FinermanWorks

Should we honor St. Patrick today

Just for drowning some snakes in a bay?

While you cannot contest

That the snake is a pest,

It at least kept the English away!

Euan Finn–born March 17, 1952

The Hystery of St. Patrick

And St. Patrick spoke to the Happy Hour crowd at The Drunken Druid’s Pub. “Consider all that God has to offer you.”

And the crowd grumbled, “Not that shamrock bit again.”

Patrick replied, “Obviously you are in no hurry for eternal salvation. You want immediate benefits. Okay. In my religion, we don’t have to sacrifice your good-looking virgins in the nearest bog…or anywhere. In fact, we want your homeliest ones and we’ll put them in convents.”

And the crowd considered this a miracle. But a bartending Druid challenged Patrick. “Now, what would you be wanting them homely virgins? After all, they are still our sisters.”

And Patrick answered, “We’ll guarantee them full-time work in gratifying jobs–teaching and terrorizing the children of the good-looking former virgins.”

But the Druid demanded, “But what kind of God would want a homely virgin?” And the crowd had to agree.

Patrick shrugged and said, “A Jewish one. They have the strangest taste in shiksas.”

The Druid sneered, “A Jewish God? One who can’t hold his own liquor?”

Patrick answered, “But He can make the liquor, distribute and market it!’

And so Ireland converted.

Euan the Bard

Imagine yourself a tourist in ancient Rome and you wanted to buy 15 postcards (the ones using mosaics were impressive but the postage was exorbitant). Of course, you would tell the shopkeeper, “I’d like Ides, please.”  If he were obliging, he would lift his tunic. Otherwise, he would think you a babbling idiot.

You see, Ides does not mean 15. It rather refers to the full moon by which the old Roman calendar divided the month. The similarity between month and moon is not a coincidence.

Ancient Rome was built on seven hills and an absurd lunar calendar. The Roman year had ten months as well another sixty days in winter that didn’t count. Be fair: if you were stuck using Roman numerals, you’d resort to any short cut, too. Such a slovenly, lackadaisical calendar might suit a small Tiber village or modern Italy, but not a growing empire. The government decided to organize the dead time into two new months: Ianuarius and Februarius.

That improved the bookkeeping but not the accuracy of the calendar. The Roman year was 355 days. As Rome expanded, it was coming into contact with more sophisticated systems. The Greeks had realized that a sun-based calendar was more accurate. Yet, out of self-reverence, for six centuries Rome adhered to its ridiculous calendar.

But that outdated calendar was just one tradition that Julius Caesar intended to end. While in Alexandria, Caesar was seduced by more than just Cleopatra. The city was the think tank of the ancient world. Greek science and Babylonian mathematics had produced a calendar of unequaled precision. Caesar was so impressed that he decided to impose it on the Roman world. And for some reason, people called it the Julian calendar.

(Alexandria’s scientific community also successfully promoted a chronological concept called the “week.” The seven-day period once had been dismissed as just another Jewish idiosyncrasy. But when Alexandria adopted the idea, everyone loved it.)

The Julian calendar went into effect on January 1, 45 B.C. If the Roman traditionalists had any objections, they certainly expressed them on March 15, 44 B.C.

Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope

New York Times

 BERLIN — A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

Papal Spokesman Eugenio Finermanni explained, “There was a good reason for making the choirboys wear see-through lederhosen.  Security!  The Church didn’t want the choir being infilitrated by Jews, Moslems or Lesbians.”

In the wake of this latest scandal, the Church announced its plans to beatify Chicago businessman Alphonse Capone.  “We are starting to appreciate him as a Catholic role model.”

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

New York Times

 AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist and the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

Texas students will learn that Charles Darwin was a New York liberal and that Marvin Luther King Jr. was a leader of the Black Panthers.  On the positive side, the students will be taught the Free Market economic philosophies of Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman.  However, the textbooks will identify Hayek and Friedman as Christ-killing pawnbrokers.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/03/13/alexanders-rage-time-band/

Anna Nicole Smith Opera Taking the Stage

BBC News reports composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and writer Richard Thomas, along with London’s Royal Opera House will put on a stage performance about the larger-than-life former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, who died in 2007 of an accidental prescription drug overdose.

Donizetti composed “Anna Bolena“.  This could be “Anna Bulimia“.

