Today is the Feast Day of St. Sithney, a rather mysoginistic character. As the Patron Saints Index informs us,

“A Breton legend says that God chose Sithney to be the patron of girls seeking husbands; the saint begged off, saying he would never get to rest, that he would rather take care of mad dogs than women. Sounded like a good idea to the Almighty, and ever since, sick or mad dogs have been given water from Sithney’s well as a tonic.”

Silly man.

I’d prefer the company of women any day, myself….

Breakfast this still-cool lingering a.m. comprised a snippet of garden-fresh rosemary bedding a lamb chop morsel, several slices of red onion and purple potato; half a cinnamon-raisin bagel and a strong cuppa volcanic coffee….

It was pretty satisfying and light, actually.

St. Swithin, stained glass

Today is the feast day of many saints – the big web calendar of saints lists fifty-five of them, many largely anonymous.

A favorite is Saint Swithin (or Swithun), a ninth-century English bishop reputed to possess a post-mortem talent for weather forecasting (Perhaps, given his view from above, he may have some advance knowledge of cloud movements?).

A charming legend recounts how he miraculously restored a basketful of eggs, carried for sale by a Winchester egg woman, that had been maliciously broken by some workmen.

A warning about putting all one’s eggs into one basket? Or that, having done so, there is still hope? Or a love from the common street vendor? Restoration?

Who knows.

In any case, I wish to mark today because it carries great significance in my little life – a life as anonymous as that of most of today’s patron saints.  For it was 32 years agotoday that I was married to my wife, Mimi, the source of most of the good things that have happened in my life.

Mimi and I in NYC's Central Park, one snowy December

May this good fortune long continue.

Today’s issue of the New York Times Travel section has a short but not so sweet piece on our Los Angeles neighborhood, Highland Park.

Sadly, NYT’s first foray into the 90042 got it wrong, or at least came up woefully incomplete.

Saint Gudule, it is said, carried a lighted candle to church each visit. The devil repeatedly blew out its flame, but could not extinguish the light, for the flame always re-ignited.

As U2 sang yesterday, at the Inaugural concert for Barack Obama, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in its emotive song “Pride (In the Name of Love)”, the same could be said for Martin Luther King. “Early evening / April 4th / Shots rang out in a Memphis sky / Three blasts: They took your life / They could not take your pride.”

It is a Beautiful Day. Happy Birthday, Martin.

How did we ever get to this place, this moment, this shared bit of civilized pavement where we meet as friends and mutual-created family?

Didn’t it short time ago seem unlikely, so much a sappy-sweet sophomoric-simple dream? Something we would deflate and deride in irony-laden moments of eye-rolling chatter.

Yet here we meet and greet, bumping into one another, warm and unhurried, turning to greet our new neighbor with a smile rather than the hard glance of challenge and turfsmanship.

We. Are. Here. Together. To make change.

How extraordinary when you even pause a minute to think of it – and yet, in retrospect, how simple and ordained.

Like: What was All that Fuss about? 

Today, on the Feast Day of the Chair of Saint Peter, the day that commemorates the chair where the Apostle Peter sat to oversee services after Christ’s death, tens of tens of thousands gathered before the Lincoln Memorial, under the sage vision of the seated Abraham Lincoln, as Barack Obama inaugurated the inaugural celebrations of his ever so imminent inauguration, with song and praise; a celebration in song and spirit of hope an renewal.

And, just a tiny Thank you, God, for preserving Pete Seeger long enough to have this final, powerful validation of his pure vision.

We may never fully know what today meant to him; but i think we can imagine and be grateful.

This land, truly, is your land, mine, and ours.

Let us preserve, protect, and renew it. Amen.

From what I knew of the man, Robert Graham would have enjoyed this little tale.

Saint Reinhold was a tenth century bishop, assigned to oversee the construction of an abbey in Cologne. No mere supervisor, however, Reinhold threw himself into the abbey’s stonework with such skill and zeal that his carving soon outshone the handiwork of the stonemasons under his care. Disgruntled by this turn of events, and envious of the saint’s superior craftsmanship, the stonemasons grabbed their hammers and beat him to death.

Ah, the tempestuous art world.

Last Wednesday, on the 1048^th anniversary of Saint Reinhold’s final, crushing critique, hundreds of us gathered at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, in Downtown Los Angeles, to honor the gentleman carver and sculptor Robert Graham.

I came alone and sat near the back – as misfortune would have it, I had yet another memorial service to attend, and would need to leave before the final benediction. Even so, when that time came, the rows all around and behind me would be filled: Frank Gehry in the row before me; Donald Sutherland across the aisle; Harrison Ford passing in front. Really, though, the mind registers the faces and names, then rapidly – especially in such a setting – readjusts to the realization that we are all, at base, small and frail human beings.

Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. For me the twin moments were the human ones at, or near, the beginning and end of the service:

Noriko Fujinami, Graham’s studio director, presiding quietly and comfortingly from the center aisle, moving over to place her hands on a mourner’s shoulders from behind; silently embracing a newcomer.

And then: As the service began, we were asked to join the choir in singing “Amazing Grace,” a song that hadn’t passed my mind in decades, as Cardinal Roger Mahony and entourage entered with the casket from the rear. Looking up from the printed lyrics – “How sweet the sound / that saved a wretch like me” – I caught the cardinal reaching into the fount of holy water at the rear of the cathedral, and taking great handfuls and literally pouring out great draughts of it, repeatedly: the holy water cascading over the beautiful wood, as though Roger was trying to exorcize some deeper personal pain at the loss of his friend.

