Love Begins with a Dream

"Written on the heart of every person, begins Archbishop Sheen, is the image of the Love of their life. This is how we can claim to experience "love at first sight"; we have known that special someone all our life, in the form of that image inscribed within us. God, too, has within Himself blueprints of everything in the universe, and so there is an archetypal idea of every living thing on the planet.

"There is actually only one person in all humanity of whom God has only one picture, and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His own Mother. She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the world’s first love. Indeed, the very first announcement of the "good news" in salvation history, made immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve, mentions the Mother: "I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in wait at her heels." (Gen.3:15)

"God specially chose her for this mission, and made it clear that just as a woman was the cause of the fall, so a woman would be the ‘cause’ of redemption. This woman, His Mother, was not like ours, whom we accepted as something historically fixed, which we could not change; He was born of a Mother whom he chose before He was born."

Carnivorous

I am dat, sho'. I mean, I run around like a maniac sometimes, craving very large servings of properly cooked meats. Good thing I don't have easy access to anyone's 4-H project, or I might start snacking on it.

So, Christmas is coming, eh? I'm ready. Bring it on.

It looked even worse in person.

Hmm. Such a sad and lonley little blog. Somehow, with life going on in the background, I'm finding less and less time to write. However, this doesn't mean I have ceased to think odd things, do stupid things, or ask dumb questions. Here are three examples, or proofs, for the existence of me:

1. I ate spice cake for lunch. Basta. Then I had skittles for dessert.

2. I yelled "touchdown!" at my brother's basketball game tuesday night. This was, admittedly, largely done on purpose and for effect, but the resulting looks told me that the humor of my faux intelligence was lost on the crowd. Sitting in an unheated gym does that to people.

3. I wondered to myself whether Huxley intended to bash, or to resign himself to, the 'social system' which built itself on abortion, cloning, genetic engineering, and widespread promiscuity. Until, that is, I remembered that he wrote the dang book about half a century before half of those things were widespread, and before some of them were even thought of as possible.

Yes, sports fans, I'm going out of my mind. Which reminds me of another direction to which I can ramble. Basketball! I have been to more basketball games in the last two weeks than in the entire rest of my life. Last night, in fact, I was feeling comfortable enough with the game to start yelling my own opinion to the coach, the players, the refs, and the concession lady. Finer points still escape me ( how do you tell what kind of a foul it was, or how many from each time line up at a foul shot?), but on the whole it's a very interesting game. Still high stress, though. It goes so fast!

I can't think of where my next ramble went. I should probably write about my grand adventures in Europe. Tune in next week.

Man Impersonates Cop to....Bowl?

SAVANNAH, Ga. (Dec. 11) - A Savannah man went to jail this weekend for impersonating a sheriff's deputy so he could go bowling. Jeffrey Eugene Ferguson, 46, pulled up to a gate at Hunter Army Airfield on Saturday and showed a guard a driver's license that was cracked in half, police said.

When the guard requested a second form of ID, Ferguson pulled out a Chatham County sheriff's lieutenant badge.

The guard called Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police, who responded and discovered Ferguson's license had been suspended for failure to pay child support, according to police Sgt. Mike Wilson. Ferguson, who was jailed on charges of impersonating a police officer, later told authorities he found the badge at a work site. He told them he was not trying to get any special police priviliges - just to get on the military post to go to its bowling alley.

A Rose by any other name...

...would be just as confused. Trust me.

I went by the store to grab a half-gallon of ice cream, right? As Mike and I are checking out, I see the cashier's nametag out of the corner of my eye, and my eye's corner gasps. Chastity? There's an outdated, Puritanical name, I muse.

No wait.

It's Chasity. Never mind. I wonder if maybe, somewhere along the line, someone just couldn't spell.

That thing you do...

Sheesh. There are entirely too many things going on in life right now. You don't want to hear about them, trust me. For starters, my standoffish cat has been traded in for some alien cat--wearing her old body, though--that cuddles and sleeps in laps all the time. It goes downhill after that, believe me.

BAY-bah!!!

Dude. I'm home now, childrens. Gimme, like, two more days to get my brain on, and you'll get posts once more.

Il bene, e il male.

The good news is, my blog still has the most recent update, even though all the groups blogs I am on still have people in the US, who theoretically have time and internet connections which promote blogging.

