Monastery — Summer 2019

My summer visit to the monastery this year took place in two installments: June 23-25, and July 10-13. Since the days at the end of each stay are not complete periods of 24 hours, I was actually "on campus" for just over two days in June and three days in July. I wanted to be there on June 24 to celbrate the feast day of the birth of St. John the Baptist, who is my patron saint. In July, the important days were the 11th, which is the feast of St. Benedict, and the 13th, which is the feast of Emperor St. Henry II, who is the patron saint of Benedictine oblates, among whom I count myself. St. Henry's day is of such a low rank in the church calendar that no notice is taken of it in the official prayers, but it's still the day.

Big days like St. Benedict are observed not only in the prayers at Mass and during the other services but also with a festive dinner. In summer, weather permitting, it is held in the cloister quadrangle. The final prayer service of the day, compline, follows, and after that the monks go to the kitchen to store the leftovers and wash everything. I enjoy joining in.

If you've read some of my earlier posts, you know that the day generally begins and ends with prayer services (psalms, mostly) and during the day there is Mass and two other services, as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In between, there is a total of about nine hours when I can read and meditate on a spiritual book or two, read a "secular" book, glance through newspapers in the chapter room, take a nap, stroll around the campus, and take pictures. I can do more reading after compine until I go to bed.

During this visit, I only used two books: Wrestling with God, by Richard Rolheiser, which I had begun on my visit in December 2018, and Building a Bridge, by James Martin, S.J.

Benjamin Hettrick was made a novice on July 10 (before I got there) and given the name Celestine. Yes, he's named for Celestine the Benedictine monk who was elected pope and resigned after 5 months in office in 1294. It seems that Dante may have disapproved of the resignation and consigned him to the outer circle of Hell, but the Church disagreed and canonized him. Brother Celestine explained to me that he sees Pope St. Celestine as a good example of humility: he realized that he was unable to perform the duties of the papacy and so resigned for the good of the Church.

At one of the festive outdoor meals, I was sitting with the prior and the novice master. I told them about Fr. Christopher's insistence, some 40+ years ago, that nudity is not inherently "dirty." I then added that during hot weather, when I am alone at home, I enjoy "the Christopher privilege." The prior said, "Eww," and the novice master said, "Too much information."

I tried to post a couple of pictures, but couldn't get them to show. Maybe I'll try again sometime.

Longing on PEI

My mother's mother, the youngest of ten siblings, came with two of her sisters from the family farm on Prince Edward Island to Massachusetts some time around 1900. My mother visited the farm and relatives there several times as a girl. She remembered it fondly and would say that we should visit sometime, but we never actually did so. She did, however exchange Christmas cards with a cousin there until her increasing dementia ended the exchange a few years before she died.

A few days before my mother's death, a letter arrived for her from a daughter of the other cousin on the island. It asked my mother to share any memories of her visits as well as any information which might help the writer track down the descendants of the other sisters who had come with my grandmother. We couldn't give any information my second cousin had requested, but the family was reconnected, and my brothers, sister-in-law,  nephew, and I visited the island that summer and met the relatives: two cousins of my mother and their spouses, our second cousins, and several of their children.

In the course of our visit, we took a guided walking tour of downtown Charlottetown, the capital. The guide, a college age man, was in 19th century costume, and I found him quite attractive. The following year, my brother, sister-in-law, and I returned. She had arranged to give an organ concert in Charlottetown and another in Tignish about two hours away. After the first concert they went to Tignish to prepare for the concert there. I didn't need to go with them, and I decided to stay in Charlottetown and take another of the walking tours which were offered.

To my delight, the guide happened to be the one from a year earlier. It also turned out that I was the only person signed up for the tour. So in addition to the tour, the guide also gave some information about himself. His name was John — I've forgotten his last name — and he lived in one of the suburbs of Charlottetown. He said that he and the other guides stayed in the Delta hotel during the season, and he told me several times that they gathered every evening in the lounge of the hotel. It seemed clear to me that in effect he was inviting, encouraging, me to join the group there. I told him that I had to join my family members in Tignish that evening.

I would have liked to see him that evening. Of course, my imagination developed a scenario in which I fantasized that after a couple of drinks he would invite me to his room, and make advances toward me. I would refuse to engage in sex, but there would be innocent displays of affection. Certainly there we would exchange contact information, and we would stay in touch. None of that could actually happen because of my family commitment, but I definitely wished it were possible to get to know him better and to develop a friendship. We have had no contact since then, and I wonder how he has done in the dozen or more years since those encounters. I hope all is well.

