40 Years Ago Thursday July 16

The mightiest engines ever built... still breathtaking to watch after 40 years.

I wrote these lines February 1, 2003 on the occasion of the destruction of the Columbia Space Shuttle:

I have no mind for mathematics. I am not mechanically inclined. Whatever appreciation for science I have is largely aesthetic. I like traveling less and less as I get older. I'm getting more phobic (heights, sharp things, fire, etc.) and more timid with each passing year. My views and politics are probably far to the left of most mechanically inclined prosaic can-do types. And yet, I have always been an enthusiastic supporter and admirer of space exploration. That has not changed with today's catastrophe. My most vivid and happiest historical childhood memories from the 60's were not of the Counter-Culture (I was far too young and too remote from all that) and certainly were not of the Vietnam War; they were of the Space Program. I followed all those space flights with relish from John Glenn in Friendship 7 to the last Apollo flight to the moon in 1972. I even followed all of the now forgotten missions of the Gemini program. That is the only aspect of the 60's that I feel privileged to have lived through and witnessed. All of those mighty projects to put men on the moon were ultimately peaceful despite their Cold War motivations. They brought people together in a great civilizing enterprise of exploration. They were great works about something other than war or commerce (even though they began in war and benefited commerce).

Exploration was always risky since the first ancient Polynesian or Viking or Phoenician or Chinese or Greek or Arab set sail in uncharted waters. The bones of lost and luckless explorers litter the frontiers in history. Space is vast, disorienting, hostile, and implacably alien. Exploring even our small part of it is lethally dangerous. People died and will die again trying to push back that frontier; several Russian cosmonauts, the crews of Apollo 1, the Challenger, and now the Columbia. I am so grateful for people with the courage and spirit to risk their lives to take a small light up into that immense darkness. I salute all those who try to expand the realm of the possible for all of us puny little mortals; even when they die trying.

And that great triumph of exploration 40 years ago was full of risk. The success of the whole project depended on the skill and the courage of the 3 pilots, even with all the best technology that 1969 could offer. Those astronauts were not payload. The only reason that the Lunar Module didn't crash into the surface of the Moon as it ran out of fuel was Neil Armstrong's superb piloting. The astronauts were the ones ultimately responsible for the happy outcome of the whole mission.

I've often wondered why we haven't returned to the Moon, and I always come to some sour conclusions along the lines of we're all too busy making money to bother with exploration. But, despite the predictions of a certain movie that came out the year before Apollo 11, space travel in the 21st century is anything but routine and banal. Space is still a lethally dangerous, hostile, alien, and disorienting immensity. We are creatures of gravity, and of Earth's atmosphere. We are not built to survive where there is no air, no ground, and no up or down. We are still trying to figure out how to adapt our technologies and ourselves to spending the time in that environment necessary to travel beyond the confines of our own planet.

An Open Letter to the Right Reverend Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham Concerning His Recent Essay in The Times

Your Grace,

Piss Off!

Respectfully,

F. Douglas Blanchard, Episcopalian

Brooklyn, USA

The opinion piece can be found here.

Madpriest has a more detailed and nuanced opinion here.

The best reasoned and nuanced reply to Bishop Wright, in my opinion, is from Scott Gunn.

Stephen Bates has another fine opinion piece in the Comment Is Free section of The Guardian.

I'll leave the reasoned arguing to the professionals.  I live in Billyburg in Brooklyn, a place not renowned for nuanced discussion, but more for declarative statements like the one in my open letter above.

Ends and Beginnings

Hubert Robert, Demolishing the Bastille, 1790

When Parisian crowds stormed the Bastille July 14, 1789, they found only a handful of old men upset at being rudely awakened. The Marquis de Sade was released from the Bastille only days earlier.
The storming of the Bastille was not about liberating prisoners. It was about seizing weapons. The members of the newly formed National Assembly were in Paris. The city was full of rumors that royal troops were marching toward the city. The Bastille was stormed to seize weapons to defend the city and the National Assembly. In that desperate act fueled by rumor, something new began.
The Bastille suddenly acquired a meaning and an importance it never had before. It is likely that before July 14, 1789, Parisians hardly noticed the old medieval fortress on the edge of town. After it was stormed, it became an emblem of tyranny, of rulers at war with their own people. It became emblematic of an ancient feudal order that now seemed arbitrary, rooted in superstition and ignorance. The stone fortress stood for everything that stood in the way of emerging expectations in a brand new world where the human condition of toil, pain, and obedience for the many was no longer immutable. That order was ancient, but it was no longer permanent. It clearly was no longer divinely ordained. Common people could change their lot in life. They could have a say in their own destinies. The new Industrial Revolution harnessed the forces of nature to the needs of production. People now had powers that they once attributed to their gods. "Why should we fear Jupiter's thunderbolt," said Karl Marx, "when we have the lightning rod?"

We are still in the middle of those revolutions unleashed at the end of the 18th century. They remain unfinished, their promises unfulfilled.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt once said that among the greatest privileges of humanity was the capacity to start something new, to begin. All my life, I've heard Greek choruses bewailing the decline of this and that. I've always wondered, if one thing is dying, then it means another is struggling to be born. Civilizations end, not because they fail, but because the people who make them are mortal. Traditions disappear when they no longer have anything to say to new generations. We are living in such a time when new things struggle to be born. Hannah Arendt looked about at the smoking ruins of Europe and Asia at the end of the Second World War. She noted that, for the first time, the thread of historical continuity that joined the past and present together was now irrevocably broken by the catastrophes of the 20th century. However, she saw not despair, but a unique opportunity, the chance of a new start.

