#something about the prevalence of churches looking the other way about you-know-what and men reducing male students' abuse to a fantasy

[the-epic-hiram-lows]

Hiram groping Archie over the pants in the pew at Veronica's confirmation parallels to Grundy groping Archie in the car driving him home. Discuss

what is there to expand on? you've made a perfect statement.

[hanksthompson]

Eddie has always been different. That much, he was certain of. Has he always known what the extent of it was? Not necessarily, but something always felt off. Not like he could ever identify that for what it was at the time, though. It was only prevalent when he got closer to his teen years, of course, but he supposes it was just a fact about him way before then, too. Outcast was putting it lightly. He was more than aware of the insults he’d get not only at school, but on the streets, too. That’s just how Derry was, he assumed. Should he be surprised, at this point? It didn’t look like it was changing anytime soon, and it’s not like he wasn’t used to another lifestyle. He just grew accustomed to that, really.

He’s not particularly sure what made him a target for bullying in the first place, actually. In Eddie’s opinion, there wasn’t anything really remarkable about him. He had always looked like a normal kid, really. Maybe he was smaller than most, or a little more fragile-looking in comparison to the kids who actually got exercise. But outside of that, he didn’t think he was all that different, really. Maybe he took care of his appearance more than most kids?

Always keep your hair neat! I don’t want my son to look like the other boys in the neighborhood.

That was one of the earliest instructions Eddie had gotten from his mom, and one he never really understood growing up. Never understood why it had to be kept neat at all. But he listened. He didn’t have any reason to object to it at the time, and he was young enough to blindly follow whatever his mom would tell him, even if there was a small, nagging part of him that felt weird about it. But he listened. He remembered an old photo that still had his dad in it, his late dad, and while he was still young when he passed, he remembered he would look up to him at that young age. He always liked how his dad was around him...how he felt when in his company. He took to combing and parting his hair every morning, in an attempt to match that old picture. His hair was a little longer than his dad's, sure, but the simplicity of it was enough to make him happy.

His mom never seemed to notice how he chose to style his hair though, he wasn’t sure if she remembered much of her late husband at all. Eddie always thought that was weird, but it wasn’t anything he could question, really, not when his mom had started piling on more and more concerns for him, and for his health. But with those concerns came restrictions. He didn’t remember having any significant allergies before, but he remembers being told not to roll around where the grass had been freshly cut. The specifics of that also seemed weird. But he was young enough to buy into it. Young enough to believe whatever concern and crocodile tears she threw his way, so much so that he had grown concerned for his own health as well, at that point. And it had only gotten worse as he got older.

Don’t you go running outside, you could trip, scrape your leg, and get infected!

He always wanted to run. Always wants to take part in P.E. Actually play baseball with the older kids by his house.

Stay away from heights! You could just as easily fall and break something!

He had always wondered what that would be like. Falling. Experiencing something. Truth be told, he was less eager about dealing with a broken limb, something he was always told would be the worst pain imaginable. But he’s still curious. About falling. About knowing what that, alone, would feel like. He imagines normal kids get to know what that’s like.

Any two men who keep their house that nice must be queers.

That was one he never understood either. His mom’s supposed hatred for one of their neighbors, the Tracker brothers. Or why she had always defaulted to the same assumption every time. Or why it had made him feel weird at the time. But phrases like that weren’t exactly new to him. Not just from his mother, but from graffiti in Bassey Park, or even on the Kissing Bridge, one such place he always had to cross by when he was in High School. It always made him feel…dirty. But he just accepted those, as well. It wasn’t until he started going to Church or had encountered a homeless man at Neibolt, that he had started pushing those thoughts away from himself. And, as a result, grew that much more uncomfortable with religion, as a whole.

He couldn’t shake the feeling away that he had done something wrong, just by existing.

But even in spite of that, Eddie really only got a chance to feel…maybe normal isn’t the word for it, but how a kid is supposed to feel when he was with the Losers. They never smothered him. Never made him feel any less of what he really was. Never treated him differently than they treated each other…because he could handle the teasing and the insults and the jokes just as well as anyone else.

Part of him had always felt guilty when he had thought of them as family. That he was betraying his parents in some way. That he was betraying his dad somehow when he had always looked up to Bill the way he thinks he used to look up to his dad.

He had always tried to justify that thought process, though. That it was normal to have people in your life that share similarities with your actual family. Or he did until he had reached his early 30’s.

If Eddie had been aware of just everything he had forgotten about after leaving Derry, he would’ve been more acutely aware of just how that affected him. How going back to living with his mom’s strict parenting style, and not being around his friends, had taken his own strength from him. The idea of it sounds cheesy, really, and if he were told that, both as a 13-year-old and a 40-year-old, he’d probably dismiss it. It sounded ridiculous. But that was his life, starting at around 14. She was still just as smothering and manipulative as she always was, except this time, he got back into the habit of letting this happen. Of letting her treat him this way, even if he now knew his medicine was fake.

I just want what’s best for you.

She always said that a lot. And damn near every time, it felt like utter bullshit. But he still listened to her. This was what love had felt like to him at the time. A woman watching over him, a woman fueling his anxieties to the point where he felt he had to rely on her. It was never something he could for himself. He was always the weak one when it came to a loving relationship. That’s what he truly believed.

He wasn’t even sure how old he was when he finally got to move out of his mom’s house, he had to guess it was early to mid ’20s, and he had remembered there was a lot of tears on her end. Tears to the point where he had felt uncomfortable with the whole display. Because he couldn’t figure out if this was her usual method of manipulation, where she’d resort to crocodile tears just to get him to do what she wanted, or if the display was genuine. But judging how guilty he felt because of it, he was more than content assuming it was the former, and that alone got him out of the house and on to his own life. He figured so, at least.

He wasn’t sure exactly how it happened if he had to think back on it, but he remembers he had met her through work. Risk analyst, on a surface level, seemed like a weird and unheard-of job. But it was one he was drawn to, nonetheless. But it was one that served to make him feel better in his everyday life. Even after he moved out of his mom’s house, she could still hear her nagging voice whenever he would want to do the simplest of things, and it only added to his paranoia. But that had dwindled when he got his new job. It made him feel better when he knew the statistical odds for anything bad that could happen, because he knew they were low. Low odds made him feel better. Like he was actually in charge for once. That he could live his life, free of paranoia. But that only lasted so long.

Myra. Someone who always had an uneasy sense of familiarity, but with that familiarity, came a sense of comfort. He thinks maybe that's why he was drawn to her in the first place, or that’s the excuse he likes to make. It wouldn’t be the only one. From the minute they had started talking, he had noted that familiarity, as well. But that hadn’t stopped him, really. She had always felt…safe, for a lack of better words. That’s what he told himself as well. And what he continued to tell himself when he had reached 34, and he was looking into engagement rings. Told himself it was normal when he couldn’t even look at the pictures of his own mother anymore, because of the relationship. Tried to convince himself that this was normal. Normal for adulthood, anyway. That this would be a normal marriage.

It was a disturbing thought to Eddie, however, that the minute they had started living together, that nagging voice from his mother would often get mistaken for Myra’s voice invading his thoughts. So much so, that the worse it got, the more they both blended together, until he was certain it was just Myra in his head. Of course, the first month or two was fine, and he had managed to convince himself that this would be a fine life, that he could love Myra.

You shouldn’t use ingredients like that. It’s not good for your health.

He was willing to pass that off as normal. It seemed natural to worry about what your partner was eating, about how it could affect them. But the health-related concerns had quickly started to get out of hand. To the point where he was, once again, reduced to taking over-the-counter medicine for the smallest of issues. It was a habit he hadn’t questioned getting back into, but just accepted for what it was.

You really should shave more. You’re starting to look unkempt.

Growing stubble or a beard was never something Eddie really wanted to do, but even the slightest hint of one had always sent Myra off. He, of course, never saw the issue with it, outside of it being something he was indifferent too, but Myra had always made a big deal about how he presented himself for work. Buying razors and shaving cream at the store felt more like an obligation, than anything.

Patterned shirts are childish, aren’t they? You should toss those out, Eddie.

There was maybe a small part of him that was aware his sense of fashion as a kid was anything but perfect. Oversized shirts and sports shorts and a fanny pack and slip-on shoes. It seemed ridiculous, thinking back on it, but he had always loved those clothes when he was a kid. He liked the bright shirts with patterns, they always seemed fun to him. Even when he wore simple polo shirts, they were almost always pastel. He liked that they were bright. And maybe he didn’t always wear every single one of those things now that he was an adult, but he still kept some of that old fashion sense. He would occasionally wear graphic shirts to bed, and sometimes kept the same sports shorts whenever he would want to exercise, but that’s usually it.

Myra never cared for them, though. She thought they were unprofessional for someone who worked for a business firm. And it was a subject she had continuously pressed until she had eventually got her way. Graphic and patterned shirts were replaced with strictly polo shirts, button-ups, or cardigans. Stupidly short shorts were all replaced with either lounge pants, khakis, or jeans. He still convinced himself that he could be alright with that. That this was just another part of adult life.

Are you watching that comedian again? Switch it back to cable, my show is about to start.

Dictating whatever they watched seemed like a stretch to him, but one he couldn’t bring himself to complain about when she had insisted they watch something other than the Netflix specials for a certain comedian. He couldn’t bring himself to complain, because he isn’t even sure why he was watching it in the first place, or why he continued to watch whenever there was a new one on Netflix. He didn’t even like the jokes. They felt…wrong to him. Wrong in a way he couldn’t even explain to himself. It was weird. And it was weird when he kept watching. He thinks maybe a small part of him was drawn to it, in the same way he was drawn to Myra in the first place, but he dismissed that thought. It sounded stupid to him, anyway. And he thinks that maybe, maybe, he can bring himself to like Myra’s shows. It would just take some time.