I wonder if he had known that I would be the only participant on the tour that afternoon and if he had arranged to be the guide for that reason. The guides used to get tips, and a tour with only one tourist would not have been very desirable. I can imagine that it could have been cancelled because of insufficient participation, but it wasn't. Maybe he had noticed my interest in him on the earlier tour (I took several pics of sites with him in them)  and somehow learned my name. Or maybe it was pure coincidence that he drew the assignment. Of course, I had signed up for it because the area to be covered  — the Lieutenant Governor's Mansion and the area between there and the edge of downtown — was of interest, and I'd have enjoyed it in a group or with a different guide, but being alone with him made it even more enjoyable.

Some people might consider this sad because of what didn't happen. On the other hand, the actual experience was pleasant, and it is an instance of chance encounters being able to produce good results. There was nothing lasting, like what came from a chance encounter in Rothenburg, but it was good while it lasted.

Infrastructure and Traffic Congestion

A few weeks ago, on successive days, I came across two articles which got me thinking about highways and public transportation. The first was focused on the need for infrastructure repair and maintenance to reduce traffic congestion. Certainly, when parts of roads and highways become unusable because of deterioration, it increases congestion, and increasing amounts of time are wasted by drivers stuck in traffic. As I read it, however, it seemed to me that it completely ignored a much more basic and valuable solution to the problem of congestion: public transportation.

During my lifetime, we have seen a repeated cycle of building highways and having them filled beyond capacity, then enlarging them and having them filled again. It seems that for most peoplethe apparent convenience of being able to go from Point A to Point B in one's own vehicle outweighs the inconvenience of being caught in traffic jams. While the problem is worst around cities during rush hour on weekdays, there can also be significant delays on weekends, especially holiday weekends. Here in Massachusetts such delays occur during the summer as people go to and from Cape Cod as well as resort areas of Maine and New Hampshire. In October, foliage attracts heavy traffic. During these times highways on which traffic normally flows unimpeded become congested. Two years ago, something of the sort happened to me as I went to western Massachusetts for a weekend of concerts at Tanglewood. The trip, which should take under two hours each way, was slowed by congestion and took more like four hours each way.

The usual solution has been to widen the roads, creating additional travel lanes. But it seems to me that it would be highly preferable to provide public transportation, which could remove large numbers of cars from the highways, as well as from urban roads. It would have to be capable of reaching the destinations of most travelers in a time which is competitive with a trip by car. For this, a graduated system would be needed. First there should be high speed rail roughly paralleling the interstate highways. These could get people from one pint to another significantly faster than they could by car. Stops could be at major cities and at junctions of interstates. From these stops there can be high speed rail along intersecting interstates and local rail to other destinations. From the stations subways could cover some metropolitan areas and a network of buses would reach outlying areas.

For example, a high speed railroad roughly following Interstate 90 would travel three times as fast as cars on the highway, losing some of the advantage when the train made stops. On the other hand passengers would not have to take breaks to refuel, refresh, and eat. Near Springfield, a high speed line would run north toward Montreal and south to Hartford and then to a connection with the Boston-NYC line. A traveler to Tanglewood could connect in Lee with a local railroad to Pittsfield (and points north. Buses could cover the run from Pittsfield to Lenox. A 2 1/2 drive from Boston to Lee could be covered by high speed rail in about 1 1/4 hours. Even if the time thus saved (or somewhat more) were taken up by local transportation, it should be highly attractive not to have to deal with traffic, but to be able to do other things, such as read, during the trip.

Another example: a trip from Boston, MA, to Butler, PA.  An 8 1/2 hour, 540 mile, trip by car to Erie, PA, on Interstate 90 should require no more than 3 hours by high speed rail — saving 5 hours. If a high speed train wouldn't stop between Erie and Pittsburgh, a local train to somewhere around Route 422 ought to be able to get there in 2 1/2 hours (a bus would take longer), and a local bus from there to Butler might need maybe 1/2 hour. Mapquest estimates under 2 hours Erie-Butler by car. So by car from Boston to Butler via interstates could take over 10 hours, whereas with high speed rail to Erie and other public systems from Erie, it would be more like 6 hours overall — without the hassle of driving.

