The good news: Pakistan is finally starting to fight some of the Taliban-allied militias on its northwest frontier.
The bad news: It's only because they're about to capture a city of 3 million people.
FLASHBACK: The battle for Swat, a region some of us know all too well.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Death and the archbishop
So now we know what got Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, killed earlier this year: He wouldn't pay up anymore.
This is from the front page of the Times this morning. Not sure what to think yet -- other than that (with the possible exception of the photo they put above the fold) it's one of the more blood-boiling things I've seen in quite a while.
It's the flip-side, I guess, of the mass exodus of Iraqi Christians since the rise of the insurgency: Those who have stayed have been forced to pay handsomely for the privilege -- with the protection money becoming a major source of funding for Al Qaeda & Co.
I've been trying for a while to imagine myself in the shoes of one of those Iraqi priests -- and increasingly longing for the stark moral clarity of a deny-Christ-or-be-eaten-by-lions type deal.
I hope I could say with a straight face that I wouldn't pay; cooperating with that kind of evil just doesn't seem to fall under the rubric of "rendering unto Caesar." As for those who did: There's a kind of humbling relief that such a decision wasn't my cross to bear -- just as it's now not my place to judge.
Still, I can't help but be struck by the model of Archbishop Rahho. Who knows whether he felt any of the shame for making the payments that comes through from the other Christians in the article -- but it certainly didn't stop him from denouncing them as soon as he saw his opening. Probably a lesson there.
May his martyrdom be a powerful one -- especially in a climate that tosses that word around far too often.
Rest in peace.
This is from the front page of the Times this morning. Not sure what to think yet -- other than that (with the possible exception of the photo they put above the fold) it's one of the more blood-boiling things I've seen in quite a while.
It's the flip-side, I guess, of the mass exodus of Iraqi Christians since the rise of the insurgency: Those who have stayed have been forced to pay handsomely for the privilege -- with the protection money becoming a major source of funding for Al Qaeda & Co.
I've been trying for a while to imagine myself in the shoes of one of those Iraqi priests -- and increasingly longing for the stark moral clarity of a deny-Christ-or-be-eaten-by-lions type deal.
I hope I could say with a straight face that I wouldn't pay; cooperating with that kind of evil just doesn't seem to fall under the rubric of "rendering unto Caesar." As for those who did: There's a kind of humbling relief that such a decision wasn't my cross to bear -- just as it's now not my place to judge.
Still, I can't help but be struck by the model of Archbishop Rahho. Who knows whether he felt any of the shame for making the payments that comes through from the other Christians in the article -- but it certainly didn't stop him from denouncing them as soon as he saw his opening. Probably a lesson there.
May his martyrdom be a powerful one -- especially in a climate that tosses that word around far too often.
Rest in peace.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!
Not that you were going to see The Happening anyway.
For the record, I enjoyed the movie -- which is like some of the other M. Night Shyamalan films I've seen in that they often need to age a little while before you realize just how silly they are.
One of Shyamalan's more obnoxious tells is that whenever he wants the audience to know something of significance to the plot, he'll have one of his bit characters just come out and say it. Thus, he uses his own cameo in Signs to tell the Mel Gibson character -- without any indication as to how on earth he might have come across this knowledge -- that he thinks the scary alien invaders are allergic to water. Which, of course, turns out to be true.
So as soon as the creepy old botanist who's fleeing the yet-unknown phenomenon that's causing everyone along the eastern seaboard to kill themselves randomly tells Mark Wahlberg, "I think I know what's doing this. It's the plants." -- well, you know it's the plants.
Turns out, the entire northeastern flora has up and decided its finally time to punish humanity for their wicked, polluting ways -- or, in more scientific terms, rapidly evolve a chemical defense mechanism that attacks people's self-preservation instinct.
Anthony Sacramone over at First Things has some interesting and only half tongue-in-cheek thoughts as to why the film's message might not be entirely as eco-radical as meets the eye, before coming to the conclusion that it's best not to think too hard about all this.
Which is probably true, because what I picked up from the film was a sneaky and none-too-coherent attack on nuclear power.
The question gets raised from time to time throughout the movie: Why is this "happening" only happening in the northeastern United States? We never find out for sure. But during the split-second that Wahlberg flips on the radio in an abandoned truck he finds, Shyamalan makes sure the entire audience knows (see above rule) that the northeast contains the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in the country. Then there are those cooling towers ominously (and probably anachronistically) looming over our heroes as they flee through the hills of eastern Pennsylvania. And the very last scene -- after everything's supposedly returned to normal -- contains rumblings of a new attack in (of all places) France.
Though one wonders whether Shyamalan's killer flowers have really thought this out all the way. If its really nuclear power that's got them in such a tizzy -- as opposed to deforestation, or greenhouse gasses, or suburban sprawl -- do they really want to be killing off all the people who run the plants in the first place?
For the record, I enjoyed the movie -- which is like some of the other M. Night Shyamalan films I've seen in that they often need to age a little while before you realize just how silly they are.
One of Shyamalan's more obnoxious tells is that whenever he wants the audience to know something of significance to the plot, he'll have one of his bit characters just come out and say it. Thus, he uses his own cameo in Signs to tell the Mel Gibson character -- without any indication as to how on earth he might have come across this knowledge -- that he thinks the scary alien invaders are allergic to water. Which, of course, turns out to be true.
So as soon as the creepy old botanist who's fleeing the yet-unknown phenomenon that's causing everyone along the eastern seaboard to kill themselves randomly tells Mark Wahlberg, "I think I know what's doing this. It's the plants." -- well, you know it's the plants.
