Not partial to partial victory

"Because as every good activist Canadian knows, admitting partial victory constitutes defeat."

-- Chris Selley

You don' t have to be Canadian, or even an activist -- I knew back when I was still just an American schoolgirl that some people thought this way. That "That's not good enough!", if repeated too often, stops sounding like a stern but fair evaluation and starts sounding like a tiny kid's whining. Just as my father's voice, snapping out at me, sounds higher and more nasal every time I remember it.

But it's one of those sins I can easily get "caustic" about, as Fr. Vincent Hawkswell says, because I'm not much tempted to it myself.   

I'm more tempted to try to disguise defeat as partial victory. Which is good enough for me, right?

Or to try to tell myself and everyone else that I don't need victory, it's stupid and I wouldn't like it anyway. Like those grapes I can't reach . . .

Usual compulsive Bomb Girls post

Well, let's see, last week was all about people in strange new places. German POW's at large in Toronto, Vera at the Posh Ladies' Club, some woman I'd never seen before (supposed to be an upstairs neighbour? Maybe this bit was originally written for Edith) making herself at home in Lorna's kitchen, Dr. "Just Call Me Ned" Patel at Lorna's roast beef dinner, Lorna's son Eugene missing from that same dinner and turning up at the girls' rooming house, and finally pale redheaded Kate singing in the choir at Leon's all-black church.

Carol said the worst thing yet to Vera and got smacked down by the Head Posh Lady. "Miss Demers! Any shoulder put to the wheel is one worthy of respect!"  I can just imagine her answering "If you insist, ma'am, I'll respect her shoulder. One of them. The rest of her, however . . ."

Was that a turning point for Carol, or is she just going to be the Major Frank Burns of Victory Munitions?

And as the Head Posh Lady has taken a liking to Vera, I really hope she gives Vera some mentoring on how to be not completely tacky.

Line of the Day

In response to a talk I gave (by request) on "how marriage helps me live my faith":

"Thank you, Eunike, you make me gladder than ever that I'm single."

Things I wanted to post about while we were offline

• I admit to having done my spiritual exercises on the bus.
• I also took out my resentment at having to be at a meeting with a school district committee by going through a language arts teacher's statement and circling all the spelling and grammar mistakes. There were eight, in less than a page. I left it there as it was when I went.
• A businessman in Texas is trying to get over his fear of rejection by asking strangers to do silly things he figures they'll refuse. I was afraid I'd read this and feel I had to try something like it myself. But it turns out lots of them unexpectedly say sure, like the cop who let him sit in the driver's seat of the squad car. So is it working? Well, he's learning a lot . . . 
• (Get ready for multiple links.) In this post, this reader asked Charlotte if she'd heard lately about anything "very cool that someone has done or is doing - something that makes me sit up and thank God for making my fellow human beings so brilliant or loving or insightful". If someone had asked me, I'd have mentioned this blog post on how the blogger's mother paints portraits of people who've died tragically and sends them to the families -- "to do something in her own small way to push back against the darkness". 

Comics respect life (sort of)

Human peanuts in Doonesbury . . . and Mary Worth endorses NFP, though of course she calls it by its old name.

Catholic Universe?

Such A Pretty Bubble provokes thought again, this time on whether a subset of American Catholics is letting its religion turn into more of a brand -- about getting the right look, the right toys and videos for your kids, the right whatever. I'm not commenting simply because I've lived away from the U.S. so long, and Catholicism is in a different position in Canada -- different, also, in French Canada than "English" Canada.

What I do want to say here: What's the intention behind starting up acceptably Catholic businesses/industries? Just to have decent choices to make for our families? Or to construct a parallel Catholic universe where we can feel we're not of the world, but hey, not missing any of the fun either?

As I've mentioned, I edit for a secular company. Even so, my job sometimes means cleaning up writers' language. It's partly to keep the advertisers happy and partly because we just don't want to be that kind of site. There are plenty of them already. Would I be doing more good working for Catholic media? I don't think so. We have a part in keeping the outer world clean too.

Findings

Bomb Girls night again -- last week was all about people finding things.

• Marco found his dad had developed Fascist tendencies during his internment (which will now probably last for the duration, what with old Mr. Moretti throwing his arm up and yelling "Viva Il Duce!" in front of the guards).
• Kate found a bottle of booze in the desk in the warehouse.
• Betty found God. (But I hope Leon's not turning into a Magical Negro.)
• Lorna found that, as she told Mr. Aikins, "Witham and Moretti both booked off without permission." Also, nobody liked her "life skills seminar" (did they even use those words back then?) on how to grind up beef tongue into your meatloaf and pass it off as sirloin.
• Vera found that there were soldiers even she wouldn't want to go with. Or, at least, that she'd feel sorry she'd gone with.
• Bob found a new career as an entrepreneur.
• One of Bob and Lorna's sons found his way home on a war bond tour.
• I found out why Gladys went with Marco and his mama to the internment camp: They needed her to drive them.

Now -- who was that "some guy" who interrogated Marco all night, then let him go after getting a phone call? Anyone we'd recognize? Not Gladys' fiancé, he's American -- maybe her other fiancé?

Back!

Back from working on borrowed bandwidth, camping in the corner of the library where I could plug in my old laptop whose battery won't hold a charge. (A guy came by a couple of times, looked at me intently, and seemed to want to say something -- at my age, you respond to that  by telling him you'll be leaving in a minute and then he can have the electrical outlet.)

