand Chartreuse liqueur, sales of which provide a legacy, and the color. No visitors are allowed inside to this day. Expect persecution. Notice the cat in the second picture. The pictures come from Dr. Josef Ketzer, my tutor in Vienna. "There is a legend that the Chartreux are descended from cats brought to France by Carthusian monks to live in the order's head monastery, the Grande Chartreuse, located in the Chartreuse Mountains north of the city of Grenoble. But in 1972, the Prior of the Grande Chartreuse denied that the monastery's archives held any records of the monks' use of any breed of cat resembling the Chartreux." Wikipedia. Charles de Gaulle owned a Chartreux.
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