The bad news is, I still have a week of finals left, then a week in PA, then a week in VA, then a crazybeautiful Christmas break, then being a *@#$! proctor for the entire spring semester. You might not hear from me for a while.

Discovery, delimma, and others.

When one sleeps with one's big toe stuck through the hole in one's sock, the aforementioned toe will be quite asleep by morning. And it will hurt.

I have a problem, y'all. I joined facebook in a moment of extreme weakness. Now, I'm not sure what to do with myself...can I keep a blog running decently, and yet function on facebook?? I mean, facebook is a much more unifying, humble thing to engage in, compared with solo blogging. What do you think?

Only in America...

LIVINGSTON, Mont. (Oct. 25) - A high school principal received a six-day suspension and a letter of reprimand for giving one of his students a wedgie.

Eric Messerli pulled a Park High School senior's soccer jersey over his head and yanked upward on the waistband of the boy's underwear at a soccer game Oct. 5. Other school officials said he was joking around with the student and did it playfully. He was suspended for two days without pay and four days with pay before the school board decided Monday to let him return.

He tearfully told the board: "I've made mistakes in my life, but none have had the impact that this one has had." Messerli, who was back on the job Tuesday, will be required to talk with students and staff members about the incident to restore respect and authority. He said his first reaction was to resign, but he decided to "tackle this mess" head on.

"I want to live in a world where we don't have to hide when we screw up," he said.

Divide and Concord

The man next to me on the metro today had a big bunch of flowers in his hand, a nervous look on his face, and kept dialing the same phone number over and over. No answer. I hope she forgives him.

It appears that we have a mere month left here in Italy. Where does the time go? Sunk into classes, tests, tours, sleep, and train trips, I suppose. Speaking of, I need to get a train ticket. I also need to study for a quiz on a Ratzinger article (yay!! intellectual/theological works that are actually accessible to the average mind), and study for a history/english/theology/classics exam. Whadda class...four subjects in one. Oh, and also an acting class. Monday was "act out a scene from this book that Thomas Bowdler thought racy enough to merit expurgating" day.

We the story of the rape of Semele, but we did it politically-correct style. I didn't think it was that funny, really, but the class sure did. If I feel like embarassing myself to death, I might post the text next week.

Subway Crash in Rome (from Tuesday)

As far as we can tell, Laura and I were actually on this train--we got off the stop before the crash, and switched lines. Later, they changed the news report to say that two people actually died, one at the scene and one later at the hospital. Jesus saves!

ROME — A subway train plowed into another during morning rush hour Tuesday in a central Rome station, killing a woman and injuring about 60 others, authorities said.

One train was stopped in the station when it was hit from behind by another traveling at a high speed, said Atac, Rome's public transport company. Some passengers said the driver of the second train appeared to have run a red light.

The fire department initially said a woman and the driver of one of the trains were killed, but government officials later said only the woman died. The driver, a man, was pulled out alive from the rubble, officials said. Italian news reports had said the woman was Nigerian, but the officials later said she was an Italian in her 30s.

About 60 people were injured, including 10 seriously, said another fire department spokesman, Luca Cari. He said the moving train plowed 6-to-10 feet into the carriage of the stopped one.
Television footage showed stunned and bloodied passengers being led out of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II station, while onlookers watched from behind police lines.

Ambulances, firefighters and rescue teams rushed to the subway station, near Rome's main railway station, following the 9 a.m. crash. Rescue workers set up a field hospital nearby, where they treated dozens with light injuries.

Firefighters were trying to free at least one more person trapped in the wreckage, Cari said.

"For now, we don't know about any more people trapped, but we can't rule it out," Cari said. "We are untangling the two trains."

Andrew Trovaioli, a 38-year-old passenger, said one of the trains appeared to have missed a stop light.

"I saw the red light as the train moved into the station," Trovaioli said, who suffered a slight injury to his elbow.

"I saw lots of blood, the impact was brutal," he said, adding he saw about 10 people lying on the ground, and three or four covered in rubble.

"There was panic for some 30 seconds. We were not told how to get out," he said.

One passenger told Sky Italia that lights went out immediately after the crash. Another passenger in the first carriage of the moving train said he could see through the driver's front window as the accident unfolded.