Turns out, the entire northeastern flora has up and decided its finally time to punish humanity for their wicked, polluting ways -- or, in more scientific terms, rapidly evolve a chemical defense mechanism that attacks people's self-preservation instinct.
Anthony Sacramone over at First Things has some interesting and only half tongue-in-cheek thoughts as to why the film's message might not be entirely as eco-radical as meets the eye, before coming to the conclusion that it's best not to think too hard about all this.
Which is probably true, because what I picked up from the film was a sneaky and none-too-coherent attack on nuclear power.
The question gets raised from time to time throughout the movie: Why is this "happening" only happening in the northeastern United States? We never find out for sure. But during the split-second that Wahlberg flips on the radio in an abandoned truck he finds, Shyamalan makes sure the entire audience knows (see above rule) that the northeast contains the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in the country. Then there are those cooling towers ominously (and probably anachronistically) looming over our heroes as they flee through the hills of eastern Pennsylvania. And the very last scene -- after everything's supposedly returned to normal -- contains rumblings of a new attack in (of all places) France.
Though one wonders whether Shyamalan's killer flowers have really thought this out all the way. If its really nuclear power that's got them in such a tizzy -- as opposed to deforestation, or greenhouse gasses, or suburban sprawl -- do they really want to be killing off all the people who run the plants in the first place?
Friday, June 13, 2008
Among the Albanians
I'm a radio star!
Okay, not quite -- but among the many adventures of my junket to Albany was a brief appearance on Post State Editor Fred Dicker's daily radio show, which he hosts every morning from his office on the third floor of the Capitol. I'd be remiss, I suppose, if I didn't at least confess to the existence of a recording -- and though I at least held my own, I can't say my appearance was all that impressive.
Some people, as they say, have the face for radio. I'm still working on it.
Had I had my wits about me, I might have observed that Albany is a city of paradoxes. The first is the state version of that old chestnut that everyone hates "Congress" but loves their own congressman. I really did enjoy most of the politicians I met -- with full knowledge that they wouldn't get many votes if they weren't good at leaving that impression. Their office also pleads their case: A people worthy of democracy must be capable of elevating at least some competent and honorable men and women to lead it.
Otherwise, "By their works you shall know them" -- though that's perhaps not as friendly a judgment. I recommend Fred's show for a taste of what all this actually looks like.
The other paradox is something akin to what G.K. Chesterton called the "entirely practical and prosaic statement" that "whoever will lose his life, the same shall save it" -- or perhaps to Merry the Hobbit's insight from Lord of the Rings: "The closer we are to danger, the farther we'll be from harm." In other words (Chesterton again) the paradox of courage.
Not that you see much courage up there, of course; it's rather that if you look with open eyes, you start to see with precision the otherwise obscure moments where courage, and justice, and temperance, and study are lacking -- and thus, the ennobling role the virtues can play in shaping politics, even where "three men in a room" is the law of the land.
And as far as inspiration goes, that sure beats another tired Obama stump speech. At least, once you learn how to breathe through the fumes.
Okay, not quite -- but among the many adventures of my junket to Albany was a brief appearance on Post State Editor Fred Dicker's daily radio show, which he hosts every morning from his office on the third floor of the Capitol. I'd be remiss, I suppose, if I didn't at least confess to the existence of a recording -- and though I at least held my own, I can't say my appearance was all that impressive.
Some people, as they say, have the face for radio. I'm still working on it.
Had I had my wits about me, I might have observed that Albany is a city of paradoxes. The first is the state version of that old chestnut that everyone hates "Congress" but loves their own congressman. I really did enjoy most of the politicians I met -- with full knowledge that they wouldn't get many votes if they weren't good at leaving that impression. Their office also pleads their case: A people worthy of democracy must be capable of elevating at least some competent and honorable men and women to lead it.
Otherwise, "By their works you shall know them" -- though that's perhaps not as friendly a judgment. I recommend Fred's show for a taste of what all this actually looks like.
The other paradox is something akin to what G.K. Chesterton called the "entirely practical and prosaic statement" that "whoever will lose his life, the same shall save it" -- or perhaps to Merry the Hobbit's insight from Lord of the Rings: "The closer we are to danger, the farther we'll be from harm." In other words (Chesterton again) the paradox of courage.
Not that you see much courage up there, of course; it's rather that if you look with open eyes, you start to see with precision the otherwise obscure moments where courage, and justice, and temperance, and study are lacking -- and thus, the ennobling role the virtues can play in shaping politics, even where "three men in a room" is the law of the land.
And as far as inspiration goes, that sure beats another tired Obama stump speech. At least, once you learn how to breathe through the fumes.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Oh, Albany! (Part 2)
This is what I get for making fun of their architecture.
It's actually something my boss and I had been talking about for a while, but I just found out yesterday that he's sending me to Albany on Monday, this time for an entire week. The purpose: my continuing education in the utterly dysfunctional ways of New York government.
It should be useful. Next week's the second-to-last week of the legislative session, so its an especially happening time. Plus, I'll get to spend the week under the tutelage of the universally acknowledged "most feared reporter in Albany," Post state editor Fredric U. Dicker.
Just as long as I can decontaminate my soul when I get back.
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Monday, June 2, 2008
Oh, Albany!
New York's illustrious state capital gets a bad rap from those city-folk forced to do business in it. It's small, far away, and there's nothing to do, they say. Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Then again, I was only up there for one night.