You can’t go on that business trip, Eddie. You can’t leave me here alone.

That was a rare one, but one he had always heard, nonetheless. Of course, only when he was supposed to go out of town, and he always did, mind you. But he had always felt guilty about it, especially with Myra’s constant calls to him during the trip itself, whenever he would have a free moment to himself. He remembers those calls very clearly, because each and every one of them was the same. He would always stay on the phone with her to try and calm her down, and would stay on that call even if it was exhausting to him, and she always asked him to say the same thing, at the end of every single one.

Can you say you love me?

And he always obliged. Even if it felt weird for her to ask that, he still listened, and gave her what she wanted to hear. Maybe it helped that he was out of town, and when he was away from her, he always felt more certain of the fact that he loved her. Or maybe it was the guilt. The guilt that he left her alone, and she always sounded like she was near tears when she would call. Guilty that this was his fault, somehow.

He thinks one of the first nightmares he gets, after he’s married, revolves around that specific guilt. That reminds him of a specific nightmare from when he was a kid, of a time where he couldn’t save his mom in the basement of the pharmacy. Except now, it’s Myra, and he remembers feeling useless in that nightmare, remembers being berated for not being enough, when he was needed. He thinks he remembers not getting a lot of sleep that night.

I just want what’s best for you.

The phrase had felt so familiar coming from Myra, that he had felt obligated to believe it. That every little thing she had nitpicked at, even when it had annoyed him, was for his best interests. That she was genuinely worried about his health, that she wanted him to make good impressions, even if he had barely left the house outside of when he had work. That she wanted him to be safe. Even if, for a majority of the marriage, he was the one looking after her, because she had consistently put herself in situations where she was the one who needed to be comforted. He felt he could empathize with that, to some degree, so he had always given her what she wanted in those moments. He was used to it, anyway. Putting others before himself. That was something he was good at.

[sockparade]

ill at ease

I can still picture the grin on Milan’s face that day as he walked into the office with a Starbucks frappuccino in hand. I have a hard time remembering a day when Milan didn’t arrive at the office with a Starbucks frappuccino in hand. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary. But it was noteworthy that day because the week before a video went viral of two Black men being arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia because a white employee was uncomfortable with them asking to use the restroom and sitting in the coffeeshop while they waited for a business associate to arrive. Something non-Black folks do all the time. People were calling for a total Starbucks boycott.

I raised my eyebrows at his drink, and he shrugged saying, “Look, I’m not going to let the actions of some racist white people take away my freedom to get whatever drink I want.” 

And like, yeah, I objectively understand how that’s an imperfect political stance and maybe an ineffective strategy to create change, but also, man, I really felt that. In order to protest Black men being arrested for sitting in a coffeeshop (read: for being Black), was I really going to try to tell a Black man about where he should or shouldn’t get his substandard (ha) coffee fix? Try to convince him about the importance of voting with his dollar? Can’t a person just live?   

I just didn’t have it in me to disagree. 

I often think about that exchange whenever I hear a call to boycott such and such corporation or a call to cancel a celebrity. I mean, listen, I do believe in the power of an organized boycott or protest. There is concrete historical evidence and contemporary examples of how people have bossed companies and the government into doing what we demand. But I don’t want to keep pretending that it’s an easy switch to flip or that it’s a cost-free way for people of color to fight against the inequity in the world.  

That Starbucks incident was just one in an endless number of incidents in which a white person says or does something that reveals their racism, forcing people of color to do the emotionally taxing, unending math, of just how much caucasity we’re willing to stomach.

This is a really old story. Marginalized groups of people have always had to bear the brunt of publicized racist behavior. For every racist incident, there are generally three major phases of emotional labor that people of color in the United States have to work through. At first I could only name two but then I realized it’s actually three. Let me walk you through them.

First, before any explicitly racist incident happens, we have to contend with the fact that there are generally such slim pickings in terms of choices that will allow us to exist ethically and stay true to our convictions. How do we earn a living? Where do we grocery shop? What authors do we read? Whose music do we listen to? Are there ANY electronics that are manufactured in an ethical way? Do we wear checks or not? Are the non-white teachers at this preschool treated with respect by the white owners of this preschool? How do I reduce my purchases on Amazon? Is this restaurant gentrifying the neighborhood? Wait which banks have divested from fossil fuels again? Can I truly be myself at this church? What athleisure brands haven’t been accused of overt racism yet? Where are the influencers that look like me? 

When it comes to the consumption of and participation in… well, almost anything, we constantly have to make concessions because we live in a place that’s simply not built for us. It is so hard to name a single sphere of life that I enjoy that isn’t dominated by whiteness or the white gaze. I think my MO for some time now has been to assume that no brand, company, restaurant, actor, or celeb is truly *safe*. I’m generally always waiting for the other shoe to drop while also trying not to think about it too much. It’s a lot of mental gymnastics. 

I was at a lecture a few years ago on the topic of the “doctrine of discovery” and the systematic oppression of Native American nations. It was a large auditorium in Berkeley full of neoliberal mostly white folks. The lecturer read a rather dismissive opinion rejecting the Oneidas attempt to reclaim land that was criminally stolen from them in violation of U.S. treaty (Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, 2005) as a shockingly recent example of how this oppression has continued. And then theatrically, he revealed the author to be none other than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. There was a loud, audible, collective gasp from the audience. 

I mean, no, I didn’t know the Notorious RBG had that in her. But also, I’m not over here clutching my pearls. I’m not saying I’m proud of my jaded mentality. I’m just accustomed to it. As Tressie McMillan Cottom says in her essay “Know Your Whites” in Thick: And Other Essays, “I am not disappointed. If you truly know your whites, disappointment rarely darkens your door.” I’ve been seeing more and more of this language with the virality and frequency of racist actions being caught on video and circulated on the internet. People will say, “I’m not surprised, but I’m mad.” It’s too overwhelming to feel shock and pain every single time. So we steady ourselves for the eventuality, we brace for the pain. Know your whites, y’all.        

The second phase of emotional labor is related to the actual injury. We feel the deep pain of injury even if we don’t know the person that was harmed or the person who caused the harm. I think people are sometimes quick to dismiss the behavior of rich and famous people as irrelevant and reduce discussion of it as simply celebrity gossip. But I think there’s pain whether it’s a murder, an arrest, or a racial slur. I know it can be hard to tell by the overwhelming amount of white tears shed on social media after each viral incident but the marginalized group targeted by the offense carries the pain so differently than anyone outside of that group. Try as we might to muster our empathy and our vague-ass Christian lament, it’s just. not. the. same. It’s not. Sometimes it’s so painful that I don’t even fully let myself go there. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read in detail about the recent hate crimes against Asians since COVID-19. I feel squeamish about it. I feel pain when I read stories and see pictures of families being separated, detained and deported but I know for a Latinx person that pain must be so much deeper. And I absolutely cannot fully imagine the pain that Black and Indigineous folks in America endure living in this place.  

And then finally, there’s the third phase of labor. This is the part when we’re called upon to react, call it out, bring awareness, advocate for change, and make swift changes (big and small) in our own lives. Sometimes I feel judged (by others and by my own conscience) when I don’t boycott or abstain. And sometimes I just try to skip to this third phase because I don’t want to deal with the grief of the second phase. 

After this past week’s twitter feud, lots of folks are ready to cancel Alison Roman for the trash comments she made about Chrissy Teigan and Marie Kondo in her recent interview in The New Consumer. It feels like there’s a sudden clamoring to point out just how white Alison Roman is, and how there’s new evidence that she’s racist. And I guess what I want to say is, um, it’s not really much of a reveal nor is it brand new information. Right? Roxana Hadadi in her recent article titled, “Alison Roman, the Colonization of Spices, and the Exhausting Prevalence of Ethnic Erasure in Popular Food Culture” gives a pretty detailed explanation of just how unshocking it is. 

Prior to reading this interview in The New Consumer, did anyone really think Alison Roman had an astute analysis of her white privilege and her accompanying habit of cultural appropriation that she’s benefitted from her entire career? No! While certainly gross, was I shocked that she mocked imperfect English (regardless of whether it was in reference to Marie’s accent or a Eastern European cookbook)? No! Am I shocked when any person mocks an accent? No! We’ve *allowed* it in TV shows, in movies, in corporate settings, and in social settings. I cringe every time but I’ve been forced my whole life to accommodate it. I’ve heard mockery of accents maybe most often from second generation immigrants mocking their own culture’s accents! And If I’m completely honest, I still sometimes find myself guilty of laughing along. (Curiously, Alison Roman’s lengthy apology made no mention of that part of her interview. Perhaps she, and/or her PR team, realized there was no easy way to walk that one back.) Race relations are a fucking mess in our country, y’all. Let’s please stop pretending like it’s just the occasional ultra-public celebrity slip-up. 

Hear me when I say I’m not defending her fuckery. What I’m taking issue with is the lack of nuance and the self-righteousness in how we respond to these public brouhahas. Both the shocked reactions and the gotcha reactions expressed by people feel equally tiresome to me. This reflection, written by Charlotte Muru-Lanning, is one of the few three-dimensional, unflattened, and self-searching reflections written by a person of color on this whole drama. While I don’t agree with how defensive she is of Alison Roman, I appreciate the way she refuses to act as if she doesn’t exist in the world that she’s critiquing and I love that she recognizes the complexity in herself as a woman of color. 