Back with the same provider only because they offered Theosebus a ton of free services to make up for the long outage.

Back to being able to send email -- except to people whose email doesn' t accept messages from dynamic IP's.

But all in all, glad to be back.

Charlotte answers all our questions

Here. Very kind of her to take the time, as I realize when I read about her everyday routine (70 miles? Every day? That's a couple months' worth of driving for me.)

Yes, I asked the "are you friends with the neighbors yet" question. I'm always interested in how these processes work, or don't, even though I think it's never the same twice. I'm someone who can talk about our neighbors' "annual big party they never invite us to", and laugh, and mean it, but it took me a long time to get to this point.

(And we've got other neighbors who have an annual big party they always invite us to, who in fact felt they had to drop a card in our mailbox this year to say it was pre-empted because of renovations, just in case we got the idea it was on and we weren't invited. So.)

Char was also asked about having any anger at the Church, and ended up writing also about her anger at some Catholics. God knows there're some I'm mad at -- whether it would be a good idea for me to write about that, or whether it would be the top of the slippery slope into mortal sin via whining, I don't know yet.

Anyway, once again, if anyone's reading this, go read her.

Edith the Inadvertent

Bomb Girls night again, and before I go watch Marco visit his dad in the internment camp (where, it seems from the preview, Gladys inexplicably goes with him and gets threatened with indefinite detention herself), I want to think for a moment about another minor character, Edith McAllum.

Her story, though it's just as dramatic as anyone's -- fired, rehired, widowed, unable to tell her kids their father's dead -- doesn't get much screen time. Instead, she is to Lorna Corbett what Carol (q.v.) is to Gladys -- her friend from before the show, lest the viewer think she had none. Edith is also the inadvertent revealer of devastating things. She's the one who let slip to Lorna's husband, Bob, that Lorna was pregnant -- at a time when he knew it couldn't be his. Last week, she unknowingly introduced Bob to the baby's real father. After she'd left, someone got slugged. Not Bob the disabled veteran, either.

It's about time poor Edith got to see the consequences of her words, so she can learn something. If she unintentionally wreaks havoc one more time, I'll start wondering why none of the major characters got this task.

Line of the day

"Cedric the Entertainer as Father Doug Willliams"!

Came across this as I referred to Wikipedia while editing a review of A Haunted House. It seems Father Williams is an exorcist, and while he's also apparently a druggie and a convicted criminal, hey, at least he's given a real, full name. The New Age guy who also tries to cast out the demon is, by contrast, just called Chip the Psychic. Who says Hollywood has no respect for the Catholic priesthood?

Relics relinquished

Again with relics getting stolen, this time from a parish in Missouri -- the good news is, they've been brought back. In a Zip-Loc bag, but all's well etc. 

The priest is wondering whether it's "devotional" or whether the thief wanted to sell them -- but anybody who'd want them would know such things shouldn't be sold.

Most interesting thing I've got to say this evening

If anyone's out there, please take a look at Charlotte's new blog, Such A Pretty Bubble ("My, my, what a pretty Catholic Bubble you have!") 

I've sometimes wished to live in a Catholic bubble. But it's just as well I don't. Mine would be more like a zorb. This zorb.

Bomb (office) girl

On Bomb Girls night, I'd like to reflect for a moment on one of the minor characters, Carol Demers. If she weren't a fictional character, I'd feel slightly sorry for her -- even though she's young, rich, beautiful, and regularly unpleasant. 

What makes her pitiful is that she exists only to make her old friend Gladys, one of the major characters, look good. She does this, first of all, just by being there to show that Gladys had at least one friend before the series began and is not a complete social misfit. Then, her job is to say all the insensitive rich-girl things Gladys can't say because we're supposed to like her -- and get sassed for them.

When the bomb girls show up for a fundraiser at Gladys', Carol greets them with "This isn't the back door!" to which Vera says, "Damn right!"

Vera has grounds to be sassy -- earlier Carol had stopped her from meeting some visitors to the plant, inspectors or something, because Vera's scar might raise safety issues in their minds. You see what I mean.

No matter how it seems sometimes, no real human being is created to be harsh to others -- or to make someone else seem more loveable by comparison. We're all meant to be the best we can, which is usually better than we think . . .okay, time for TV.

Showing the flag in Belfast

This came out of a conversation this evening:

1. How I know what's going on in Belfast isn't "rioting for the sake of rioting" as in Birmingham, etc, awhile back: If it were, the Catholics would be doing it too.
2. How I know the rioters aren't Catholic: They're waving Union Jacks and singing some song I don't recognize as they pass a "Nationalist area".

  Also noted: They all look like kids. But then I'm getting old.

Anticipated

Back. Happy St. Raymond's Day.

This letter to an editor says:

Although the Bible isn’t a science book, it contains references that anticipate scientific discovery by hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years . . .thousands of years ago the psalmist wrote: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13). This verse anticipates that we are literally knitted or woven together at the molecular level.

There's more. Under the Law of Moses, Jewish women are unclean, well, pretty much while they're infertile. Someone I pointed this out to said "But they didn't know about women's cycles back then." (They may have had a vague idea, but it seems it wasn't proven until 1905.)  But God knew -- and knew also that a third of the Jews would be killed in the 1940's.

And how did the author of Genesis know the order in which creatures came to existence -- even if he got the timing off by a few million years?

And what are we being readied for right now?