Saints preserve us.

 

Bad movie saints.

Movies often are appealing because we find characters with whom we can identify. Sometimes they are not the main characters, who are handsome or powerful or gorgeous or resourceful or in incredible shape or witty or really have a lot going for them. I mean the second bananas, or maybe third or even further back in the bunch. Sure, they're Hollywood characters, so they're probably still not awful to look at, but they're not the star, are they? (Although the star could be someone like noted Italian-American homunculus Joe Pesci, so who can say?) One thing, though, is that precious few characters in the movies would ever be considered for sainthood.

The Church often calls upon us, especially at Confirmation, to identify with a saint, someone of extraordinary virtue with whom we may still find some fellowship. We hope this will inspire us to seek out virtue ourselves, such as the Seven Cardinal Virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage plus the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity), as well as the 12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit. 

Well, movie characters with whom we identify are not always going to have those virtues, or maybe any at all in a generous supply. And yet we can learn from them, even if they would make lousy saints. Plus, they always wind up helping the good guys. So allow me to present a few Lousy Movie Saints for your consideration. Devotions not encouraged.   

St. Cleo McDowell of the Rival Hamburger
Patron of Small Business Owners
Known for: Dedication, hard work, directness,
paternal love
A real David-vs.-Goliath story, with a man who
appreciates royalty

St. Samir Nagheenanajar the Long-Suffering
Patron of Victims of Office Machinery
Known for: Intelligence, love of justice
Appreciates how the Evil One uses things against us;
not afraid to fight 

[see also: St. Female Temp, Patroness of Mondays]

St. Mona Lisa Vito the Handy
Patroness of Classic Car Mechanics
Known for: Mental endurance, intelligence, fortitude, courage
Sees the beauty in others that others do not -- like a broken-down
Thunderbird covered in dents and rust

St. Jack Butler the Unemployed
Patron of Stay-at-Home Dads
Known for: Prudence, chastity, paternal love
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do -- even if it means
resisting the gorgeous Ann Jillian

St. Mongo of Rock Ridge
Patron of Big Galoots 
Known for: Strength, humility
Maybe not the sharpest hammer in the icebox,
but shows how a little love and candy (and dynamite)
can turn a sinner away from bad

So there's a starter set. As I say, they're all lacking in attributes one would expect to see among the holy, but they all help out our heroes, so there's definitely a lot to like here. And definitely a lot with which to identify. 

The end of Christmas!

Sure, it's Groundhog Day (again!), but that's just a silly regional fun day. Today is also a more somber day, one on which we remember one of my favorite saints, Simeon.  

First of all, we should note that in medieval England, the Christmas celebration ended on Candlemas, February 2, forty days after Christmas Day. This may seem like too much of a good thing, but we have to remember that Advent was not a time of Christmas parties and general hoopla as it is now. Rather, Advent was like a mini-Lent, and not the celebration period. So for them, Christmas was the start of the festivities, not the end. I enjoy what we call the Christmas season (Thanksgiving through New Year's), but it really has turned the celebration on its head.

So what is Candlemas, more officially known as the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord? It's what it sounds like, the commemoration of Mary and Joseph taking the baby Jesus to the temple, which was the custom of the time, to have the baby consecrated to God. (This followed the 40-day purification period after childbirth, which enabled the mother to get over having birthed a child!) Since we don't know much about the childhood of Jesus, this does make a natural bookend to the Christmas season. 

At the temple, according to Luke, two saints are met: the prophetess Anna, and my man Simeon. There is something about Simeon I love. His extraordinary patience is admirable -- I have no patience, so I admire it in others. 

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

This man was righteous and devout,

awaiting the consolation of Israel,

and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit

that he should not see death

before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. 

He came in the Spirit into the temple;

and when the parents brought in the child Jesus

to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,

he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:

    “Now, Master, you may let your servant go 

        in peace, according to your word,

    for my eyes have seen your salvation,

        which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:

    a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

        and glory for your people Israel.”

The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;

and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,

“Behold, this child is destined

for the fall and rise of many in Israel,

and to be a sign that will be contradicted

--and you yourself a sword will pierce--

so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Pretty harsh words for Mary, but he only spoke the truth. The prayer to God, known as the Canticle of Simeon, is called also the nunc dimittis, from the opening words in the Latin vulgate -- "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine" ("Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord").

So now Christmas is over. You may take down your decorations. I almost waited that long, but just because I was so busy -- the fake tree didn't retire to the cellar until January 20, I think.

Today's Feast of the Presentation is also called Candlemas because of the traditional blessing of the candles used in church at Mass. Parishioners are often invited to bring candles from home for this blessing, too. This comes from Simeon's declaration of Jesus as "a light for revelation to the Gentiles". 

So is it just a coincidence that Groundhog Day calls on Candlemas?  

Probably not. According to Dr. Wiki, the Germans had a superstition related to Candlemas, about its weather being the determinant factor of the timing of spring weather (although the Germans turned mostly Lutheran, they held on to Candlemas). This predictive belief got tied to the local badger, whose actions during Candlemas week would give them a heads-up on when they could expect to start planting. That got transferred with the Germans to Pennsylvania, and the preponderance of groundhogs rather than badgers led to the modern Groundhog Day. 

It's an interesting lesson for how we shuffle things around in the modern world. A period of fasting and preparation (Advent) becomes the period of feasting and merriment (the Christmas season) and a day of dedication and blessing becomes a day for a rodent to forecast the weather. I'm sure there's more to be made of this topic, but I'm cold and grumpy. Just walked the dog and I'm freezing. That little jerk in Punxsutawney had better not see his shadow today. 

St. Prez.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." I think that can be said for the president. Absolutely nothing is going right for this man and his passel of pointy-heads, and everyone knows it. One suspects that even they know it, although if they admit it, it would be like saying, "Yeah, the emperor is naked, so what?" And then it gets even worse. 

They can't even do propaganda right. Say what you will about Obama, his people could do propaganda. Here's the famous St. Obama photo, the first of many where the president just happened to have his head inside a halo in news shots:

And here's Ol' Joe's people trying the same trick. 

The thing is, that doesn't look like a halo. The first thing I thought of was:

Which, no offense to Art Garfunkel, is not a halo. In a flash I thought the Prez had let his hair-plug maintenance get out of control in the hope of holding on to the youth vote. But alas, it seemed like the attempt to put the ring of holiness around President Biden instead put his head on a platter. Which, as much as we love St. John the Baptist, is not the kind of image a president wants to project.  

I'm sure that Trump's people tried to put out pictures like that, but the wire services wouldn't have run them anyway. He was in the Lyndon Johnson position -- Johnson who famously said, "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'" 

Well, there's no point in pretending we're electing saints to any political offices. I think most politicians are working for the other side, IYKWIMAITYD. 