I’ve become pretty comfortable in my understanding that everyone white in our country is racist. I say racist in the fullest, most comprehensive definition of the word. Some are hateful in their racism. And some are actively trying to fight it even as it exists in themselves. As Ijeoma Oluo explains so succinctly and precisely in her book, So You Want to Talk About Race, racism is “a prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are reinforced by systems of power.” And then she goes on to say, “Systematic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change.” It’s in the water. And we are all impacted by it, no matter what part of the machine we’re in. Me included. As a Taiwanese American who grew up in Houston, Texas, I wasn’t magically immune to the anti-blackness that was/is prevalent in the Asian American community. Whether it was comments made by my parents, my relatives, my friends, or comments from acquaintances/strangers, it was pretty consistent. You don’t bake in that environment for all your formative years without it damaging a part of you. It’s something I still find myself fighting to unroot and discard from my psychology and my bias despite spending my non-profit career trying to address racial disparities in education and employment. I might spend the rest of my life working on it. We can’t keep pretending it’s an occasional affliction or it’s a disease that only Trump supporters suffer from. I suspect the people who are *shocked* at Alison Roman’s racist comments are also people who believe there are good whites and bad whites. #notallwhites? 

Lots of folks have written reflections on cancel culture so I don’t feel the need to rehash it all here. Cancel culture exists for a reason. And it also has its various pitfalls. On one of my favorite podcasts, Still Processing, Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris do an excellent job of examining the limits of cancel culture in their episode about Michael Jackson (content warning: child sexual abuse). One of their most compelling arguments against cancel culture is that while it attempts to hold an individual accountable, it can also be harmful because it allows people to look away. It allows us to skip the hard work of scrutinizing our broken systems beyond a single individual and it allows us to give ourselves a pass and not search ourselves for the ways in which we are complicit. We can’t look away. We have to interrogate what we consume and why. It’s the only way things will change.

I want to attempt to do some of that hard work here. Beyond organized boycotts, I do subscribe to the idea that there’s value in the individual choices I make to abstain from something. Not just in service of a desired economic, political or societal outcome, but because of the impact it can have on me, as an individual. So let me push past my annoyance that I even have to do this when I’ve already done two other phases of emotional labor and get to work. 

A question I’ve been asking myself this week is: Did I somehow make peace with Alison Roman’s cultural appropriation for profit? And if so, why? The answer is, yeah, I think I did. And here are my thoughts on why.

I like Alison Roman’s recipes. I have both of her cookbooks and I only have three cookbooks in my kitchen so that’s something. It’s pretty rare for me to crack open a cookbook when I’m in the kitchen. I mostly just google for specific recipes I’m craving or I’ll look up what temperature is ideal for roasting cauliflower. Almost all the dinners I cook for my family consist of rice/noodles, a meat, and a vegetable and I don’t use recipes for those anymore. Each week I do like to have one “more complicated” dinner recipe and that’s when I’ll sometimes open a cookbook or scroll Instagram. I spend an unreasonable amount of time reading recipe comments (often contradicting) about modifications or adjustments they made and that’s after wading past all the comments about how excited people are to make the posted recipe-- it’s all very confusing and time consuming. 

For someone who was not taught how to cook and who didn’t spend much time in a kitchen until maybe 3 years ago, I appreciated Alison Roman’s insistence that she had figured out the “best way” to make classic dishes (usually dishes I did not grow up eating, like Shrimp Louie or Shallot Pasta), the way she suggested using spices I’ve never cooked or eaten before (Aleppo pepper), and her encouragement to use new techniques that I was unfamiliar with (slow roasting tomatoes in the oven for six hours). It was kind of like finding a cooking lifehack.  

While I found her IG persona mostly grating and self-congratulatory, I was charmed by her vision in her first cookbook for lowering the barrier to entry for making a really great meal that you can be proud of and her push in her second cookbook to host dinner parties that bring your friends together in a memorable way. For a generation that has relished mostly eating out all the time and then ordering in all the time, following an Alison Roman recipe could sometimes feel like permission to try shit out in the kitchen without the pressure to be a master at it. It was a good feeling when the recipes turned out well and it was fun to talk about which recipes I’d tried with other folks who were also working their way through her recipes. 

Okay, and this part might sound ridiculous but I sort of thought that Alison Roman was someone who could maybe teach me how to make white food. Haha. You know what I’m talking about? Like the food that might be on a menu at a restaurant tagged as “American (New)” on Yelp. I mean yes, she has a recipe for “Kimchi-Braised Pork with Sesame and Egg Yolk” in Nothing Fancy but that kind of bastardized Asian dish has been popping up on white restaurant menus pretty consistently for some time now. But a question I’m now asking myself is why I wanted to make white food in the first place? Did I subconsciously think it was fancier and would make for a more interesting menu when hosting dinner parties? 

In her introduction to that Kimchi-Braised Pork recipe she says, “I am calling this a braise, but it is really a stew (an homage to the Korean Jigae) in which meat is braised--but isn’t that most stews?” How do you react when you read that sentence? I think she avoids triggering my usual alarm bells because she doesn’t attempt to be an expert in Korean cuisine. She feints left by throwing in the homage line. She’s not aiming for authenticity in her recipe. It might actually be worse if she gave a mini lecture on Korean cuisine. I don’t know. When I read that line in the cookbook, I don’t find myself immediately questioning the proper origins of the recipe. I don’t have the same knee jerk reaction as when a white chef publishes a whole cookbook of recipes from just one specific region of the world and presumes to be the expert or the ultimate curator. 

And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I need to work harder to stay in the habit of questioning recipe creation and curation. Kind of like the way I’ve learned to question books like Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt. Fifteen years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about white authors writing the stories of people of color. Wasn’t that the whole of literature? Or so I thought. What a gift it’s been to pivot my reading to mostly authors of color! What would happen if I demanded more from the food media I was consuming?

It gets a bit more complicated for me though. Alison Roman has a Chinese-inspired recipe called “Soy-Braised Brisket with Caramelized Honey and Garlic” that I really like. In her introduction to it she writes, “... the tangy, spiced braised beef noodles available at a few of my favorite Chinese restaurants around New York, which I’ll order every time. While not a replication, this brisket is my interpretation: salty from soy sauce, sour from vinegar, lightly spiced from a few pantry all-stars.”  

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I am personally so confused by Chinese food. What is Chinese food? What is Taiwanese food? What is Americanized Chinese food? Is that still Chinese food? What was the food my mom cooked at home throughout my childhood? It took me awhile to allow myself to just fully enjoy Americanized Chinese food without feeling hung up about it. A few years ago my mom made a new dish that I loved and I naively asked her whether it was a recipe she grew up with. I think I was secretly hoping it was a family recipe that she learned from her mom so I could check that immigrant kid fantasy off my list.

She laughed and said, “Do you know where I learned it from? I learned it on YouTube!”

I mean, this is the thing with the Asian Diaspora. Things are pretty disjointed for me. I know some Asian Americans are super locked in and schooled on their origins, heritage, and culture but I honestly don’t know much. I don’t know what region or city in Taiwan my favorite kind of Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup is from. I think I’ve learned to make a version of it that I like better than anything I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant or in someone’s home. I don’t say that to brag, I just say that to point out how confusing it is to try to connect that Taiwanese dish with my heritage when it’s something I learned how to make in my thirties using a recipe I found on a stranger’s website. I feel like I’m trying to connect with a culture I didn’t really grow up in myself. I’m chasing phantoms. 

You know what, I feel like some white lady in the Midwest on the Instant Pot Community Facebook group might legitimately be the world expert on the best way to make General Tso’s Chicken in a pressure cooker at home. After I made the Butter Chicken recipe from Two Sleevers, I looked up who authored the recipe and was so relieved to see that Dr. Urvashi (affectionately nicknamed The Butter Chicken Lady) was Indian. I loved that Butter Chicken recipe. I was super excited to try cooking more Indian food and I was happy that I could do it with a clear conscience. Haha, it’s all so convoluted, I know. 

I think maybe I feel reluctant to hold others accountable for being more respectful of food origins because my understanding of my own cultural heritage (as it relates to food, but also in many other ways) feels spotty and incomplete. I find myself feeling unsure of what I am defending. But ultimately I think this has been a flimsy excuse. It’s not so hard to google a bit more to find a chef that’s sharing a recipe from their particular culture. I think I need to confront the hidden grief I feel about being disconnected from my culture. 

In The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief, Anne Anlin Cheng puts it this way, 

“If the move from grief to grievance, for example, aims to provide previously denied agency, then it stands as a double-edged solution, since to play the plaintiff is to cultivate, for many critics, a cult of victimization. So the gesture of granting agency through grievance confers agency on the one hand and rescinds it on the other. As a result, for many concerned with improving the conditions of marginalized peoples, the focus on psychical injury and its griefs is strategically harmful and to be studiously avoided. But this also means that we are so worried about depriving disenfranchised people of their agency that we risk depriving them of the time and space to grieve. A final problem is that since justice based on grievance and compensation tends to rely on the logic of commensurability and quantifiability, it is ill-equipped to confront that which is incommensurable and unquantifiable. In short, we as a society are at ease with the discourse of grievance but terribly ill at ease in the face of grief.” 

So yeah, I guess the part I haven’t said is, when I read those comments made by Alison Roman in that interview, it hurt me. And when she deflected and didn’t take the initial pushback seriously, that hurt too. It was such a familiar feeling. I know that feeling because I’ve been there before. I’ve had my feelings brushed off with a laugh or a weird, unsatisfactory explanation. I’ve been told that someone was just punching up and didn’t think about it in the context I was. I’ve experienced that basic othering so many times in my life.

Okay so the theory here is that if I do a better job of facing the first and second phase of emotional labor head on… if I can somehow process the pain and grief of living in a racist society, then being a thoughtful consumer will feel less like a sacrifice. It’ll be easier for me to stand by choices I’ve made because I’ll know I’ve made them with integrity and in a way that is true to myself. And I can get to a place where that doesn’t feel like a loss of freedom but rather a true liberation. Man, I want that. 

