I bonded with Garrison Keillor yesterday and wanted you to see…

“Life is good. Sex is less frequent than when we were young and couldn’t keep our clothes on for more than an hour; now we make love only on birthdays and anniversaries if there is a full moon and the Twins are ahead in the eighth inning, but it’s all the more pleasurable for being rare. It’s like Paris that way: if you lived there you’d just be complaining incessantly the way the French do, but a biennial visit can be marvelous.
Fishing season opens, which gives men a chance to eat bad food, go without bathing, pee outdoors, and sit in a boat for hours and be monosyllabic, but misery makes for good company as I recall from back when I went to political fundraisers. I’m a Democrat and at our events you wind up standing in a bunch of people talking about economic injustice or declining test scores in secondary ed.
Not what I’d call a fun evening. Trump’s success is simple: entertainment. He knows his crowd and tells them what they want to hear: the system is rigged against them and it’s time to overthrow the government. He says stuff you never heard in high school civics class and it’s thrilling. They get to whoop and yell for revolution, knowing this is theater, only intended to terrify Yalies and Times columnists and the book club ladies.
I went to a Trump rally in New Jersey last week. I wore a fake moustache and dark glasses. I loved it. He came out collecting donations — for a hundred bucks you get a degree from Trump University and a round trip on Trump Air. He was raking it in. He yelled, “You people are dumber than stumps. I may be a mad hatter but you have the brains of a box of hammers. You couldn’t find your way home if you were standing in the driveway. Without me, you’d be hopeless.” And he pulled out a pistol and fired into the crowd and a fat man fell down dead and the crowd cheered. “See what I mean? I knew you liked me,” he said. I never saw a candidate do that before.
I read that younger and younger people are now going around with hearing aids and is it any wonder, what with the world clamoring for their attention as they turn up their headphones to shut out the clamor and now baseball, our sacred national pastime, is employing DJs to make rock ’n’ roll racket to engage people who get bored sitting through the outs, waiting for a grand slam.
Nonetheless it is spring, the trees blossom, birds sing, some things remain the same. I saw neighbor kids waiting on the corner for a ride Saturday evening, she was very elegant in a ball gown and he wore a tuxedo and was trying to make conversation. I wanted to warn them about vodka, that it can go down very easily and then be painful coming up, but why would they listen to an old man? I hope they like each other. Friendship is a good start for romance, better than the zing of the strings of your heart. And now I miss my sweetie, far off in Minnesota. She’s the butter on my bagel, the syrup on my toasted waffle. I count the days until she returns.”

Garrison Keillor 5/19/23

I agree with everything Garrison noticed and I want to change my life too. Then I will have the Keillor attitudes and be happily married and my mate the best.

Celebrate Ascension and Prayer…or sing while processing with a banner of the Jesus Ascended…

Ascension Day marks Jesus Christ’s ascension into heaven, according to Christian belief.
©iStockphoto.com/Sebastien Cote

What Do People Do?
Ascension Day is officially celebrated on a Thursday on the 40th day of Easter, or 39 days after Easter Sunday. Some churches in the United States join forces to celebrate a combined Day of Prayer and Ascension Day service, which may include a time for reflection. A few churches also organize a “church crawl”, where people travel from one church to another and experience the different prayer events.

Other churches may feature combined cathedral choirs that offer a special solemn Eucharist written especially for Ascension Day. A social time usually follows the service.  Some Lutheran churches hold a special ceremony where the Paschal candle is extinguished and removed after the reading of the gospel on Ascension Day.

Celebrating the Ascension
 
As Luke concludes his account of the Ascension (Luke 24:51-53), he says: “As He blessed them He parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.”
 
Christ’s final act before ascending to Heaven was blessing us, and his followers’ immediate response was praise. 
 
