Another Headcovering Issue

As some of us dither over whether chapel veils look too darn good and draw too much attention to us, defeating their purpose, some Catholic women have a different problem with the whole issue:

“Please, in view of the present security challenges, the church has urged women to stop coming to Sunday service with big headgears and bags to enable security men know when a bomb will be smuggled into the church” -- Fr. Uche Obodoechina, Nsukka, Nigeria

No Sunday purse, either, then. The article goes on to say anyone half an hour late or more for Mass is out of luck -- the doors will be locked.

Actually, these ladies may take up veils as more security conscious . . . or they may do as the rest of the world and just go uncovered.

It works on paper

This bout sponsored by Dover Publications. Kind of like Trudeau vs. Brazeau, only with a touch more WWF. Or maybe SCA.

If you're sick of both parties, though, they also sell a kit so you can  build your own White House. It'll be very small, and made of cardboard, but it only costs $10.

Church lady gone wild

Everyone's read about the old Spanish lady who "fixed" the 19th-century fresco in her village church. Some people have even formed the impression the job had been done by a commissioned artist. I might've thought so if the newspaper people hadn't run a large heading about the "well-intentioned" old lady above the before-and-after pictures.

(If she'd stuck to just touching up the hair, probably no one would have noticed.)

Not surprising that people took it as intentional. What's been misrepresented as "the spirit of Vatican II" seems to frown on anything that looks as if it was hard to make. Spain wasn't immune to it -- I heard of a Spanish gentleman who took one look at his newly built parish church in those days, said, "I'm not coming to Mass here" and made his family troop across town to the Cathedral for the rest of his life.

Still not going away

Anna Ella Carroll, 1815-1894

I've been reading a biography/hagiography of the lady on the left, but it's hard to get enthusiastic about someone who wrote a book called The Great American Battle, or, The Contest Between Christianity and Political Romanism.

Look, I'm glad she turned her talents to better things, like saving the Union. And if it's true the U.S. government promised to pay her for some of her work and didn't deliver, that was shabby.

Still, I hope at some point, some well-placed Catholic (Ellen Sherman? Or just one of Anna's own Catholic relatives) made sure to tell her "You may as well get used to us, we're not going away."

Scraps

• Drugstore customer overheard demanding respect: "I make about $3000 a day!"
• Drugstore manager assuring customer he is respected: "We're not stereotyping."
• People wonder how Chef Gordon Ramsay (of Hell's Kitchen and now Hotel Hell)can judge innkeeping. What I wonder is how he found the cure for denial: Lock the victim into the haunted top floor of a hotel, with only a handless mannequin and a camera crew for company.
• How to cancel out all the F-bombs you threw at the innkeepers: Leave with a promise to pay for the disabled teenage prep cook's education.
• How to cancel out any accusations of sentimentality caused by above: Tell the kid "God help you if you fail out of that college!"

Another anniversary

Knock Shrine

August 21st, 1879, there was a Marian apparition at Knock -- or, as one witness put it, "Our Lady is in the village."

Though it's not observed where I live now, I went to Mass today, and heard something that could be taken as a warning to Ireland:

your wealth has continued to increase,

and with this your heart has grown more arrogant . . .

and you will die a violent death

surrounded by the seas.

 But what do I know, I'm not Ezekiel.

A focus group said the imaginary lady on the new $100 bill looked Asian. So:

The bank immediately ordered the image redrawn, imposing what a spokesman called a “neutral ethnicity” for the woman scientist. . .

Neutral ethnicity?

Why don't we quit inventing fictional characters to put on our money and stick to real people? Real women scientists, for example. Even Pauline Marois would do in a pinch.

Real people don't have "neutral ethnicity".