I also want to get in the habit of asking myself whether my desires, the same desires I am so reluctant to give up, are not actually just byproducts themselves of suffering in this machine for so long. Like, do I really believe it’s coincidental that I bought into Alison Roman’s brand and that I also do a good amount of my shopping at Madewell? And then they happened to do a collab together? 

I need take a magnifying glass to the way I’ve been subconsciously trained to prize dominant white culture. It is so uncomfortable for me to even type that out because it feels like I’m admitting that I like white culture. Like I’m somehow admitting to an inferiority complex. I’m not saying I wish I were white. I definitely don’t wish that. But I am guilty of believing that my taste, my style, and my preferences are somehow invincible to the whiteness of million dollar marketing campaigns in this country. I like to pretend that my brain is somehow impervious to the terrifying industry of engineered social media algorithms and psychological branding strategies. And that’s bullshit. I don’t think anyone really wants to be white these days. Even white people themselves seem uncomfortable. But a white person enjoying wonderful things created by people of color? We eat that shit up. Why do we do that?

We have to spend time recognizing, no matter the discomfort, why our pleasures align so easily with the dominant culture. My hope is that when I start interrogating the way my tastes align with whiteness I’ll begin to cherish the ability I have to move into a place of misalignment. Maybe it won’t be so difficult to give up things I’ve taken pleasure in, because I’ll find pleasure in the process of detaching. Maybe it’ll eventually stop feeling like I’m abstaining and it’ll feel more like I’m just making powerful choices. 

I think the shallow analysis of white supremacy and consumption in this country instructs a person of color to believe that liberation means having the freedom to consume as we please, disregarding the impact of our choices. You know, a chance to live the way many white people live. But I think a more thoughtful analysis instructs us to believe that our choices have consequences in terms of whether it supports or dismantles the machine of racism -- both in ourselves and in society. 

Instead of the performative handwringing of trying to decide whether or not we buy another Starbucks coffee, hit next when MJ starts playing on a Spotify playlist, or keep cooking that Alison Roman brisket, my friend Milan has taught me over the years that it’s more important to be attentive to what we are desiring and why we’re making the choices that we make. Yeah that will often mean boycotting things or making different choices, no doubt. The difference is that it won’t be from an exhausting place of trying to achieve blameless optics. It’ll be from a genuine realignment. There’s freedom in that.          

And yes, I see it too. That our pleasure and the way we experience culture is so closely tied to consumption is fodder for a whole other damn essay. Ugh.     

[woodworkingpastor]

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020 No more business as usual Matthew 28:1-10

Call to Worship, based on Psalm 118

This is the day that the Lord has made,

We will rejoice and be glad in it!

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good

God’s steadfast love endures forever!

Let the Oak Grove congregation say,

“God’s steadfast love endures forever!”

The Lord is our strength and our might; Jesus has become our salvation.

We thank you, Jesus, that you have answered us and have become our salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone of our salvation

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

Hymn, Christ the Lord is risen today, # 280

No more business as usual, Matthew 28:1-10

Easter Sunday is normally one of the highest attendance Sundays of the year. We expect the pews to be full; our musicians and our choir will be prepared with preludes and offertories and anthems; everyone will be dressed up a bit more than most Sundays and, most importantly, we are together celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the event that separates the Christian faith from every other faith tradition in the world.

But this is no ordinary year.  Social distancing requires us to be separate from one another, something that would be painful enough anyway, but is especially difficult on Easter Sunday. Recognizing that we probably—hopefully!—will never have another Easter like this one, I decided to take the opportunity to get out of the church office, drive to Antioch Church of the Brethren and record my sermon from their cemetery.

It’s an unexpected choice for an unusual time. But remember the Scripture that was just read: the story of Easter begins at a tomb.  It begins with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (presumably the mother of James and Joseph mentioned in 27:56) going “to see the tomb.” This is a story about seeing.  And it makes me wonder—having had all the familiar traditions of Easter stripped away in the midst of this pandemic, do you think that God can move even in this time to help us see the grace and power of Easter more clearly?  I hope so.

Helen Keller wrote an article for a 1933 issue of The Atlantic Monthly entitled “Three Days to See.” In the article, Keller named all the people and places and objects she would want to see if somehow she were granted a three-day reprieve from blindness. After describing in great detail how it felt to touch the smooth skin of a silver birch or the rough bark of a pine, she imagined what it would be like to see the face of her beloved teacher, Anne Sullivan, and so to know her more deeply than touch can allow. Keller wrote, “It is a great pity that in the world of light the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding fullness to life.”

What can we see this Easter morning?  

Shaking up business as usual

Keeping your Bibles open, notice Matthew 28 begins in a very normal way. Verse 1 does nothing more than mark the passage of time in the ways people have been marking the passage of time for thousands of years.  Matthew has just spent 27 chapters relating events of eternal significance, and then we “turn the page” and come to Matthew 28:1 where he essentially says, “it’s sunrise on a Sunday morning” as if there’s nothing more notable about the day than that. Just another Sunday.  Just another Sunday?!?!?!  

We recognize that life has a predictable order to it. One of the reasons we resist disorder is because the universe is so predictable.  You certainly don’t need our level of scientific sophistication to recognize this.  People across time and space and culture learn that we can count on certain things happening at more or less predictable times. The sun will rise, the seasons will change, babies will be born, will grow old, and will die, and the next generation will come along behind to take their place.  

The Psalm writers counted on this great regularity and predictability in the universe in the poetry they write in praise of God:

Psalm 50:1. The mighty one, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.  

Psalm 133:3. From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised.

So why are these two women named Mary visiting Jesus’ tomb on this particular morning? Because it was part of the rhythm of life.  It’s what people did, and it’s what people still do—although for slightly different reasons.  Medical technology being what it was in that day, there was always a chance that the person you though had died wasn’t actually dead; sometimes people could be in such a deep coma that people mistook them for dead.  In the Jewish tradition of the time, the third day after death was when the most significant grieving happened because the third day established definitively that the person was actually dead.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary have come as one last tribute to care for Jesus’ body.  From the moment of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ body had been reduced to something that could be controlled. Pilate could claim the power of life and death over it.  The Roman guards could mock it and abuse it.  Joseph of Arimathea could request it.  Jesus’ body was dependent on the charity or ill-will of others.  This, too, is somewhat the normal order of things.

But then we keep reading and we come to Matthew 28:2. That’s where the action is!  Matthew introduces us to a massive disruption of the created order. This is not, in fact, an ordinary Sunday.  Something disorderly is going on here; a disorder that can only come from God.

The NRSV represents this with the phrase “And suddenly…” The Greek carries more of the meaning of “Look!” or “Behold!” It’s a word designed to grab our attention, to make us sit up in our chairs a bit and take notice; it’s a word writers used to emphasize something had changed, there is something here we need to see.

What is there to see in the early dawn light of the cemetery? An earthquake, if you can imagine that an earthquake is such a thing as to be seen. This is fascinating, and it’s more significant to Matthew’s understanding of the gospel than we might realize.

The word in verse 2 is seismos; if you listen carefully you can hear that it’s where we get the words seismic or seismologist. It just means there was an earthquake. But it’s the second earthquake in three days as it turns out, the other being in 27:51 at the moment when Jesus died.

And what we see if we do a bit of looking around in Matthew’s Gospel is that the earth isn’t the only thing that shakes when the power of God comes up against the structures of people.  Like the shaking caused by the earth’s plates rubbing up against one another, earthly people and institutions shake when they rub up against the power of God.

In verse 4 we read that when these highly trained Roman guards met an angel sent by God, they “shook and became like dead men.”

Going back just a week in Scripture to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in Matthew 21:10 we read that the whole city [of Jerusalem] was in turmoil when Jesus entered. People knew that Jesus had come to confront the established order of things.  They could sense that some trouble was coming and they were anxious.

We can even go all the way back to Matthew 2:3 and read of the time the Magi met King Herod and asked about “the child who has been born king of the Jews.”  Matthew tells us that Herod “was frightened.”  It’s a synonym of the words used in Matthew 28, but it conveys the same meaning.  When confronted with the power of God, human structures and attitudes and methods realize there a greater power.  Everyone associated with the old power structures responds to the coming of Jesus in fear. We’re tempted to laugh out loud hearing that King Herod trembled in fear because a toddler is a threat to his throne.

The earthquake that Matthew says accompanied the angel’s appearance established a new order for the world.  All of this happens in verses 3 and 4; the stone is rolled away from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb and the guards collapse in panic. When we finally get to verse 5 the only ones left standing are the ones we met at the beginning of the story: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.  These two women are the key players in the resurrection story.  

Seeing these two women in the story and the crucial role they played in the story of our faith reminded me of some characters from Sherlock Holmes stories. You might know enough of the Sherlock Holmes story to recognize the names of Dr. Watson or Professor Moriarty. But there some other characters that play an important role in a few stories; they’re the “Baker Street Irregulars,” a group of street children to Holmes hires as spies.  In 19th century London, poor, homeless children were everywhere—they were so prevalent that nobody really saw them. So Holmes could pay these children to go to certain places and watch for certain things, because these children were essentially hidden in plain sight.  Sherlock Holmes found great significance in their seeming insignificance.

That’s what is going on here. The women aren’t a threat to anybody, so they could go to the tomb and see things that no one else would be able to see. And because they did, they became the first ones to hear the great news: “He is not here; for he has been raised” (Matthew 28:6).  The women are the first to realize that everything Jesus said was true. All the persons in authority are left defeated.  The methods taken against Jesus have been proven to be without power. Jesus’ resurrection validates everything in his ministry.