The occasion was the annual Legislative Correspondents Association Dinner and Show, a black-tie affair where the Albany press corps gets to mock the state's powers that be -- largely to their faces. Let's just say they had a lot of material to work with this year. Video "rebuttals" were provided by Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco and Mayor Bloomberg (here and here, if you're at all curious). Perhaps more on this later.
But back to Albany. I'm something of a democrat when it comes to geography: every location has some hidden charm, whether we're talking about Willets Point or Staten Island. Albany is no exception. It's actually quite a pretty town in many respects. Plus it's right on the Hudson, and the train ride up from the city (a leisurely two-and-a-half hours) is absolutely gorgeous.
The centerpiece of all this is the Capitol building (above), a late-19th centure structure that (you can see) must be delightful to work in.
And then came Nelson Rockefeller. Here's the Capitol again, this time from the side. It's really the kind of building in which you can imagine big, important people like Teddy Roosevelt and Al Smith (for all their faults) doing big, important things:
Now here's what happens when you turn around:
And what on earth is this thing?
Welcome to the Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, home since 1973 to most of the bureaucracies that run New York -- and basically what Epcot Center would look like if DisneyWorld was in hell. Rockefeller, that playboy patron of the "arts," came up with much of the design himself.When I was in Claremont, I remember several lectures put on by the American-founding types at the Salvatori Center about the role of architecture in expressing and nourishing a nation's values. It's at least interesting to reflect that this may well have been the view from Eliot Spitzer's window.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Mayor Booker at the MI
There are benefits to being a card-carrying member of the working press. Free intellectual stimulation, for one. All of this is to say, if I haven't said so already, that the Manhattan Institute is a wonderful thing.
And that Cory Booker is an impressive guy. The MI had the young mayor of Newark over this morning for a breakfast lecture, purportedly on his new prison-to-work program, but what ultimately became the general story of the city as he found it two years ago, and what he's been doing since.
The background story is better laid out here, but the cartoon summary is that when New York City had Rudy Giuliani, Newark got stuck with Sharpe James, who Booker finally unseated in 2006. Booker's a democrat, but a young, tough-on-crime, school-vouchers-believing one, for whom the sky's the limit politically if he can actually deliver as promised.
Which would be a very good thing, at least judging from the 45 min I got to hear him talk. He's been compared to Barack Obama (young, black, charismatic, community organizer type), but while there are other things to recommend him over Obama, he's not quite as smooth.
He's even got a bit of that Mike-Bloomberg-post-partisan-problem-solver vibe, which would be annoying -- the one cringe-inducing moment of the breakfast came when, searching briefly for the right turn of phrase, he came up with "inefficiencies of the human spirit" -- if the problems he was facing weren't of such a greater magnitude, and if he didn't have the serious street cred to back it up.
His success, of course, remains to be seen, but all signs still indicate that this guy is for real. It tells you something about a guy when he moves into the housing projects immediately upon being elected to the city council and stays there for 8 years -- camping out on the street, among other things, to protest the lack of police protection.
As mayor, not only has he seriously cut the city's crime rate already, he'll also quite frequently tag along with cops on their nightly patrols, sometimes -- sometimes -- chasing down criminals himself.
I'm not quite sure what to think of that last part. It reminds me a bit of Winston Churchill's stint as home secretary back before WWI, when he once famously insisted on commanding a police confrontation with a group of anarchists holed up inside their London hideout. There's a school of thought that says that the great man didn't exactly help matters with his presence.
Then again, it was all part of the same package: A leader who had a strong enough sense of himself and his purpose to think to do something like that as anything more than a PR stunt.
So yeah, press work has its perks.
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Spring blog-keeping
Hey folks. My apologies for the long hiatus; I'm back now. It's been a busy and distraction-filled few weeks, with some exciting adventures I hope to catch you all up with eventually.
One of the benefits of being away is that I've had occasion to think a bit about this blog -- what I like, what I don't like, and what I'd like to do more of. Some thoughts:
*Three-week vacations aside, this is my 88th post in just under a year. (Yes, it's been that long.) Considering the shelf-life of most comparable "random musings"-style blogs, that's not half bad. I congratulate myself.
*I said when I started this thing that I hoped it would be a good exercise in disciplining my writing. How disciplined I've been, of course, is open to debate, but I've grown to appreciate blogging as a way to preserve my own voice in the midst of a day job that has me writing in a very different style. That's something I want to keep up. To that end, I'm going to try to cut down on posts like these, which -- while fun -- don't really say anything. Not that I'll leave off-beat subjects completely alone, just that when I have something to say about them, I'll actually take the time to say it.
*I suppose I'd be kidding myself if I thought I could completely avoid blogging about the election in the next few months. Still, it's something I'd like to get away from as much as possible. One of the great failings of this blog, as I see it, has been my lack of effort in giving a good account of my life in the city -- which, if I'm honest with myself, probably speaks to my own lack of serious contemplation on that score. No more. Expect this blog to get somewhat more personal in nature, but always with an eye to presenting useful insights and observations in that context. I promise not to start navel-gazing on you.
*To that end, a couple of ideas I've been kicking around for a while: One is to post more about what I'm reading at the moment, whenever I come across something useful to say. This naturally includes interesting lectures I've been to or movies I've seen (of which there have been several lately). The second is to start a bit of travel journaling. One of my favorite things to do here remains to find some random area of the city I've yet to explore, then take an hour or two just walking around. I'll start bringing a camera, too. Though I suppose I should start with a bit of an ode to my own neighborhood, which I've become quite taken with. Stay tuned.