These scenarios depend for their attractiveness on having both high speed and local transportation running frequently enough that trips can be accomplished in an overall time that is not much longer than travel by car. Certainly, there are places so remote and lightly populated that public transportation would not be feasible. People would need to drive at least part of the way (possibly a rental car from the end of the line). But if systems could be put in place which could entice even half of the drivers off the roads it would obviate the need for road and highway expansion as well as cutting the exhaust emissions by nearly half.

The second article dealt with the laws restricting the imposition of tolls on federal highways. If tolls could be raised on the highways so that the cost of a trip by car were comparable to the public transportation fares, that would overcome an incentive to drive which is created by the subsidy taxpayers give to highway construction. If users ultimately pay the expenses of public systems, users should also pay the costs of highway construction and maintenance.

End of an Era — Scollay Square Restaurant

A topic of a number of my posts has been having dinner at Scollay Square Restaurant in Boston (apply the filter restaurants) where Seth worked as a waiter for a number of years (apply the filter Seth). Seth was always friendly and interested in the books I was reading. The food was enjoyable, so it was a good place to go for dinner before Harvard Musical Association concerts and I made it my regular restaurant for those occasions. Several readers of this blog visited me over the years, and I brought them there to see the place I was writing about.

It started out fairly upscale, but after a year or two they eliminated the top of the line items, with a corresponding reduction in the overall price level. Patio seating during warm weather was popular, but I guess overall patronage was never as good as it should have been because the trend to commonplace items continued, apparently to try to attract more patrons.

Last November 16, I went there, and I was shocked at how few people were there: a couple of people at the bar and three ladies at a table. While I was there maybe six more customers arrived. This was considerably less business than I had ever seen there. I hoped it was just an off night for some reason.

Various factors such as weather, scheduling conflicts,  or just not feeling like making the effort to go to Boston led to my not going to another HMA evening until April 5. When I got to the Scollay Square, the windows were covered inside with brown paper. I was disappointed, but in, light of my experience in November, not entirely shocked to find it closed. It was a good place to have as my regular pre-HMA restaurant for ten years, and I'm sorry it's no longer there as a familiar, if occasional, presence.

This meant that I needed to find another place for dinner. I checked out several places in the area, but they were offering burgers and sandwiches, and I wanted normal entrees. There was a spot called Carrie Nation just down the block from Scollay Square. The second time I went by it, I decided that it was the best I could do at that point, so in I went. The maitre d' seemed to think that he didn't have a table available, but the manager happened by and told him to seat me in the section by the window. Looking at the menu I found a number of attractive choices and settled on oysters, followed by salmon and lentils with a house salad. Everything was good. After putting in my cocktail order I noticed a specialty cocktail which includes rye whiskey and grand marnier that I'd like to try. Service was good. In a way, although the ambience is very different, it's reminiscent of what the Scollay Square was when I first went there. So I want to go back and have some of the other items they offer, and I'll probably make it my regular place.

A Weekend

Usually my older brother visits me on weekends, arriving Saturday evening about 6:00 and staying either until early Sunday afternoon or until Monday afternoon. (In summer, if he has Race Committee duty, he'll usually arrive after dinner on Friday.) At 9:00 Saturday evening, my younger brother calls from Japan, where he has lived since 1973, and we talk for about an hour.

During my major weekly shopping expedition on February 27, I had bought meat for a pot roast for Saturday dinner, and chicken thighs for Sunday. But by the time I had finished everything else I wanted to do on Saturday, February 2, and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner, I realized that there wasn't enough time to prepare, cook, and eat the pot roast before the phone call from Japan. I substituted the chicken. My brother went back to Boston Sunday afternoon, leaving me with a piece of beef which I had expected to provide dinner for two and leftovers for another meal for me. The best course seemed to be to save it for our dinner on Saturday of this weekend.

Strictly speaking, it's not weekend, but I attended the Boston Symphony concert on Thursday evening. But I blogged about it on Saturday, and that definitely was part of the weekend.

We had tickets for a concert of the Handel and Haydn Society at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, so the plan was for my brother to go back to Boston after the 11:00 Mass on Sunday. I'd stay here and have lunch and meet him at Symphony Hall. But as the weekend arrived, there were predictions of snow and rain Sunday morning, and my brother decided to stay in Boston.