Responding to good news

What is the response to this news?  If the Gospel story of Jesus’ resurrection helps us see that the people and the methods used to stop Jesus are ineffective, what else is there to see, and how should we respond?

We should see the women worship Jesus when they meet him on the road. Worship is one way that we show our values have been reoriented in the face of something or someone more powerful. The women stop the important work they are doing—what could be more important than sharing news of the resurrection?!—and acknowledge the worth and the lordship of Jesus. Everything else can wait while we structure our lives around the acknowledgement that Jesus is Lord!

We should see that in the resurrection the nameless and powerless become heroes while the named and powerful are shown to be helpless. In times of upheaval—like the resurrection and even like the times we’re in now—the ways we have normally measured what is important and unimportant gets turned on their head.  In these days of social isolation we’re all much more keenly aware of the importance of people like grocery store employees and nursing assistants in assisted living facilities and the people who sell food and pick up our trash in places like stadiums and concert halls, and a whole host of other jobs that we have previously been able to undervalue or ignore. Whatever normalcy we have in life is being significantly influenced by people whose jobs we haven’t always valued as highly as we should.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes when he said things like “Blessed are those who mourn, or who are weak, or who are peacemakers.” It’s why Jesus had time for people who were sick and suffering.  These are the important people; these are the important things to be involved in.  Sitting with someone who is suffering or forgiving someone who has offended you contributes nothing to our national economy, but these actions are of tremendous value in this resurrection life.

The resurrection validates everything about Jesus’ ministry. That’s important, because all we know are the strange in between times where the ways of the world exist as viable options side by side with the way of Jesus.  And when we come face to face with those situations that make the ways of Jesus seem like not so great an idea, we ought to have the courage to pray for an earthquake of our own to shake everything up and reorder our priorities and life.

[apenitentialprayer]

I figured this was a fitting question considering your url, haha. What are some misconceptions about Purgatory you hear all the time, and what is it as defined by the Roman Catholic Church?

Let me try this again! This is going to be a long one, sorry not sorry. :P

Let’s get the definitional stuff out of the way. Purgatory is the “final purification of the elect” (CCC 1031), through which the saved are made ready for union with God. Now, this union is made possible through Jesus Christ and His redemptive suffering during the Crucifixion. So why is Purgatory needed? Union with God requires detachment from sin. “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC 1030) go through a process of purification to break any attachment we may still have to our individual vices. Purgatory is thus an extension of what we’re supposed to be doing here, which is the detachment from sin so that we may love God as much as we possibly can.

The doctrine of Purgatory was dogmatically defined in 1245, but the concept of the final purification goes back to the early Christian Church. Saint Ambrose of Milan speaks of a purifying fire at the gates of Heaven that all must walk through; his disciple, Saint Augustine, is careful to distinguish between hellfire and the corrective flames of purification. Saint Bede the Venerable actually describes visions of these flames. For those who need Scriptural evidence, Saint Paul seems to have a similar idea in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 -

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

I’m about to enter into the realm of speculation here, but the Lord’s Prayer might also allude to Purgatory. The line “lead us not into temptation” may also be translated as “do not subject us to the final test” (as you will see in many modern English translations of Matthew and Luke). In the (very basic) commentary that comes with the standard NABRE translation, this ‘test’ is linked to the trials and persecutions believed to take place right before the coming of the Kingdom, an idea very prevalent in Jewish apocalyptic works. Perhaps it is possible that it might also be asking that we not need to go through the final ‘testing’ of the purification? Maybe this allusion is just in my head, but possibly something to consider.

Of course, the most direct allusion to Purgatory in the Bible is in the Book of Maccabees (which is why I saved it for last; keep in mind that while Protestants reject its Inspired nature, about 61.6% of Christians do accept it as Scripture). In 12:39-46, Judas Maccabeus is described as performing sacrifices to expiate the sins of some of his soldiers. While the author’s purpose of including this story is to prove that Judas believed in the resurrection of the dead (see verses 43-44), it also serves the purpose of showing that it is possible to aid the dead after they have died; if they all went immediately to heaven or hell, this would not be possible. The full text I am referring to reads:

On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his companions went to gather up the bodies of the fallen and bury them with their kindred in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had fallen. They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden. Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection in mind; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.

ANYWAY, what are my least favorite misconceptions of Purgatory

Purgatory is Eternal

A few years back, when I was on a bus, two elderly women were talking about DNRs. One of them was disturbed because her brother had signed one. The other woman, in an act that I can only call extremely uncharitable, equated signing a DNR with suicide, and told her that the best her brother could hope for was “eternity in Purgatory.” I was very angry with that; first because while suicide is considered a very serious sin, the Catholic Church currently takes a relatively lenient stance towards it, admitting that many factors can reduce an individual’s personal responsibility for it, while also stating that we should pray for those who commit suicide (CCC 2282-2283). So the “best” one could hope for is not eternity in Purgatory, but eternity in the arms of a merciful and understanding Father.

But besides that, this woman held a deeply flawed understanding of what Purgatory is. Purgatory is not an afterlife, a kind of third option for those who weren’t damned but not good enough for Heaven either. If you are in Purgatory, it is because you are saved. Purgatory is by its very nature transitional, a form of preparation for heaven for those who were not sufficiently prepared at the moment of their deaths. To treat Purgatory as an eternal destination deeply distorts orthodox Christian cosmology, which understands that everything will ultimately have to choose to either be of God or to be of the devil.

People Spend Many Lifetimes in Purgatory

This is actually very common among Catholics, including myself until very recently. If you look at traditional prayer cards that have indulgenced prayers, you’ll often see something like “300 days” written down on the card. People see this, and assume that this means that saying this prayer eliminates 300 days from one’s stay in Purgatory. Which means Purgatory is either virtually empty because people can eliminate their “time” in Purgatory (as if it is some kind of sentence), or Purgatory is some excruciatingly long time in which 300 days is virtually nothing.

Purgatory shouldn’t be seen as this transactional thing. The time one spends in Purgatory is exactly the amount of time it needs for someone to come to terms with themselves and detach themselves completely from their sins. The ‘300 days’ on the prayer card is very much a this-worldly thing; devoutly praying the indulgenced prayer is considered equal to fasting for 300 days. This was a lot more important when Confessors gave penances that could be that extreme. I think the longest penance I have ever received, ever, was spending ten minutes in Eucharistic adoration. I’m not necessarily saying that this shift is a good or bad thing, but it’s a thing that has changed.

So how long does one stay in Purgatory for? However long it takes. We know that we can speed up the process by interceding on their behalf, through prayer and offering up our sufferings and indulgences for their sake, and that’s about it. In Pope Benedict XVI’s Spe Salvi, paragraph 48, he reminds us that “simple terrestrial time” is irrelevant when it comes to the Communion of Saints. As we are all members of the Body of Christ, we are inexplicably connected to one another in eternity, and all our good deeds and all our sins affect everyone else. In paragraph 45, he says that the ‘duration’ of Purgatory is incalculable precisely because it happens outside of that terrestrial time. So don’t worry about it; just pray for your brothers and sisters, knowing that they are effective precisely because our connection to them exists in eternity.Those are my two big ones. I hope this has been at least somewhat educational?

[newtshirtcom]

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[life-in-every-limb]

Gird yourselves with sackcloth And lament, O priests; Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God . . . ~ Joel 1:13

When I am disturbed about world events, I head to my computer, looking for something to read.  I read for facts, for analysis, and to process.  Fortunately, in such times as these, others are moved to write to provide for this need.

So I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about the sex abuse crisis in the Church, and I wanted to share some of what I’ve read with you, hoping to provide insight, suggestions, and comfort as well as inspiring discussion.

Including a link here does not mean that I in general am a fan of the publication in which the piece appeared, or of the author, nor that I agree with or can confirm the truth of every position taken, as I will qualify below.  I’m a little hesitant about sharing from some of these sources, frankly.  I read from a variety of publications, some “liberal” and some “conservative” for lack of a better way to describe them; I feel very uncomfortable with using political terminology to describe matters of faith but I think we all know what I mean by these shortcuts in this context.

I don’t agree with the aims and philosophies of every source, nor do I endorse every word written.  I’ve included links to author bios when available and to the home page for each publication so you can decide for yourself what weight to give their words.  I’m including along with the link to each piece a quotation that gives a preview of the article so that you can decide whether you’d care to read more. Every article either helped me, informed me, or gave me something to think about as I deal with this.  I hope that you may find them useful or at least interesting, and I’d love to know your thoughts.

Provocative Questions

I’ll start with some of the most challenging and thoughtful articles I’ve read, pieces that engage with some very difficult questions.  All of us want to understand how this happened and how to put an end to it for all time.  Everyone has his pet theory:  It’s celibacy! It’s the gays! It’s the lack of women in the priesthood!  (None of that is what I think, for what it’s worth.) Some of these perspectives are represented in the writing that follows.  I don’t pretend to have the answer to any of this, and I cannot confirm the truth of every story, although all of it appeared in trustworthy publications.  Brace yourself before reading the personal accounts of priestly formation.  If even ten percent of it is accurate then I don’t even know what to say about the future of the priesthood.

I.  From Eve Tushnet on Patheos:

A Closeted Subculture

There is no way to have a church without gay priests. What you can have is a church where the only gay priests are those unscrupulous enough to lie about their orientation and longings, plus those so frightened and ashamed that they couldn’t bring themselves to admit those longings even to themselves. You can have a church, in other words, with only the most damaged (and vulnerable) gay priests possible.