Peacocks on a mission from God.

Friday was National Peacock Day, as our friend and Certified Dad Joke Expert PLWoodstock mentioned in the comments yesterday. Actually, I have been able to find no reference to the weird holiday on all my usual Weird Holiday calendars, but let's just roll with it. After all, it was a day for Peacocks of the basketball variety, as a small private college, St. Peter's University in Jersey City, slipped past powerhouse Purdue in the men's NCAA basketball tournament to move into the Elite Eight. The 15th-seed Peacocks became the lowest seed to ever get that far. It was one of the most thrilling, nail-biting games of any kind I have ever seen. 

My disinterest in basketball is well known; just a sport that, like hockey, never grabbed me. That's changed in the last week, at least temporarily, since one of my oldest and dearest friends is an alumnus of St. Peter's. In fact, he was on the last football team the school ever fielded, since (dare I say) their success rate on the gridiron was exceptionally compromised. However, he is thrilled to follow his old school's playoffs, and we old pals, being scattered about the tri-state area now, have been watching each game together virtually while keeping a running chat going via texts. It's been a lot of fun. 

I asked my friend if he knew why the team's mascot is the peacock. He didn't know, although he'd heard that the grounds used to have a lot of peacocks hanging about. That seems odd, since the peacock is not native to the Americas. Moreover, St. Peter's avian symbol is the rooster or cock, after Christ's warning that Peter would deny Him three times before cock crow. 

I suggested that the name came from Pete cock, which seems unlikely but is kind of funny. (Keep it clean, boys.) 

Actually, it seems that the peacock, like the pelican and many other animals, has a history of Christian symbolism. The site Jesus Walk lists some examples of peacock symbolism in Christian art, for example, but nothing specifically associated with St. Peter. 

When I was a kid, the local zoo had a couple of African peacocks wandering around. They were fun to watch, but the males seldom put on the classic display. It's usually done to scare predators, and of course to attract mates. 

"Helllloooo, ladies!"

There's quite a spectacle on the court, though, as the young men of St. Peter's are playing an energetic brand of basketball that thrills my basketball-loving pals, most of whom can barely stand the modern NBA's current brand of three-point showboating and bricked foul shots. 

I root for the Peacocks unreservedly in their battle against the Tar Heels tonight. Fight fiercely, Peacocks!

I have also noted that, since it is Lent, St. Peter's is on a mission from God. I think we have to understand that that's the case. Villanova is still in the mix, but it's time for a more humble Catholic college to step forward. St. Peter's has gotten the call.

Have you seen my glasses?

I have been unable to find my glasses for weeks, and it's annoying.

Fortunately it isn't worse than that. I'm mildly nearsighted, so I usually need them only for driving at night and in large areas like churches or supermarkets -- and for the latter use, the return of the mask mandates mean they fog up indoors anyway. 

Unfortunately, last week I had to drive at night in a pounding rain in an unfamiliar route because an accident blocked a street and sent me around a long detour. My wife was following in her car (long dog-related story) and I had to apologize for making us make two U-turns because I missed the signs until it was too late. 

So I'd like my glasses back. I have, however, searched everywhere with no luck. This seems to be like the last time I lost my glasses, when it appears I threw them away by accident. St. Anthony cannot help you when your lost item is in the landfill. Ditto the valet key for my car, so I am down to one car key. Also assorted books and tools and things.

My wife got tired of hearing me krex & moan about it, so she got me a Tile set for Christmas. 

The idea behind the Tile is simple, but the execution is complex. You attach one to something you lose a lot and sync it with your phone. You can use the Tile app to set off an alarm on the little Tile to find your item. Ah, but what if you left your wallet, say, in the library or in the house of ill repute? The wallet-size Tile card can show you where it is on a map. Apparently the system works not just through satellites but also through the Tile apps on phones belonging to random people passing by as well -- I'm not sure what to make of that, or even if I've summed it up properly. It sounds like using Tile drafts you into the Tile Army. But it does seem like your missing item has a much better chance of being found.

Not my glasses, though. These Tiles are too big to put on a pair of glasses. Even the little dot, which can stick to anything. I stuck it on the back of my phone, and then realized that if the phone is lost I can't locate the dot anyway. I thought I could use the Tile site online to activate the dot, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. Perhaps if my wife had the Tile app she could find the dot on my phone. She does not have the Tile because she doesn't lose things. 

I guess I could have put the dot in my glasses case, but I didn't lose that. 

I do appreciate the Tile, and I have misplaced my wallet and keys enough for it to be a very handy thing, especially as I march forth into decrepitude. My eye doctor swears I'll go farsighted eventually, but maybe my vision will just even out. If that's the case, I won't need to attach a Tile to my glasses, and can get on with just losing my keys as usual. 

George & Dragon.

Today is the feast day of St. George. You know -- dragon killing dude. That's pretty much the only thing anyone (including me) thinks of. And yet he's the patron saint of England, Catalonia, and Moscow; there are 26 towns named for St. George, including the seat of Richmond County in New York; and the cross of St. George -- red cross on white banner -- can be found all around England. The Coptic Church calls him the Prince of Martyrs, and he is even revered by Muslims. There is a statue of him on the grounds of the United Nations building in Manhattan, slaying a "dragon" made of actual pieces of US and Soviet missiles, a Russian gift in 1990. But who was he? 

Like several early saints in the church, such as Christopher, his legend had a tendency to crowd out the facts. He was the real deal, whom Pope Gelasius I canonized in 494. Here's what the Saints & Angels page says:

George was born to a Gerontios and Polychronia, a Roman officer and a Greek native of Lydda. Both were Christians from noble families of the Anici and George, Georgios in the original Greek, was raised to follow their faith.

When George was old enough, he was welcomed into Diocletian's army. by his late 20's, George became a Tribunus and served as an imperial guard for the Emperor at Nicomedia.

On February 24, 303 A.D., Diocletian, who hated Christians, announced that every Christian the army passed would be arrested and every other soldier should offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods.

George refused to abide by the order and told Diocletian, who was angry but greatly valued his friendship with George's father.

When George announced his beliefs before his peers, Diocletian was unable to keep the news to himself. In an effort to save George, Diocletian attempted to convert him to believe in the Roman gods, offered him land, money and slaves in exchange for offering a sacrifice to the Roman gods, and made several other offers that George refused.

Finally, after exhausting all other options, Diocletian ordered George's execution. In preparation for his death, George gave his money to the poor and was sent for several torture sessions. He was lacerated on a wheel of swords and required resuscitation three times, but still George did not turn from God.

