Jericho-Rosary-Guadalupe

 The reports of election fraud have been disturbing. It is one thing to lose because the voters want something else but it another to lose due to manipulation of the process. But this is not some sudden revelation to me-during previous recent presidential elections, I read about ways that voting machines and the process could surreptitiously be manipulated to alter the vote. Also, this year's allowance for mail-in ballots was an open invitation for fraud. 

Since the election, I have been praying for a miracle that would rescue the country from the evils of the fraud. My sister, Mary Lynn, invited me to pray a novena using the Patriotic Rosary-which I did-that concluded on Tuesday December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. During that novena, I heard about another novena that was ongoing that was time to conclude on Saturday, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. An event associated with this was the Jericho March (see the Book of Joshua, Chapter 6). Another event based on prayer and fasting was Project Nineveh (see the Book of Jonah, Chapter 3).

 

Though there wasn't a Jericho march organized for Connecticut, I thought I might go to the State Capitol Building anyway and walk around it 7X while saying the rosary. Perhaps I would run into others who had the same idea. 

The weather turned out to be daunting: cold & drizzling. But I pressed on.

Selfie in front of the Capitol Building at the start of my walk (Noon).

There was no sign of anyone else. However, a bit later, a handful of Trump supporters arrived. They went to the sidewalk and waved flags and shouted at traffic (tilting at windmills?).

North side of the Capitol Building-I started here.

Trump supporters demonstrating at the street in front of the Capitol Building.

View of the gold dome from the NE side.

So after I did my hour walk and seven circuits, before returning to my car, I walked a short distance to the Soldiers and Sailors  Memorial Arch to take a closer look at the BLM mural painted on the street. I am amazed that the city has closed off a regular street in order to allow a political message to be painted. Astonishing.

BLM street mural photo from news.

Selfie at the end of my prayer walk.

View of the Connecticut State Capital Building
looking SW from Bushnell Park.

Postscript: While I felt somewhat triumphant at the end of the walk, the next day I was extremely depressed. I wondered why had I been the only one there to pray. Where were the others? Where were the professing Roman Catholics? So much apathy.

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Links:
http://www.patrioticrosary.com/patriotic-rosary.html
https://jerichomarch.org/about/
https://sign.org/articles/project-nineveh-december-12th-202256
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_State_Capitol
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Written Friday 25 December 2020.

Get Back to Cuckoo!

No. This is not a description of me (I hope). As part of my rebirth, I pulled my cuckoo clock out of the box, put it up on the wall, and now it is ticking (and tocking) away.

My cuckoo clock back to life.

It has been many years since my cuckoo clock has been a presence in my life. But now it is back. For a long time it was tucked in a box stuck away. Off hand, I don't remember when it was last on the wall or actually in use. There were a couple of reasons for this.

First, during my "marriage" to Lynn, she found the sounds annoying and the clock became a focal point of control. I would wind it up and go to work only to return home to find it silent and still. Then, the music part malfunctioned and it would continually play its waltz until the weight had played itself out. Lynn's mom, Judy, knew a clock repairman whom she thought would fix it. After a year of being in the shop, I asked for the clock back. When it left, it was in the original box with the original instructions. When it returned, it was in a generic box that wasn't the right size and the instructions were missing.*  The music played correctly for a while but then it went back to its old ways and I was done fighting.

So now that Lynn is gone once again and I am wondering who I am and supposed to be, the cuckoo (clock) is back. When I first put it up, it ticked for a few moments but then stopped. But, unlike years ago, we now have the internet to instruct us on just about anything, including troubleshooting your cuckoo clock. And so, after checking a few sites, I nudged the clock so it was a degree or so more level, and tick-tocking continued without interruption.

Close-up view of my cuckoo clock.

My affinity for a cuckoo clock dates back to my childhood. We always had one (and it is still there in my Mom's house). One of my chores as a child was to make sure the clock was wound. The clock was a gift to my parents from my mother's brother when he returned from military duty in (West) Germany in the late 1950s. Uncle Jim passed away earlier this year and my Aunt Denise told me that his military duty in Germany prevented him from attending my parents' wedding; so the cuckoo clock was their wedding present from him.

Years later, when I was beginning my career and starting my own residence, I naturally wanted to outfit my apartment with a cuckoo clock. I bought mine from a clock store in Berea. As usual, I had no idea what I was getting. I only knew it was a cuckoo clock made in Germany and it played music on the hour as well as cuckooing on the hour (the number of the hour) and half hour (one cuckoo).

It is a tremendous satisfaction and comfort to come into the living room and hear the clock steadily ticking away. There is something reassuring about that for me. It's like the heartbeat of life.