One of the benefits of being away is that I've had occasion to think a bit about this blog -- what I like, what I don't like, and what I'd like to do more of. Some thoughts:
*Three-week vacations aside, this is my 88th post in just under a year. (Yes, it's been that long.) Considering the shelf-life of most comparable "random musings"-style blogs, that's not half bad. I congratulate myself.
*I said when I started this thing that I hoped it would be a good exercise in disciplining my writing. How disciplined I've been, of course, is open to debate, but I've grown to appreciate blogging as a way to preserve my own voice in the midst of a day job that has me writing in a very different style. That's something I want to keep up. To that end, I'm going to try to cut down on posts like these, which -- while fun -- don't really say anything. Not that I'll leave off-beat subjects completely alone, just that when I have something to say about them, I'll actually take the time to say it.
*I suppose I'd be kidding myself if I thought I could completely avoid blogging about the election in the next few months. Still, it's something I'd like to get away from as much as possible. One of the great failings of this blog, as I see it, has been my lack of effort in giving a good account of my life in the city -- which, if I'm honest with myself, probably speaks to my own lack of serious contemplation on that score. No more. Expect this blog to get somewhat more personal in nature, but always with an eye to presenting useful insights and observations in that context. I promise not to start navel-gazing on you.
*To that end, a couple of ideas I've been kicking around for a while: One is to post more about what I'm reading at the moment, whenever I come across something useful to say. This naturally includes interesting lectures I've been to or movies I've seen (of which there have been several lately). The second is to start a bit of travel journaling. One of my favorite things to do here remains to find some random area of the city I've yet to explore, then take an hour or two just walking around. I'll start bringing a camera, too. Though I suppose I should start with a bit of an ode to my own neighborhood, which I've become quite taken with. Stay tuned.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Adventures in popeaucracy ... or, how I scored those awesome mass tix
Something I learned last weekend: As far as massive, important bureaucracies go, you can do worse than the Archdiocese of New York.
Pope Benedict's visit was obviously a wonderful, holy thing. But from a logistics standpoint, I'm made to understand from folks on the fringes of the storm, it was also something of a nightmare.
Kinda like you'd expect.
My experience with this was relatively minor. Saturday morning (as I started to describe in the post previous), I was one of a hundred-odd volunteers assisting at the Papal mass for clergy and religious at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Supposedly, our role was to meet the priests as they got off their busses and escort them to the rooms reserved at the Palace Hotel where they could change into their vestments. (No one, obviously, was allowed to get anywhere close to the Cathedral on their own initiative.) Thing was, the clergyfolk knew the drill already, so our job basically became to stand in line along the sidewalk corridor leading to the hotel and greet them as they passed by.
This was actually very cool. For one thing, I had no idea that nuns had so many different kinds of habits. Plus the weather was gorgeous. I was also standing right there as busses and busses of bishops unloaded for their procession, and again as the entire American delegation of cardinals filed out of the hotel.
Then there was lots of free food and plenty of downtime while the mass was going on. Problem was, no one was really around to explain to us where we needed to be next, or when. And we were the least of anyone's problems. There was the bus full of priests that broke down and couldn't get into the cathedral for security reasons until -- somehow this mattered -- the pope was already seated. There was the Secret Service deciding not to let through any more people who had special tickets to stand on the steps of the cathedral. A friend and I finally found a "volunteer coordinator" who had little more idea than we did as to what was next (not much, it turns out), but who told us all kinds of tales of woe from that morning -- most of them involving the Secret Service and the NYPD contradicting each other at every turn.
I found it hard to get frustrated at any of this. I was fine, it was a beautiful day, the pope was there and besides, don't these things tend to happen when four or five all-important institutions get together to coordinate a series of massive, max-security events in the busiest city on earth? Nothing more than a gentle lesson in human folly, poised in poetic contradistinction to the presence of the Vicar of Christ next door.
Or so I thought, until I found out that this very confusion was my chance for a much-coveted ticket to Yankee Stadium.
As it turned out, this volunteer coordinator was also working for the archdiocese on the papal visit, and she shared with us (as a variation on a theme) that there were still loads of tickets to the next day's mass that hadn't been given out. Again, this didn't surprise me greatly, given what I gathered was the intricate politics of distribution (with each parish and diocese just so) and the supposition that at least some people who had reserved tickets wouldn't show up to claim them.
But I didn't expect to be able to walk right into the official archdiocesan papal visit command center and ask for some.
Yet that's precisely what this woman suggested we do. Needless to say, we set out immediately (the offices were ten blocks away), and after a few minutes with a confused security guard, we were welcomed right upstairs.
The woman who greeted us was juggling ten other things -- "The governor's office is on the phone! They want to know about the photographer!" -- but she wasted little time handing us (at my friend's request) two tickets apiece.
Then she took them back. They were handicapped reserved. But out came two pairs of new ones, with the promising label "FIELD CHMP SEC 15, BX 59." Didn't know exactly what "field chmp" meant, but it sure sounded nice.
By now, it was becoming ever more apparent that they still had more tickets than they knew what to do with. So I went for it: "Can I have four?"
Moral of the story? Always ask.
I hesitated for a while to share this too broadly, lest anyone who missed out on tickets trying through the proper channels bemoan (understandably) the unfairness of it all. But as I think back on it (if you'll follow me for a second), that's precisely what made the whole thing kinda special.
There were any number of reasons the powers that be could have cited to turn away two brash young volunteers who showed up the day before the event. There was a system, after all -- as there needed to be, especially for something as big and important as the pope.