"I saw clearly the red light. I saw the situation, that the metro ahead of us was stopped at the station," said the unidentified passenger, adding that he managed to escape serious injury because he stepped back just seconds before the impact crushed the front of his car.

The cause of the accident was not known. Atac said the station remained closed but the rest of the line was working.

Wow.

You guys are so patient. Here a new blog has not been forthcoming in weeks, yet you check back.

Since we last spoke, I have seen Assissi, Siena, Florence, Naples, Pompeii, Pisa, Roccasecca, and the island of Ischia. Things are great, but so ruddy hectic I barely find time to do homework and email my family. My friends all think I have fallen off the face of the earth. There are no apostrophes on Italian keyboards. I have been awake for 14 hours and have eaten nothing but two apples, half a bag of potato chips, and some Reeses Pieces.

I need food.

Strike!

So the metro train operators (but not the buses) decided to strike from 8am until 5pm today. So Lola and I walked approximately 3 miles today, counting all the wandering around we did in the zoo. Who knew that animals could be so universally entertaining? I think the Australian family following us around was the best part.

Dolce far niente!!

It still hasn’t quite filtered through my brain that I am actually in Rome, doing things like walking to the Piazza Navona for fun, or saying things like, “Well, guys, I’m just going to go bum around St. Peter’s until you finish at the bank. Find me there.” It hasn’t filtered. Part of the problem is that I’m around a bunch of friends who seem to create their own environment wherever they go, thus rendering whatever is outside a little superfluous. Another part of the problem is that I still have the remanants of jet lag, or something. Maybe the sleeping less than five hours a night is causing that. Then again, maybe it’s just me. The first time I went out alone (I walked to St. Peter’s for Mass), I was asked for directions by a cute little Spanish woman.

There are a billion little tiny Italian culture quirks you notice all the time. Their elevators have buttons inside that change according to which floor you are on, and not according to which floor you want to reach. They have little, single-pump gas stations on the side of the road as if it were a phone booth or a fire hydrant. The ambulances have the most annoying, teeth-grating sirens on earth. The motorini (little Vespa motorscooters) really don’t stop at lights.

But all that is just part of the cultural experience, you know? Like a ‘mezzo-euro’ store, which is somewhat
equivalent to our dollar stores. Whatever. It’s just keeping us all so busy, touring and having class and learning Italian, that all I can do is link you to our blog with pictures, and hope that satisfies!

Johnny Cash

(subtitled "What would have been an essay / If I'd cared a little more")

Hmm. This blog is getting dead, with little prospect at living again anytime soon, as I'm leaving in only two days. Hurrah! Excited I am, but nervous as well, to answer the question everyone has been asking me for the last week and a half. I'm excited.

So, I went and did it. I listened to some Johnny Cash. I did so deliberately, listening to the whole song and not just the first two lines. I tapped my foot with the beat. I liked it. Gasp.

Let me tell you why, though. It is because a great deal of Cash's music ( not all--no blanket statement being made here) represents what I really treasure about American country-genre music, and that is its grounding in the tradition of folk music which is being lost rapidly in the face of pop music today. Folk music tells a story, it's a ballad of one denomination or another, and I really love it. I like some current "country" hits because they, too, tell a story. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad.

Often, it's patriotic, which you don't find anywhere else in the music world anymore. Gone are the days of "God Bless America" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Gone are the days when anyone on the street could sing you the Marines' hymn, or Anchors Aweigh. Only in the select class of music now known as country will you find songs about America, Americans, and pride in being one.

So, country music is the last great stand of folk music. Music that tells a story, music that is proud of and lauds its heritage--instead of tearing it down and rebelling against it like popular and rock music does so often. And hence, as a classic (though maybe not the classiest) example of that folk-country offering, I give you Johnny Cash.

And I cannot for the life of me believe that I just wrote that.

Situational Awareness

This is a long article, but I want you to read it. It's an issue dear to my heart, and the helpless rage I feel when the 'other side' has their say is unspeakable. However, this is what the mainstream news is putting out there for public consumption. What am I, who stand on a street corner on Saturday afternoons and speak with women, trying to talk them out of having an abortion? I'm a 'predatory fanatic.' Who are those that run the 'clinic' where those little hearts are systematically stopped as a mater of routine? A nationally recognized, heavily funded, organized group of individuals who offer 'social policies to benefit minority women and children'. Dear God, what kind of world do we live in?

