Dead baby cupcakes

Sacred Heart Catholic Church
Crystal City, Texas

   Supposedly I was raised Roman Catholic. During my formative years, we lived in a mission town in south Texas where 80 percent of the population was Hispanic migrant workers. I don't remember the exact years, but I know I was confirmed much too soon after my first Communion, because of the bishop of San Antonio's schedule (and reputed dislike for our hilarious parish priest, dear Father Jerry).
   I understand now that my religious education was not standard issue Catholic. I could be grateful for that, despite the many years of confusion it caused.
   My parents were more and less devout, and as soon as we moved to a place with Catholic day schools, Little Rock, I very much wanted to attend the high school for girls and wear a uniform. MSM was expensive, but my dad made that happen for me.
   Apart from being the new girl and out of the loop in a population full of lifelong friendships and animosities, and also apart from being a self-important, bossy, would-be tomboy, I was poorly prepared to blend in. I had never been made to memorize the longer prayers and I didn't know it was rude to say "Yes, M'am" to a nun. (The address is "Sister.")
   I remember the first time I realized many of the other students were actively engaged in anti-abortion crusading through their various parishes. They appeared to be delighted to be heckling women they saw coming and going from a place they called "the abortion clinic," a place that I knew by a different name because of my father's work in the War on Poverty. Planned Parenthood was not a Satanic mill in the world I'd known before. It was a place where poor women could see a doctor for all kinds of reasons.
   How did these teens know which women were going for abortions? How did they know what was going on in the hearts of strangers? I might have asked such questions out loud or I might not, I can't remember. Whether I did or not, I know for a fact that I did not listen for answers to such questions. Craven fear of losing respectability and an overly acute awareness of the ease with which sticking out transmogrifies into ostracism were dominant themes in my teen years. All I knew for sure was that everything was all about me, and I wanted to be admired, I needed to be right, and my being right was for my own protection.
    I must have been awful to be around.
   Anyway, all that to say this:
   October is, yet again, the 40 Days for Life campaign in the church my mother attends (and so I attend on Sundays). Basically this means that middle-aged and elderly people who are well past the age where childbearing issues are marginally relevant in their daily decisions will have the supposed epidemic of abortion thrust in their faces in a tone that suggests they are, right this minute, contemplating killing their unborn babies.
   If this marketing approach were, in fact, confined to 40 days, it could be justifiable based upon the church's dogma against abortion. But the truth is the campaign sprawls across the calendar. Appeals for money from Birthright arrive in my mother's mail more often than once a year, and she tends to send $75 any time she writes a check, to anybody. And yet she has to sit in Mass and be lectured by a deacon for supposedly turning a blind eye to crimes being committed against the unborn?
   Sitting beside her (while she sleeps peacefully) in the pew, I have gathered that some people there believe every woman they see is just about to go abort a baby.
   It's tempting to say they're obsessed, but I don't know other people's hearts. Maybe they fear losing respectability. Or maybe they are the church militant, called by God. I don't know.
   Sunday after Mass — a deeply interesting Mass in which the very entertaining pastor spoke about that interview given recently by Pope Francis — we were greeted on the church steps by earnest, grim teenagers holding black plates loaded with brilliantly colored cupcakes. Each pretty cupcake held one candle.
   They expected us to take a cupcake, eat it and in so doing say a silent prayer for all the aborted fetuses who would never get to experience the delicious joy of a first birthday.
   Yes, dead baby cupcakes.
   If anyone reading this can articulate exactly why this was a misguided use of young people's idealism — and also why it would not have improved the world to have lectured them about how silly their protest or demonstration or marketing pitch was — I would be glad to read your words. Mine fail.