But there we were, and so were the tickets -- and as I'm sure the pope reminded us at some point during his visit, if everything were meted out by the standards of exacting justice, we'd all be goners anyway.
Besides, God wouldn't like it as much.
Pope Benedict's visit was obviously a wonderful, holy thing. But from a logistics standpoint, I'm made to understand from folks on the fringes of the storm, it was also something of a nightmare.
Kinda like you'd expect.
My experience with this was relatively minor. Saturday morning (as I started to describe in the post previous), I was one of a hundred-odd volunteers assisting at the Papal mass for clergy and religious at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Supposedly, our role was to meet the priests as they got off their busses and escort them to the rooms reserved at the Palace Hotel where they could change into their vestments. (No one, obviously, was allowed to get anywhere close to the Cathedral on their own initiative.) Thing was, the clergyfolk knew the drill already, so our job basically became to stand in line along the sidewalk corridor leading to the hotel and greet them as they passed by.
This was actually very cool. For one thing, I had no idea that nuns had so many different kinds of habits. Plus the weather was gorgeous. I was also standing right there as busses and busses of bishops unloaded for their procession, and again as the entire American delegation of cardinals filed out of the hotel.
Then there was lots of free food and plenty of downtime while the mass was going on. Problem was, no one was really around to explain to us where we needed to be next, or when. And we were the least of anyone's problems. There was the bus full of priests that broke down and couldn't get into the cathedral for security reasons until -- somehow this mattered -- the pope was already seated. There was the Secret Service deciding not to let through any more people who had special tickets to stand on the steps of the cathedral. A friend and I finally found a "volunteer coordinator" who had little more idea than we did as to what was next (not much, it turns out), but who told us all kinds of tales of woe from that morning -- most of them involving the Secret Service and the NYPD contradicting each other at every turn.
I found it hard to get frustrated at any of this. I was fine, it was a beautiful day, the pope was there and besides, don't these things tend to happen when four or five all-important institutions get together to coordinate a series of massive, max-security events in the busiest city on earth? Nothing more than a gentle lesson in human folly, poised in poetic contradistinction to the presence of the Vicar of Christ next door.
Or so I thought, until I found out that this very confusion was my chance for a much-coveted ticket to Yankee Stadium.
As it turned out, this volunteer coordinator was also working for the archdiocese on the papal visit, and she shared with us (as a variation on a theme) that there were still loads of tickets to the next day's mass that hadn't been given out. Again, this didn't surprise me greatly, given what I gathered was the intricate politics of distribution (with each parish and diocese just so) and the supposition that at least some people who had reserved tickets wouldn't show up to claim them.
But I didn't expect to be able to walk right into the official archdiocesan papal visit command center and ask for some.
Yet that's precisely what this woman suggested we do. Needless to say, we set out immediately (the offices were ten blocks away), and after a few minutes with a confused security guard, we were welcomed right upstairs.
The woman who greeted us was juggling ten other things -- "The governor's office is on the phone! They want to know about the photographer!" -- but she wasted little time handing us (at my friend's request) two tickets apiece.
Then she took them back. They were handicapped reserved. But out came two pairs of new ones, with the promising label "FIELD CHMP SEC 15, BX 59." Didn't know exactly what "field chmp" meant, but it sure sounded nice.
By now, it was becoming ever more apparent that they still had more tickets than they knew what to do with. So I went for it: "Can I have four?"
Moral of the story? Always ask.
I hesitated for a while to share this too broadly, lest anyone who missed out on tickets trying through the proper channels bemoan (understandably) the unfairness of it all. But as I think back on it (if you'll follow me for a second), that's precisely what made the whole thing kinda special.
There were any number of reasons the powers that be could have cited to turn away two brash young volunteers who showed up the day before the event. There was a system, after all -- as there needed to be, especially for something as big and important as the pope.
But there we were, and so were the tickets -- and as I'm sure the pope reminded us at some point during his visit, if everything were meted out by the standards of exacting justice, we'd all be goners anyway.
Besides, God wouldn't like it as much.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Popemobile!
I'll tell the story later, but I just so happened to score four utterly amazing last-minute tickets to the pope's big mass at Yankee Stadium yesterday. Right on the first base line. And yes, that shot's with no zoom. I'll post some more pictures later, too, but for now, my colleague Robert George (a much more disciplined blogger than I) has his up. We were sitting in the same section.
.
I also want to say that I was never prouder to be associated with the New York Post than I was this morning, reading the headlines and captions on the special pope-visit pull-out section. A sampling:
.
--BEN'S SERMON ON THE MOUND
--Communion crews bring host to most
--PAPA'S MITER FINE ATTIRE (with picture caption: "Infallible taste")
--"It's the pope-arazzi!" (caption for a line of priests in full vestments snapping pictures of Benedict)
And, of course, Sunday's wood: COME TO PAPA
Saturday, April 19, 2008
About that speech...
This is cool. I'm blogging live from outside St. Patrick's Cathedral, where I'm volunteering for the pope's mass for clergy this morning. Our "job" was mostly just to welcome the priests and nuns as they came into the hotel across the street to robe up. As one would expect from an event of this size staged by several of the largest bureaucracies in the world, confusion abounded. Still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing once the mass ends.
But we did get to see the pope. Very briefly. After our "duties" (and breakfast) were over, about 70 of us kind of just filed through these metal detectors separating the hotel from, well, another gate separating us from Madison ave, where his motorcade passed on the way to the cathedral.