II.  From Paul Blaschko in Commonweal:

Inside the Seminary

From 2008 through 2010, I was a seminarian in St. Paul, Minneapolis, an archdiocese now entrenched in its own abuse scandal. My experience there led me to believe that the problem of priestly sexual abuse is due, at least in part, to the failure of seminaries to provide adequate human and sexual formation to men studying for the priesthood.

III.  From Rod Dreher in The American Conservative:

Inside the Seminary Closet

I would have held anyone’s secret in order to keep my own from being exposed. The reason I lay these stories bare now it because of my strong belief that this pervasive dysfunctional culture is at the deepest core of the cover-up, abuse, and scandal of all forms–not just sexual–that continue to be rampant in these church circles.

IV.  From Massimo Faggioli in Commonweal

Trent’s Long Shadow

This new phase of the clerical sex-abuse crisis is more a crisis of the Tridentine church than of the Vatican II Church, because the church in which that abuse took place is, in terms of its institutional structure, still essentially Tridentine. The effort to reform the church in light of what we now know about sexual abuse and abuses of power must look back further than the Second Vatican Council, which did not so much open a new era as begin to close down an old one whose remnants are still with us. 

V.  From Simcha Fisher of I Have to Sit Down:

Would a Female Priesthood Disrupt Sex Abuse?

 It’s not the evil of maleness that is the problem. It’s the evilness of humanity. It’s the weakness and corruptibility of human nature. We don’t need more women on the inside. We need more clear-thinking, courageous women and men on the outside, willing and able to see clearly and speak loudly, and, most importantly, capable of bringing the guilty to justice.

VI.  From Andrew Sullivan in the Daily Intelligencer:

Cleansing the Catholic Church of Its Sins

We may still believe in Jesus. But precisely because of that, we can no longer believe in the church. No one is untouched. . . . This is no time to shore up the institution. It’s time to open it up and cleanse it. 

How should the Church respond?

There is no shortage of opinions on this question.  And end to the silence, as I wrote myself last week, is the centerpiece of every article out there.  Also prevalent is the need for a thorough housecleaning with massive resignations.  Once again, I don’t agree with every word in every piece and I have highlighted some of what struck me.

I.  From Simcha Fisher of I Have to Sit Down:

Dear Priests, I Am Begging You to Speak about This Scandal

We need to know that you are as struck with horror as we are. We need to know that you would be on our side if we were the ones calling the police. We need to know that you care for us more than you care about falling afoul of some toothless pastoral directive from above. We need someone to be with us in this free fall of horror.

II.  From Peter Jesserer Smith in the National Catholic Register:

Erie Bishop Models What a Real Apology to Victims Looks Like

You may be aware that we recently unveiled new policies and implemented procedures to ensure that this criminal behavior is stopped.  . . . But this is not the moment to focus on our efforts. Today, I simply stand before you, humbled and sorrowful.

III.  From Courageous Priest:

Finally, A Faithful Apology from the Pulpit

You can laugh at me and think I am crazy but when I heard the news about former-Cardinal McCarrick two things surfaced in me at once: (1) anger; and, (2) the thought that I should sell all my belongings, shave my head, live in a stone hut, and start a new religious order.  How will we rebuild from this mess?  Who will do it?  The answer throughout all of history in the face of moral crises in the Church has always been saints.  Everyday people make a more radical decision for Jesus and that starts healing and repair and roots out the corruption and evil.  I’m probably too weak to be a St. Francis of Assisi… I don’t know… but we need some new men and women who will radically reform their lives and that of the Church.

IV.  From ChurchPop:

What Should a Priest Do When a Stranger Yells “Pedophile!” at the Store?

We’re all rightfully angry at these crimes and their cover-up. Catholics, lay and clergy, shouldn’t get defensive.

V.  From Rosary Bay:

**I am certainly not in agreement with what seems to me to be the radical traditionalism espoused by this publication, and I am not even sure this rite is valid any more, but it would be satisfying to see it used on a few bishops, anyway.

Rite of Degradation of a Bishop

Next, one of the assistants gives the degrandus a crosier, which the degradator takes from the man’s hand, saying: “We take from you the shepherd’s staff, to indicate you no longer have any claim on the pastoral office which you have mismanaged.”

VI.  From Mark Thiessen for the Washington Post:

The Catholic Church needs a #MeToo moment – and it should start here in Washington

The episcopacy as an institution has been corrupted. A culture of silence allowed a culture of abuse to flourish. Bishops consumed with what the pope called “the thirst for power” have through both action and inaction allowed evil to spread through the church. That evil must be rooted out.  It is time for the Catholic Church to experience its own #MeToo moment. And it should start here in Washington – the modern symbol of earthly power. 

VII.  From Elizabeth Scalia of The Anchoress:

How Can We #RebuildMyChurch? Cardinal Wuerl Accidentally Points the Way

It’s very clear that too many bishops and cardinals have shown themselves to be untrustworthy overseers; they need to learn how to be priests again, and there is no better way to do that than to toss them out of the cushy offices, greatly reduce the number of personal assistants, end the entourage, discourage the gold cuff links and the bespoke shirts and the limos. Send them forth with a pair of good shoes and a working phone, into the mission territory of their parishes.

How should the Church NOT respond?

I.  From Sohrab Ahmari in the New York Post:

In the face of horror, the Catholic Church is worried about PR

The most painful aspect of all this is the blasé response of many American hierarchs and especially those, like Washington Archbishop Donald Cardinal Wuerl, who are implicated in the report. Wuerl and his colleagues have treated the report as a PR headache rather than a moral and spiritual wake-up call. They have acted like corporate reputation managers rather than successors to the Apostles.

II.  From Jake Tapper and Clare Foran on CNN:

Pennsylvania AG: Cardinal under scrutiny over report on priest abuse ‘is not telling the truth’

In a statement to CNN, Shapiro said, “Cardinal Wuerl is not telling the truth. Many of his statements in response to the Grand Jury Report are directly contradicted by the Church’s own documents and records from their Secret Archives. Offering misleading statements now only furthers the cover up.” 

How should the laity respond?

I know, I know, it isn’t our fault.  But we are the Church, and we are called to respond to this crisis.  Prayer should always be our first response, but not our only one.  Following are some ideas for prayer and other actions.

I.  From Paul  Begala on CNN.com:

Catholics in the Pew Must Unleash Their Anger

Like so many Catholics, I am reeling. I am praying that Pope Francis will institute reforms with teeth — yet I also believe that the Church is the People of Christ, and so the laity must lead.

II.  From Dr. Susan Reynolds on Daily Theology:

** I chose to sign this letter.

Statement of Catholic Theologians, Educator, Parishioners, and Lay Leaders on Clergy Sexual  Abuse in the United States

Today, we call on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to prayerfully and genuinely consider submitting to Pope Francis their collective resignation as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God’s People.

III.  From Haley of Carrots for Michaelmas:

What Can *WE* Do About the Abuse Crisis?

If one thing is clear, it is that now is the time to become a saint. That’s what the Church needs. I pray that the Vatican and the bishops will do the hard work that must be done to protect the innocent and bring justice to victims. But we need St. Catherine of Sienas to rise up.

IV.  From Emily of Our Home, Mary’s Mantle

Silence IS NOT Always Golden…

Protect one-another. Pray for each other. Show love and kindness. And please, don’t leave our Faith. As imperfect as leadership may be. Let’s take our responsibility and no longer be complacent, but reticent and watchful.

V.  From Pray More Novenas:

Novena for the Abuse Crisis | Accountability, Transparency and Healing

This novena is meant to help us pray for the victims of these terrible acts and for the Church. We will pray that all the abuse stops and any priests and bishops involved will be held accountable.

VI.  From my post last week:

Sackcloth and Ashes

I know many of you are tired of hearing folks offering thoughts and prayers whenever there is anything bad happening in the world.  I agree that when people who have the ability to act ONLY offer prayers, that’s an insult to God, who gave us brains and hands and blessings in order that we would cooperate with Him in bringing about good in the world.  But that doesn’t mean prayers are useless!

VII.  From Anni of A Beautiful, Camouflaged, Mess of a Life:

25 Ideas for Non-Traditional Fasting

Yesterday, the Pope called for the faithful to a period of fasting and prayer. The Catholic bloggers and artisans were already planning to kick off #sackclothandashes. . .  But, I am nursing a little guy . . . So, I had to get a little creative. These are all things I have done to “fast”. . . The purpose behind fasting for faith (not medical purposes) is to be intentional! Offer up your desires and will to God. . .

VIII.  From Laura of A Drop in the Ocean:A Litany for Our Church in Crisis

If you’ve not prayed a litany before, it’s a style of prayer with a list of intentions and responses. The response for each group of intentions is given in italics after the first line and is repeated after each individual intention. It can be prayed individually, or in a group where one person reads the intention and other say the response. It is meant to be prayed slowly as we reflect on each specific intention.

Personal Reflections

I will close with some outcries from the hurting heart of a faithful Catholic, reflecting the devastation and betrayal we all feel, as well as some words of wisdom and comfort from a friend.

I . From Mary Pezzulo of Steel Magnificat:

Better the Millstone: On the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report

Our shepherds have failed us. They have sinned horrendously. They have sinned, and if they don’t repent they will burn in the pit of hell, and that will be nothing more than justice for them. And they did it over a thousand times.  I don’t know where to go from here.

and

Sanctissima: Meditations on a Dark Assumption Day

If things go on as they are– if no changes are made, if the bishops keep stammering their “sadness” and “concern” without repentance, without resigning and going away, if everything goes on as it is– where will I be next year? On Assumption Day, Anno Domini 2019, will any of us still believe in things invisible?

II.  From Jeffrey Salkin in Religion News Service:

An open letter to my Roman Catholic friends

As difficult as it is now, as betrayed and as befouled as you might now feel – I urge you to cling to the idea that your faith might yet be more powerful than the malfeasance of those whom you once might have trusted.  God stands above our humanly-created structures. God alone deserves your faith.