On April 23, 303 A.D., George was decapitated before Nicomedia's outer wall. His body was sent to Lydda for burial, and other Christians went to honor George as a martyr.

That sounds like a brave but very typical saint of the early church, willing to go to a horrible death rather than renounce Jesus Christ. 

So... what about the dragon? 

Here's the story:

There are several stories about George fighting dragons, but in the Western version, a dragon or crocodile made its nest at a spring that provided water to Silene, believed to be modern-day Lcyrene in Libya.

The people were unable to collect water and so attempted to remove the dragon from its nest on several occasions. It would temporarily leave its nest when they offered it a sheep each day, until the sheep disappeared and the people were distraught.

This was when they decided that a maiden would be just as effective as sending a sheep. The townspeople chose the victim by drawing straws. This continued until one day the princess' straw was drawn.

The monarch begged for her to be spared but the people would not have it. She was offered to the dragon, but before she could be devoured, George appeared. He faced the dragon, protected himself with the sign of the Cross, and slayed the dragon.

After saving the town, the citizens abandoned their paganism and were all converted to Christianity.

Obviously there is at least one thing in the story that's deeply weird -- the idea that the men of Silene said to themselves, "We're clean outta sheep; what do we do? Go fight the dragon? Nah, that's crazy talk. Let's just feed him the girls." Although to be fair, that was probably one hell of a dragon (or crocodile).

No disrespect meant to St. George or the other martyrs of the church, but I kind of think that without the tale of bold St. George killing the dragon he would not have nearly the same popularity. Sober men of the church revere the saints who gave their lives for Christ, but all guys like the story of a dude willing to kill a dragon and save the princess.

Fast acting.

I don't have much to say today, Good Friday, that I didn't say yesterday in cartoon form, except to add: I'm HUNGRY!

Well, all right, I'm not hungry, yet. But as an American who has never had to go a day without food because there was no food available, I'm not used to the fast that falls on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I'm totally spoiled that way, and I wish everyone on earth that privilege. 

The rules are, as outlined by the bishops: 

For members of the Latin Catholic Church, the norms on fasting are obligatory from age 18 until age 59. When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. The norms concerning abstinence from meat are binding upon members of the Latin Catholic Church from age 14 onwards.

If possible, the fast on Good Friday is continued until the Easter Vigil (on Holy Saturday night) as the "paschal fast" to honor the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus and to prepare ourselves to share more fully and to celebrate more readily his Resurrection.

I didn't know this latter part about the fast continuing to the Saturday Vigil, which usually begins around eight in the evening here. Dude, that's like, four meals I'm missing, with just one meal in between! And no snacks! And no meat! Do I look like John the Baptist to you? Camel hair is not my color!

Of course, fasting has been a crucial part of Christian teaching, and that of every major religion. Self-denial is paramount in learning obedience to God, and to putting our egos in their proper and healthy place. What the Catholic church urges us to do is nothing compared to the Ramadan fast observed by Muslims, where not even a drop of water may be consumed from sunup to sundown. Because it is keyed to lunar cycles, it is celebrated (if that's the word I want) at different times of the year each year. When it falls in June or July, it must be murder. And it goes on for a month. 

Some people these days fast for bodily rather than spiritual health. Harvard Health has some good things to say about this practice, and it has shown great promise, especially in fat rats. And I say: It's about time those rats got off their tails. 

Along those lines, today, April 2, happens to be the feast day (so to speak) of St. Francis of Paola, founder of a strict order in the 15th century. 

Humility was to be the hallmark of the brothers as it had been in Francis' personal life. Abstinence from meat and other animal products became a "fourth vow" of his religious order, along with the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Francis instituted the continual, year-round observance of this diet in an effort to revive the tradition of fasting during Lent, which many Roman Catholics had ceased to practice by the 15th century. The rule of life adopted by Francis and his religious was one of extraordinary severity. He felt that heroic mortification was necessary as a means for spiritual growth.

He lived to the age of 91. Some might suggest that he felt like he lived to the age of 391 with a diet like that, but that wasn't what he was about. 

Meanwhile, back home, our parish has had some outstanding pastors, but they seem to have had different takes on food. The one we had when we moved here looked like he'd never missed a meal in his life; one after him looked like he'd never eaten a real meal. The current one is somewhere in the middle. 

Well, I am sure I can endure this hunger situation, and could even if it went until Saturday night. There is a world of difference between hunger when you don't know where your next meal is coming from and hunger when you see Snickers eggs and braised lamb shanks at the end of the tunnel. 

I feel like a guy playing at being needy, but maybe that's better than never giving the state and consequences of true need any thought at all. 

The patron saint of the canceled.

Yesterday was the feast of St. John of God, a Portuguese born in 1495, of whom many interesting stories are told. By some accounts he went to war in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, fighting the French and later the Turks. He fell away from his childhood piety and lost his moral bearing. Eventually he decided to mend his ways, and went all in for the Lord, devoting himself to helping the poor and the sick. 

There was one story about him that made me think he would be a wonderful patron saint for those facing public cancellation in these strange and wicked times. We are supposed to be a society of the free, but as you well know, making a public statement of a sort that everyone believed a decade ago (such as, riots are bad, men can't be women just by wearing a dress, all lives are important) can get you fired from your job, blackballed from your industry, doxxed, attacked at your home, blacklisted from "social" media, and if some asshat is feeling particularly asinine, maybe SWATted while you sleep. 

My use of the term "blackballed" just now might be enough to do me in, but fortunately I'm a nobody and I don't use Twitter. If I were to get the attention of the social justice orcs, I would know better than to apologize -- apologies are never accepted by the mob, and just motivate them to keep burning and pitchforking.

Modern mob justice has no interest if its victim even really did anything wrong. It just likes to collect heads. If I offend in this blog, it's probably a joke, and if they don't like it, the humorless dweebs should try telling a joke themselves; if I say something true that they don't like, I'm not apologizing for the truth. Of course, we know for the mob, truth is never a defense. 

According to the Catholic News Agency, John of God did not make a secret of his often disreputable past: 

The Bishop of Granada approved his work, and gave him the name “John of God.” A group of volunteers came to accompany him in his work, many of whom had first come to him while in dire need themselves.

      Others, who resented his work, assaulted John's reputation by focusing on his past sins – but John, unfazed in his humility, would acknowledge the truth of what was said, as a testament to God's grace in his life. He once offered to pay a woman to tell the entire city what she had been saying about him in private.

And that's why I suggest John of God would be a good patron for those who have come under attack by Internet mobs. He was repentant of his past, and he did not apologize to those who tried to ruin his reputation. He had already repented to the One who mattered, so he knew the truth wouldn't hurt him. If others attacked him anyway, he was humble enough to take it and man enough to see it through.

