July 2007

Last night I cooked dinner at the Catholic Worker here, and emerged from the kitchen to find a huge crowd assembled in the backyard for the meal. My heart filled with joy and I boomed out, “Happy Sunday!”

An Italian, in town for a conference, came up to me afterwards to remark that Buona Domenica is an established greeting, but that he’d never heard an English speaker say “Happy Sunday.” He said that Italians also say buona continuazione (happy continuance?), and buon proseguimento, which translates roughly as “happy follow-through” or “happy proceeding.” Also, they say buon lavorno for “happy work.”

I cooked pizza and white-bean-and-pasta soup. The pizza recipe is mostly from Cooks Illustrated. The soup is a white-bean-and-roasted-garlic soup from Isa Chandra Moskowitz, with a bag of pasta thrown in.

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This morning I attended the beginning of a Mennonite-Catholic theological conference at Notre Dame. It centers on the document Called Together To Be Peacemakers. This document does a good job comparing and contrasting the two faiths; I recommend it. The proceedings of the conference will soon be available at the conference website.

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You ever have one of those days when you’re hungover and sweeping out a soup kitchen, and feel like life is a burden, and then a ragged, weathered man sits down at the piano and riffs on “Let It Be” for 20 minutes, and the burden floats away? I love that.

Mr. Hetero’s final chapter
Worcester Magazine notes that Tom “Mr Hetero” Crouse has dropped his lawsuit against the City, in which he claimed he was coerced into paying for a huge police detail to protect his “Mr. Hetero” pageant (see City documents for more). The City Solicitor writes:

The suit was dismissed by Rev. Crouse when it became apparent in depositions that Mechanics Hall, acting as his agent and fearing that the agreed upon number of police officers would not be sufficient to protect event attendees, actually requested additional paid-duty police officers above and beyond the number recommended by and agreed-to by Rev. Crouse and Mechanics Hall for the event to further ensure the safety of event attendees.

Earlier in his statement, the City Solicitor engages in fantasy:

Attendance at both the event and the protests was far less than expected due for the most part because February 18, 2006 turned out to be one of the coldest days of the winter.

There’s no evidence that the weather was the key factor; days before the event, Worcester Magazine was reporting that advance ticket sales were extremely low. For February, the weather was actually pretty nice; at least there wasn’t a blizzard or icy roads.
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In Trinity Term 2007, I took a course called Introductory Certificate in Management. I recognized that there were three parts in what was introduced in the course:

1. the questions asked and issues raised (“How to get things to happen”), or, in academic speech, “problematizing” (so far so good);
2. the mechanisms proposed (not so convincing); and
3. the evidence supporting the mechanisms proposed (not so sure).

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Now that the Miro media player has gotten really good, I encourage my friends to download it. They’re always a bit disoriented at first. What are you supposed to do with this thing?

Well, here’s how I use it. (If you’re totally confused, watch this video.)
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From July 18, 2007, here’s a talk by Notre Dame’s Mike Baxter on “American Catholic Agonistes: The Political Divide of Liberal and Conservative Catholicism.”

Due to technical problems, the last few minutes of the talk weren’t recorded.

Download the mp3, see other formats, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

 

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