I first posted this lament on Facebook about 12 hours ago, Wednesday July 16, 2014.
Photo: Reuters, Gaza, July 16, 2014
Showing posts with label Latin America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latin America. Show all posts
Thursday, July 17, 2014
The children
Children,
children, children. Children running away from violence and poverty in
Central America, children sent back to violence and poverty in Central
America, children killed on a beach in Gaza, children hungry and unsafe
on the streets of these United States, children deathly ill with cholera
in South Sudan. Cry out, o stones.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"Photos of a Prophet" - a Romero retrospective and tribute
Andy, in the comments to the previous post, recommended this wonderful pdf-format slide show. It's actually a book available in exhibit form available in slide show form. The wonders of technology!
These are archival photos of Monseñor Romero and his people, from Romero's childhood to the days after his death. Well worth a look.
The exhibit is currently at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. Information here.
Priests carry Archbishop Romero’s coffin out of the Metropolitam Cathedral of San Salvador, March 30, 1980. Photo: Private collection of the Photography Center of El Salvador
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Oscar Arnulfo Romero, ¡Presente!
Today was the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Monseñor Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador.
I will post more when my teaching week is over, but for now, here are two links.
At this one, which is mostly in Spanish but has links to other languages, you will find a wealth of resources including a slide show in PowerPoint (click on "XXX Aniversario") with rich quotes by Romero and many other words and images to ponder.
This one is a biography in English by a U.S. poet and activist who has engaged in Central America solidarity work for many, many years and knows what she is talking about.
"A church that does not unite itself to the poor in order to denounce from the place of the poor the injustice committed against them is not truly the Church of Jesus Christ."*-San Oscar Romero de las Americas
¡Romero vive!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Why Mexico City
Someone on Facebook asked why my parents got married in Mexico City.
Since it's too long an answer for Facebook, here goes.
My father got his master's degree at the Columbia University Journalism School. He was not yet 21 years old. He graduated at the top of his class (1939) and was one of three recipients of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. This gave him the opportunity to travel and write for a year.
He headed for Europe in June. He knew by then that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He traveled through Western Europe, then Eastern Europe and the USSR and back to Western Europe. Well, if you remember your world history, you remember what started happening on September 1, 1939. World War II broke out.
My father had hoped to stay and find work as a war correspondent, but despite his letters of recommendation, he couldn't find a job, and he went home, not on a Cunard liner as he had on the way over, but on a freighter taking refugees back to the U.S. Among the passengers was my father's cabin-mate --not by choice-- who turned out to be, so he said and my father had no reason to doubt him, Prince Felix Yussupov. You may remember him as the man who killed Rasputin. My father notes in his memoir that he "had never before met anybody who had killed a man, let alone boasted about it. Sharing a cabin with him was fun on an otherwise tense voyage, but I didn't sleep too well thinking about my new friend, the murderer." (p.23)
FoAoH decided to finish up his fellowship in Mexico City, so off he went. There were many estadounidenses there at the time: Mexico was warm, welcoming, and inexpensive. It was also, as my father discovered, desperately poor, and the Mexico City metropolitan area was already crowded then with a population over five million. He started freelancing and stringing (working part-time) for several newspapers and news services.
After he'd been there for a while, MoAoH got sick of waiting up in Brooklyn. She'd finished college by then, so, as I like to tell it, she said to her parents "Bye-bye, I'm going to marry FoAoH!" Okay, it wasn't entirely like that. My parents had both turned 21 by then, it was now early 1940, and my father saw that they could live quite well on under $15 a week, so they decided that they would get married sooner rather than later. My father wrote a letter to my mother's father, as one did in those days, and promised he would take good care of her. They had known each other for years so my mother's parents knew my father was a trustworthy sort, and they knew my parents wanted to get married. People didn't "get engaged" in those days, at least in my parents' circles. It was the Depression and nobody was buying or showing off diamonds on their left ring fingers, and my mother's family was never terribly conventional anyway, though they certainly believed in marriage.