Origin Story

National Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day has been an annual observance publicized by the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) since 2004, when congressional supporters passed a resolution "expressing the sense of Congress" to honor the spirit of Jacob Mock Doub on the first Saturday in October.
That's how national observances become national observances.
You can look up the speeches that supported the resolution in the archives of the Congressional Record. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2004-10-05/html/CREC-2004-10-05-pt1-PgH8063-3.htm
I looked them up after reading at the bottom of a press release touting local observances that the day was meant to honor the memory of a boy who died of complications from a mountain biking accident.
And I thought, What the ...? Take a kid mountain biking because some kid died mountain biking??
But it turns out the story is deeper than that, and the memorial appropriate.
According to an account published in the Winston-Salem Journal in 2004, “Jack” Doub was a champion teenage mountain bike racer from North Carolina who died in 2002, four months after cutting his leg on a stump while jumping a big rock. The day before this relatively minor accident, he had placed second in a national competition.
The newspaper reported that the 17-year-old was so cheerful and plucky his family didn't realize an infection from the wound was spreading through his body, just that he didn't feel up to being so active. According to his obituary published on ancestry.com, at the time he died he had recently taken up photography. So basically, he was young and strong and somehow able to keep total sepsis at bay for months. But then, the week before he died, he went mountain biking again with friends and had a great time jumping things.
But afterward, at home, he complained of the flu. Emergency room physicians found no evidence of flu. His family found him dead on the floor of his room a few days later.
His father told the newspaper he didn't blame mountain biking for the accident. That Jack was very active with several sports and often injured. That he could have sustained the infection that killed him  doing anything.

So that explains it

Michael and I watch a steamy costume drama on Starz, The White Queen. It's about the War of the Roses, and the beautiful actors all appear to be playing historic figures. Of course I have no idea why who hates whom. So last week during a break in the action (Michael begged permission to wash the dinner dishes), I hopped around Google looking up bios on some of the principal players in the story.
I was surprised to learn how young they all were when, for instance, they were married for the first time (3 years old? Really?) or how many spouses they ran through.
Today, Slate moved a fascinating article by Laura Helmuth about longevity. In the course of supporting her argument that older people have a moderating impact on society, she points to the 14th century as a fer instance.
Calling it "one of the worst centuries in recorded Western history," she explains that the bubonic plague and famine killed vast numbers of Europeans. She quotes historian Barbara Tuchman's observation that the Black Death cut through the complete cross-section of societies, removing anyone, including kings and established leaders.
These older people were then replaced by kids — teens or younger. As Helmuth puts it, these inexperienced, hormone-addled leaders "promptly did stupid, aggressive, frontal-lobe-deficient teen-age nonsense like invading neighboring countries."
No wonder the 100 Years War dragged on and on.

Lost weekend

Arkansas Rep's new production of an old flop, Pal Joey, struggles to overcome its inherent oldness about a half-hour longer than I was able to sustain any interest in its success.
After the first plodding, billowy ballad sung by Mrs. Milkmoney, the story bogs down. My 89-year-old mother, an easily confused person who likes sleeping through live theatrical productions, began asking when we could leave. After every number, "Is it time to go now?"
Sister-in-law Kathy and I have been trying to figure out what went wrong. Why is a show with such a beautiful set, such talented singers and dancers, so very dull?
Sometimes the fast pace of dancing and singing placed almost too big a burden on the ridiculously gifted leading man, and his sweating and huffing and puffing were distracting. We couldn't buy into his supposedly irresistible charm.
Be we think the main problem is pacing in general. The time spent serving Mrs. Milkmoney, sharpening her little corner of the love quadrilateral, is time wasted. She delivers all of her character-revealing songs while lounging — on a sofa, in her bed. And she has an old-fashioned voice that I'm sure is meant to imply quality and power but that just lacks excitement.
No movement, and the plot doesn't advance.
If she absolutely has to sing so often, why not let her be a self-deluded aspiring thespian? It would make her falling for a con job more credible, and she could at least do a little soft shoe.
Also, the final movement in the story has Linda, the good-hearted waitress and pretty bad portrait painter taking back the rotten rat Joey. Presumably they will live happily ever after. That's just wrong. He has not been redeemed, merely disenfranchised.
A much better ending would have Linda, Teddy and Mrs. Milkmoney gotten together to sing a big happy number about how they see through him now.

Laboring away

There's nothing wrong with working on Labor Day. All the cool kids are doing it today.
Writing for Time magazine online, Christopher Matthews reported Aug. 30 that Bloomberg BNA data suggest 39 percent of employers intend to keep their doors open today, requiring at least some of their employees to come in.
Most of the newspaper staff is off today, but I am subbing in for a fellow Features editor who's on the road, and his section normally would move most of its copy today. My co-workers stood on their heads to get things done early, but there were a few latecomers that couldn't be helped.

And besides, I like working on holidays.
I like the sense that I don't have to be here.
That it's my choice.

I like how quiet the office is.

I like the feeling of suspended deadlines.

Sean Clancy just left. Laura Brown will be in on copydesk. And Phil and Karen Martin are also here, with their little dog Audi.