St. John of God, pray for us! The whole world's gone batty and everything is upside down. Help us be humble and faithful enough to endure, help us be brave, and help us not to apologize for telling the truth. 

Fred's Book Club: Oh So Bad.

Greetings, book lovers, and welcome to the Humpback Writers, our Wednesday (Hump Day) book feature -- this week, the Ash Wednesday book feature. No actual humps have yet been detected, but that doesn't mean our authors are all beauty pageant contestants, let me tell you.

Since it is Ash Wednesday, I considered profiling a book of great theological wisdom, humility, penance, and historical importance, like The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. But I decided to go the other way.

Sinner is a sort of book of confession by Lino Rulli, host of The Catholic Guy Show on SiriusXM radio's Catholic Channel. When I say it's a book of confession, I mean like Confessions by St. Augustine, except nothing at all like that. Well, maybe a little. It's just that Lino is nothing at all like that. Maybe he's akin to St. Augustine as he tries to live a Christian life, but like all of us he doesn't quite pass the Augustine bar. In fact, he rarely passes any bars. (Rimshot.) 

From the introduction, Lino discusses his intentions:

Having me write a book about the Catholic faith is like having a really bad actor write a book about the craft of acting. (Speaking of which, why hasn't Pauly Shore written a book about acting yet?)

The only way I could wrap my head around writing this book was if I called it Sinner, because that sums me up.

And I knew I had come up with the right name when not one person disagreed with it. If I called it The Catholic Guy's Path to Sainthood or Holy Lino's Guide to God, there would have been protests in the street and the burning of my image in effigy.

But everyone seemed to agree on one thing: I'm a sinner. 

Lino's youth, as the only child of one and a half devout Catholics, was not particularly ordinary. One day while praying in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at St. Peter's Basilica on a family trip to Rome, his father (the half-devout one) felt God was telling him to leave his career as a parole officer to become... an organ grinder. Of course, every organ grinder needs a monkey:

My dad sat me down to explain. "Lino, we can't get a monkey. First off, we can barely take care of the two cats in the house. Second, there's no room for a monkey around here. And third, we can't afford it. The insurance is too expensive. He could bite someone, they'd sue us, and we'd be stuck." 

This all sounded like common sense. And I couldn't help but wonder if there were any other father-son conversations taking place on the planet at that moment about why the family couldn't get a monkey.

"OK, Pops," I said, thinking he just needed to get this information off his chest. As I got up to go, he stopped me.

"Since we can't get a real monkey..." There was a pause. Maybe he wanted me to figure it out on my own. Maybe his conscience was getting the better of him.

"I need you to dress up like a monkey and ask for money."

He got up and left the room, but walked back in with one more thought.

"Oh, and don't bite anyone or we'll get sued."

And with that, I became a monkey boy.

Lest you think he's making it up, there is a picture in the book of Monkey Lino, Pops, and the organ.

So we are entertained by stories of his eccentric Midwestern youth, his quest for a Mrs. Lino, and his tortuous career path. But you may be wondering if Lino ever gets around to the Catholicism stuff. And he does, quite a bit. He is a big fan of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, known colloquially as Confession, and he has some advice on the topic:

Welcome to the least reverent guide to confession you'll ever read.

After you've committed to the idea of going to confession, you've got to figure out which lucky priest will hear your sins. If you find a parish that has confession by appointment only, move on to the next parish. A parish of three thousand people that offers confession on Saturday from 4:00 to 4:05 might not be where you want to pour out your soul, either. Find yourself a parish that offers confession frequently. Daily is preferable.

Advent or penance services are a great opportunity, but make sure it actually involves going to confession. Don't be fooled by those "communal penance" services that involve thinking about sins but not saying them out loud. That's not confession, that's reminiscing.  

Around the time this book came out, I was driving to Westchester for work every day. My wife got me a subscription to Sirius, which is how I discovered The Catholic Guy Show. Eventually I had to start going into the city by bus, so I dropped the service, but I still sometimes catch the podcast version of the show, especially if I know I'll be in the car more than usual. It's entertaining. Since Lino wrote Sinner, he did find a wife and moved back to his native Minneapolis (he had been doing the show from Manhattan), so he's got a whole different set of things to complain about now than he used to. 

If you're Catholic, you'll probably find the book funny. Amusing for anyone, really. 

For a Catholic guy who hosts a show called The Catholic Guy Show, Lino Rulli is not much of a booster for the religion. He spends half his time knocking dull Catholic radio hosts, overzealous Catholics, and others who might be considered part of his fan base. 

But Lino's boss and friend Cardinal Dolan has seldom had to swat him for sinful radio, so he must be doing something good -- sinner though he is.

Saints and Snickers.

Well, we survived Halloween with the full moon and all that. I hope you did as well. If not, I guess you're not reading this. We miss you.

Meanwhile, despite the threat that the state or local government would eighty-six the whole trick-or-treat thing, and despite the sudden freeze the night before that killed every bloom of my remaining dahlias and mums, we had enough kids stop by to almost wipe us out of candy by four p.m. "Screw your Boomer-remover Chinese Death Virus, old-timers; we want Snickers!"

My wife may have been a little generous with the virus-free candy bags she made up, but hey -- if the children are willing to walk around in the cold, they deserve extra candy. So I ran to CVS to buy more, barely finding Halloween stuff tucked in amid the Christmas stuff. But I had expected as much -- the blurry photo below was from the supermarket's "seasonal" aisle early on Halloween morning. Sorry I was rushing, but you can tell by the Festive! colors that it's Christmas now. 

The kids may have come early because it was unseasonably cold. But man, they had some great costumes. I think the COVID fatigue has been beating them down even worse than their parents. However, after the dinnertime lull, we did not get a lot more trick-or-treaters, so we wound up with extra candy anyway.

Well, that was yesterday. Today -- welcome, November! 

yay

We had to set the clocks back, which used to mean and extra hour of sleep, but then I got dogs. I wanted to set the clocks back to 1962. That seems like a nice year. New Frontier, Googie architecture, Mercury 7, all that. Of course, lots of people had a terrible time of it in 1962. Avalanches in Peru, Big Freeze in the UK, segregation riots at the University of Mississippi, Marilyn Monroe's overdose, and so on. So not all of us would like to see 1962 again. Also, to really enjoy the year we'd have to know what we know -- i.e., that World War III was not about to break out -- which would mean we'd be sad because we knew what bad things were coming down the pike -- assassinations, Vietnam, 9/11, hippies, Challenger disaster, disco, Pink Lady and Jeff. 