My parents met at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. They didn't become sweethearts till college but were in the same group of friends in high school. Like many in their high school --mostly children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants-- they attended public colleges: she went to Hunter College, which was all women at the time; he went to City College, which was all men. Both of those schools were way uptown in Manhattan, of course, and my family's version of "In my day we had to walk five miles to school in the snow, uphill in both directions!" was "It was the Depression, we lived at home, and we took the subway to school an hour and a half in each direction." Three hours of commuting a day to get an education. My mother is the one who talks about this.
My father was editor of the college newspaper and helped get a corrupt college president on the road to resignation, but that is another story and you can read it in FoAoH's memoir. He went on to a private university (Columbia) for professional journalism study. My brother also went there, years later, and I contemplated doing the same but didn't.
Back to the Mexico story. My mother took the bus down to Mexico City from New York. Yes, the bus. More like buses. I think her first stop was Indianapolis because she had an uncle there. Not sure whether or where she stopped after that, but it was a five-day trip. At any rate, she got to Mexico City safe and sound on a Friday, and the following Tuesday she and my father were married.
They married at the American Embassy because they were patriotic young people and wanted to be married on American soil. But the Ambassador wasn't empowered to officiate at weddings (unlike some other foreign diplomats) so they got a Mexican Justice of the Peace. Only civil marriages were valid in Mexico. A wedding at the JP's Registry office would cost two pesos, but they decided to splurge and go for the 32-peso wedding, which is what it cost to get married outside the Registry. 32 pesos in those days was about 8 dollars.
Foreign Service officers couldn't officiate at marriages but they could witness them (in the church that's the same thing, so I don't quite get the distinction, but there you have it) and issue a certificate of marriage so in addition to the Mexican wedding certificate, my parents got a U.S. certificate (for one dollar extra). I'm not sure whether the Consul General or the Ambassador signed the piece of paper, but they were both there. The Ambassador at the time was Josephus Daniels, a former Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson who was a former newsman -- how appropriate. I remembered he was a Southerner, but what I had forgotten and just re-read in the Mexico chapter of the memoir is that he was the founder-editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. That's Raleigh, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, my paternal grandparents had expressed the desire for my parents to have a Jewish wedding ceremony, so several days later PoAoH located a rabbi, which in Mexico City was not so easy, and he witnessed and officiated at a religious ceremony. It was in Spanish and Hebrew and they had a sheet or a tablecloth for a chuppah (the traditional wedding canopy) and my father didn't have a kippah (yarmulke) so he used a handkerchief tied at four corners. The part of this story I love is that the rabbi lived on Jesus Maria Street. Now there's a title for a novel: The Rabbi on Jesus Maria Street.
Parents of Acts of Hope did have a little reception with a wedding cake. The cake was the work of two Greek-American pastry cooks from Manhattan who after fighting in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (i.e. against Franco's forces) had settled in Mexico and opened a restaurant and bakery.
My father's memoir doesn't say and I haven't asked my parents, but it occurred to me a few years ago upon re-reading my father's description that these guys, Nick and Mike, were probably a couple. But maybe they weren't.
The cake had two white doves on top.
The big story in 1940 in Mexico was, of course, Trostsky's assassination, and my father, as a freshly minted journalist, got to cover it. There was a substantial cast of characters in the background shenanigans leading up to the assassination, including an American woman who had been one of Trotsky's aides. My father was stringing for the Jack Starr-Hunt News Service and among their clients was the N.Y. Daily News tabloid, which could care less about the politics of the story. Who cared if Stalin's arch-enemy had just been killed? The Daily News fired off to my father a cable that read "RUSH 1,500 WORDS GIRLIE ANGLE." Welcome to highfalutin foreign correspondent work.
After a few months in Mexico, with the fellowship year over, my parents returned to the U.S. and Brooklyn, where both their families lived. My father got a stop-gap editing job at the Brooklyn Academy of Music while hunting for a real job in journalism. At last, after six months, a real job materialized, and off my parents went to Herkimer, New York (for those of you who don't know, that's in the boonies, at least from a New York City perspective) where my father worked on the Evening Telegram newspaper for the magnificent sum of $35 per week.
The following year Pearl Harbor happened and my parents moved to Washington.
But that is another story.
Since it's too long an answer for Facebook, here goes.
My father got his master's degree at the Columbia University Journalism School. He was not yet 21 years old. He graduated at the top of his class (1939) and was one of three recipients of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. This gave him the opportunity to travel and write for a year.
He headed for Europe in June. He knew by then that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He traveled through Western Europe, then Eastern Europe and the USSR and back to Western Europe. Well, if you remember your world history, you remember what started happening on September 1, 1939. World War II broke out.
My father had hoped to stay and find work as a war correspondent, but despite his letters of recommendation, he couldn't find a job, and he went home, not on a Cunard liner as he had on the way over, but on a freighter taking refugees back to the U.S. Among the passengers was my father's cabin-mate --not by choice-- who turned out to be, so he said and my father had no reason to doubt him, Prince Felix Yussupov. You may remember him as the man who killed Rasputin. My father notes in his memoir that he "had never before met anybody who had killed a man, let alone boasted about it. Sharing a cabin with him was fun on an otherwise tense voyage, but I didn't sleep too well thinking about my new friend, the murderer." (p.23)
FoAoH decided to finish up his fellowship in Mexico City, so off he went. There were many estadounidenses there at the time: Mexico was warm, welcoming, and inexpensive. It was also, as my father discovered, desperately poor, and the Mexico City metropolitan area was already crowded then with a population over five million. He started freelancing and stringing (working part-time) for several newspapers and news services.
After he'd been there for a while, MoAoH got sick of waiting up in Brooklyn. She'd finished college by then, so, as I like to tell it, she said to her parents "Bye-bye, I'm going to marry FoAoH!" Okay, it wasn't entirely like that. My parents had both turned 21 by then, it was now early 1940, and my father saw that they could live quite well on under $15 a week, so they decided that they would get married sooner rather than later. My father wrote a letter to my mother's father, as one did in those days, and promised he would take good care of her. They had known each other for years so my mother's parents knew my father was a trustworthy sort, and they knew my parents wanted to get married. People didn't "get engaged" in those days, at least in my parents' circles. It was the Depression and nobody was buying or showing off diamonds on their left ring fingers, and my mother's family was never terribly conventional anyway, though they certainly believed in marriage.
My parents met at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. They didn't become sweethearts till college but were in the same group of friends in high school. Like many in their high school --mostly children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants-- they attended public colleges: she went to Hunter College, which was all women at the time; he went to City College, which was all men. Both of those schools were way uptown in Manhattan, of course, and my family's version of "In my day we had to walk five miles to school in the snow, uphill in both directions!" was "It was the Depression, we lived at home, and we took the subway to school an hour and a half in each direction." Three hours of commuting a day to get an education. My mother is the one who talks about this.
My father was editor of the college newspaper and helped get a corrupt college president on the road to resignation, but that is another story and you can read it in FoAoH's memoir. He went on to a private university (Columbia) for professional journalism study. My brother also went there, years later, and I contemplated doing the same but didn't.
Back to the Mexico story. My mother took the bus down to Mexico City from New York. Yes, the bus. More like buses. I think her first stop was Indianapolis because she had an uncle there. Not sure whether or where she stopped after that, but it was a five-day trip. At any rate, she got to Mexico City safe and sound on a Friday, and the following Tuesday she and my father were married.
They married at the American Embassy because they were patriotic young people and wanted to be married on American soil. But the Ambassador wasn't empowered to officiate at weddings (unlike some other foreign diplomats) so they got a Mexican Justice of the Peace. Only civil marriages were valid in Mexico. A wedding at the JP's Registry office would cost two pesos, but they decided to splurge and go for the 32-peso wedding, which is what it cost to get married outside the Registry. 32 pesos in those days was about 8 dollars.
Foreign Service officers couldn't officiate at marriages but they could witness them (in the church that's the same thing, so I don't quite get the distinction, but there you have it) and issue a certificate of marriage so in addition to the Mexican wedding certificate, my parents got a U.S. certificate (for one dollar extra). I'm not sure whether the Consul General or the Ambassador signed the piece of paper, but they were both there. The Ambassador at the time was Josephus Daniels, a former Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson who was a former newsman -- how appropriate. I remembered he was a Southerner, but what I had forgotten and just re-read in the Mexico chapter of the memoir is that he was the founder-editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. That's Raleigh, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, my paternal grandparents had expressed the desire for my parents to have a Jewish wedding ceremony, so several days later PoAoH located a rabbi, which in Mexico City was not so easy, and he witnessed and officiated at a religious ceremony. It was in Spanish and Hebrew and they had a sheet or a tablecloth for a chuppah (the traditional wedding canopy) and my father didn't have a kippah (yarmulke) so he used a handkerchief tied at four corners. The part of this story I love is that the rabbi lived on Jesus Maria Street. Now there's a title for a novel: The Rabbi on Jesus Maria Street.
Parents of Acts of Hope did have a little reception with a wedding cake. The cake was the work of two Greek-American pastry cooks from Manhattan who after fighting in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (i.e. against Franco's forces) had settled in Mexico and opened a restaurant and bakery.
My father's memoir doesn't say and I haven't asked my parents, but it occurred to me a few years ago upon re-reading my father's description that these guys, Nick and Mike, were probably a couple. But maybe they weren't.
The cake had two white doves on top.
The big story in 1940 in Mexico was, of course, Trostsky's assassination, and my father, as a freshly minted journalist, got to cover it. There was a substantial cast of characters in the background shenanigans leading up to the assassination, including an American woman who had been one of Trotsky's aides. My father was stringing for the Jack Starr-Hunt News Service and among their clients was the N.Y. Daily News tabloid, which could care less about the politics of the story. Who cared if Stalin's arch-enemy had just been killed? The Daily News fired off to my father a cable that read "RUSH 1,500 WORDS GIRLIE ANGLE." Welcome to highfalutin foreign correspondent work.
After a few months in Mexico, with the fellowship year over, my parents returned to the U.S. and Brooklyn, where both their families lived. My father got a stop-gap editing job at the Brooklyn Academy of Music while hunting for a real job in journalism. At last, after six months, a real job materialized, and off my parents went to Herkimer, New York (for those of you who don't know, that's in the boonies, at least from a New York City perspective) where my father worked on the Evening Telegram newspaper for the magnificent sum of $35 per week.
The following year Pearl Harbor happened and my parents moved to Washington.
But that is another story.
Friday, December 25, 2009
With those for whom there is no room
Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.Thomas Merton
"The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room"
from Raids on the Unspeakable
The paragraph continues: For them, there is no escape even in imagination. They cannot identify with the power structure of a crowded humanity which seeks to project itself outward, anywhere, in a centrifugal flight into the void, to get out there where there is no God, no man, no name, no identity, no weight, no self, nothing but the bright, self-directed, perfectly obedient and infinitely expensive machine. This is part of a much longer Christmas essay of Merton's on eschatology, fear, and joy.
Thanks to Charlie Hawes, who began a Christmas sermon with this passage a few years ago and fixed it in my mind.
Photographs by Mev Puleo (1963-1996). These and other photographs by Mev visible here are available for purchase. Please contact Mark Chmiel at MarkJChmiel@gmail.com for further information.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Updating the book list, and a plug for Anita Diamant's new novel
I am digging out from under all manner of things. In the midst of this and the usual house-cleaning, literal and metaphorical, that accompanies the advent of Advent, I am updating this blog. I hadn't updated the reading list at the right in months. It isn't complete, but it gives you a snapshot of what I'm reading or re-reading these days.
The Aquino and Rosado-Nunes book is composed of the proceedings of the first Inter-American Symposium on Feminist Intercultural Theology. This was the first ever formal gathering of Latin American and U.S. Latina feminist theologians. Some social scientists also participated in the meeting. Why is this book significant? Because, one of its introductory essays notes, for the first time in the history of Christianity in the Americas, feminist theologians of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean were able to meet together to share our common concerns and visions about the present and the future of our theological work, on the basis of intercultural hermeneutical frameworks. ("Hermeneutical" in this case means "interpretive.")
The book by Renate Wind (which is way overdue at a certain library in California) is a biography, the first, I think, of the late Dorothee Sölle. {This next sentence added a day later after the original post:} Wind has previously written about Dietrich Bonhoeffer; it's not surprising she would be drawn to Sölle, who in so many ways was spiritual and theological heir to Bonhoeffer. The eco-books by McFague and Ruether (the Ruether one is an edited volume featuring writings from Asia, Africa, and Latin America) are triple-purpose books: they are part of my reading and referencing for the Big Tome; I have students reading a couple of them; and I am looking at them as I ponder my sermon for this coming Sunday, the first in Advent. I haven't preached since September. What does the environmental crisis have to do with Advent? You'll find out after I preach. Unless the Holy Spirit sends me in another direction.
I actually cheated by listing Anita Diamant's new book, Day after Night, because I read and finished it last weekend. Anita gave it to me last Friday when she came to my talk on prayer at Harvard (about which more later) and I started reading it that night and finished it on the first of my two plane flights the next day. It's both deep and a page-turner.
I am just starting Louise Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, which a colleague lent me. "It's about a woman who dresses up as a man so she can work as a Catholic priest, so you can see why it made me think of you," he said. (!) The priest in the book is a member of the Ojibwe Nation, as is Erdrich.
You may or may not have noticed that these are the first fiction books I've listed in eons, or perhaps ever since I started blogging. I am starved for fiction and haven't let myself read any, except for the occasional mystery novel, in something like four years. Ridiculous. Just because I've been trying to finish a work of non-fiction doesn't mean I shouldn't be reading fiction. I find reading fiction life-giving. Do you?
The Aquino and Rosado-Nunes book is composed of the proceedings of the first Inter-American Symposium on Feminist Intercultural Theology. This was the first ever formal gathering of Latin American and U.S. Latina feminist theologians. Some social scientists also participated in the meeting. Why is this book significant? Because, one of its introductory essays notes, for the first time in the history of Christianity in the Americas, feminist theologians of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean were able to meet together to share our common concerns and visions about the present and the future of our theological work, on the basis of intercultural hermeneutical frameworks. ("Hermeneutical" in this case means "interpretive.")
The book by Renate Wind (which is way overdue at a certain library in California) is a biography, the first, I think, of the late Dorothee Sölle. {This next sentence added a day later after the original post:} Wind has previously written about Dietrich Bonhoeffer; it's not surprising she would be drawn to Sölle, who in so many ways was spiritual and theological heir to Bonhoeffer. The eco-books by McFague and Ruether (the Ruether one is an edited volume featuring writings from Asia, Africa, and Latin America) are triple-purpose books: they are part of my reading and referencing for the Big Tome; I have students reading a couple of them; and I am looking at them as I ponder my sermon for this coming Sunday, the first in Advent. I haven't preached since September. What does the environmental crisis have to do with Advent? You'll find out after I preach. Unless the Holy Spirit sends me in another direction.
I actually cheated by listing Anita Diamant's new book, Day after Night, because I read and finished it last weekend. Anita gave it to me last Friday when she came to my talk on prayer at Harvard (about which more later) and I started reading it that night and finished it on the first of my two plane flights the next day. It's both deep and a page-turner.
I am just starting Louise Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, which a colleague lent me. "It's about a woman who dresses up as a man so she can work as a Catholic priest, so you can see why it made me think of you," he said. (!) The priest in the book is a member of the Ojibwe Nation, as is Erdrich.
You may or may not have noticed that these are the first fiction books I've listed in eons, or perhaps ever since I started blogging. I am starved for fiction and haven't let myself read any, except for the occasional mystery novel, in something like four years. Ridiculous. Just because I've been trying to finish a work of non-fiction doesn't mean I shouldn't be reading fiction. I find reading fiction life-giving. Do you?
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Señor, ten piedad
That's "Lord, have mercy" in Spanish.
Brutal news from El Salvador from our friend Caminante, here. Mother of God!
San Romero de las Américas, camina con nosotros.
Brutal news from El Salvador from our friend Caminante, here. Mother of God!
San Romero de las Américas, camina con nosotros.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
It's music time: Let It Be
I just posted this on Facebook for a friend who is deep in a writing job and thought I'd share it here for the assembled multitudes. I'm enjoying watching and listening to this video. (Sorry MP, I still love the Beatles.) And for you religious types, this has Mother Mary in it, too. What's not to love?