Anyway, still thinking about that UN address from yesterday. The tension that jumps right off the page, of course is the vast gulf of seriousness separating Benedict from the body that commands his "deepest respect" or whatever his precise wording was. There's more than a touch of absurdity in delivering a friendly, general-sounding lecture on the importance and foundation of human rights to a body that's elected Iran, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to its Human Rights Council.
And yet. Benedict was never going to give a public tongue-lashing to dictators. That's not his way -- and it probably wouldn't do much good anyway. But there's a few spots in his speech that give the distinct impression that he's up to something just as radical.
I don't know, for example, exactly what he was up to when he said:
"Every state has the primary responsibility to protect its own population from gross and sustained violations of human rights... If states are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the UN Charter and other international instruments."
-- But it's the kind of statement that makes the Bush doctrine seem downright isolationist. And I don't doubt he knows exactly how pathetic the UN has been in this regard for the entirety of its history.
Then he launches on a discourse as to how human rights require a foundation in the natural order of things -- that is, in a full understanding of the human person -- to be effective.
And he has this to say: "When faced with new and insistent challenges, it is a mistake to fall back on a pragmatic approach, limited to determining 'common ground,' minimal in content and weak in its effect."
Say what? Pragmatic, common-ground approaches to human-rights issues is what the UN was DESIGNED for. The soviet bloc and the West were never going to agree even as to what "human rights" consist of -- let alone how to promulgate them. But it was concievably a good thing to have a place for us to talk and vote about stuff before we started firing missiles.
Indeed, as I'm pretty sure I understand from the people who think about these things, the thrust of the post-WWII "human rights" project has remarkably little to do with discerning the true foundations of liberty -- to the extent that it doesn't reject the possibility of such a foundation explicitly. It's much more along the lines of: "What are the bad things that we can all get together and agree (for whatever reason) to call bad?" And the absence of each bad thing gets to be called a "human right."
Benedict would argue -- with ample evidence, if he chose to employ it -- that that approach doesn't quite work.
The question for us: What would the United Nations look like without it?
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Friday, April 18, 2008
Benedict at the UN
The more I think about it, the more I love the address Pope Benedict gave this morning at the United Nations. More thoughts to come.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Running for bishop, and other perils of modernity
I'm not always one for browsing the lefty Catholic periodicals, but this piece in Commonweal Magazine caught my attention, especially in light of the Pope's visit.
As I understand it, Fr. Reese is presenting a fairly well-worn argument: The Vatican is too top-down authoritarian; that's not how it always was; and given the post-Vatican II embrace of modernity, the Church should finally adjust its governance to our democratic age.
By, among other things, returning the selection of bishops to a general election of the faithful. I'm hardly of the competence to comment on any of his other proposals, but this one strikes me as a seriously bad idea. And Reese basically makes the argument for me.
As he acknowledges, the centralization of power in the papacy in the first place was in part a response to meddling in Church affairs by secular powers. But then there's this remarkable specimen of comfortable, Western-style obliviousness: "But now that few kings or noblemen are in a position to meddle with the church," he says, "one could argue that such centralization is no longer necessary -- and that it is in fact counterproductive."
No position whatsoever -- as any good Catholic from China to Zimbabwe will gladly tell you.
I'm all for the Church embracing the modern world, but -- and I'm starting to believe that this is the fundamental divide between liberal and conservative Catholics -- there's still a huge open question as to what the modern world we're embracing consists of.
Is it the peaceful, tolerant, democratic world of liberal imagination -- or something a lot more complex? Because if, as both the persistence of tyranny and a strong dose of Christian realism attest, humanity has yet to reach its broad, sunlit uplands, we're going to need a strong and independent Church hierarchy for some time to come.
Contrast Reese's take on the demands modernity places on the Church to Pope Benedict's, from his speech at the White House on Wednesday. There's little doubt he's completely alive to the blessings of the modern world -- as he shows, for one, in his great love for the United States. But he has an equally good idea of what might be coming down the pike.
As I understand it, Fr. Reese is presenting a fairly well-worn argument: The Vatican is too top-down authoritarian; that's not how it always was; and given the post-Vatican II embrace of modernity, the Church should finally adjust its governance to our democratic age.
By, among other things, returning the selection of bishops to a general election of the faithful. I'm hardly of the competence to comment on any of his other proposals, but this one strikes me as a seriously bad idea. And Reese basically makes the argument for me.
As he acknowledges, the centralization of power in the papacy in the first place was in part a response to meddling in Church affairs by secular powers. But then there's this remarkable specimen of comfortable, Western-style obliviousness: "But now that few kings or noblemen are in a position to meddle with the church," he says, "one could argue that such centralization is no longer necessary -- and that it is in fact counterproductive."
No position whatsoever -- as any good Catholic from China to Zimbabwe will gladly tell you.
I'm all for the Church embracing the modern world, but -- and I'm starting to believe that this is the fundamental divide between liberal and conservative Catholics -- there's still a huge open question as to what the modern world we're embracing consists of.
Is it the peaceful, tolerant, democratic world of liberal imagination -- or something a lot more complex? Because if, as both the persistence of tyranny and a strong dose of Christian realism attest, humanity has yet to reach its broad, sunlit uplands, we're going to need a strong and independent Church hierarchy for some time to come.
Contrast Reese's take on the demands modernity places on the Church to Pope Benedict's, from his speech at the White House on Wednesday. There's little doubt he's completely alive to the blessings of the modern world -- as he shows, for one, in his great love for the United States. But he has an equally good idea of what might be coming down the pike.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
What's the matter with Obama?