These represent only a fraction of what I’ve read.  They have brought pain, challenge, conviction, healing, confusion, doubt, and conviction to me.  I will continue to read and pray and I welcome your suggestions.

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers, a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.   ~Hilaire Belloc

[erraticfairy]

If You Don’t Use It, You’ll Lose It: 4 Tips for Aging Well

My grandfather was a true Yankee farmer. Taciturn and dignified, he rarely said a paragraph when a few words would do.

Once, when I was in my mid-twenties and totally clueless about what it means to be dealing with old age, I found him sitting at the kitchen table translating poetry from German to English. Then in his late 70s, it had been over 50 years since he took basic German at the agricultural college he attended. I didn’t have any idea he knew even one German phrase. Yet there he was, diligently working out the poem, word by word by word.

“Why don’t you just get an English translation?” I asked.

He looked up briefly and growled, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

Later my grandmother explained that he was fearful he was losing some of his memory. Characteristically, he decided to do something about it. He was using the task of translating the poem and the pleasure of conquering it to exercise his brain. Fast forward 50 years. Now in my 70s, I have a new appreciation for my grandfather’s concerns.

Like many in my age group, I’ve watched a number of my friends slip into dementia. It starts with simple problems with memory and word-finding that we all have. (I know I’m not the only one to run through all my kids’ names before hitting on the right one.) But the symptoms of Alzheimers and the other dementias aren’t funny or brief. They result in increasing frustration and confusion for the patient and increasing frustration and sadness for those who love them.

Put simply, dementia is a decline of the mental faculties we so take for granted when we are young. According to the Alzheimer’s Foundation, to be diagnosed, a person must show decline or adverse changes in two of the following: Memory, Language, Thinking, Judgment and/or Behavior. The Merck Manual states that approximately 5 percent of people aged 65 to 74 years and 40 percent of people older than 85 have some form of dementia. It’s a frightening possibility for most of us as we age.

Some medications seem to slow it down, but science has yet to find a cure. Although it sometimes feels like fending off dementia is just dumb luck and genetics, there is now some good research that shows that we may be able to at least slow down the mental decline of advancing age by taking care of our whole self. Those who care for their bodies as well as their minds, who continue to do things that give life meaning and, yes, those who continue to enjoy life, may in fact be protecting their brains in ways that science has yet to understand.

4 Ways to Slow Down the Effects of Aging:

1. Take care of the basics: The basics don’t get any less important as we age. Sleep, diet and exercise are the building blocks for good health and for slowing down the effects of aging.

Getting enough sleep matters. Most adults require 7 to 9 hours of sleep, even if they don’t think so. It may become more difficult (44  percent of seniors experience insomnia and certain heart conditions and medications do intrude on sleep) but those are problems to solve, not a reason to give up on sleep.

Continuing to eat well is equally important. Nutritional requirements don’t really change although some people find that they eat less. A 2015 article in the Healthspan Campaign Newsletter quotes Simin Nikbin Meydani, D.V.M., Ph.D., the director of the USDA Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, as saying that “malnutrition, both under-nutrition and over-nutrition are prevalent among older adults.” So don’t give in to the temptation to skip meals or to limit your diet to a few favorite foods. Your body and your mind need to be fed.

And then there’s the question of exercise: We don’t need to become marathon runners to stay mentally sharp. A 2015 study conducted by scientists at the University of Kansas Alzheimer Disease Center and other institutions found that although participants who exercised 225 minutes a week scored higher in cognitive tests than those who exercised less, the difference was not markedly significant. Yes, those who exercised more became more physically fit. But it seems that just walking briskly for 20 to 25 minutes several times a week may help keep your memory sharp. Working in your garden, energetically doing the housework, and even keeping up with the grandkids counts.

2. Take care of the mind: Grandpa may have been right about the importance of exercising his brain but the jury is still out on the success of computer based brain exercise programs. A report by the National Institute on Aging states that there is no evidence that computer brain games are significantly effective. But the results of some studies, though not conclusive, are encouraging. In 2013, the Canadian Medical Association published a review of 32 studies of strategies to slow down the mental decline in aging, including 3 that looked at the success of mental exercise. All three reported significant improvement in brain function. So translate poetry, join a book club, do challenging puzzles or engage in good conversation that stretches your mind.

3. Continue to do things that give life meaning: Even as he aged, my grandfather did volunteer work with his church and with his men’s club. He wasn’t doing it to protect his brain, but it’s likely that it did exactly that. Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, has been called the father of positive psychology. He states “well-being cannot exist just in your own head: Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment.” Continuing to be involved with others in doing things that matter contributes to happiness and, probably, to aging well.

4. Have Fun: Imagine my surprise when my grandpa started taking mandolin lessons in his mid 70s. He had inherited his grandfather’s instrument but had never played it. “Now or never,” he said. Little did he know he was doing his mind a favor. A study done at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine states that “leisure activities such as reading, playing board games, playing musical instruments and dancing were all associated with a reduced risk of developing dementia.” If you’ve been waiting until you “have time” to start oil painting, to learn to play the piano, join a chess club or learn to dance — make the time and go for it!

My grandfather moved into old age with a sharp mind and an open heart, feeling useful and loved. There are no guarantees that doing any of the above recommendations held off dementia for him — or will for me. But they certainly will keep me healthier and happier. It’s comforting to know that there is a developing body of evidence that doing these things may also have important protective factors for our aging brains.

from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2IKEEB0 via theshiningmind.com

[ennaraw52]

What is it like to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina?

My answer to What is it like to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina?

Answer by Enna Morgan:

Twilight envelopes the city, and gives birth to a new ecology

photo: enna morgan

''Sexy, alive and supremely confident, this beautiful city gets under your skin. Like Europe with a melancholic twist, Buenos Aires is unforgettable,'' reads Sandra Bao's article in the Lonely Planet. Well, she is not lying, this bustling metropolis, better known as 'The Paris of the Americas' and dubbed an 'alpha city,' has earned all those pseudonyms. But like every other city, there are some of the not so dazzling truths that don't exactly make the ''top 10 tweets'' list, and many that, though recorded, do not make headline news.

Prior to moving to Buenos Aires, I was bedazzled by the tales of a rich, populous city, steeped in culture and drizzled with romance, theatre and dance. The home of the amorous Argentine tango, and the famous asado. I dreamt of dancing in the street until the early morning, hearing the sound of violins strumming late into the night, and decadent food beckoning from every street corner.

Though some of those images were somewhat realised (the food), the caricatured version and the reality of the untold stories left an impression that as Ms Bao stated, is unforgettable. My experiences in Buenos Aires will forever alter the way I view the country, other people’s reviews of the places they visit, and the word ''romantic.''

As you brush off the suitcase gingerly in preparation for your own escapades in this urban sprawl, here are some little-known realities that can help to ease you into the culture, and help to reduce the frequency of breaking out the inhaler.

It is all colour coded, really!

1. The Argentines are terribly colour conscious. They view the darker-complexed people as either whores of thieves, and they treat them accordingly. And by darker complexed people, I am not referring specifically to African Americans or Africans, I am speaking of……those who are not light-skinned; it is not a race issue, it is a skin-tone issue.

For instance, if you are dark-skinned and standing in line at a Confeteria (or any other such place), by the time it is your turn to be served, the price of items would automatically increase right before your eyes. Some store owners (Chinese) would even refuse you service, and very often (most prevalent after midnight, and outside of the main city limits), the buses would not stop for you. Additionally you would always find those who would want to make a point of letting you know exactly how they feel (especially if they happen to be feeling slightly inferior due to their lack of command of the English Language). One such example occurred in one of my classrooms.

Among other subjects, I taught Business English, and thus worked in several premiere corporations (names deliberately withheld) around Capital Federal. One morning, in the middle of class, amongst a group of ''well-educated'' professionals (department heads of a well-known international company), we were discussing Brazil’s economy. Out of nowhere (that I could trace) one of the students elected to explain to me the difference between the Brazilians and the Argentines (let's keep in mind that for the 18 months I spent in Buenos Aires, there was never an Argentine who claimed roots from anywhere other than France or Italy; let's also keep in mind that the topic was centered on ''economy'' and nothing anthropological or sociological in nature).

She explained that, ''The Argentines are better because their ancestors are from France and Italy, but the Brazilians, they are…..well……BLACK!'' Well, that certainly cleared up that mystery! I have been thus culturally enlightened, and had to then make notes to myself to reconstruct my prior knowledge of the Brazilian genealogy. Foolish me, I always had it in mind that being colonised by Portugal in 1500AD, then subsequently falling under the Iberian Crown, they would then be descendants of Spain and Portugal, but then what do I know! I was only the dark-skinned Indian girl, after all, no doubt a thief or a whore!….or, (Heavens forbid!) both!

For the first several months that I was there, I had noticed that I was repeatedly the recipient of very hostile stares (they make little effort to hide their distaste), and persistent searching of my bags whenever I enter into a supermarket. On one occasion, after being in the store for about 8 minutes, I was even hauled to the front of one of the Carrefour supermarkets by one of their employees (did not know who she was or why she wanted me to follow her, so I did), accused of stealing and publicly searched.

After the search revealed nothing, the (frustrated) woman (plain clothes security) who made the accusation, admitted that although she had no concrete evidence of me stealing anything, she just wanted to check (she had begun following me around the store from the time I entered), and so finding nothing, she admonished me for being too long in the store. I was by that time in the store only about 15 – 20 minutes (ten of which was consumed in the search).