By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer Sun Aug 20, 12:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON - On a street once known as Murder Row, a teen center founded to steer youths away from drugs and crime has become an outpost in another crusade — a nationwide push by anti-abortion activists to expand their foothold in heavily black and Hispanic inner cities.

The campaign involves crisis pregnancy centers, whose counselors seek to dissuade women with unplanned pregnancies from having abortions. There are more than 2,300 centers across America, yet relatively few in inner cities where abortion rates are typically highest.

Now the two largest networks — Care Net and Heartbeat International — have launched initiatives to change that equation. Their sometimes awkward efforts rely on unlikely alliances, as an anti-abortion movement led mostly by conservative, white Republicans interacts with overwhelmingly Democratic, black communities.

"This crusade has been very difficult — having to educate community leaders as to what's really going on without being offensive, without having a political agenda," said Lillie Epps, the only black member of Care Net's senior staff and director of its Urban Initiative.

In Washington, the key players say all has gone smoothly in a year-old partnership between a Care Net affiliate, the Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center, and a teen center in the tough Anacostia neighborhood called The House DC. During the school year, Capitol Hill volunteers come to The House to counsel girls from nearby Anacostia High School who get caught in the tide of teen pregnancies.

One reason for the harmony: The teen center's black leaders and the whites running the pregnancy center share an evangelical Christian faith.

Steve Fitzhugh, co-founder of The House, is a former pro football player active with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He's mentored boys later killed in gang shootings, and girls as young as 12 who carried pregnancies to term.

"I don't care if it's conservative dollars or liberal dollars we get," Fitzhugh said. "We've got to save these kids."

His program is in sync with the nationwide pregnancy-center movement not only in opposing abortion but also in advocating sexual abstinence outside marriage and refusing to promote birth control.

"Others say, 'Let's pass out the condoms.' We're not on that page, and that's not always a popular stance," Fitzhugh said.

About two miles from The House, in a racially mixed neighborhood, the Capitol Hill pregnancy center is in its 21st year of operation. Its six-member board, executive director and most of its volunteers are white, but 89 percent of its clients are black.

Yet the director, Janet Durig, said she and her white colleagues don't feel like outsiders. She evoked the image of a pregnant black teen, abandoned by her boyfriend, coming in for counseling.

"When she breaks down and cries, do you think she cares if I'm white?" Durig asked.
Critics contend that pregnancy centers routinely mislead women seeking neutral advice on their options. A report in July from congressional Democrats said center counselors often overstate the medical risks posed by abortion.

Skeptics also argue that the same white conservatives supporting urban anti-abortion initiatives oppose other social policies that might help minority single mothers and their children.

"These predatory fanatics don't lift a finger to help the children who are born unwanted and unplanned," said Jatrice Martel Gaiter, head of the Washington-area Planned Parenthood chapter.

"In these centers of deception, they leave young parents at best with a box of Pampers and a prayer," she said. "They leave people even more vulnerable than when they walked through the door, without any information about how to avoid a future unintended pregnancy."

Durig acknowledged that her center recommends abstinence, not birth control, to clients, but said its services go beyond opposing abortion. The center offers parenting classes; a basement storage room is stacked with bins of donated baby clothes.

Capitol Hill also is among hundreds of pregnancy centers that recently acquired ultrasound equipment, on the premise that a look inside the womb will deter many pregnant women from abortion.

A sign on the center's brick facade reads "Pregnant and Scared?" — the slogan Care Net has placed on 40,000 billboard and bus-shelter ads nationwide, promoting a hotline it runs with Heartbeat International on behalf of their 1,900 affiliated centers.

Most of the centers are rural or suburban. The quest to open more in inner cities is fueled by statistics showing that nearly 90 percent of women who get abortions live in urban areas, and the majority are poor.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which compiles abortion data, black women are almost four times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2.5 times as likely.

Care Net says it has opened 13 urban centers since 2003, with 15 more under development in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and elsewhere.

