Apparently the Pope, long known for wanting to take the Catholic Church back to its glory days, has decided to relax restrictions on the celebration of mass in Latin.
OK. I'm not Catholic (in case you didn't know) and I never gave this much thought, but what thought I ever have given it tended toward "if people want to, why not?" It doesn't seem like the world's most learnable or fun language. If they're really that motivated, my (completely ignorant) opinion on the matter is that it's not hurting anyone, so go ahead.
The curious thing is that "The decision comes after months of debate. Some cardinals, bishops and Jewish leaders have opposed any change, voicing complaints about everything from the text of the old Mass to concerns that the move will lead to further changes to the reforms approved by 1962-65 Second Vatican Council." (Yahoo News)
Does any part of that sentence jump out at you as a bit odd?
I mean, I would say there is truth in the stereotype about us being a particularly opinionated people, but frankly this suggests that some people have way too much time on their hands. Um, guys?* Don't you think there are some major theological, or, say, geopolitical issues of our own that we could be devoting this energy to?
*because yes, I'm sure the "leaders" implied here are men
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
right where i'm supposed to be
This past weekend I went down to New York City to meet up with some friends from my old job and visit another friend (and formerly my supervisor) and her husband who moved to Pennsylvania a while back and recently had a baby.
I haven't driven this far-too-familiar route between Brattleboro and New York since the month of hell (aka March) finally ended. Part of me never wanted to drive it again, and part of me really didn't care since I can drive it in my sleep. 91 to the Merritt Pkwy. Merritt to the Hutch. Hutch to the Whitestone Bridge and then onto the Bruckner.
Except this time I took the Bruckner to the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, aka the Cheating Death Everytime Highway) and flew past my old house, continuing on to Brooklyn where two of my closest friends from college awaited my (late) arrival. They moved to the city just after I did, through total serendipity, and they're both about to move away. This past weekend was quite possibly the last time we'll all be together for a long time, much less in New York. So, as good college friends do, we celebrated our together-ness with margaritas.
And as many women our age can probably relate to, we spent most of the time competing for who has recently come across the most bizarre factoids about health and the body, mostly women's health stuff (yeah yeah, ewwww). (Though, because of the sketchy company I've been keeping lately, my weird women's health fact actually had to do with the reproductive systems of goats, because I was at my cousin's farm in upstate New York recently when one of her goats gave birth to twins.)
Let's be clear, here. We are NOT discussing our reproductive systems because we plan on using them anytime soon. We're more like halfway between high school health class and the dinging of our biological alarm clocks - we're old enough to learn and actually discuss really useful (or just fascinating) information, and young enough for this information to kind of gross us out ("my ovaries might WHAT??"). We're old enough to have watched a number of our friends marry and even have babies, and young enough for that to be totally freaky (well, except that one of the friends I was with is married herself).
It was therefore validating and ironic and lovely to spend Saturday with five good friends, three of whom are married (two of those to one another), and two adorable little baby boys (belonging to the married people). I'd never met the boys before, and it's a little tough to describe how I felt about this sudden babyness everywhere. They are beatiful and adorable and perfect, like all babies. They are also unpredictable and drooly and gross. Ten years ago I would have been terrified of the little creatures, and five years ago I would have felt some aversion and some indifference. This weekend I felt warmth and patience and not a little awe. I felt, dare I say it, really comfortable holding a baby in my arms. And perfectly happy to give the baby back to his mother.
It was validating to know that I could feel natural holding a baby and feel happy and comfortable letting it go. Yes, that could be right for me someday and I might even be good at it. No, that day isn't coming anytime soon, if I can help it (AHEM, no thanks to my health insurance provider).
But aren't the CUTE?
After the day with the babies we fought traffic back to the city and went out for a yummy dinner. On Sunday I sat in Prospect Park and called a bunch of people to say "hey, I'm in the city, come sit in the park with me!" which a lovely number of people actually did. We whiled away the beautiful afternoon, until I absolutely had to get back in my car and fight the end-of-the-weekend, leaving-the-city traffic to come home.