There are still some adjustments needed:

1. The clock seems to run a few minutes fast. By the end of the day it is about 3-minutes ahead. I recall that in the past I struggled trying to adjust the speed. This is done by adjusting the leaf on the pendulum.  Right now, I can live with it by letting it go idle for a couple minutes at the start of the day in order to synchronize the time.
2. The number of cuckoos is one behind the actual time. For example at 1 o-clock, it cuckoos 12 times. This requires adjusting the hands of the clock. I remember doing this in the past but right now I am content to live with this minor idiosyncrasy.
3. The music does not play at the top of the hour. As I understand it, there is a special gear that is no longer available that drives the music. In any case, something is in the works that causes the music to play sporadically without warning or apparent cause. Sometimes it goes through several cycles and then mysteriously stops.

For right now, I am very happy to have the cuckoo back and calmly tick-tocking away.

* Typing up this post, prompted me to hunt through my files in hopes of finding the invoice from when I bought the clock. I didn't find that but instead discovered the instructions that I had assumed were lost when the clock went to the repair shop. These instructions indicate that the clock was manufactured in the Black Forest of Germany by Emil Schmeckenbecher.

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Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock
https://www.theamericancuckooclockcompany.com/about-our-clocks/troubleshooting-your-cuckoo-clock/
https://www.bavarianclockworks.com/blog/diy-cuckoo-clock-repair-guide/
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Written Monday 21 December 2020.

The Angelus

 

Framed print of "The Angelus" now hanging in my living room.

My dad's Godfather, Uncle Frank, had this print hanging in his living room over the gas fire place. When I was a wee lad (i.e., Warren Road days), my father would take me with him to visit Uncle Frank. They would talk and I would be bored-Uncle Frank (and Aunt Elizabeth) didn't have any children, so they had no toys for me to play with. So I had been "taught" to politely and obediently sit there (and be seen and not heard).

And so I quietly took in the surroundings. The living room was dominated at the one end by a brick fireplace with natural gas-fueled flames. Above the fireplace was a framed "painting" that I often pondered (because what else was there to do?). For years I assumed that the couple were praying at the grave of their dead child.* When we were young, my dad often took us to the cemeteries where we prayed for the dead relatives. 

Years later, I learned that this "painting" was actually a print of a painting called "The Angelus" by the French painter, Jean-François Millet. I was too young to know the prayers but I was familiar with the Angelus church bells that rang at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. because these bells structured our days (during the time we lived on Warren Road).

After Uncle Frank died, the "painting" went from its place of honor over the fireplace to a storage space in the upstairs eave at our new suburban home on Elmhurst Drive. Apparently, it never occurred to me to question why we didn't hang it in our living room above our fireplace. But by the time we moved to Elmhurst Drive, angelus bells had fallen out of fashion and we were too far from the church to hear them anyway.

This is an image I found online that is more colorful and vivid.
I don't know how accurate it is compared to the original painting.

Years later when I was on my own, I took the "painting." (I don't remember if I asked or merely told or what). I don't know if I ever hung it up, perhaps early after I married Lynn. There was a time when we seemed to collect images of The Angelus (I have a smaller painted copy somewhere that I think we actually displayed).

In any case, hanging the painting was rather daunting because of the bulk of the frame and the weight. It is heavy because the back is a piece of thin wood covered with a thick heavy paper. From the various moves over the years, the frame got rather beaten up, chipped, and dirty. Periodically I considered having the print re-framed but I was afraid that there might be some hidden treasure secretly stashed behind the print and it would be stolen by the frame maker. Another option was to purchase an entirely new framed print and bury the old one behind it; but that seemed dishonest, and a betrayal. Since the divorce (2001) I had intended to hang the picture but procrastinated against acting.

Recently, I down-sized my storage unit and encountered the picture again. I decided I had to display the picture because it a core part of me (although I'm not sure what that exactly means). It is a connection to a past that no longer exists**, a piety that has been discarded and buried. So perhaps hanging it is something of a bit of rebellion on my part. 

The institutional church stole my religion, my faith; Vatican 2 threw it away but I still remember it. There was something about the old ways that was structured and solid and secure. Perhaps it is merely a memory of a childhood, a dream that can't be recaptured. But whatever, the picture/painting/print is back on the wall. It is a call to pause and remember. Remember.

*While researching "The Angelus" painting, I was chagrined to learn that the abstract painter Salvador Dali also believed that the painting was originally about a couple praying at a grave. Apparently there is some evidence this could be true.

**One of the mysteries of life is that there are things we can never know. I never thought to ask about the origin of the picture, how and why Uncle Frank got it and if there was any special significance about it or it was merely a piece of religious art. Both Uncle Frank and my dad are long gone so it is unlikely that I will ever know.

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Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Angelus_%28painting%29
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/the-angelus-3048.html?no_cache=1&S=&print=1&no_cache=1&
https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/a/angelus-painting-by-millet.php
https://www.dalipaintings.com/archeological-reminiscence-millets-angelus.jsp
http://www.artinsociety.com/millet-and-the-angelus.html#
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Written Sunday 27 December 2020.