Many other such incidents followed until I decided to put a stop to it…..in my own signature style. No need for details, let's just say that I established myself, in my immediate surroundings, as a force to (not) reckon with.

Before leaving this topic, I will add that I was one day discussing these phenomena with the laundromat fellow (light-skinned), who I then learned happened to have some dark-skinned relatives; turns out that they too have had to endure similar insults, albeit being native Argentines. He then explained that such discriminatory actions are normal within the Argentinian culture. I guess this acquired human habit of colour discrimination has no geographic boundaries.

Are they sexy or sex-starved?

2. No doubt the Argentines are indeed ''sexy,'' as Ms Bao stated; however, experience suggests that this trait it is not in a pleasingly seductive or sensual way, but instead, in a disgustingly carnal manner.

To illustrate:

Around rush hour (mornings, 7 – 9am, lunchtime, and after work, 4 – 6pm), as is typical with every city that relies on the subway for public transportation, the trains are usually jam-packed. I dreaded the ride, not for the reason that I would be up close and personal with a vast array of beggars, workers, tourists, and proletariats, but for the simple reason that this jam-packed atmosphere presented ample opportunity for the thus inclined men to get their jollies. You see, the train would be so tightly packed that it would preclude any movement of any sort; even breathing would become impossible.

Very often you would find yourself either inhaling the carbon dioxide of your travelling companion, whose nose was lodged half-an- inch in front of yours, or you may feel a solid and disturbing protrusion moving independently in the vicinity of your ass (yes, I said ass – deal with it!). And every move you make to re-adjust yourself to get away from it, would serve only to excite the ''protrusion'' to literally jump with joy. Ugh!

This was such a nauseating experience that it brought me to a point of avoidance. I chose to walk home from Nove de Julio, the junction where I would transfer from the B (red) train to the C (blue) line to get to my home on Avenida Viamonte. Although it was several blocks away, it was more enjoyable than the invasion of the joysticks that would attack from various directions. But, alas, the odium was not limited to the subte.

On one occasion I was on the bus, which was horribly crowded. I was hugging a post since the beginning of the ride, and being deep in thought, I was not quite aware that as the bus progressed along its journey, the crowd had thinned to the point of there being only a few of us left standing.

I became aware of something poking me in the rear, I then turned to discover that even though there was no longer a crowd that would necessitate close body contact, there was a short, unattractive man (that describes half the population) standing behind me, intent on satisfying his (obviously) unfulfilled carnal urges. Needless to say, with some well placed expletives used as adjectives, I suggested that he find another place/ person to disgust, and expressed very clearly where he could stick his tallywacker in the future.

I did a lot more walking since that incident,…….and enjoyed it immensely.

But don’t let the libido effect scare you off, there are things to enjoy in this tropical, asado-loving, dulce de leche-filled cosmopolis.

There was actually a great benefit to being dark-skinned in Buenos Aires. All around me, both night and day the light skinned teachers, and tourists were being robbed daily, but I wasn't. I think that the rationale here was simple: Since the dark-skinned folks were considered thieves or prostitutes, then they would obviously not be worthy of a pickpocketer's time and attention.

I could therefore walk the streets very late at night or early morning (which I did very often after a good salsa or tango), unperturbed. That meant much to me, since one of my primary reasons for being in BA was to learn AT (Argentine tango).

When the fair winds blow

3. After being in Buenos Aires for 18 months, I had to take a serious look at the perception of others, especially when it came to terms like “beautiful” and ''paradise,'' terms often used to describe the Argentinian experience. I have seen the picturesque, colourful photos of San Telmo and La Boca, and have heard the hauntingly romantic stories that surround these places, but the reality is that right beside the beauty and the orgasmic culture, there is the Riachuelo, the stench of which hovers in the air, and causes you to catch your breath like the sudden appearance of a whore in church.

Casually meandering through the city, with constructed walkways like a suburban city park, the Riachuelo ranks number 14 on the list of the 15 most toxic places in the world. And this chemically laden air, a combination of metallurgic, sewage, pesticides, and petroleum is inhaled daily by the 15+ million of inhabitants and visitors who are crammed into the city.

Interestingly ironic, the name of the city and province is Buenos Aires, which literally translates to ''good air,'' or more accurately, ''fair winds,'' but existentially, the city is a living, breathing contradiction. In addition to the atmospheric condition generated by the Riachuelo, the streets sport a constant layer of dog shit, evenly spread through the popular avenidas like peanut butter on hot toast. Now that leaves a lot to ruminate on (pun intended). Picture hot steaming streets, and equally hot, freshly made dog shit. Oh, yeah! You get the picture…..and it is not a pretty one.

My walk home in the evenings (which became increasingly frequent since I wanted to avoid the vulgarity on the train) was literally on a thin carpet of shit. Unlike the USA, there are no lease or pooper laws (maybe I am wrong, and there are, but they are certainly not observed) so the dog owners take their dogs out for a walk, and allow them to relieve themselves in the street.

By the end of the day, the feaces have been properly trampled and distributed by the thousands of pedestrians and it is smoothly smeared all over the street ……then tracked into their homes. Yuk!

Nove de Julio, the widest avenue in the world, spans 14 driving lanes

photo: enna morgan

I resided on Avenida Viamonte & Esmeralda, in the heart of Capital Federal (a few blocks from the famous Florida and Nove de Julio), so the area was always as busy as a queen bee in mating season, with incessant tourists and resident activity. On a hot summer's day, I would observe the tourists as they languidly enjoy their meal in the open air restaurants that line the sidewalk.

And when that good old Buenos Aires wind picked up, it picked up! I mean dust particles, and dessicated fesces that just a few hours ago was smeared thinly across the sidewalk. With the help of the scorching tropical sun, the shit is now nicely dried out and transformed into shit sprinkles. Yum! Lounging insouciantly on my balcony, enjoying this view, I often wondered how many restaurant patrons ever stopped to consider that croutons and black pepper were not the only toppings they were enjoying in their salads!

No charge for the extra topping!

During my 18 month stay in the tango Mecca, needless to say, I rarely dined in restaurants, and I never dined outdoors. And due to the proximity of the Riachuelo, and my knowledge of the fact that it runs right through the city, I never ate fish.

Sunset over Umberto Primo

photo: enna morgan

The poor little rich city.

4. I am not sure if the occurrences that I witnessed in Buenos Aires are reflective of the poverty level left in the wake of this erstwhile boomtown, but I will say that I have visited what are considered to be some very poor countries, and I have not witnessed anything close to the experiences I have had in Buenos Aires.

Household garbage in Buenos Aires is disposed of by setting it in bags and placing those in the street. Just after sundown, everynight, families come out with carts and very often they would gather around a large collection of household or office garbage and proceed to spend the evening gathered around it like Christmas dinner. They would then open all the bags and extract anything they can sell, then place them separately in large garbage bags in their cart.

Even before the sorting takes place, they would gather up the discarded food they had found in the garbage bags and huddle together in a circle, and seated comfortably amidst the stench and piles of rubbish and dog shit, they would feast. No one was exempt, from the infants up to the elderly would partake in this nightly family event.

Families in filth, photo deliberately blurred

photo: enna morgan

After the meal, they would then gather their ‘treasures,’ and move on to another area, to repeat the process, leaving in their wake, the thrashed and scattered rubbish, which, by 9pm, with the assistance of the wind and the incessant passersby, would be evenly distributed along these famous, prized, commonly exalted areas.

By midnight, the garbage collectors would drive around in their trucks and pick up the bags of garbage, after which, the hosers would come out (only in Capital Federal) and wash down the streets, leaving only the large, black, hideous cockroaches to run around, frantically scrambling to track down the scent of the food, of which they were so unceremoniously robbed.

What would Polo do? Would this become a poster shot? Avenida Florida, BA

photo: enna morgan

The next day, en route to work, I would see the clamouring streets filled with exhuberant tourists and ambitious workers, oblivious to the filth and poverty that resides just below the surface, and the strange eco-system that thrives subrosa, and slips in and out with the darkness, like a thief in the night.

And at lunchtime as I pick my way home through the crowded streets, I would smile as tourists and residents alike would brush past me in search of their choiced destination the outdoor cafe. They jostle each other to get ahead, lured by the smell of the savoury empanada and images of a crunchy ensalada as they proceed to bask in the glory of their South American Shangri-La, which they would later digitally transform on Facebook into the envy of their friends and family back home.

At night after I have made my way home without any extra baggage, I would sit at my computer and skim the latest news and stories, that would litter the computer screen like the city’s waste densely punctuating the burgh. The raving reviews would pour in from various parts of the globe, published by the itinerant travellers, who had just returned home and was eager to share their wealth of good news about the ‘good air’ city.

The story content is always the same: the scintillating details of warm summer night in open-air cafes, with a guitar strumming softly above the cafe chatter; decadent desserts soaked in dulce de leche, served by a dreamy Latin lover (you may have noticed that I did not touch on that subject this entire time; that was a deliberate omission; that's a book all by itself) with the looks of Marcus Schenkenberg, the eyes of Ryan Gosling, the savoir faire of James Bond, and the mesmerising baritone of Josh Groban, gliding along the strings of Herb Alpert's 50 guitars.

And as I read the details, I would have to look out my window to remind myself that the glossy, panoramic exotica , with the beautiful sceneries and glowing descriptions that fill the pages on my computer screen are the same pictures of the scenes in the street just below me – the sexy swell of life, love, and laughter, and its faithful accompanying melancholic twist – the train of woe, waste, and wanton.

A woman settles in for the treasure hunt, CBD, Buenos Aires

photo: enna morgan

A man tries to wrap up his collection as the garbage collectors do their job of pick up the scattered remnants

photo: enna morgan

What is it like to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina?

  from What is it like to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina?