Roomin' House Blues

The Irish Potato Famine of starting in 1845-1855 started a massive wave of Irish immigration to the United States. The Nativist backlash, sometimes refereed to as the Know Nothing movement because of it's secrecy called the newly arrive "Catholic Hordes. ".  The 1.5 million Irish who came during that period were matched by 1.4 million Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Germans. French Canadians, like some of my own ancestors, also added to the largely Catholic "hordes" Later, in the first two decades of the 20th Century, largely Catholic Italians, Eastern  and Basques from Spain arrived.  By 1910 there were over 16 million Catholics in the U.S. and immigration continued to swell our numbers.   It is largely because of this immigration that Catholics today are the largest religious body in then U.S. This immigration changed the character of American and build it up, industrially, culturally and spiritually.  That was possible largely because of generally tolerant...

Diatessorn?  Don't bother running to your Oxford Dictionary for the meaning.  I have borrowed it from the title of a mid-second attempt to harmonize the four Gospel--causing deletions, confusion and lack of consistency, and missing the unique purpose of each Gospel--but in the positive creating an easy reference for the essentials of the story.  The Diatessorn (made of four ingredients) was composed by Tiatin, a Christian apologist and an Assyrian.  Inevitably, to harmonize the four, important parts of the Gospels were excluded,  and while consistent within itself, the consistency to the separate accounts is lost. The unique emphasis of each Gospel is muddled. As someone who has worked with religious films series and viewed many biblical films, I view the fact that most Gospel films draw on more than one Gospel account and sometimes non-biblical sources as a problem for the artistic and religious value of these films.  The harmonization of the Jesus stor...

Today  Seattle's Women in Black/Homeless Remembrance project held it's monthly vigil for the homeless who have died.  There is a world wide Women in black movement composed of diverse and not necessarily affiliated groups who hold vigils to give witness for peace and justice. In Seattle one Women in Black group holds peace vigil's, and the other gives witness to those who have died in or because of the condition of homelessness. At the vigil downtown today four who died were remembered: Jeffery Davis, 44 by suicide 1/4/2015 James Carlson, 56 outside, cause of death pending 1/7/2015 Kevin Guempel, 49 , cause of death pending 1/13/2015 Juri Skolin, 60, found on Third Ave., cause of death pending. According to the Women in Black 45 homeless people died by violence or outdoors in 2014 and since then 5 more.  The Women in Black leaflet calls on us to be a community and to support a basic social network including shelter. It calls on us to stand with them and t...

One subject I have not touched on much in my writing is the actual manner of life in a rooming house.It is part of the economic condition of   the low income students and workers, the unemployed and the disabled who live in rooming houses and shared housing that there is very little home life.  Relationships in the home are transitory and most are superficial.Space is limited and communal activities are limited.  I have had some goo friendship develop from contact with roommates, and many who at least remain Facebook friends.  but this relationships were cultivated by going against the isolation and difficult living circumstances found in a rooming house. One of the things I do every year, to attempt to build community, is to try to involve roommates in some kind of Christmas  celebration.  I put up a creche set, I go by a tree.  I break out the decorations and try to get a tree decorating party going with a little music. Maybe we watch a Christmas ...

It has been said that the rich and poor need each other.  The poor need the rich to help them, and the rich need the poor for the opportunity to obtain salvation.  Jesus told the rich young man that if he wished to reach perfection to shed himself of his wealth to the benefit of the poor (likened to the camel that has all it's goods taken off so it could enter Jerusalem through the gate called the "Eye of the Needle."  While we perhaps lose our attachment to worldly goods in the state called purgatory, could we not profitably do this while we are still alive?  And do not the poor need the basics of a decent life? One of the severe criticisms of Pope Francis is that he (in agreement with prior Popes and the entire body of Catholic Social Teaching, although with more english the ball called solidarity)  has repeated called for more help for the poor from the church, from government and from the rich, and further has sought to limit neo-liberalism to the benefit...

Today in the Seattle Times, a guest op-ed titled "The Politics of Envy" in print, and prosaically  "We have a Fixation on Income Inequality" missed entirely what is really happening in today's economy. .  It's author, Richard Davis essentially claims income inequality does not matter.  He gives the misleading example that if the four richest men in King County moved to Boises income inequality would fall, but we would be not better off. This is utterly misleading for several reasons. We don't measure income using a median figure. The essential problem that some had benefited extensively from the relative poverty of others would remain and the poverty would remain.  And lastly, it would only be a matter of time when another handful of individuals would amass the same wealth as the first few. Davis says it is better to concentrate on generating employment and income opportunity for the lower income without a recognition of what has made them lower inc...

I have been studying the pronouncements, activities and history of Pope Francis with an hopeful intensity since his surprise election. His choice of name and, the simplicity of his of first appearance and his style of behavior became immediate indicators that something was different, but it remained to be seen what wold be the substance of that difference.  One of the immediate surprises is that after election, he went to pay his hotel bill, and then he moved into the Vatican guest house, Domus Sanctae Marthae, rather than the papal apartments.  He freed himself slightly from his staff by this, setting some of his own appointments, lived a in slightly simpler manner and became in my mind "The Rooming House Pope."  He had a Rabbi friend come and stay with him in the guest house, invited the Editor of La Republica over for an interview, kissed cleaned and kissed the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday and did numerous acts that constituted his style. I explored his...