Setting the clocks forward is just as bad. Who wants to shoot ahead in the calendar without a guarantee that things will get better? Will we still be under mask orders in 2023? Will China skip the pussyfooting around and drop the big one? Will the next virus to jump a Wuhan lab be a new fast-acting form of leprosy? My God -- will The View still be running five years from now?

So this is why it's best to live in the day, as they say, and Saints Preserve Us! It's All Saints Day as well. Chernabog in Fantasia has been chased away by the "Ave Maria," and God bless us all, every one. Especially since we're going to have the remaining holidays out the bazooty every day for the next two months and change. Buckle up, cocoa cup! 

Saints not alive!

Yes, folks, all the stupid Halloween stuff is over, leaving me with a couple of pounds of un-tricked-or-treated candy and the obligation to go to church today. I'm not sure why they even have a Vigil Mass for All Saints' Day, as everyone has to be home distributing the goodies lest their home be egged.

But today is All Saints' Day. The Church's definition of a saint, according to a pretty good summary from the gang at the Dummies publishing imprint, is as follows:

The Catholic Church believes that saints are ordinary and typical human beings who made it into heaven. In the broader sense, everyone who's now in heaven is technically a saint. Saints are human beings who lived holy lives in obedience to God's will and are now in heaven for eternity.

We know there are many more saints in heaven than we have knowledge of, people no one ever heard of who lived lives of triumphant virtue. The reason it takes so long for the Church to determine if someone ought to be recognized as a saint is that the investigators strive to separate truth from legend and bad motives, and to make sure that a saintly countenance of the deceased did not conceal an ignoble heart. This takes a while.

It can be tricky to know who is a saint on this side of the tapestry, the side where everything is all threads and knots and nothing makes sense. Some people give off a real glow of holiness, they say; others are known to die a martyr's death, faithful to the end and unafraid. I wonder which is the harder path to sainthood?

The best essay I have ever read about death, and likely ever will read, came from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, writing in First Things in 2000. In "Born Toward Dying," Fr. Neuhaus described, sparing few grisly details, his horrible ordeal with cancer that nearly killed him. In fact, it actually did for a short bit. He found himself sitting up while his body lay on a table, encountering two beings that had a message for him.

“Everything is ready now.” It was not in the form of a command, nor was it an invitation to do anything. They were just letting me know. Then they were gone, and I was again flat on my back with my mind racing wildly. I had an iron resolve to determine right then and there what had happened. Had I been dreaming? In no way. I was then and was now as lucid and wide awake as I had ever been in my life.

It's an amazing piece of work, a piece that has the ring of truth throughout. His terrible sickness, exacerbated by the incompetence of medical personnel; his determination while this mystical but brief incident occurred to make sure he would not allow himself the comfort of thinking it was a dream in the future by nailing down the reality in his mind while it happened; his terrible depression later as he climbed slowly back to health, while wondering how life can go on when it all ends in death.

I was bowled over when I first read it. I was sitting on a train, and I found myself staring out the window, thunderstruck by the certainty that everything he had been through and every word he had written was especially intended for me to read, as much as it was intended for him, and for everyone else who would read his essay. In other words, God is so great that not only do things happen for reasons, but things that happen to a number of us are still meant for each of us individually. I hope I am making some sense; I sometimes think the things that really make sense in life are things that, in Chestertonian paradoxical fashion, seem the most senseless at first glance.

 Fr. Neuhaus did recover, but sadly, the cancer recovered too; he passed on in 2009. I trust he was not afraid, because he'd seen the curtains, and he knew that everything was ready.

Fred's Pet Rescue!

Move over, The Dodo -- here comes The Fredfred!

All right, well, maybe it wasn't quite as dramatic as all that, but it was considered a good deed, anyway.

Tuesday night I was walking Nipper around the neighborhood when he stopped and looked back. Behind us was a golden retriever, smiling. I don't know how long he'd been trailing us, but there he was.

He was all by himself, but he had a collar on, so I thought be might be one of the dogs at the corner we had just passed. The guys did the usual sniff & greet and then mixed it up with some Puppy UFC -- hard on me, since my dog lunges like a puma and weighs almost as much. Plus, we were right in the middle of the street. It's not a busy street, but there's no sidewalk. So I had to try to wrestle them to the lawn nearby, while trying to remember if I'd seen that dog before. And no, I had not.

He was very friendly, though, so I pulled him in to give him a pat and have a look at his tags. The owner had put his name on it, and a phone number, and even his home address -- and it was clear across town, in an old cottage community, four miles away! Could he have gotten that lost? He did have a bunch of burs stuck on his coat, which I first thought were ticks.

I alerted the Mrs. to the situation, then dialed the number. I was informed by the Verizon recorded lady that the owner of that line was not available and thanked and hung up on.

Now I'm thinking this sweet puppy is owned by some crackhead who didn't pay his phone bill and probably doesn't even know his dog is missing.

My wife came to meet us with another leash, and we led the little guy and our guy to the house. She suggested we call our vet, have the dog scanned for a chip -- if the dog had one it might have updated information. The vet's office was still open for half an hour, so I called and asked if we could bring the stranger in; they said okay. So I loaded him into the car and off we went. (He was not shy about jumping into a strange SUV.)

While I was stuck at a light I had the thought -- maybe there's just a problem with the guy's phone? So I texted the number, asking if he had a dog.

He called me within a minute.

As it turned out, my call couldn't get to him because he was clear across the country. His elderly parents were dogsitting the pup in their home, not two hundred feet from where I found him. He gave me their address and called his folks while I turned the car around.

His mom was grateful. Turns out they were playing in the yard with Golden Boy when he spotted a deer and ran after it into the woods. They'd been stomping through the underbrush looking for him since; meanwhile he'd popped out on the street and found me and Nipper.

So all's well that ends well. It could definitely have gone the other way, since when we found the dog he'd crossed a street with a blind curve frequented by idiot drivers.

I'm glad to have brought the pup home, and I hope the parents were able to think of a way to keep him there until their son returned.

It's always nice to be able to do someone a favor. All the same, I'm glad we didn't have to hold on to the little guy ourselves. Two dogs is more than enough to handle here. I am happy to do a favor, but not that big a favor!

Halo dere!

As you probably know, your friend Fred is a living saint.

But as you follow this blog day after day, you wonder: What makes me think that? Just an impression I get? Certainly not anything Fred does.

Well, that may be the case, and if so it's clear that my angelic modesty has prevented me from talking about all my good deeds.

Here's the main one: I am a great closer of mailboxes.

You know what happens. The mailman leaves mail and doesn't close the mailbox door properly. Or the homeowner picks it up and lazily slaps the box closed, not seeing that it popped right back open. Or the wind pries it open. Or a thief. Or the stupid box is old and decrepit and can't close with any certitude anymore. Whatever the reason, you have a mailbox hanging open at the house, door lying there like a moronic, drooling lower lip, lolling in the breeze, making the whole property and its people look like shiftless dumbbells.

