Monthly Archives: August 2017

Miscellany. Wherein I Defend Confederate Monuments In Public Places.

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in American History, Art, Uncategorized

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Mrs CorC? was laid off last week in a cost-saving move by corporate. Sucks. We are using the down time to clear out junk in the old hacienda.  I took some books to the Y for their book sale. My dream is that we will be rid of enough stuff to commence work on the home remodel. The pricy stuff will be new windows, a rear patio door and hardwood flooring downstairs. With luck, we can have the house ready for the family at Christmas or Thanksgiving.

I’ve been on course to reach my weight loss goals. My swimming is coming along, well uh, swimmingly. I will do a 2-mile swim now without a second thought.

I live in Richmond, Virginia. We have in Richmond, an avenue where Confederate monuments are placed in positions of honor. They have been here for over a century. It is lovely statuary in an exquisite urban setting.  If political ideology clouds your aesthetic sense, you will be offended by monuments to Robert E. Lee and others.  Sorry. The street, Monument Avenue, is lovely .  Destroying beautiful things are what barbarians do. Art is also supposed to make one think and frequently makes us uncomfortable.  Think about that.

Yes, I know all about slavery. We Southern white males are not idiots. Nor are we ignorant. How is destroying Monument Avenue, even with its allusion to a tragic past, going to eliminate the horror of slavery from our history ?  Books in this country are already banned for superficial reasons. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is not taught in schools because Mark Twain used the “N” word.   The study of  history and literature isn’t for the timid.  Art isn’t about sentimentality. How can people we don’t much care for or agree with create beautiful things? Yet they do. And always have. 

This has been on my mind for a while. I needed to express my thoughts. 

Choosing

19 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, Love and stuff

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Celibate or Chaste? I no longer consider my marriage that lacks a sexual dimension to be a “less than” or inferior bond. It is what it is. And the love between my wife and me is wholly satisfying. 

I believe our highly sexualized culture is a great deception. That happiness based on sexual fulfillment is an unattainable state and rests at the heart of this deception.  

So I’m choosing chastity until we have a sexually active aspect to this marriage.   As a Catholic marriage, we recognize God in all Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity as a partner in this bond.  Our marriage is our Vocation. I am saying good bye to the illusions of the erotic fantasy world.

Baseball. Why?

14 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in Sport

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I love this game, I hate this game. Sometimes, I just avoid watching a game, but I get sucked in. My wife reminds me, “It’s only a game.” I suppose. 

So the Yankees and Red Sox are going at it, Red Sox have the bases loaded in a tie game, top of the 10th inning, 1 out. The Yankee pitcher just gave up a single to score the runner on third, Red Sox 3-2.

It’s just not worth riding this emotional roller coaster. 

“It’s only a game.”

Day’s End.

12 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in Housework

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What a day. No fireworks, no bells tolling joyous peals mark this day.  One doesn’t receive medals for tidying up, tossing out items that should have been pitched months ago. I feel like I deserve such accolades. I recycled my empty Altoids tins, my John McCann’s Steel-Cut Oatmeal canisters. As functional as they are, steel, with a snug-fitting lid, they continue to be made, and are not at risk of obsolescence.  Yet why have I saved three, with nothing to put in them?

I have little piles of charitable solicitation letters complete with cheesy greeting cards, calendars, return address labels. Maybe folks, I will send you some dough, when I get some extra money.  Your causes have merit.

I replaced an anemic basket, holding my Red Delicious apples, Bartlett pears, yellow Cavendish bananas, Roma tomatoes, and a Vidalia onion, with a larger one capable of holding all of the produce.

These nagging little chores have a psychological reward greater than the tasks. I’m just a little bit less attached to my stuff.

Saturday Night.

06 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life

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Early this morning, 2 AM, I was up, cleaning the kitchen. I puttered around a bit, getting ready for Adoration of The Blessed Sacrament between, 4 and 5 AM. My time with Our Lord has become very special and important to me.  I have had the rather startling experience of Our Lord “speaking” to me, not some hallucination, but through  an insight I had not had beforehand.  

This morning I read Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s book The Three Conversions In The Spiritual Life, (Tan Books, Charlotte, 1977) while spending my time before The Sacrament.

 Father Garrigou-Lagrange raises the question “Is man able, without some help from on high, (his italics), to get beyond himself, and truly and efficaciously to love Truth and Goodness more than he loves himself?” (Page 7). A challenge, most certainly.   Somehow, at age 66, the Interior Life for me has become the Last Frontier.  I shall read on. But the emptiness of our secular and materialist culture becomes increasingly apparent to me. More stuff won’t make me any happier. And even that end called “Happiness” seems the most vain of aspirations.

The day grinds on. I do some serious catch-up sleeping, have breakfast with friends, then sleep some more, go swimming, have dinner and here I am. 

We have lost our pursuit of the Beautiful and the True.  We use Art to derive solely emotional responses, and ascribe to that emotional response, Truth.  Is Truth a mere feeling? 

“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. That is all you know on Earth and all you need to know.” Keats,  Ode To A Grecian Urn

I am tiring, making less and less sense, and feel frustrated pecking out the letters on my Smartphone. More later.

Texting With My Son

04 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in Family, Relationships

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My elder son and I were texting tonight. He is 41 , with a successful career. He told me he would give everything he had for his mother and me to be together again. You see, we divorced when he was two. I remained in his life. He even lived with my current wife and me when he was a young adult recovering from some bad decisions that he made,

 Today is his mother’s birthday. I realize this terrible fracture to his emotional security haunts him still.  Her birthday brought his sense of loss to the surface.  

I have a good marriage today, emotional maturity, an eternal grounding for my life in the Roman Catholic Church, over two decades of sobriety. And yet, the scar remains. That decision to divorce (not my idea, for what that is worth) haunts him and me still. I can only imagine what his mother thinks.

I can fantasize about sexual escapades all I want. But that sacred bond of marriage I trampled on so long ago has more value than any erotic reverie I may ever entertain.

July

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Exercise/ Fitness

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I finished the month with one final swim. 2500 meters. My time was 56:15. I never thought I would swim this distance in under an hour since I had my surgeries in 2015.  But I did. I felt strong and fast and powerful. A great feeling. 

Every day I hear some ad that says men my age (66) or even younger need some sort of Hormone Replacement Therapy to regain their youthful vigor and even virility.  My own experience reinforces my scepticism around this claim.  I guess my suggestion is to get active over a sustained period of time before deciding on HRT.  Then again, I am not a physician.

Life is good.