Much later, after Communion, and before the Eulogies would restore a sense that our life, at least, goes on, Robert’s widow, the actress Anjelica Huston, was escorted by Msgr. Kevin to a podium, from which, veiled in black, she read William Butler Keats’ poem “He Bids His Beloved Be at Peace.”

First, what a joy it is to hear poetry read by someone who knows how to do so. But of course, how fraught with emotion and meaning this was, given the context. As Anjelica came to the sixth line – “The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire” – her voice broke, became hoarse holding back her tears, as ours poured down. She struggled to regain control over the next two lines, and then spoke the rest quietly, tarrying softly over the half-benediction / half-plea of the final four lines:

“Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love’s lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.”

Whatever followed seemed superfluous.

What with the recent spate of dour local arts news – downsizing, near bankruptcy, layoffs, and cancellations – the three brochures for local arts organizations tumbling out of Sunday’s paper bestowed an aura of belated Christmas gifting.

Printed in full color on good card stock, they advertised the schedules for, respectively, the Los Angeles Art Show (Good for a $5 admission discount);  REDCAT at the Disney (A true keeper, chockablock with detailed info on great programming); and the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, at Santa Monica College.

Over 150 worldwide art galleries at the Convention Center in two weeks; opera, Cajun, and jazz at the Broad through the spring; and experimental cinema, theatre, dance, music and ideas at REDCAT through the year – all give rise to hope for the arts scene despite the economic downturns here and ahead.

The stunning kicker, though, is this: All three tumbled out of, not the Los Angeles Times – which offered, instead, the usual Target, Best Buys, and CVS adverts – but the local edition of the New York Times.

One couldn’t help thinking how their placement in the NYT must register as yet another none-too-subtle dismissal of the cultural relevance or importance of the handful of critics still soldiering on at the LAT. So sad.

Today I learned that someone close to me was raped this week. 

I’m sorry. Let me repeat that, because simple language is such an inefficient carrier for news this tragic:

Today I learned that someone close to me was raped this week.

The details are dreadful and painful in the extreme. To say nothing of the psychological wounding the perpetrators (yes, there was more than one coward) inflicted, the physical pains will resonate through her battered body for months, at least.

Where does this deeply ugly thirst for violation derive? How is it possible that man, born of woman’s womb and nursing, can exact such terrible suffering from his virtual sister?

I find it incomprehensible, and an ineraseable blot of shame on my gender.

Back in the early Middle Ages, around the ninth century, the cult of Saint Ursula began to flourish. Storytellers generally agreed that she had sailed to Cologne, Germany, where she was killed.

Any number of explanations have been proffered to explain away the extravagant number – eleven thousand – of virgin martyrs who died in her company: Perhaps it was a misreading of roman numerals; or a misreading of Ursula’s youthful age (only eleven years old); maybe it was a misreading of Ursula’s true name (“Undecimillia”); etcetera.

All arise to explain away the supposed impossibility of eleven thousand women being martyred by men.

Tonight, though, I read that a woman is raped every six minutes in the United States alone. Every six minutes: that’s ten an hour; it’s 240 a day, every blessed day of the year.

Urusula’s martyred companions seem to me tonight almost too small a number, by a magnitude of eight. It’s terrible – shocking – terrifying – sickening – to realize; but even today, in our enlightened age, over 87,000 women are raped every year in the United States.

May we somehow eventually come to honor the suffering and agony of Ursula, her companions, and their several thousand sisters, by raising our sons to be men who will treat women with equality, love, and respect.

Little more is known of today’s second-century saints than the manner of their dying: “stretched on the rack, beaten with clubs, burned, then beaten to death with lead-tipped whips.”

An altogether damnable way to treat one’s fellow humans; yet one is pained to recognize the continuity of suffering that man imposes on his sisters and brothers.

The video at this blog post’s beginning records the seconds leading up to, and following, the extraordinary recent terrorist attack on Mexican soil (and honor) by fellow Mexicans -
the tossing of a grenade or two into the central plaza of Morelia, Michoacan, during the annual “Grito” cry for independence, this past September 15.

Annually, Mexicans gather in their town’s central square shortly before midnight, at which moment the cry of “Viva Mexico” resounds through the land and, most profoundly, through the people’s hearts.

This year, in Morelia, just after the cries for freedom, there sounded the thud of a fragment grenade, tossed into the crowds, and ridiculously murdering eight mostly young persons, and critically injuring dozens more of all ages.

We reel, fully off-balance, wounded in our hearts, grasping at any manner of understanding this most un-Mexican way of bringing death to one’s brethren.

Where, and who. are we?

The questions reverberate through our hearts and conversations; and answers are hard to come by.

What is most noticeable, however, throughout the video (which is not, i assure you, bloody or invasive), is the humanity, dignity, and respectful proportionality with which the victims comport themselves.

Shortly before the video’s end, one hears the National Anthem begin its pre-recorded broadcast: a reminder of how casually and naturally one responds to tragedy:

There is no break with protocol; society’s decorum is never broken or threatened.

Viva Mexico!