Act I:  Anna is a waitress at a Texas truckstop.  She introduces herself with the aria:  “Che Gelida Manina” (Check out my jello).  There she is discovered by a starving Chicago artist Ugo Efneri who paints her portrait “Madonna of the Big Tomatoes.”

Act II:  Now famous on pasta jar labels, Anna is seen regularly on the talkshow of Lorenzo Reggio.  In his 800 years, he has never seen a woman more beautiful or one that made him seem so intelligent.  Lorenzo asks Anna to be his 47th wife.  She replies  in the aria “Bella figlia dell’amore” (More Figs Are Lovely) that she prefers food to men and flees to a Carmelite convent, expecting to find caramels.

Act III:  Hoping to increase her metabolism by ingesting 50 pounds of drugs a hour, Anna sings “Un bel dì” (Unbelly Diet.)  That doesn’t work.  Her last wish was to be covered in gingerbread and left as a cottage in a German forest. 

But that’s another opera…

Ironically, today is the anniversary of an excellent opera.  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/03/12/pizza-and-opera/

March 10, 1536: Thomas Howard Manages to Be Born Without Committing Treason

Is decapitation hereditary?

If Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, were here to celebrate his 474th birthday, I would ask that question. Surely he would have noticed that much of his family–Dad, Aunt Catherine, Cousin Anne, etc.– was dying in the Tower of London rather than Norfolk. Grandfather nearly went to the block but instead spent years watching the mold on his cell walls. At the very least, being a Duke of Norfolk seemed to have some risk. So, why was the fourth Duke writing fan letters–perhaps including vague marriage proposals– to Mary, Queen of Scots? Perhaps he couldn’t help himself if decapitation is a hereditary trait. He certainly discovered that Queen Elizabeth I had a hereditary trait too: Tudor vindictiveness.  She proved that in 1572, retiring the Fourth Duke to the family vault and demoting his heirs to mere earls.  (Charles II would restore the dukedom in 1660.)

Yet, the Howards were fairly adapt at surviving.   They had been on the wrong side at the Battle of Bosworth, but switched their loyalty from York to Tudor. They could be just as flexible in theology, oscillating their piety from Rome to Canterbury to Rome. The Howards were devoutly Anglican when it came to seizing monastery lands from the Catholic Church. Once they sated themselves upon the Church’s wealth, they could be Anglicans for Henry VIII and Edward VI; they could be Catholics for Mary. (Caught between Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, they tried being everything. That proved tricky.) Had the Ottoman fleet sailed up the Thames, the ingratiating Howards probably would have become the Emirs of Norfolk.

In the 17th century, when the reigning Stuarts were subconscious or covert Catholics, the Dukes of Norfolk felt safe to resume their Catholicism. For the last three centuries, they have avoided any unpleasant stays in the Tower. And yes, the Howards are still the Dukes of Norfolk.

Pope Francis risked Turkish anger on Sunday by using the word “genocide” to refer to the mass killings of Armenians a century ago under the Ottoman Empire.

I imagine that the Press Secretary of Turkey could offer this explanation:“For some reason, the Armenians decided en masse to march into the Anatolian wastelands but in their impetuous whimsy forgot to bring any food. Now this occurred during World War I, so perhaps there was a shortage of updated Michelin guides. (The French army would have been using them to rate the trenches at Verdun.) Those silly Armenians kept missing the Howard Johnsons and ended starving to death–except for the thousands who must have accidently shot or bayoneted themselves.”

Did you think that the words barbarian and barber were just phonetic coincidences?  On the contrary, etymology has more than its share of irony.

Barbarian originally comes from the Greek word for strangers: barbaroi. The Greeks applied it to anyone who had the misfortune not to be Greek. Of course, the Romans never thought that it applied to them, so they stole the word along everything else in Hellenic culture. The Romans then used the term to describe those wild thugs across the Rhine and the Danube: hence, the term: barbarian. The Romans noticed that the ancient Germans didn’t bother to shave, and the legionnaires coined the term “barba” to describe the unkempt Teutonic facial hair. That slang became the basis for the French and Italian words for beards and our term for one who trims beards–barber. 