That's where I come in.

If I'm trotting along, walking the dog or something, and I see the box? I'm closing it. Because that's the kind of saint I am.

Before

After

You're welcome!

Now everything looks pin-neat and refreshed. No passerby thinks that the folks in the house are careless idiots. Nope, they think the place is smart and refined, even though it probably isn't. All because I went out of my way to do a good deed, a deed for which I expect no recompense nor thanks, out of the goodness of my shining, golden heart.

If only more people could be like me. Ah, humanity!

Workers.

Today is a day that the Universal Church celebrates one of its great saints, one very important to me, St. Joseph. His traditional feast day is March 19, of course, but today we celebrate St. Joseph the Worker, in honor of his role as supporter and protector of the Holy Family and to stick it to the Reds.

May Day is of course the day that the International Godless Commies chose for their big holiday, so the Church decided that A) the workers of the world ought to have a holiday but B) Commies are godless and cruel and so there ought to be a better choice for the workers on that same day. Or in other words, "to foster deep devotion to Saint Joseph among Catholics, and in response to the 'May Day' celebrations for workers sponsored by Communists, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker in 1955."

Back in 1955 the Church understood that these God-hating Year-Zero types were no friends of Jesus, however many smiley faces they plastered on their violent plans for world domination. I'm not so sure the Church is as rigorous in this understanding anymore.

I suppose this is a day to celebrate the worker, then, which Labor Day is not anymore. Labor Day is now the day to celebrate the barbecue and the closing of the beach house. So, let's celebrate today. Yay, workers!

So in honor of St. Joseph the Worker, here's ten Dad Jokes about working from around the Web for you:

🔨 I can’t believe I got fired from the calendar factory. All I did was take a day off.

🔨 Some people say the glass is half full. Some people say the glass is half empty. Engineers say the glass is twice as big as necessary.

🔨 To the guy who stole my copy of Microsoft Office: I will find you. You have my Word.

🔨 The Invisible Man got a great job offer but turned it down. He couldn't see himself doing it.

🔨 I got a job as the director of Old MacDonald's Farm. Yeah, I'm the CIEIO.

🔨 Our IT guy got mad because I downloaded all of Wikipedia. I said, "Wait, I can explain everything."

🔨 There was a terrible explosion at the French cheese factory. Nothing left but de brie.

🔨 My pal Fred just wrote a history of Krazy Glue. I can't put it down.

🔨 Want to hear a joke about construction? I'm still working on it.

🔨 They told me my son, the road crew manager, was a kleptomaniac. I refused to believe it. But when I got to his house, all the signs were there.


You know, maybe it's just as well that we have no record of anything St. Joseph ever said. No wonder he's considered the model father.

The perfect sign.

I've long thought that the perfect symbol for something momentous has got to be the cross, which Christians think is the perfect sign of the most momentous sacrifice in history. It works out so well that it's easy to see God's hand in it.

1) It's simple.

A small child can make a cross. It's even easier to draw than the ichthus, the fish symbol composed of two arcs, because you have to make curved lines -- straight lines are easier to draw. The cross is simpler than any sign of a supernatural faith -- the Star of David, the pentacle, the star and crescent, and surely every motif associated with Hinduism. It's simpler than secular signs like the hammer and sickle. It's even simpler than the Bass Ale triangle. Simplicity helps a message spread.

2) Its essence and scope are in the design.

It's not hard to understand the principles of the public torture and murder method known as crucifixion; once we do, we see it in those simple lines. It is also the post and beam that holds up the roof to shield us, the sail to move us. The cross also means a crossroads, a change of direction, and believers find that the cross is the ultimate change of direction for humanity. The cross is sturdy, as faith must be. In other words, the sign expresses so many things within its two lines, many that require no prior knowledge of crucifixion. G. K. Chesterton has a lot to say on this topic in his novel The Ball and the Cross. 

3) It speaks history.

The public nature of the cross is vital to the story; Jesus's death was a public event, witnessed by many. He did not go sneaking off somewhere before he died. You can't go sneaking off the cross; even if you could get off, the Romans would stick you right back up there. It is crucial (if you will) that we know that Jesus died, because when He was seen later, that was pretty significant. It goes to the faith as being tied to a definite event that happened in a definite time and place, unlike the legends of gods in other cultures. For all its cruelty, though, the cross leaves a body that is recognizable and not in pieces; not that God cannot reassemble pieces, but it would have just made Jesus seem more like a ghost on His return than the One who had defeated death. (As it was, He had to prove to the Apostles twice that He was not a ghost.)

The cross teaches us about cultures that used (and sometimes still use) the evil of crucifixion, meant to be a shameful as well as cruel means of death; in it we also remember the triumph of the faith. The cross was not used commonly as a Christian symbol until after Constantine. After that, it was seen on all the structures of Christianity through the march of the centuries. 

4) It works better than any other sacrificial sign you can think of.

Think of saints who were tortured to death or otherwise murdered in the course of God's work. Do we symbolize St. Paul or St. John the Baptist with the headman's ax? The answer is not usually. These would not put one immediately in mind of the victim. You might think St. Paul was a Viking if we used the ax. St. Lawrence, famously grilled to death, is often symbolized by the gridiron, but that's not a device normally associated with torture as the cross is. The Catherine Wheel is the closest sacrificial sign I can think of, and St. Catherine of Alexandria did not die on it; the spiked wheel shattered at her touch.

5) It works better than any other simple sign you can think of.

Think of other very simple things to draw -- line, square, circle, scribble. Do any of these suggest a means of fatal torture, let alone a high public one, let alone one that tells the story of God's sacrifice to reconcile the world to Himself?

6) It is easily embellished for related uses.

Catholics display the cross as a crucifix, with the body of the Victim on it. Most Protestants just leave the cross unadorned. Some saints have different crosses; the upside-down cross is a sign of evil in Hollywood and among other ignoramuses, but in truth it is St. Peter's cross, as tradition says Peter did not think himself worthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus. St. George, St. Andrew, St. Brigid and others have variations on the cross. St. Florian's is well known as a symbol of fire departments. At its heart, it remains the cross.

7) It spells agony, and holiness.

And sometimes it appears as such in the most appropriate times.

Irishmen: Sober as judges?

Well, here it is, Patty's Day again, and toime to go get likkered up at Ye Olde Pubbe, dance some jigs, and start a donnybook! Wee hoo!

