October 2006

Let us pray.

God, we thank you for the promise of Jesus, that
“there is no one who has given up
house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions,
and eternal life in the age to come.” (Mark 10:29-30)

Teach us when it is appropriate to run away from persecution,
but if our witness for you
is to involve suffering or even death at the hands of others,
O God, give us strength and courage.
Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I drove out to the Trappist monastery in Spencer for mass and to pick up their weekly donation of food for the poor in Worcester. The autumn trees are stunning. I should spend less time in the city.

Iowa: The national Catholic Worker gathering begins in Iowa today. Four folks from Worcester will be there.


Read the rest of this entry »

Being #13 is not too bad, when you’re on The OC Weekly’s list of the county’s top 100 things.

No. 13: Christianity’s Dwight Smith
Whether you enjoy the fire and brimstone of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel or its Spanish-language offshoot, the Templo Calvario (the largest Latino evangelical church in the United States)—or the gaudy Golgotha that is the Trinity Broadcasting Network headquarters; the Southern Baptist dressed in purpose known as Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church; the queer-friendly Metropolitan Community Church; the pedo-protecting ways of the Catholic Diocese of Orange, or the annual Harvest Crusade spectacle—Orange County hosts every manifestation of Christendom imaginable. We loves our Prince o’ Peace, and a lot of us will kick the ass of anybody who feels differently. But the man who best follows in the footsteps of the Nazarene remains the remarkable Dwight Smith, the man who runs a Catholic Worker from a large home in Santa Ana filled with the blessed of the Earth. Buy your way into heaven—give Dwight your extra pennies. Isaiah House, 316 S. Cypress Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 558-7478.

Hey! Don’t forget Dwight Smith’s wife, Leia, you sexist pigs! (Rebecca Schoenkopf)

Winchell’s Donuts President Bob Zanolli, Catholic Worker Dwight Smith, and some homeless kids at a press event in 2003. Photo by Mike Benedetti.

The T&G ran an editorial cartoon about the project today. (Detail: Kevin Ksen saying “Strange . . . do you feel a draft?”)

Speaking of a draft, yesterday I spoke with many supportive Worcester folks, and one of them told me stories of the people she’d met who grew up poor or were black and who said, “The military gave me a chance when nobody else would!”

When your country is set up so that poor or black people are dying so that rich or white people don’t have to, that’s bullshit.

Some peaceniks say, “If we had a draft, we wouldn’t be in Iraq today,” but I’m not so sure. I do think that a draft would be more fair than the so-called “poverty draft” we have today. (Though the sons of the truly powerful were able to dodge the old draft well enough.)

The article doesn’t give many details. I wonder how they’ll be resettling them here and how they’ll help them assimilate. I’m very happy for them to get the opportunity to come here to the U.S., and I hope they become successful in establishing a community here. If anyone sees more info on where they’ll be coming or what people can do to help, be sure to pass it on.

CBGB: There’s been talk that CBGB might move to Vegas, now that it’s closed its doors in NYC. Bruce spoke out about this last night:

That’s like moving The Whisky to Worcester. That’s like moving the Old Grey Whistle Test to LA. It doesn’t work.

Darfur: You can now look at high-res satellite pix of burned villages in Darfur.

Halloween: Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Trick or Treat Action Kit is plain nifty. I was digging through one at a friend’s house last week. Wish I knew about it in time to order some for other friends.

Opting Out: Today I talked to T&G columnist Clive McFarlane about the Opt Out project. Taking my own advice, I wrote down what I wanted to say on an index card, and tried to avoid saying anything but those things.

Clive asked why the project only focuses on schools giving kids’ private info to military recruiters, when schools also give kids’ info to colleges. These seem like very different things to me, but I don’t know much about how schools give that info to colleges, and hadn’t really thought it through.

I tried to avoid this question in a nice way. If Clive writes a column about the project, we’ll find out if I succeeded.

After our conversation, I phoned some of the other people helping with the project, and one said to me:

Schools are not required to give info to colleges by federal law. It’s not legislated. That’s the difference.

That sounds about right to me. Back when I was in high school, we opted in to having info sent to colleges. And the policies seemed like they were under local, rather than federal, control.

(The Telegram website should really have homepages for Mr. McFarlane and Ms. Williamson. Why no respect for the city columnists?)

When City Councilor Gary Rosen proposed that Worcester look into getting rubber sidewalks, Pie and Coffee celebrated his unconventional vision, Buck Paxton argued against the idea, and Worcester Magazine mindlessly ridiculed him.

Then, in last week’s InCity Times, Gary Rosen wrote an article explaining the idea, and defending it against his critics:

While arborists, street department and city officials, and newspapers like the Boston Globe and In City Times think that the idea of rubber sidewalks has a great deal of merit, our Worcester Magazine called it “bizarre.” I know that we can be and should be more creative and innovative in Worcester.

The primary benefit of rubber sidewalks, as he describes them, is that they deal better with growing tree roots, bending rather than cracking.

Budding rubber sidewalk geeks will want to read the installation manual (pdf). The section “Releasing rubber sidewalk pavers” seems to indicate that swiping a section of sidewalk would be easy.

It’s been a depressing couple of weeks in Massachusetts politics, but Jim and I wade into the muck anyway. Then we point out that this election will determine if the Green-Rainbow Party and Working Families Party are official parties.

[download the mp3 of "Saint Kermit #43: Frank Talk"]

We rant about:

• Kerry Healey calling Deval Patrick soft on crime
• Somebody revealing the skeleton in Patrick’s sister’s closet
• Rand Wilson, who is polling double-digits as “Working Families” candate for State Auditor
• Jill Stein, polling double-digits as “Green-Rainbow” candidate for Secretary of State

Interview: Barney Frank.
Music: National Carpet.
Sports: Sport.

Pope Benedict canonized four new saints today: a French nun on the Indiana frontier who founded St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, a Mexican bishop who risked his life to help the wounded during the Mexican Revolution, an Italian priest who pioneered education for the deaf and founded an order of nuns, and an Italian woman who founded an order of nuns and schools for girls.

At last, the opt-out contest is here.

Public high schools send their students’ personal info to military recruiters each fall, unless the students opt out.

This is not good. So we’ve started a contest.

The Worcester junior or senior class with the highest percentage of students opting out will win $250. Students should turn in opt-out forms (pdf) ASAP.

More info at the contest website. If you know any Worcester high schoolers, let them know about the contest. You can contact optout.admin@gmail.com for more info, too.