In central Houston, there had been no full-fledged pregnancy center until one opened in 2004 in a poor, minority neighborhood. While many of the Fifth Ward Pregnancy Help Center's financial backers and volunteers are from white areas, its executive director, Sylvia Johnson, is black.

"This is hard territory," she said. "We try to be nonpartisan, to let our service speak for itself. We can't fix all the problems."

Among the clients was 28-year-old Karry Ann Morris. Already a single mother with a 3-year-old son, she got pregnant again last year. She ended up at the Fifth Ward center along with the boyfriend, who was suggesting abortion.

Morris, a hairstylist, didn't know what to expect. But she became determined to keep the baby — now a 4-month-old girl named Mikaila — when shown ultrasound images at the center.
"As much as I didn't want to be pregnant, when I saw her heart beating at six weeks, I knew," Morris said.

Heartbeat International's current project is to open three to five centers in black and Hispanic neighborhoods of greater Miami, then apply that model to other cities.

The Rev. John Ensor, the project's white executive director, said Miami was chosen partly because it had far more abortion clinics than pregnancy centers. He has spoken to some Miami-area churches, and is cautiously encouraged.

"We're just learning how to communicate," Ensor said. "There's the African-American culture and subcultures you have to figure out. The same with Latinos — Cuban, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans. All these wonderful complexities that you find in an urban community."
He acknowledged a gap between Democratic-leaning minorities and conservative, white anti-abortion activists.

"There's no doubt it's a problem for African-Americans to join a movement they perceive is antithetical to their interests in other areas," said Ensor, who nonetheless believes that, with patience and hard work, he can recruit local minority leadership.

Though relatively few blacks play prominent roles in the anti-abortion movement, national polls indicate that qualms about abortion are as widespread among blacks as among whites.
One outspoken black leader is the Rev. Clenard H. Childress Jr. of Montclair, N.J., who depicts the high abortion rate among blacks as a form of genocide. He applauds the inner-city goals of groups like Care Net, but questions whether they have the savvy to avoid looking like carpetbaggers.

"Without a strong relationship with the local pastors, their efforts in the urban community will be in vain," he said. "It won't be effective if you don't resonate with the community as someone they can trust."

In inner-city Dallas, one black pastor, the Rev. Tony Evans, acted on his own to open a pregnancy center in his church, the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. He said it differs from the standard center by offering comprehensive prenatal and postnatal services for mothers, including help finding jobs.

Care Net's Lillie Epps agrees on the importance of courting black pastors. Some share opposition to abortion but don't speak out for fear of offending their Democratic-leaning congregations, she said.

Another key, she said, is recruiting local volunteers so the counseling staff isn't overwhelmingly white. "We want people to come in and see someone who looks like them," Epps said. "We can't charge into a community and say, 'We're your savior.'"

Nvts

That's what this place is. Nvts. Every single hvman on campvs is ovt of their mind. Wow. It's hard to replace those 'u' letters with 'v' letters. Try it.

So, I've seen 'most everyone and their brother (literally), and now all that remains is to sing pretty tomorrow morning. I'm plumb tuckered out. Sigh.

Inventory

Hmm. Ol’ CC hasn’t changed her face much since I was last here, except for Blessed Margaret’s having brick all over the outside instead of siding. I liked the old way better, to tell you the truth. I’m here in Front Royal, pushing books around like in the good old days (I moved 1,000 books yesterday—my first day), and waiting for the weekend to roll around. At that point I will emerge from my undisclosed off-campus location and see everyone, then proceed to hole back up until it’s time to head for Rome. Jenne will get a special audience, because she’s special. Everyone else, you’d better keep your eyes peeled on Saturday.

I didn't do my homework because...

* I didn't want the other kids in the class to look bad.

* Our furnace broke and we had to burn my homework to keep ourselves from freezing.

* I'm not at liberty to say why.

*It was destroyed in a freak accident involving a hippo, a toaster, and a bag of frozen peas. You don't want to know the details.

* I have a solar-powered calculator, and it was cloudy. [my favorite!]

* My mom used it as a dryer sheet.

* I felt it wasn't challenging enough.

* My parents were sick and unable to do my homework last night. Don't worry, they have been suitably punished.

* I didn't want to add to your already heavy workload.

* I spent the night at a rally supporting higher pay for our hard-working teachers.