It was a perfect weekend in the Big Apple: I enjoyed what the city has to offer and saw some of the people I love best in the world, and I was so happy at the end of it to come back to my happy hippie valley in Vermont. There is no good Mexican food here, but there are lovely friends to discuss my reproductive system with, enough babies around to keep me from forgetting that talking about it is all I want to do with it for a long time, and enough potlucks and dances to feel totally socially fulfilled by my current single life no matter what most of society tries to tell me I *should* feel about it. The universe is giving me a lot of validation right now, and most of the time I'm remembering to be grateful.
I haven't driven this far-too-familiar route between Brattleboro and New York since the month of hell (aka March) finally ended. Part of me never wanted to drive it again, and part of me really didn't care since I can drive it in my sleep. 91 to the Merritt Pkwy. Merritt to the Hutch. Hutch to the Whitestone Bridge and then onto the Bruckner.
Except this time I took the Bruckner to the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, aka the Cheating Death Everytime Highway) and flew past my old house, continuing on to Brooklyn where two of my closest friends from college awaited my (late) arrival. They moved to the city just after I did, through total serendipity, and they're both about to move away. This past weekend was quite possibly the last time we'll all be together for a long time, much less in New York. So, as good college friends do, we celebrated our together-ness with margaritas.
And as many women our age can probably relate to, we spent most of the time competing for who has recently come across the most bizarre factoids about health and the body, mostly women's health stuff (yeah yeah, ewwww). (Though, because of the sketchy company I've been keeping lately, my weird women's health fact actually had to do with the reproductive systems of goats, because I was at my cousin's farm in upstate New York recently when one of her goats gave birth to twins.)
Let's be clear, here. We are NOT discussing our reproductive systems because we plan on using them anytime soon. We're more like halfway between high school health class and the dinging of our biological alarm clocks - we're old enough to learn and actually discuss really useful (or just fascinating) information, and young enough for this information to kind of gross us out ("my ovaries might WHAT??"). We're old enough to have watched a number of our friends marry and even have babies, and young enough for that to be totally freaky (well, except that one of the friends I was with is married herself).
It was therefore validating and ironic and lovely to spend Saturday with five good friends, three of whom are married (two of those to one another), and two adorable little baby boys (belonging to the married people). I'd never met the boys before, and it's a little tough to describe how I felt about this sudden babyness everywhere. They are beatiful and adorable and perfect, like all babies. They are also unpredictable and drooly and gross. Ten years ago I would have been terrified of the little creatures, and five years ago I would have felt some aversion and some indifference. This weekend I felt warmth and patience and not a little awe. I felt, dare I say it, really comfortable holding a baby in my arms. And perfectly happy to give the baby back to his mother.
It was validating to know that I could feel natural holding a baby and feel happy and comfortable letting it go. Yes, that could be right for me someday and I might even be good at it. No, that day isn't coming anytime soon, if I can help it (AHEM, no thanks to my health insurance provider).
But aren't the CUTE?
After the day with the babies we fought traffic back to the city and went out for a yummy dinner. On Sunday I sat in Prospect Park and called a bunch of people to say "hey, I'm in the city, come sit in the park with me!" which a lovely number of people actually did. We whiled away the beautiful afternoon, until I absolutely had to get back in my car and fight the end-of-the-weekend, leaving-the-city traffic to come home.
It was a perfect weekend in the Big Apple: I enjoyed what the city has to offer and saw some of the people I love best in the world, and I was so happy at the end of it to come back to my happy hippie valley in Vermont. There is no good Mexican food here, but there are lovely friends to discuss my reproductive system with, enough babies around to keep me from forgetting that talking about it is all I want to do with it for a long time, and enough potlucks and dances to feel totally socially fulfilled by my current single life no matter what most of society tries to tell me I *should* feel about it. The universe is giving me a lot of validation right now, and most of the time I'm remembering to be grateful.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
an early summer night's dream
Last night I tried reeeeally hard to go to yoga class, just to get there and find that class was canceled this week because my yoga teacher is on vacation. OK fine. Luckily there was a back-up plan readily available right in the same town (because no, I don't go to a yoga class in the town in which I live. My class is, in fact, in a whole other state. That's partly because I really love this particular yoga teacher, and partly because I like to be absurd). So I ended up joining some friends at the local elementary school to watch their son's Little League game.