This created two complications. First, he would not be around for the pot roast this weekend, but I couldn't keep it for another week without freezing it, which I didn't want to do. So I cooked it on Saturday to provide my dinner both Saturday and Sunday. Second, I have the H+H tickets here. Usually my brother takes his ticket with him when h leaves for Boston at midday on Sunday. Since he wasn't going to be here, we had to arrange to meet in the lobby of Symphony Hall for me to give him his ticket. That meant that I couldn't decide to stay home if it was still snowing on Sunday afternoon. As it happened, the snow had turned to rain, and the roads were merely wet.

Since this was the weekend we shifted to Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time), I got less sleep than I might have on an ordinary weekend, and I was afraid that my tendency to drowse during afternoon concerts might be strong. I took a brief nap after Mass, and as it happened, the music was interesting enough that I was wide awake for the whole thing. The concert was very enjoyable.

Baked Stuffed Haddock

Most weeks, I have baked stuffed haddock on Wednesday. Peter, who was at Tanglewood with me in 2017 has asked for my recipe — which he helped me make while he was visiting me here. So here it is.

Baked Stuffed Haddock "Naturgesetz"

12-14 oz. haddock (or other whitefish) filet

8 oz. green pepper, zucchini, or summer squash

6 crimini ("Baby Bella") mushrooms

olive oil

butter

malt vinegar

Old Bay® seasoning

dried chervil

plain dried breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 350°F. While oven is heating, put olive oil in a baking dish (mine is pyrex glass). It should cover the bottom of the dish.

If using zucchini or summer squash, cut off the ends, peel and slice it lengthwise. If using green pepper, wash it and slice either horizontally or vertically, discarding seeds, stem, membranes and white bulb to which seeds are attached. This leaves just the green part of the pepper.

When the oven is hot remove the baking dish and tilt it to coat the sides with olive oil about 1/2 inch up each side. Add the vegetable pieces, coating every surface of each piece with olive oil, and arrange them around the sides of the dish. Return the dish to the oven.

Wipe the heads of the mushrooms with a moist paper towel to remove any extraneous matter and cut off the stems.

Add about 4 teaspoons of butter, thinly sliced, to the baking dish and return it to the oven.

Lightly sprinkle the fish on with vinegar on both sides, then season the inside surface with the seasoning and a generous amount of chervil. Remove the baking dish from the oven and place the fish in it, seasoned side down. Season the skin side with the seasoning and herb. Turn the fish over and sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs sufficient to hide most of the herb.

Bake for 5-6 minutes. Meanwhile, slice the mushrooms horizontally (or chop them if space in the baking dish is tight).

Remove the baking dish and add the mushrooms, coating all surfaces with the butter/oil blend in the dish. Turn the vegetables, and return the dish to the oven and bake for another 5-6 minutes.

Remove the baking dish from the oven, turn the mushrooms, and return the dish to the oven. Bake for another 5-6 minutes.

Serve with rice or on toast points. Tilt the baking dish and use a spatula to scrape the oil into one corner, and pour it over the fish (and a bit on the rice).

Serves two

Notes:

Salt substitute or other seasoning may be used in place of Old Bay®.

Parsley may be used in place of chervil.

Chopped onion might be used instead of all or part of the vegetable.

The vegetables may be sprinkled with dried oregano (and celery salt) before putting them in the baking dish.

All measurements are approximate. Vary quantities to taste.

The cooking time depends on the thickness of the filet. The thicker the piece, the longer it needs. It should be firm, mist, and flake readily when done. If there are very thin ends, they can be folded under to approximate the thickness of the rest of the filet so they won't overcook. Flounder tends to be much thinner than haddock. I'd recommend giving it no more than 10-12 minutes and adjusting the procedure so that the veggies get at least 20 minutes (flipping when the flounder goes in) and the mushrooms go in with the flounder (and flip when 5 minutes remain).

The "skin side" of the filet is a bit smoother that the other side and often has a (completely edible) thin white membrane on some portion of it. The "inside surface" is more porous.

This recipe can also be used for shrimp or scallops (slice large scallops crosswise).

Baked stuffed haddock in baking dish with green peppers and  chopped mushrooms. The haddock filet was larger than usual and there wasn't enough room left for the mushrooms if I had sliced them as usual.

Toast points.

