Soilcrust of Leave
Oct. 2nd, 2018 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoI slept late, and thought I must have had a lot of sleep! But I forgot I went to bed late, too, so it was only six and a half hours--the usual. Disappointed. Not a very winful day, but I did spend an hour cleaning up the kitchen, which was in need of it, and I went for a walk, although it was not much fun. I found one of our oldest LP collections: "A Treasury of Gregorian Chant," published by Everest and "electronically enhanced for STEREO," as it says on the box, in 1967. The Sparrowhawk brought it with him when he came to college. It has some static and a few bumps, but overall the sound quality is still good. At the time, it was an artifact of wonder, promising a whole world of beauty and culture that we believed would soon welcome us as our homeland. Such an odd feeling, how the voices of what was once the future become the voices of our past, seemingly in a moment, in a night, while we were sleeping, as our Michigan weather changes the lingering kiss of late summer to the silver bite of frost.
The Philosophy called, too. His collarbone is mending, and his physical therapy is going well, but the business of daily life still tires him more than it did. He says he'll come to visit us soon, with a friend who wants to see Michigan color in the trees, which means it won't be for a couple of weeks at least. Climate change makes everything uncertain.
Meanwhile, in God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power in the Vatican, by Gerald Posner, various Popes are behaving quite badly. Quelle surprise! My favorite quote so far is found in a footnote, where Cardinal Pacelli, later to be Pius XII, refers to an epidemic of NUDISM with Germany at its epicenter, with five million "mentally unbalanced" adherents. And "Cardinal Merry del Val called nudism 'one of the most detestable and pernicious aberrations of our times.'" Nudism: huge problem. HUGE. Fascism: maybe not so much . . . . These statements want me to tear off my clothes immediately. I would add parenthetically that "Merry del Val" (or Rafael María José Pedro Francisco Borja Domingo Gerardo de la Santíssima Trinidad Merry del Val y Zulueta, to give the full version, is such a good name that its owner should have had the good sense to become a dashing swordsman or something and certainly not a member of the Curia.
The Philosophy called, too. His collarbone is mending, and his physical therapy is going well, but the business of daily life still tires him more than it did. He says he'll come to visit us soon, with a friend who wants to see Michigan color in the trees, which means it won't be for a couple of weeks at least. Climate change makes everything uncertain.
Meanwhile, in God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power in the Vatican, by Gerald Posner, various Popes are behaving quite badly. Quelle surprise! My favorite quote so far is found in a footnote, where Cardinal Pacelli, later to be Pius XII, refers to an epidemic of NUDISM with Germany at its epicenter, with five million "mentally unbalanced" adherents. And "Cardinal Merry del Val called nudism 'one of the most detestable and pernicious aberrations of our times.'" Nudism: huge problem. HUGE. Fascism: maybe not so much . . . . These statements want me to tear off my clothes immediately. I would add parenthetically that "Merry del Val" (or Rafael María José Pedro Francisco Borja Domingo Gerardo de la Santíssima Trinidad Merry del Val y Zulueta, to give the full version, is such a good name that its owner should have had the good sense to become a dashing swordsman or something and certainly not a member of the Curia.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-03 12:21 pm (UTC)