I know a lot of people who are happy to blame their drinking on Irishness, and at any time of year, not just St. Patrick's Day. I also know a lot of people who have stopped drinking who blame their former drinking on Irishness (sometimes Catholicism too, as if the pope forced them to drink). But do the Irish really drink more than other people? Or are the Irish actually sober as judges?

After all, ask any Irishman in New York and he'll tell you that this drunk thing is a slander on the Irish by the English. Note that these are some of the same Irishmen who blame their drinking on being Irish. But let's give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

Toby Young, British educator, journalist, sometime politician, and spectacularly failed magazine editor and scriptwriter, once said that "The English drink as if they do not want to live." Perhaps then the English are just projecting their own flaws upon their beleaguered island neighbors?

And what about the French? I edited a French cookbook recently, and apparently they put booze in everything. They will not make a simple side dish of rice without squeezing wine into it. They probably rub framboise in their scalps as a dandruff cure. They can't sneeze without selecting a nice Burgundy to go with it. Are they worse drunks than the Irish?

And don't forget the Scandinavians. They have had the toughest drunk driving laws in the world for a long time because they couldn't stop themselves from flying off the fjords in their Saabs without the force of law. A Norseman of my acquaintance once told me, "Norwegians drink just as much as the Irish, but people don't know it because we don't sing."

But none of this disproves the unspoken assumption that the Irish are the biggest drunks in the world. We need data.

According to World Atlas -- which may not be the most accurate but they seem to use good info -- Belarus is far and away tops in per capita adult alcohol consumption, with the adults of this Eastern European nation each consuming a quite-literally-staggering 17.5 liters of pure alcohol per year. At standard 80 proof (40% alcohol) for the liquor, that means every man and woman is drinking the equivalent of about 44 liters of vodka per year, or more than 11.5 gallons. That's a lot of booze. The first runner-up is Moldova, at 16.8 liters; in fact, with the exception of tiny Andorra (#7), the top ten per capita alcohol consuming nations are all Eastern European countries. Ireland makes the list at #21, in a virtual tie with Luxembourg, and Great Britain is at #25. France (#18) does beat Ireland and Great Britain; the United States isn't in the top 25. We try, but I think the Mormons and Baptists hold us back.

I doubt this will change any of the revelry going on today, but for future reference, if anyone blames his drinking on his heritage, ask if they are Belarusian. We should thus do our most outrageous drinking on St. Euphrosyne's day. St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk is the patron saint of Belarus and her feast day is May 23. She doesn't look like someone who would approve of such shenanigans, though.

Still, if you want to get faced on May 23, just tell everyone you're celebrating St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk and your Belarusian heritage. When they point out (probably with justice) that you are not Belarusian, tell them, "Everyone is Belarusian on St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk's Day!"

Just don't confuse her with St. Euphrosyne of Alexandria, whose feast day is September 25. Getting drunk for no reason on September 25 would be embarrassing.

Weekend update.

The Greatest Weekend Updaterizer

Hi, gang. Couple of things to report after the weekend, especially a followup on poor little Nipper, the 100-pound puppy, whose overnight tribulations, as noted yesterday, led to a terrible night's sleep for both him and me (and senior varsity dog Tralfaz). Nipper was the poster child for the phrase "sick as a dog."

I won't recap all the gross details of his illness, but they continued all day Sunday to a lesser extent. He couldn't eat, could barely take water, and was still just as cheerful as can be. I think we spend most of our lives working hard to try to be half as happy as a Golden Retriever, and most of us never get there. Anyway, he did finally have some chicken and rice last night, and this morning he ate hungrily. Maybe we'll take him to the vet later. We'll see how things go.

I'm sure it was challenging for him, and it didn't do me a bit of good either. Saturday night I was stone-cold exhausted. I had a commitment in the morning and company coming at night, so between those two periods I had HOUSECLEANING! MyFitnessPal estimated I burned about 800 calories doing all that work, which is great, except I ate about 10,000 calories on the food my wife cooked. So, bloated and exhausted, I stumbled to bed late, and that's when Nipper's Yippie Trips to the Yard began.

It's a shame, because we really had a great time with our old friends. They love our dogs, and we all had a good time getting caught up and reminiscing. Well, we humans did. The dogs are excellent company but lousy conversationalists.

On Sunday, while Mrs. K watched the dogs, I dragged my tired hinder to Mass, where we celebrated the feast day of St. John the Baptist. Although the Gospel reading was about John's birth, I always think of Jesus's description in Matthew 11:11, that "among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist". The greatest man who ever lived, is what it seems to say, and then we think of him wearing "clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey," in Matthew 3:4. So the greatest man ever was kind of like Bigfoot's kid brother (as played by Michael York).

The thing about the reading we had, in Luke 1, is that after the strange tale of John's birth and naming, the story cuts to the narrator (if it were a film) who says:

For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
The child grew and became strong in spirit, 
and he was in the desert until the day
of his manifestation to Israel.

And I thought of John the Baptist, and saw him now not as Desert Yeti but as a man who had a particular calling and fulfilled it with everything he had. It would cost him his life, but he was wiser than most of us, and more blessed, to have such a gift after all.

To go from the sublime to the more familiar, this is something even dogs know. To varying degrees, dogs need missions too, and those with jobs are happy dogs. Often a dog will appoint himself a job if nothing is assigned him, good things like protecting the family or cheering them up, or bad things like making humongous holes in the yard. I'm not sure what Nipper's job is, but whatever it is, he likes it. So, everyone's happy. Or will be when he's healthy.

One last thought on John the Baptist: When I was turning my life around from crap to non-crap some years ago, and taking faith seriously, I remember seeing this guy who hung around the 34th Street station of the R line, playing the guitar for Jesus while dancing barefoot on cardboard. And I used to think, God, please don't let that be my calling in life. And He hasn't. But that guy with the guitar always looked happy, and I sure as hell don't.

Maybe we're lucky if God doesn't call us to do hard or embarrassing or dangerous things. Maybe we only think we're lucky.

All Saints' Day.

The contrast of Halloween yesterday and All Saints' Day today inevitably makes me (and I'm sure many others) remember the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from Disney's 1940 film Fantasia. I saw it when I was a little kid, and after what was to me then a long movie with dull music and ballerina hippos I was suddenly crapping my pants in terror -- metaphorically crapping, that is. Although it may have been a close-run thing.

I'd love to post the video here, to endanger your own trousers, but Disney jealously guards its clips. It featured this lovable Disney scamp:

AAIIIEEEE

I can tell you, I woke up in a hurry when Chernabog joined the party. In fact, I'm not sure I slept for days.

Nevertheless, I know I took some comfort in the ending of the sequence, where Cherny and the rest of the evil crew are vanquished. And this is where it both confused and enlightened me.