Of course, you erudite readers–particularly you Jeopardy fans–will raise the question, “Doesn’t Xenophobia mean a fear of foreigners?”  (So you thought you caught me!)  That is how we interpret the word, but an ancient Greek would contradict us.  To him, it would mean “a fear of strangers“, specifically Greeks from other city states.  If 500 years of civil wars are any indication, the ancient Greeks had no trouble hating each other.

And if you know anyone named Barbara, don’t tell her what her name really means.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/03/04/remembering-john-garfield/

February 26, 1564:  The Least Mysterious Thing About Christopher Marlowe

At least there is no debate as to when and where Christopher Marlowe was baptized.  It was in Conventry, England on this day in 1564, and the Anglican priest failed to observe the infant’s genius.  The date, nature, and cause of his death, however, are questions inciting civil wars in college English departments.

Did he really die in a brawl in 1593?  Was he a Catholic spy?  Was he murdered by the Crown?  Did he fake his death and live on to become the ghostwriter for William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Winston Churchill?

According to the mere facts, the 29 year-old Marlowe got in a fight over a bar bill and rather imprudently tried deflecting a knife with his eye.  But that is too petty a death to be accepted!  (Occam’s razor was never meant to be a murder weapon.)  No, the Robert Mapplethorpe of Elizabethan Theater deserves some drama.  He had to be the victim of a conspiracy.  Here is a theory that combines creative jealousy with international intrigue:  Marlowe was murdered by Miguel Cervantes.  At the time, Cervantes was a middle-aged semi-invalid, but Marlowe wouldn’t have been that tough.

Here is another theory:  the English Secret Service killed him.  Since Marlowe was gay and went to Cambridge, he must have been a spy.  The question is for whom?  The sentimental among us would like to think that the Cambridge kids were spying for Russia even back then.  Marlowe actually could have known Boris Gudunov.   But what secrets did 16th century England possess that Russia coveted?  Maybe long division.  It is unlikely that Her Majesty’s Secret Service was particularly worried about Russian spies.  Khristov Marlovsky would not have been worth killing.

No, to be significant, Marlowe would need to be a spy for Spain or the Catholic Church.   So let’s start searching “Tamburlaine” or “Doctor Faustus” for any coded Papist messages.  “The face that launched a thousand ships” might really refer to Philip II and the Armada.  So, now he is incriminated.  But why would the Crown need to arrange his assassination. If the English government could publicly execute a Queen, Dukes, and Jesuits, what is the difficulty in hanging and drawing a flamboyant playwright?

But who is to say that Christopher Marlowe ever died?  Perhaps “Dr. Faustus” is actually the story of a writer and his literary agent.  (And I wish that I could get that deal.)

February 25, 1570:  It Now Is Permissible (what is Latin for Kosher?)  To Assassinate Elizabeth I

Pope Pius V was not exactly your Barry Fitzgerald type of priest. Instead, just imagine if Josef Stalin had decided to stay in the seminary. Born in Italy, but with a Spanish personality, the young Antonio Ghislieri joined the Dominician Order where he found kindred psychopaths. He volunteered for the Inquisition and displayed a zealous piety. The Inquisitor was especially suspicious of the well-educated, believing that literacy and heresy were synonymous. To his frustration, however, the Italian Inquisition was more inclined to burn books rather than people. (In Spain, you could do both!)

Yet, his personal austerity earned him the support of the “reformist” faction within the Church; these were the cardinals who felt that Popes should have religious wars instead of mistresses. In 1566, on the death of Pius IV (your typical nepotic rascal), the reformers elected their favorite inquisitor as the next pope. Although 62 at the time, bigotry kept him young. As Pius V, of course he persecuted Jews but that was a mere formality. His real interest was in exterminating Protestants and he had an eventful six year reign. He officially gave Spain permission to wipe out the Dutch. (Without the Pope’s permission, the Dutch did defend themselves.) The Pope encouraged France’s Catholics to kill the Huguenots; he died a few months too soon to enjoy the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre but he must have been there in spirit. On this day in 1570, he declared Queen Elizabeth a heretic and ordered her overthrow and death; however, the Catholics were a minority and those who tried to comply with the Papal directive generally found themselves disemboweled by the Queen’s Secret Service.

Ironically, the Pope did not like the idea of hurting animals and forbade bullfighting. This was one Papal directive that Spain ignored.

In 1712, Pius V was declared a saint. PETA might agree even if Protestants and Jews don’t.