Or, specifically, this doozy (given at a San Francisco fundraiser, no less):
"[People in economically struggling small-town Pennsylvania] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Rich Lowry's got a good column here, taking what I'd consider the appropriate amount of umbrage. For me, it's not so much that Obama's some kind of closet Marxist (though I'm sure it's still in the water at Columbia and Harvard). It's not even that he's an "elitist" -- at least as the word should be defined. And yes, I know this kind of unthinking condescension should hardly surprise me. Still, what the hell?
Lowry hits it on the head: "Obama prides himself on his civility, but it has to go much deeper than dulcet rhetoric. A fundamental courtesy of political debate is to meet the other side on its own terms. If someone says he cares about gun rights, it’s rude to insist: 'No, you don’t. It’s the minimum wage that you really care about, and you’d know it if you were more self-aware.' "
In other words, what makes this kind of thing so interesting coming from Obama is that it reveals so strikingly the false promises of "hope" and "change" and "unity" so central to his campaign. (Harvey Mansfield, tangentially, has plenty to say about the kind of civility we really need in politics. Hint: It has nothing to do with "disagreeing without being disagreeable.")
Or think of it this way: What kind of hope does Obama really have in America if he thinks Americans' first reaction to economic hardship is to get "bitter"?
"[People in economically struggling small-town Pennsylvania] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Rich Lowry's got a good column here, taking what I'd consider the appropriate amount of umbrage. For me, it's not so much that Obama's some kind of closet Marxist (though I'm sure it's still in the water at Columbia and Harvard). It's not even that he's an "elitist" -- at least as the word should be defined. And yes, I know this kind of unthinking condescension should hardly surprise me. Still, what the hell?
Lowry hits it on the head: "Obama prides himself on his civility, but it has to go much deeper than dulcet rhetoric. A fundamental courtesy of political debate is to meet the other side on its own terms. If someone says he cares about gun rights, it’s rude to insist: 'No, you don’t. It’s the minimum wage that you really care about, and you’d know it if you were more self-aware.' "
In other words, what makes this kind of thing so interesting coming from Obama is that it reveals so strikingly the false promises of "hope" and "change" and "unity" so central to his campaign. (Harvey Mansfield, tangentially, has plenty to say about the kind of civility we really need in politics. Hint: It has nothing to do with "disagreeing without being disagreeable.")
Or think of it this way: What kind of hope does Obama really have in America if he thinks Americans' first reaction to economic hardship is to get "bitter"?
Friday, April 11, 2008
I wish this was a joke...
Ever encountered something so morbidly ironic that you just wanted to find a corner somewhere and cry?
It just so happened this afternoon that my official duties required me to pick through something called Schedule C of the New York City Council's 2008 Adopted Expense Budget. For the layman, that's big stinking piles of municipal pork.
As I understand it, one activates this particular trough (there are others) by getting together with a few other council members and requesting money for a certain city-wide need, which can then get doled out to various favored non-profits.
In any case, I was hardly surprised (this is New York) to discover that one of these items lists Planned Parenthood as the recipient of a cool $50,000. My only question: Did they really need to fund it through the "Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative"?
Yeah.
It just so happened this afternoon that my official duties required me to pick through something called Schedule C of the New York City Council's 2008 Adopted Expense Budget. For the layman, that's big stinking piles of municipal pork.
As I understand it, one activates this particular trough (there are others) by getting together with a few other council members and requesting money for a certain city-wide need, which can then get doled out to various favored non-profits.
In any case, I was hardly surprised (this is New York) to discover that one of these items lists Planned Parenthood as the recipient of a cool $50,000. My only question: Did they really need to fund it through the "Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative"?
Yeah.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
"This is the Vietnam of newspapers!"
So, I'm not exactly in the habit of hawking MTV high-school docu-dramas, but this one looks almost promising. Or at least unintentionally hilarious.
Apologies (once again) for the prolonged absence. Feel free to assume that I was off somewhere committing daring and heroic acts in the name of truth and justice. Or something like that.
Apologies (once again) for the prolonged absence. Feel free to assume that I was off somewhere committing daring and heroic acts in the name of truth and justice. Or something like that.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
How cool is this?
I got a blackberry yesterday. And I'm blogging from it! I feel so hip right now.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
A prayer for Basra
The Iraqi government launched a major offensive to take back the city from Shia militias last week. It remains to be seen whether they're making any progress -- or what that might look like if it comes. It'd be a huge victory if they could pull it off in the near future; folks down there appear none-too-happy with the status quo, and bringing the port under central gov't control could be very promising in terms of prestige and infrastructure.
And yet. A friend just tipped me off to Anthony Cordesman's latest NY Times column. I know far too little about the war to endorse any particular analysis, but it looks to be a pretty comprehensive (and none-too-uplifting) run-through of all the accompanying political, um, difficulties. Plus, Cordesman's been to Basra recently -- which seems to be a lot more than most folks covering events there can say.
Well, we've been waiting for the next shoe to drop over there. This could -- could -- get a lot worse before it gets better.
And yet. A friend just tipped me off to Anthony Cordesman's latest NY Times column. I know far too little about the war to endorse any particular analysis, but it looks to be a pretty comprehensive (and none-too-uplifting) run-through of all the accompanying political, um, difficulties. Plus, Cordesman's been to Basra recently -- which seems to be a lot more than most folks covering events there can say.
Well, we've been waiting for the next shoe to drop over there. This could -- could -- get a lot worse before it gets better.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Random, belated St. Paddy's Day reflections
Well it is the biggest mix-up that you have ever seen:
My father, he was Orange, and me mother, she was Green.