Enjoy.
With thoughts and prayers for the people of Mexico as they face the swine flu epidemic and the aftermath of an earthquake.
Enjoy.
With thoughts and prayers for the people of Mexico as they face the swine flu epidemic and the aftermath of an earthquake.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
World Malaria Day
ToujoursDan reminded us on Facebook that today is World Malaria Day. I see that he also has a post about this on his blog. Did you know that malaria is the single biggest killer of children under the age of five on the African continent?
Dan also wants everyone to know that for just $10 you can buy a net that will protect an African child from Malaria and save a life. Go here to give.
Note: I went to the site and made a "Spread the Net" donation and noticed that it is the UNICEF Canada site. Nothing wrong at all with that, but I think the $10 are thus Canadian dollars.
Dan also wants everyone to know that for just $10 you can buy a net that will protect an African child from Malaria and save a life. Go here to give.
Note: I went to the site and made a "Spread the Net" donation and noticed that it is the UNICEF Canada site. Nothing wrong at all with that, but I think the $10 are thus Canadian dollars.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Oscar Romero, ¡Presente!
A busy day, but I cannot let it pass without remembering that today, March 24, is the 29th anniversary of the assassination of Monseñor Romero.
Here's the blog post from two years ago on this day, with an illustration and links.
Here's the blog post from two years ago on this day, with an illustration and links.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Marcella Althaus-Reid, RIP
This just in from Mary Hunt at WATER. I had no idea Marcella was ill. I did not know her well, only met her once at an academic conference. She was still young. A great loss to the theological world.
IN MEMORY OF HER-- Marcella Althaus-Reid
Theology lost an original voice last Friday, February 20, 2009, when Professor Marcella Althaus-Reid died at Marie Curie Hospice in Edinburgh, Scotland. WATER offers sympathy to her husband, family members, and friends. Those who appreciate creative, bold theology are in her debt.
Marcella was Argentine by birth with a deep commitment to liberation theology. She studied at ISEDET, the Protestant theological faculty in Buenos Aires, and received her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews. She insisted that issues of body and sexuality need to be interwoven with other liberation concerns. Feminist and queer commitments informed her unique and important work.
She held the Chair of Contextual Theology in the School of Divinity, at the University of Edinburgh. See http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/marcellamari for a biographical sketch and bibliography. She was the author of the widely acclaimed Indecent Theology, among many other books.
Marcella Althaus-Reid’s work will echo for generations to come.
IN MEMORY OF HER-- Marcella Althaus-Reid
Theology lost an original voice last Friday, February 20, 2009, when Professor Marcella Althaus-Reid died at Marie Curie Hospice in Edinburgh, Scotland. WATER offers sympathy to her husband, family members, and friends. Those who appreciate creative, bold theology are in her debt.
Marcella was Argentine by birth with a deep commitment to liberation theology. She studied at ISEDET, the Protestant theological faculty in Buenos Aires, and received her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews. She insisted that issues of body and sexuality need to be interwoven with other liberation concerns. Feminist and queer commitments informed her unique and important work.
She held the Chair of Contextual Theology in the School of Divinity, at the University of Edinburgh. See http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/marcellamari for a biographical sketch and bibliography. She was the author of the widely acclaimed Indecent Theology, among many other books.
Marcella Althaus-Reid’s work will echo for generations to come.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Bonus: swingin' Brazilian duck
Where else but Brazil could you get two grown men singing about a duck sounding and looking so sexy? This is an old song (compared to some of you youngsters, anyway). The performers are João Gilberto and Caetano Veloso.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
From El Salvador, Christmas justice and joy
Caminante has posted this Christmas message from Reverendisimo Martín Barahona of El Salvador and the Anglican Region of Central America.Once again, our sisters and brothers of the Global Center have spoken with love, faith, clarity, and courage.
Glory to Godde, and on this fragile earth, peace.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Summer tunes: Ray Barretto, Tito Coro, and Ruben Blades, 1974! With a Tito Puente bonus.
What we've been listening to in the Acts of Hope study tonight: the Live 50th Anniversary double CD of Ray Barretto, "The Giant of Salsa."
What we've got for you: a 1974 piece, Ban Ban Quere, with Ray Barretto, Ruben Blades on vocals, and Tito Gomez on coro. Enjoy. '70s haircuts, oy! But the salsa is still tasty.
Note: I already had Latin jazz on the brain, and then heard a great piece on NPR earlier today with a tribute to Tito Puente. Transcript and audio here.
P.S. I'm trying to learn how to use the block quote feature, but I'm not quite there yet.
What we've got for you: a 1974 piece, Ban Ban Quere, with Ray Barretto, Ruben Blades on vocals, and Tito Gomez on coro. Enjoy. '70s haircuts, oy! But the salsa is still tasty.
Note: I already had Latin jazz on the brain, and then heard a great piece on NPR earlier today with a tribute to Tito Puente. Transcript and audio here.
"In Afro-Cuban music, we've inherited this concept of being possessed by the music on the dance floor," [Bobby] Sanabria says. "The same thing used to happen in jazz ... But we have this concept that goes way back further in terms of having a spiritual experience on the dance floor. And when you hear the power of this band coming at you like a tidal wave, and with those rhythms percolating, it excites the human organism to its utmost. It's like being in ecstasy.Go here and click on "El Rey del Timbal" on the left, suffer through the short NPR announcement, and you can hear the the whole song."I'm not saying it's better than sex, but it's close to it."
P.S. I'm trying to learn how to use the block quote feature, but I'm not quite there yet.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Friday cat blogging on Thursday
Both +Maya and I are out of words for now. I am all wordy on campus in this first week of school, both listening and dispensing, and Her Grace makes great speeches when I come home. I suspect she sleeps while I am away --I know she has not been blogging-- but who knows, she may be working on the Great Feline Novel or off on pastoral visitations.
We do, however, have pictures for you. This one is from the Lambeth trip and we have been saving it. You didn't know +Maya had an English cousin, did you? Well, here she is. Or he? It matters not.
Photo courtesy of our friends from the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil. All hail to the Global Center. As you can see, the gorgeous feline is deep in conversation with Brazilian interlocutors and about to extend the right paw of kittehship.
We do, however, have pictures for you. This one is from the Lambeth trip and we have been saving it. You didn't know +Maya had an English cousin, did you? Well, here she is. Or he? It matters not.
Photo courtesy of our friends from the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil. All hail to the Global Center. As you can see, the gorgeous feline is deep in conversation with Brazilian interlocutors and about to extend the right paw of kittehship.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Doxy writes in from the International AIDS Conference in Mexico
Monday, July 14, 2008
Summer tunes: time for some more Brazilian music
This is old stuff. If you like heavy metal, you will not like this. It's more for the AARP set, but hey, I've got my membership card, and besides, it's late on a summer night. Mellow is good.
A little warm-up. (Don't be fooled by the shabadaba singers at the opening. This is classic bossa nova from one of the masters.) Antonio Carlos Jobim singing "Agua de Beber" in concert in Montréal.
And now, another tune by Jobim, played by Jobim. This one's an instrumental. "Wave," with Jobim on piano and I'm not sure who on the flute. If you listen to only one, this should probably be it -- though you'll miss the soft Brazilian Portuguese caressing your ears in the other two.
Finally, to round off your mellow evening, "Desafinado" performed by João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim. I think I first heard this when it came out. I must have been ten or eleven years old.
A little warm-up. (Don't be fooled by the shabadaba singers at the opening. This is classic bossa nova from one of the masters.) Antonio Carlos Jobim singing "Agua de Beber" in concert in Montréal.
And now, another tune by Jobim, played by Jobim. This one's an instrumental. "Wave," with Jobim on piano and I'm not sure who on the flute. If you listen to only one, this should probably be it -- though you'll miss the soft Brazilian Portuguese caressing your ears in the other two.
Finally, to round off your mellow evening, "Desafinado" performed by João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim. I think I first heard this when it came out. I must have been ten or eleven years old.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Summer tunes: Only a Dream in Rio
I put together a series of rather sad tuneful songs, bouncing off Grandmère Mimi's musical offering of earlier this p.m. (dedicated to an unnamed person who probably wasn't me, but you know how Smokey Robinson and the Miracles can grab you in the gut at the right time) and have decided not to post them and instead to post only the feel-good song at the end of the series.