As we remember the glory of this event with the feast day of the Ascension, let us too react with an outpouring of praise! Do so through prayer, song, and the sharing of faith with our brothers and sisters worldwide.

life is a journey toward the One who loves us….not a showing off of our abilities…

WEDNESDAY MAY 17, 2023

 
“Life is not about showing off our abilities, but a journey towards the One who loves us: by keeping our gaze fixed on the Lord, we will find the strength needed to persevere with renewed joy.”
Pope Francis

Apostolate with the Word of God, the Eucharist and Prayer…

 

TUESDAY MAY 16TH, 2023 
 “Like the first disciples, do not neglect to nourish your life and your apostolate with the Word of God, the Eucharist and prayer. For the mission, like communion, is first and foremost a mystery of Grace. It is not our work, but God’s; we do it not alone, but moved by the Spirit and docile to his action. Mission and communion spring from prayer, are shaped day by day by listening to the Word of God – listening in prayer – and have as their ultimate goal the salvation of the brothers and sisters the Lord entrusts to us. Without these foundations, they become empty and end up being reduced to a mere sociological or welfare dimension. And the Church is not interested in providing welfare… helping, yes, but first of all, evangelizing, bearing witness: if you give assistance, let it come from witnessing, not from proselytizing methods.” 

Pope Francis

Excerpt from “The Prelude”
by William Wordsworth

When from our better selves we have too long

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,

Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,

How gracious, how benign is Solitude!

—Hermit

Deep in the bosom of the Wilderness;

Votary (in vast Cathedral, where no foot

Is treading and no other face is seen)

Kneeling at prayer; or Watchman on the top

Of Lighthouse beaten by Atlantic Waves.

Excerpt from “The Prelude” by William Wordsworth. Public domain.

breathing in unison…

MONDAY MAY 15TH, 2023 
 “The Holy Spirit wants to stay with us: he is not a passing guest who comes to pay us a courtesy visit. He is a companion for life, a stable presence. He is Spirit and desires to dwell in our spirits. He is patient and stays with us even when we fall. He remains because he truly loves us; he does not pretend to love us, and then leave us alone when things get difficult. No. He is faithful, he is transparent, he is authentic.” 
Pope Francis

My anthropology professor explained to me that we are social animals. We feel safest when we are incorporated in our group, and we feel that most when we are doing things together. Yes, that can have a dark side (mob violence) but it also has an extremely bright side. When we sing together, we are not only physically oriented the same way (usually we face the leader), but we are also even breathing in unison. I sang with you and the audience while I watched the clip. It was great.
Caroline M.

love always goes beyond….

SATURDAY MAY 13TH, 2023 
 “True love is never up to a certain point, and is never satisfied; love always goes beyond, it cannot do otherwise. The Lord showed us this by giving his life on the cross and forgiving his murderers (cf. Lk 23:34). And he entrusted to us the commandment most dear to him: that we love one another like he  loved us (cf. Jn 15:12). This is the love that gives fulfilment to the Law, to faith, to true life!
So, brothers and sisters, we can ask ourselves: how do I live faith? Is it a matter of calculations, formalism, or a love story with God? Am I content merely with not doing harm, keeping the “façade” in good order, or do I try to grow in love for God and others? And do I check myself on Jesus’ great commandment, do I ask myself if I love my neighbor as He loves me? Because perhaps we are inflexible in judging others and forget to be merciful, as God is with us.
May Mary, who observed the Word of God perfectly, help us to give fulfilment to our faith and our charity.” 
Pope Francis

I know this touch by heart…

This is one thing that Hollywood has a hard time portraying, marital peace and mutual pleasure, those unexpected moments when I sit looking at the screen and feel her hand on my shoulder. I know this touch by heart.

it’s the touch that says, “You’re my man, you make me happy just sitting there.” Her hand rests on my shoulder, maybe she touches my hair or puts her cheek next to mine, and it’s clear as day, no need for underscore or dialogue. You can depict this in an essay. I just did. And most of my readers recalled that moment in their own experience. I wish they all could but some of them are too young.
Falling in love is nothing new, a million songs’ worth, all the same, but this unexpected touch and the sudden proximity of the beloved and the wordless exchange of knowledge — your presence makes me happy — do you know what I mean?

I hope you do — it’s forever new.