This wasn't just any Little League game. (In fact, I guess technically it wasn't Little League at all. It's Peewee League or whatever comes before Little League. I don't know such things; I played soccer.) This was the SEMIFINALS. Bernardston vs. Northfield. Northfield was the home team, and they were mostly big tough 4th graders. My friends were with Bernardston, which has a mix of 3rd and 4th graders, with a lot of kids who haven't hit their mid-elementary-school growth spurt yet.
This made for an uphill battle for our side, and there was competetive spirit like you've never seen. Bases were stolen. Bats were tossed. Tears were shed. Four-leaf clovers were searched for in the outfield during slow moments. This was serious baseball.
The evening was warm and humid, and we watched a storm waiting just over the mountains to the west with enough trepidation that people jumped a little every time a camera flashed. Bernardston started off strong, but then watched Northfield slowly creep back. Our best pitcher crumpled to the ground in the 3rd inning after getting smacked hard in the wrist as he tried to tag home. Northfield brought in a skinny little blond bomber of a pitcher who seemed to knock our kids down 1-2-3.
But our side kept at it, and after six innings (in only 3 hours!), with the rain seeming to close in, our pitcher (whose wrist seemed magically healed, which was good because the kid can throw some serious heat, though granted his heat often went nowhere near the plate) got strike 3: the last out. Bernardston was going to the championship, and everyone headed to the local creamery to eat ice cream for dinner.
And if that's not a perfect summer evening, I don't know what is.
This wasn't just any Little League game. (In fact, I guess technically it wasn't Little League at all. It's Peewee League or whatever comes before Little League. I don't know such things; I played soccer.) This was the SEMIFINALS. Bernardston vs. Northfield. Northfield was the home team, and they were mostly big tough 4th graders. My friends were with Bernardston, which has a mix of 3rd and 4th graders, with a lot of kids who haven't hit their mid-elementary-school growth spurt yet.
This made for an uphill battle for our side, and there was competetive spirit like you've never seen. Bases were stolen. Bats were tossed. Tears were shed. Four-leaf clovers were searched for in the outfield during slow moments. This was serious baseball.
The evening was warm and humid, and we watched a storm waiting just over the mountains to the west with enough trepidation that people jumped a little every time a camera flashed. Bernardston started off strong, but then watched Northfield slowly creep back. Our best pitcher crumpled to the ground in the 3rd inning after getting smacked hard in the wrist as he tried to tag home. Northfield brought in a skinny little blond bomber of a pitcher who seemed to knock our kids down 1-2-3.
But our side kept at it, and after six innings (in only 3 hours!), with the rain seeming to close in, our pitcher (whose wrist seemed magically healed, which was good because the kid can throw some serious heat, though granted his heat often went nowhere near the plate) got strike 3: the last out. Bernardston was going to the championship, and everyone headed to the local creamery to eat ice cream for dinner.
And if that's not a perfect summer evening, I don't know what is.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Referrals Disease
Referrals Disease is when your visit to one doctor results in seeing multiple other doctors. In my case a general practitioner is leading to an orthopedist and a neurologist (no, I did not knee myself in the head; the issues are unrelated).
The good news is that the combination of mysterious health issues and lots of internet access means that I am learning quite a bit. Of course, how much of that is accurate is a different question, but I stick to the NIH and Mayo Clinic websites, which are said to be trustworthy. It's amazing how much information is out there! And how many weird things can happen to the human body (or that the body can do to itself)!