It's "Only a Dream in Rio," by James Taylor, performed in two different videos.
A live concert performance in which JT talks about how he came to write the song.
A less glitzy but equally good and more Afro-Brazilian-influenced performance, also live, but on tv and with Milton Nascimento. Well worth a listen.
I have always loved this song.
No idea why I have Brazil on the brain these days.
It's "Only a Dream in Rio," by James Taylor, performed in two different videos.
A live concert performance in which JT talks about how he came to write the song.
A less glitzy but equally good and more Afro-Brazilian-influenced performance, also live, but on tv and with Milton Nascimento. Well worth a listen.
I have always loved this song.
No idea why I have Brazil on the brain these days.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Xico on GAFCON in historical perspective - it's not only Brazilian music we like here
Xico, de son vrai nom Francisco de Assis da Silva, has written one of his fine short posts on GAFCON and the Puritan reformers under James I.
Hurrah for historical perspective - and once again, for the church of the Global Center.
I have said privately and I will now say here that historians tend to be far more flexible in church matters than, say, philosophers. There's a reason for that. If you study history, you know the church is a messy and complicated reality. You also know we've been through most of this before, or at least something closely resembling it.
We've featured the writings of Rev. Cônego [the Rev. Canon] Francisco de Assis da Silva (Xico) here before, during our Latin American series of last Christmas season. Xico blogs at Katinho do Rev. He is General Secretary of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil, to which dear Luiz belongs).
... The truth is always a search. There is no port where the truth arrived definitely. The truth is born in the wave of the Spirit that moves always challenging our own convictions. The truth is not an idea: it is fundamentally a praxis. Right confession of right comprehension on metaphysical dogmas is not sufficient to guarantee anything! Remember: The word was made flesh! At the place of a FOCA I think we can propose another alternative: AWA - Anglicans who act! ....
Read the whole essay "Confessing or Practicing?" here.
Hurrah for historical perspective - and once again, for the church of the Global Center.
I have said privately and I will now say here that historians tend to be far more flexible in church matters than, say, philosophers. There's a reason for that. If you study history, you know the church is a messy and complicated reality. You also know we've been through most of this before, or at least something closely resembling it.
We've featured the writings of Rev. Cônego [the Rev. Canon] Francisco de Assis da Silva (Xico) here before, during our Latin American series of last Christmas season. Xico blogs at Katinho do Rev. He is General Secretary of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil, to which dear Luiz belongs).
... The truth is always a search. There is no port where the truth arrived definitely. The truth is born in the wave of the Spirit that moves always challenging our own convictions. The truth is not an idea: it is fundamentally a praxis. Right confession of right comprehension on metaphysical dogmas is not sufficient to guarantee anything! Remember: The word was made flesh! At the place of a FOCA I think we can propose another alternative: AWA - Anglicans who act! ....
Read the whole essay "Confessing or Practicing?" here.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Summer tunes: Samba de uma nota só / One Note Samba
Grandmère Mimi has given us the magnificent Ella Fitzgerald singing "One Note Samba" with scat to die for. A beautiful 1975 performance by the Queen herself.
I thought it would be fun to post the Bossa Nova original. So here it is, perfect for a summer night, Samba de uma nota só (One Note Samba) by Antonio Carlos Jobim, sung by the master of bossa nova, João Gilberto, in his soft Brazilian Portuguese. Live in Montreux, I am not sure when. Just voice and guitar.
And here's a little more swingin' version, with keyboard and percussion, and also flute, but still with the guitar and sung by Tom Jobim himself. Enjoy.
I thought it would be fun to post the Bossa Nova original. So here it is, perfect for a summer night, Samba de uma nota só (One Note Samba) by Antonio Carlos Jobim, sung by the master of bossa nova, João Gilberto, in his soft Brazilian Portuguese. Live in Montreux, I am not sure when. Just voice and guitar.
And here's a little more swingin' version, with keyboard and percussion, and also flute, but still with the guitar and sung by Tom Jobim himself. Enjoy.
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