The plated dinner. Usually the sliced mushrooms are beside the fish, not on top of it.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Covington Catholic Students, Black Hebrews, and Nathan Phillips

Here's my take, after spending Monday and Tuesday, January 21 and 22, looking at all the videos I found of the incidents on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, reading some articles, and tweeting, retweeting and responding to tweets about them.

Nobody seems to have noticed that the lengthy video from the Black Hebrews begins with them engaging the Native Americans. They say that God took the NA's land from them and gave it to the white people because the NA's were worshipping idols and false gods. In other words, the BH's initial target was Nathan Phillips' group.

Boys from Covington Catholic High School arrived to wait for the buses to take them back home. At some point they began to heckle the BH's. The BH's then turned to the CCH boys and started accusing them of racism. They also used homophobic rhetoric. When the BH's said Trump is a homosexual and said the U.S. is a hypocrite nation because we give rights to "faggots," the boys booed loudly. The boys eventually started doing school cheers, one of which looked sort of like a haka by the boy who led it.

When the first video went viral, Nathan Phillips and his supporters claimed that the students had surrounded his group and blocked them as they were conducting a ceremony which they intended to complete by ascending to the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. When additional video showed that Phillips had actually walked into the midst of the students singing and beating his drum, and that there was plenty of room on the steps for them to get to the top without plowing through the students, Phillips gave the explanation that he and others were concerned that the confrontation between the Covington boys and the Black Hebrews was about to become violent, so he went between them with his chant to defuse the situation.

If defusing the situation was his purpose (or if they just wanted to go up the steps), the boys had no way of knowing that, since no one explained it to them. On several videos students can be heard asking themselves, "What's going on?" On another some are chanting, "What protest is this?" (or something like that).

Video shows Phillips walking up to Nick Sandmann singing and drumming, and getting in his face while continuing to sing and drum. Nick just stood where he was. Video shows room on either side of him, so that Phillips could have gone around him. Thus Sandmann was not blocking Phillips. Technically, it seems that Phillips assaulted Sandmann. At different points, videos show Sandmann smiling, with the expression widely characterized as a smirk, and looking slightly bewildered. One image shows him leaning slightly backwards as Phillips confronts him. At one point someone off camera says, "Be strong."

Video also shows some of the boys jumping and imitating Phillips' song. One boy is seen doing the tomahawk chop. Of course, this is not respectful. On the other hand it is not nearly as disrespectful as it would have been if they had been told Phillips was performing some sort of sacred ceremony. Still, it would be good for the school to do something to teach to boys to be more respectful of other cultures.

One of the NA's is seen arguing with a student that his people have been here two or four generations while his have been here "millions." When the student says that the NA's came from Asia over a land bridge, he says that's nonsense and proposes another theory which is inaudible. The student smilingly shouts, "We should all go back to Africa!" Some people have mistakenly taken the words "go back to Africa" as directed at one of the groups confronting them. Nick Sandmann is seen looking briefly at that student and motioning him to quiet down.

Eventually the boys leave to go to their buses, some chanting, "Let's go home." One of the NA's says, "I got it." Nathan Phillips raises his arms, seemingly in triumph, while dancing and loudly vocalizing.

A few of the boys, including Sandmann, were wearing Make America Great Again hats. I saw maybe five or six in the crowd. Some people have tried to say that wearing MAGA hats proves that the Covington boys are racists. Apart from the fact that there were few of them, and it's wrong to attribute it to the whole group, it's not accurate to say that MAGA hats simply mean racism the way KKK hoods do (which some commentators have asserted. After Trump was elected, there were several articles attempting to explain why people voted for him. Prominent among those reasons were concerns about jobs and the economy. Another reason many people voted for him was his claim to be pro-life. Given that the boys had come from the midwest to a pro-life march, there are clear easons for them to support Trump without any racism involved.

I saw no explicit racism, or attempt to interfere with the NA's on the part of the Covington boys. It seems clear to me that Nathan Phillips singled Nick Sandmann out for confrontation, and I suspect that it was because hew was one of the few wearing a MAGA hat.

The NA's should have regarded the CCH boys and themselves as allies united in opposition to the positions of the BH's. Instead, the fact that a very brief snippet was originally posted with a false characterization of the event (along with the "I got it" and the "victory dance" by Phillips) suggests that the whole thing was a set-up by the NA's.

Edited to add:

See also this excellent article by Andrew Sullivan analyzing the way the matter played out and what it tells us about our current situation.