I'd seen plenty of cartoon fights of good vs. evil, and they were real fights -- Underdog vs. Overcat, Popeye vs. Bluto, the Mighty Heroes vs. the Monsterizer. Lots of slugging going on. But there's no slugging going on here; Chernabog and his demons look like an unstoppable force that even the Super Friends would fall before. And yet they are utterly routed by... this?

Ave Maria

I would not understand what that was about for years.

All of which brings us to last night, when an evil jackwipe in a rental truck mowed down dozens and killed eight on a bike path. The New York Times reports that "He jumped out of the vehicle with a pellet gun and a paintball gun in hand, shouted 'Allahu akbar'... and was shot by an officer." They added "It is still not known what motivated the attack," because the New York Times could not find its own ass with both hands and a compass.

Apparently this evil jerk carried those comical weapons in the expectation that the NYPD would send him to his reward. He was not killed by police, which was either good luck or good shooting or both. You're not going to hell that fast, Chuckles.

This pathetic loser, who had written a letter pledging allegiance to the dying assclowns of ISIS, was no Chernabog, but you can imagine what he would have done if he were.

It brings us back to a question that has always bedeviled decent men and women: What is the response to evil? Fight or be run over? Those who preach nonviolent resistance generally know (even if they won't admit) that it only works on a foe with a conscience, like the United States or Great Britain. It doesn't work on the happy slaughterers of ISIS any more than it would have worked on the organized murderers of Nazi Germany.

It's God that strikes down the monsters in Fantasia; so where is He against creeps who love ISIS? The line of people carrying the light in darkness in Disney's movie would have been run over by this jerk in his rental truck. And this is where we run into the cheese grater of free will again -- for our wills to be truly free, our evil actions must be allowed and the consequences must be reaped. It does not mean that God is not with the victims.

The Church Militant teaches that there is a spiritual battle against evil as well as a physical one, but one must be prepared to fight both. It also teaches that the victory over evil is assured---but has not yet been won.

On this All Saints' Day, let's ask all the saints to pray for us in the battle against evil in this world, and let us be prepared to fight in any way that we are called to do so.

---

P.S.: Bear in mind that the church calls anyone who has made it into heaven a saint, and does not award the title but pronounces acknowledgment that the person so-called must have made it to that blessed destination. So if you're convinced that Uncle Al or Uncle Lou has gotten through the pearly gates, I guess you can ask him to put in a good word for us down here as well. We need all the help we can get.

Storm Diary, part 2.

March 14, 9:28 am: It’s nice and toasty in the house, and I have a lot of work to do. Whistle while you work, blah da da blah da da dooo… Meanwhile, the snow outside is falling fast. We’ve had a lot of power failures around here, usually when ice pulls down lines, but I’m not discounting the power of this storm. Once I lose power on the laptop, I won’t be able to work. Worse, without electricity our furnace won’t start. We have no fireplace. We’re gonna die.

9:44 am: Have corresponded with a client in the south. He says it’s under 50 degrees and everyone is bitching. Asks how long it takes to dig out after two feet of snow. I said it’s like everyone has the flu for a week. If we’re lucky and it turns warm, we just have flooding everywhere.

10:34 am: We got ourselves a blizzard.

Meteorologists say a blizzard has to meet three conditions, per ABC News:

1. Sustained wind or frequent gusts of 35 mph or greater.
2. Considerable falling and/or blowing snow reducing visibility to under a quarter mile.
3. These conditions have to continue for at least three consecutive hours.

We are there.

Or, a Blizzard could be a tasty dessert from Dairy Queen. I’d much prefer that kind of blizzard.

My plow guy just came to do the driveway, because if he waited until the end of the storm he wouldn’t be able to do it. He’s got to be paid for each visit, of course, and well worth it. That was visit #1.

1:00 pm: Was out with the little dog, who isn’t even that little, and I could not even tell if he peed. I had dug him a little trench to pee in but it got filled up with more of the white crap. Now the wind is whipping around really good. The big dog, who looooooves snow, actually wanted to come in after a while. No kidding, that is the first time in three years he’s wanted to come in out of the snow. My wife says he was shivering. It wasn’t doing me a bit of good either.

3:32 pm: Spent a good solid two hours working. All the while the crystalline menace grew deeper and colder, the wind erasing my shoveled path. I felt like St. Augustine, or one of his lesser scribes, scribbling away as the Vandals knocked at the gates of Hippo.

4:37 pm: Little dog has been a pain in the rear end most of the day. He’s seen snow before, but never anything like this. I finally did catch him in the act of peeing, but to do it he first had to watch big dog to see how he would manage the vast piles of snow. More is caught than taught, they say.

Remember last July, when the country was roasting under the blistering hot heat dome and I was so miserable? Good times.

5:51 pm: The dog hater down the street, Bat Fastid, finally came out with his snow blower, only to find that his snow blower doesn’t work that well in two feet of snow. He somehow managed to keep it going, for which I thank God, because if it exploded and left him standing there blinking like a guy in a cartoon it would have been more than Christian charity could bear. It could have even been dangerous for me.

6:55 pm: The snow, which was light and puffy as fairy dust, no good at all for making a snowball, has suddenly packed on the ground into a solid layer of crap, about the consistency of Lego blocks. That was a dirty trick, Winter. I know I brought it on myself for wishing ill on the dog-hating jerk, even if he is a jerk.

7:06 pm: Just got word that the county is lifting the snow emergency, effective at 11 pm. Which will be followed by the snow plow drivers’ drunk driving emergency as all those guys go get hammered.

9:21 pm: Completely exhausted. Accomplished work goals, shoveled a lot, made dinner. Ready to die. And I never even made it as far as the sidewalk today.

And we’re supposed to get more snow tomorrow.

March 15, 6:51 am: The walkway has a solid block of snow three inches deep that cannot be removed without possibly damaging the bricks. With a high of 22 expected, it doesn't seem likely to change soon. On the other hand, the top is crunchy and can be crossed in safety. Better yet, God has smiled on us, and it looks like we will have only some flurries today. And we didn't lose power.

Our plow guy never returned for plow #2, and the weight of the stuff on the driveway makes me worry that he broke his truck somewhere along the line. It's a very strong truck -- he pulled my car out of a snowbank once, for real -- but it isn't very new, and neither is he. I hope he's okay for his sake; he's a good guy. Maybe he's a little hungover.

Final totals for our town: between 19.3 and 22 inches, depending on whom you believe. Also included in totals: One frantic puppy, one dog who found out that his beloved snow is not always his friend, and two exhausted and achy adults.

Oh, St. Patrick and St. Joseph, pray for us, that we might see some sign of spring on your feast days!