Garrison Keillor 5/10/23

the difference between terror and horror…

Ann Radcliffe
 In an essay that Radcliffe’s husband released after her death, she writes of the difference between emotional terror (which she embraced) and physical horror (which she refuted): “Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.”

an integrated circuit…

On this date in 1952, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer  first presented the concept of the integrated circuit, also known as the microchip, which is the basis for all modern electronic equipment.
Geoffrey Dummer was born in Yorkshire in 1909 and studied electrical engineering at Regent Polytechnic in London. He held a series of jobs in the 1930s, including a post with the Ministry of Defence; his group was responsible for the first radar screen ever built. During World War II, he trained American and Canadian forces in ground-based aircraft detection training. Throughout his career, he was always looking for a way to make electronic components more reliable.
The integrated circuit is an advanced form of the electrical circuit, which is made up of a set of components — a transistor, a resistor, a capacitor, and a diode — linked together in a variety of ways. The transistor, which controls the electrical power — turning it on and off — was a big advance over the vacuum tubes used in the first computers. Vacuum tubes are like light bulbs: they generate a lot of heat, and they eventually burn out. They’re also much bigger than their successors, the transistors. Early computers powered by hundreds of vacuum tubes were unreliable and required a lot of room, and the invention of the transistor in 1947 solved those problems. The transistor had a few problems of its own, though, since each connection in the circuit had to be intact for it to work, and soldering all the circuits required to power a huge supercomputer was a very big job indeed. It also took time for the signal to travel through all the wires connecting the various components.
Dummer came up with the idea of making the various parts out of a single piece of silicon, which would eliminate the distance between components, speed up the signal, and do away with the need for precise soldering. It would also be smaller, enabling it to be fit into much smaller devices. He presented his paper at the U.S. Electronic Components Symposium in Washington, D.C. He told his audience, “It now seems possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires.” Dummer’s talk is considered the first public description of an integrated circuit. Five years later, Dummer presented a prototype of his idea, and tried to get the British government to invest in the integrated circuit, but to no avail. He later said: “The plain fact is that nobody would take the risk. The Ministry wouldn’t place a contract because they hadn’t an application. The applications people wouldn’t say we want it, because they had no experience with it. It was a chicken-and-egg situation. The Americans took financial gambles, whereas this was very slow in this country.” Meanwhile, American scientists beat Dummer to the punch, patenting their own circuit in 1958, and it would be years before the United Kingdom had a semiconductor industry. While Dummer didn’t get a patent for his concept, he did earn the title “The Prophet of the Integrated Circuit.”
Today, we rely on integrated circuits to run our computers, our phones, our watches, and our calculators. They’re also used in microwaves, TVs, stereos, cars, refrigerators, kids’ toys, and musical greeting cards. Pretty much anything you plug in is going to have at least one microchip in it.
5/7/23 The Poetry Almanac

Time with You
by Gary Soto
We’re thirteen, almost fourteen,
And so much in love
We want the years to pass—
Clouds roll at super speed, rains fall,
Flowers unfold and die at the snap
Of our fingers. I want to stuff sand
Through a fat hourglass,
And rip the pages from the calendar.
Let me blow candles from my cake.
Let my puppy stretch to full size.
When we turn eighteen,
Time will become a canoe on a still lake.
“Time with You” by Gary Soto from Partly Cloudy. © Harcourt, 2009. Reprinted with permission

Aspirations?

SATURDAY MAY 6TH, 2023
 
 “If in our hearts we are carrying some burden or suffering that seems to crush us, it is the moment to go out to meet Jesus, who is close, to open the tomb of our problems and look beyond the threshold toward his light. If you don’t have much time to pray, there is a wise spiritual practice that can help you. Often throughout the day, you can repeat very short prayers, so-called aspirations, to remain “in harmony” with the Lord.” 
Pope Francis

In the word “aspirations” is the word aspirate.

To breathe.

Our breath is the Holy Spirit.

Prahna.

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

While some Christians accept these as a definitive list of specific attributes, others understand them merely as examples of the Holy Spirit’s work through the faithful.