I must say, Google is probably the best thing that ever happened to hypochondriacs. I am not one, but the wealth of information out there makes it easy to imagine oneself fitting the descriptions of, for example, all 37,000 diseases possibly related to "fatigue."
No doubt having 37,000 diseases at once would be tiring, indeed.
The good news is that the combination of mysterious health issues and lots of internet access means that I am learning quite a bit. Of course, how much of that is accurate is a different question, but I stick to the NIH and Mayo Clinic websites, which are said to be trustworthy. It's amazing how much information is out there! And how many weird things can happen to the human body (or that the body can do to itself)!
I must say, Google is probably the best thing that ever happened to hypochondriacs. I am not one, but the wealth of information out there makes it easy to imagine oneself fitting the descriptions of, for example, all 37,000 diseases possibly related to "fatigue."
No doubt having 37,000 diseases at once would be tiring, indeed.
Friday, June 15, 2007
random sports commentary, because i was up too late
There are sporting events, especially basketball games, whose wide final scoring margins belie the excitement and closeness of the game. Those games are fun to watch and leave you with something to talk about, because you can tell anyone who is interested exactly why the score should have been closer (or you can rant about it on your blog, because your friends are mostly hippie dancers who really could not care less).
Then there are games whose close final score belies the total boringness and pre-destiny of the game. Like the final score of the Spurs-Cavs game last night (the fourth and final game of the NBA Finals, for those who have no clue what I'm talking about). I stayed up 'til 12:30 in the morning for THAT?
The only reason it was (maybe) still worth watching at the end was to appreciate Manu Ginobli, who is as rock-solid a player at the end of a game as a team could ever dream of. In fact, I'd say he's why they won last night, because no one else was doing jack s--t. But at least the Cavs couldn't make a basket for most of the second half, except for their runs at the 7-minute mark and the 20-second mark.
At 20 seconds they started fouling and getting rebounds and LeBron woke up and got that Michael Jordan-ish, untouchable look back in his eyes. But as my friend who I watched the game with astutely noted, you start fouling with a minute left and making those baskets, you have a ball game. You start fouling with 20 seconds left, well... you have 20 seconds that take 10 minutes to play, an outcome that everyone knows anyway, and an 83-82 game that sounds far more exciting than it ever was.
It's great that the Cavs made it to the Finals, which was always their real goal anyway. LeBron finally has something of the supporting cast he needs and deserves (something that I, as a Minnesota sports fan, can only dream the Timberwolves will give Kevin Garnett someday). Tony Parker got a little more of his rightful recognition and a big smooch from a beautiful lady. So, everybody's happy, right?
Yeah. Wake me up for next season.
Then there are games whose close final score belies the total boringness and pre-destiny of the game. Like the final score of the Spurs-Cavs game last night (the fourth and final game of the NBA Finals, for those who have no clue what I'm talking about). I stayed up 'til 12:30 in the morning for THAT?
The only reason it was (maybe) still worth watching at the end was to appreciate Manu Ginobli, who is as rock-solid a player at the end of a game as a team could ever dream of. In fact, I'd say he's why they won last night, because no one else was doing jack s--t. But at least the Cavs couldn't make a basket for most of the second half, except for their runs at the 7-minute mark and the 20-second mark.
At 20 seconds they started fouling and getting rebounds and LeBron woke up and got that Michael Jordan-ish, untouchable look back in his eyes. But as my friend who I watched the game with astutely noted, you start fouling with a minute left and making those baskets, you have a ball game. You start fouling with 20 seconds left, well... you have 20 seconds that take 10 minutes to play, an outcome that everyone knows anyway, and an 83-82 game that sounds far more exciting than it ever was.
It's great that the Cavs made it to the Finals, which was always their real goal anyway. LeBron finally has something of the supporting cast he needs and deserves (something that I, as a Minnesota sports fan, can only dream the Timberwolves will give Kevin Garnett someday). Tony Parker got a little more of his rightful recognition and a big smooch from a beautiful lady. So, everybody's happy, right?
Yeah. Wake me up for next season.
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