--Irish folk song
Sorry this is so late in coming, but hey, if the Catholic Church can change the date of St. Patrick's Day to avoid conflicting with Holy Week, then so can I.
**One of the fascinating things about New York City to me has always been not only how many Irish pubs there are, but how many still seem to be run -- or at least staffed -- by genuine Irish people. I'm fully aware of the extent of the Irish diaspora, but you'd think we would have assimilated by now. Did all these pubs just snatch up the last wave of pre-Celtic Tiger immigrants, or is there something more Disney/Epcot Center-y going on here? Does anybody know?
**Jeremy Grunert of CMC fame, now studying abroad in Belfast, has a fun blog documenting his adventures. Particularly interesting is this post, in which his Catholic Northern Irish roommates tell him the story of the "Troubles" of 1968-98 -- and teach him to stereotype the Orange-folk in the process.
**There were "Troubles," of course, long before the latest (last?) round began in '68, but it took my own visit to London two summers ago for me to realize just how fresh in everyone's memories they still are. I was staying with some Irish priests at the time, and, incidentally, reading Winston Churchill's World War II memoirs for leisure. Churchill relates his frustration, in the early war years, with the stubborn unhelpfulness of the neutral Irish government -- though thanks to the aforementioned diaspora, I was fascinated to learn, he typically went through Roosevelt to get whatever cooperation he could.
And yet, some of the names Churchill was using were unfamiliar to me. So I pulled aside one of the priests and asked in all innocence, "Fr. Martin, who was Eamon De Valera?" Two hours and several pints of cider later, I had my answer.
**It turns out that Churchill was heavily involved in negotiating a settlement for Irish Home Rule before and after WWI, too. In any case, as a Catholic anglophile with joint ancenstry and ecumenical tendencies (i.e., a mutt), I couldn't help but be fascinated with the history (I wound up devoting a good deal of my thesis to Churchill and the Irish question).
One short vignette: Churchill was a negotiator at the 1921 peace conference that laid the foundation for the Irish Free State. Opposite him was Michael Collins, the young and passionate IRA military commander, and soon to be De Valera's bitter enemy in the Irish Civil War. As Churchill tells it, the two of them were one night alone together in Churchill's London apartment, with Collins seething at all manner of past British injustice -- most presently, the 5,000-pound bounty on his head. Churchill responded by fetching a framed reward poster from his own days as an escaped prisoner of war in South Africa. The bounty: 25 pounds.
"He read the paper," Churchill later recounted, "and as he took it in he broke into a hearty laugh. All his irritation vanished. We had a really serviceable conversation, and thereafter…we never to the best of my belief lost the basis of a common understanding."
Lesson: There's nothing like the mutual experience of getting shot at to bring people together.
**Except for maybe a pitcher of cold green beer.
My father, he was Orange, and me mother, she was Green.
--Irish folk song
Sorry this is so late in coming, but hey, if the Catholic Church can change the date of St. Patrick's Day to avoid conflicting with Holy Week, then so can I.
**One of the fascinating things about New York City to me has always been not only how many Irish pubs there are, but how many still seem to be run -- or at least staffed -- by genuine Irish people. I'm fully aware of the extent of the Irish diaspora, but you'd think we would have assimilated by now. Did all these pubs just snatch up the last wave of pre-Celtic Tiger immigrants, or is there something more Disney/Epcot Center-y going on here? Does anybody know?
**Jeremy Grunert of CMC fame, now studying abroad in Belfast, has a fun blog documenting his adventures. Particularly interesting is this post, in which his Catholic Northern Irish roommates tell him the story of the "Troubles" of 1968-98 -- and teach him to stereotype the Orange-folk in the process.
**There were "Troubles," of course, long before the latest (last?) round began in '68, but it took my own visit to London two summers ago for me to realize just how fresh in everyone's memories they still are. I was staying with some Irish priests at the time, and, incidentally, reading Winston Churchill's World War II memoirs for leisure. Churchill relates his frustration, in the early war years, with the stubborn unhelpfulness of the neutral Irish government -- though thanks to the aforementioned diaspora, I was fascinated to learn, he typically went through Roosevelt to get whatever cooperation he could.
And yet, some of the names Churchill was using were unfamiliar to me. So I pulled aside one of the priests and asked in all innocence, "Fr. Martin, who was Eamon De Valera?" Two hours and several pints of cider later, I had my answer.
**It turns out that Churchill was heavily involved in negotiating a settlement for Irish Home Rule before and after WWI, too. In any case, as a Catholic anglophile with joint ancenstry and ecumenical tendencies (i.e., a mutt), I couldn't help but be fascinated with the history (I wound up devoting a good deal of my thesis to Churchill and the Irish question).
One short vignette: Churchill was a negotiator at the 1921 peace conference that laid the foundation for the Irish Free State. Opposite him was Michael Collins, the young and passionate IRA military commander, and soon to be De Valera's bitter enemy in the Irish Civil War. As Churchill tells it, the two of them were one night alone together in Churchill's London apartment, with Collins seething at all manner of past British injustice -- most presently, the 5,000-pound bounty on his head. Churchill responded by fetching a framed reward poster from his own days as an escaped prisoner of war in South Africa. The bounty: 25 pounds.
"He read the paper," Churchill later recounted, "and as he took it in he broke into a hearty laugh. All his irritation vanished. We had a really serviceable conversation, and thereafter…we never to the best of my belief lost the basis of a common understanding."
Lesson: There's nothing like the mutual experience of getting shot at to bring people together.
**Except for maybe a pitcher of cold green beer.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
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