Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
Here’s my Flickr photoset of the George Frisbie Hoar statue by Worcester City Hall.
The statue is the a focal point of Worcester’s pro-immigrant rally on May 1. Senator Hoar is known as a defender of human rights.
These are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License. When I get the time to figure out CC’s public domain process, I’ll make these public domain.
If you are blogging or otherwise writing about the rally, I hope these are helpful.
Father Matos spoke about Worcester’s May 1 pro-immigrant rally after mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral yesterday. Here’s a .wmv video clip in Spanish.
Continue reading “Worcester priests on May Day immigration rally”
In Osama bin Laden’s latest tape, he calls on “mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war again the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan.” Apparently he’s concerned about UN peacekeepers moving in to try to stop the genocide in Darfur. “Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people.” Maybe he didn’t get the memo that the violence in Darfur is Muslim-on-Muslim. Or maybe black Muslims are less Muslim than Arab Muslims in bin Laden’s world. Or maybe he’s just a bloodthirsty maniac who figures that if Muslims are killing people, that must be a good thing.
Hey, hasn’t it been like 4 and a half years now since the U.S. pledged to find this guy?
The Catholic Peace Fellowship has a podcast. (XML)
In the first few episoides, they interview conscientious objector Joshua Casteel, who we’ve mentioned before at P&C.
The Immigrant Day Rally will be May 1, 4-6pm, at Worcester City Hall.
The site was chosen because of the statue of George Frisbie Hoar, a Republican Senator and Worcester resident who fought for the rights of African-Americans, Indians, and women, and opposed American imperialism.
From tonight’s planning meeting, it sounds like the immigrant community is divided about plans for a strike/boycott.
Much more info will be forthcoming at Indymedia.
Also at Pie and Coffee: Oklahoma City Catholic Worker statement on proposed immigration laws.
Ah, another Spring day in Worcester. The kids are out of school this week. Yesterday morning a bunch of men and little kids were playing baseball in Austin Street, pausing the game when a car approached.
Last week was the seventeenth anniversary of the death of Worcester native Abbie Hoffman.
When he appeared before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities — after his red, white and blue American flag shirt had been ripped from his back — Hoffman remarked: “I regret I have but one shirt to give for my country.”
WFMU: Abbie Hoffman Makes Gefilte Fish.
This weekend I got a letter from one of my elected officials with an interesting bit of information that I was asked to keep confidential. A similar thing happened last month, when someone I don’t know wrote an e-mail about an interesting project that I was asked to keep secret.
I love to be in the loop. I love to know secrets. But I think it’s best to check with the person first, to call or e-mail and say, “If I tell you something, could you keep it secret?” Otherwise, you’re coercing the other person.
Continue reading “Spring in Worcester, and other items”
Written by James K. Baxter, 1958.
When His tears ran down like blood
I was sleeping in my clothesWhen they struck Him with a reed
I cracked a very clever jokeWhen they gave Him a shirt of blood
I praised the colour of her dressAll the way up the hill
We were laughing fit to killWhen they were driving in the nails
I listened to the steel guitarWhen they gave Him gall to drink
We were sipping the same glassWhen He cried aloud in pain
We were playing JudasesWhen the ground began to shake
We pulled up the coverletClean confessed and comforted
To the midnight mass I comeYou who died in pain alone
Break my heart break my heart
Deus sine termino.
This afternoon seventeen of my friends and I observed the Stations of the Cross, walking around downtown Worcester, praying and visiting landmarks that remind us of the suffering we impose on others.
As we walked between some of the stations, we chanted in Latin: Ubi caritas et amor, ubi caritas Deus ibi est.
We crossed paths with Father John Madden and some St. John’s parishioners. Last year, we ran into them while both groups were walking the stations; this year, it looked like they’d already finished when we passed them.
Holy Thursday AIDS action: This afternoon some Clark and St Michael’s students went to the local office of Abbott Laboratories dressed up as bunnies and carrying 4,000 black plastic eggs. They delivered 300 letters asking Abbott to make one of their AIDS drugs available to all of the developing world, as they’ve done in South Africa. An Abbott guy gave them the name of someone they can discuss the issue with, so the demo had a happy ending.
I made a short movie of the events (WMV, 1.9MB).
Update: NECN video clip of the event. I like how the anchor says they were “rotten” eggs, then Andy Lacombe clarifies that they were plastic. There’s no way there were 8,000, though.
Continue reading “Holy Thursday and other items”
This week Blessed Sacrament Parish began what they hope will be an annual tradition of staging a free, wordless passion play the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week.
Based on the capacity of the church, I’d say they had well over 200 people there for the week’s second performance.
Gerard L’Esperance played Matthew. I talked with him briefly after his performance. [WMV, 1.3MB]
Picture: Judas prepares to hang himself.