Le Sueur, Planting a Liberty Tree, 1790

"All the Sacraments to All the Baptized"

I wake up this Bastille Day morning to the news that the Episcopal Church will continue to ordain gay clergy.  The notorious resolution B033 which was intended to stop further consecrations of lgbt bishops (it never said so explicitly, but everyone knew what "manner of life" meant, and it  didn't mean right wing bishops with multiple divorces) that was strongarmed through the last General Convention in the closing minutes is no more.  Resolution D025, which effectively repeals that resolution, sailed through both houses by 2 to 1 margins.

The great Mad One of Newcastle has a splendid editorial on the demise of B033, and urges us Yanks to take heart, and reminds us that we will ultimately win this thing.

The ball is in the court of the rest of the Anglican Communion.  If they want to throw us out, so be it, but I don't think that is very likely.  Homos just aren't the communion breaker for most of the rest of the world, that they are for Nigeria, the Southern Cone, and the very loud and well-financed right wing clergy cabal that started this whole unpleasantness.

The schismatics will soon turn on each other.  The Anglo Catholic woman haters in lace won't travel far with the fire-breathing Evangelical Bible thumpers.   The splits over women's ordination are already starting.  The homos are the only thing that holds them together.  They need us as enemies.  Expect them to continue firing shots at us long after they've left the hall.

The schismatics don't even pretend to stand for anything positive.  They are the religious wing of all those who fear the future and are fueled by nothing but resentment.  They are part of that mind-set that believes enfranchisement is a zero-sum game; "whenever someone gets something, it means that I've lost something."

Which is the church that really offers hope to a bleeding world torn apart by greed, ambition, fanaticism and bigotry?  The one that requires that you to pass a 10 page examination and a blood test, or the one where even the homos are welcome to the party so it must have room for you? 

This news together with Bastille Day makes it worth my while to post L' Hymne a l'amour again.

The School of Paris, c.1920 - 1950

...when the great and noble tradition of French painting was pretty good.

Raoul Dufy

Moise Kisling, Portrait of Jean Cocteau

Bernard Buffet

Maurice Utrillo

There really is no such thing as a "pretty good" omlette.

Happy Bastille Day Mimi, Where Ever You Are!

Keeping with tradition, I'll start with the French triumphalist gloire. Here is the Hector Berlioz setting of La Marseillaise featuring Placido Domingo:




Here's another kind of French gloire. Edith Piaf sings another great French anthem:




For us Yanks, it just wouldn't be Bastille Day without this old chestnut:




Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!

Mes Amis, Vive La France!

Cassoulet for everybody!

Here's a tribute to La Belle France from a very great American.

UPDATE:

Ma cher Mimi is back from Anaheim.

Dancing the Giglio

I skipped church today (well, my own church anyway) to watch an old Brooklyn tradition that I've heard about for years, the Dancing of the Giglio. It's part of a 2 week celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, combined with the Feast of San Paolino de Nola (a local saint of the southern Italian town of Nola; most of the Italians in Williamsburg are originally from Nola). It takes place on the first Sunday of the feast. A contingent of about a hundred very beefy Italian guys carry a 4 ton 60 foot high tower, together with a brass band, a singer, and the parish priest, down Havemeyer street in front of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn where I live.

San Paolino's Boat with the Giglio

Another contingent of big Italian guys carries The Boat, a big model boat with another effigy of San Paolino with another brass band and a man dressed in costume known as "The Turk." This commemorates San Paolino's rescue from Turkish pirates by the men of Nola. The two huge floats meet in front of the church, the two crews join hands, and "dance" the two giant effigies.

Watching San Paolino sway on top of his tower was very exciting.

The whole thing was a hoot and a half. I had a great time. The weather was perfect. I went to the 11AM Mass which started at noon (things apparently ran very late this year for some reason). The church was packed, SRO. The entrance procession was a brass band playing "Giglio e Paradiso" followed by a statue of San Paolino, not so much carried as danced up the center aisle. How many times do you get to pump your fist in the air and yell HEY! at the top of your lungs to the tune of an Italian brass band in church (at least in Episcopal church)? I loved it! The sermon was surprisingly good. A monsignor in a thick Brooklyn accent reminded the carriers that what they were doing was the work of the Gospel by making such a festival for everyone. He noted the inclusive nature of the feast, that everyone was invited to participate. I noted a number of African Americans and Hispanics among the parade staff, and an Asian saxophonist in the band. Even Sicilians were welcome, he reminded the amused Campagnan congregation.

My back hurts just watching this.



Here is the tune "Giglio e Paradiso" with stills of the carriers.

A wonderful piece of old New York that (so far) has survived gentrification. I hope I have a camera next year.

Buona Festa a Tutti!

UPDATE:

The locals explain that the feast commemorates the 5th century local bishop of Nola, San Paolino, who exchanged himself for a young boy, an only son, who had been captured and sold into slavery by North African pirates.  When he returned to Nola with the boy, the townspeople greeted him with towers of lillies, hence the name "giglio" (lilly) for the tower.  The annual ceremony recreates San Paolino's return to Nola with the captured boy.