The Anchoress

Starting tomorrow, I will be returning to my pre-Katrina policy of donating all revenue realized through Amazon purchases via the Anchoress Bookshelf (see sidebar) to the hospice which helped my brother through his last days. As of right now, your purchases have accrued a grand total of $209.47 - whatever that balance is by tomorrow is the amount I will send to the Salvation Army for Hurrican Relief (at this point, whether it goes to Katrina or Rita relief seems immaterial to me).

You guys are terrific. I thank you for entering Amazon.com via the Bookshelf.

And because you’re so nice (and you’ve put up with me beating you over the head about In This House of Brede for months) I have updated The Bookshelf a little bit, slipping in some books and music (and one DVD) which would make excellent Christmas presents, and the Chanticleer is just a terrific Christmas Choral album to play while you’re making your lists!

As for what is on my Bookshelf right now…

I just finished the biography of Mother Anglica and thought it was very well done - Raymond Arroyo didn’t “sanctify” her - he let the real, flawed human woman show through. My husband is reading it right now because the story of how she built a EWTN is a pretty darn phenomenal “business” story.

My review of Amy Welborn’s A Catholic Woman’s Book of Days is here.

And of course, you have my thoughts about the DVD of Pride and Prejudice, here.

The Raffi CD, Baby Beluga , is a kid’s classic that is so much fun I STILL put it on, sometimes when I am cleaning house, and the Renee Fleming album is…really nice to listen to on a cold night with a fire burning.

Charlotte’s Web and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler are two kid’s classics (you give books at Christmas, right? My nephews and nieces all know I am the aunt who gives books…) but I’ve also added a few books that WILL be classics, eventually. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and Math Curse are laugh-out-loud funny and clever - (all of Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s books are very smart) - and King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs were two of my kid’s favorites, both for the artwork and the texts.

And because Halloween is coming, I included The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, because it is ENORMOUS fun to read out loud to little kids - they have to clap their hands and stomp their feet and such! Which should warn you that it is not for bedtime reading; it will just get them worked up!

If you pick up anythink I’ve recommended from the Bookshelf, I’m always interested in someone dropping a line and telling me how much they liked (or didn’t like) it!

There is quite a testy little storm a-brewin’ between CBS’s new media blog, Public Eye, and blogfather Hugh Hewitt.

This comes on the heels of the little brouhaha between Public Eye and Jeff Jarvis.

I am not trying to take sides, here, but I must point out to CBS that their child, Public Eye (PE) has now been caught fighting twice in one week. Tsk. Tsk. A new kid on the block will never make friends that way!

At the heart of both fights is the question: What - in these changing times - defines a journalist? While a journalist can also be a blogger, is it out of the question for a blogger to be a journalist? Can some bloggers morph into that fabled classification of “journalist?”

G.K. Chesterton was a journalist who wrote prodigiously - he never stopped writing - novels, treatises, polemics, opinion columns, dialogues and debates and poems. No one today doubts that he was a journalist, yet I am quite certain that were he alive in this era, he’d be a blogger, and a BIG one in every way. Being fat and unphotogenic, he would very likely come up more from blogs than from any sort of mainstream venue. And yet he would still be (and would very likely completely identify as) a journalist.

The Hewitt/CBS dust up started when PE posted what it did say up front was a far-from comprehensive, very subjective list of “journalist/bloggers” that seems to simply have not been as well thought-out as it could have been. Before trying to compile such a list, I might have contacted a few bloggers and sounded them out on it, and perhaps built the piece into an exposition on the manner in which journalism does, in fact, seem to be inexorably morphing and transitioning into something new.

But then, I am a simple cavewoman with no particular dog in the fight, whereas both Public Eye and Hewitt have strong feelings on the subject.

CBS is the former Tiffany-standard for news reportage, and it is quite natural for them to want to hang on to that “premier journalist” crown, even if it is a bit tarnished. With their blog-experiment at Public Eye, they’re a little like a Miss America with two hours left on her reign, gamely trying to go along with a program that will eventually render her own crown obsolete and irrelevent.

Hewitt and the blogs are like the 50 contestants all parading around with vaselined lips and duct-taped swimsuits, working their talent competitions and looking for any advantage because the field is - for once - crowded with folks who are just thatgood.

Seriously talented people want to be taken seriously, especially when they are as educated and able as the “standard bearer,” and Hewitt took some offense at a post by Public Eye’s Brian Montopoli.

Reading Hugh’s initial reaction to the PE piece, I at-first took him to be amused by its incompleteness and glaring omissions. But a transcript of his subsequent interview with Montopoli indicates that no…far from being amused, Hewitt was vexed and loaded for bear. In reading it, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Montopoli, who seemed taken quite off guard by Hugh’s grilling…Hugh is an attorney, remember…and at one point he came off like a cross between Perry Mason and a dyspeptic John McLaughlin:

HH: Well, I didn’t write this. I think this is a silly exercise in naval gazing. But Brian, let me ask you a couple of specifics. Is Michael Barone a journalist?

BM: Um, yes.

HH: He has a very fine blog.

BM: Right.

HH: It’s not on your list.

BM: And someone pointed that out in comments. And as I said, there are probably people that we should have put on there that we didn’t, which is why we have the comment feature, and…

HH: So you would agree that was an oversight.

BM: Yeah, I think it was.

HH: Okay. Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post Gazette columnist, also a blogger at Irish Pennants. Oversight?

BM: I’m not familiar with his work, but if he’s a columnist at the Post Gazette, and also a blogger, then yes, he probably should be on the list.

HH: James Lileks, columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Newhouse News Service. Columnist and blogger? Should he be on the list?

BM: Sure. Now why didn’t you tell me this in comments? We would have added them.

HH: I don’t comment on other people’s blogs. I do my own blog. I’m not going to help you guys get an audience. No one’s reading your thing. I’m giving you the most people you people have gotten yet.

BM: That’s just mean, Hugh.

HH: Let me ask you about Michelle Malkin.

BM: Hugh, let me ask you a question.

HH: No, no, Brian. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

BM: All right.

HH: I’m running the show. Michelle Malkin, columnist for World Net Daily, syndicated, also frequently on television, blogger extraordinaire. Is she a journalist blogger?

BM: I think of her as a blogger primarily.

HH: But I mean, so what’s to distinguish? Why is she not Michael Barone? Or is this just Brian Montopoli’s view of the world, which is in fact, then, not objective, and not journalism?

BM: Well, I mean I used the word subjective in the post. So, I’m not sure why you’re hammering me for it not being objective.

HH: Well, because a journalist, since you’re allowed to put this out on CBS’ website, that says here’s a list of journalist bloggers, I don’t have a definition. I really am just going to indulge my own subjective opinions, I think you’re proving my point about media, which is there isn’t any objectivity. This is all just subjective, and CBS…

BM: I think that’s a bit of a stretch, and let me explain why. We merely wanted to allow our readers to have some idea of exactly what was out there in terms of journalists who blog.

HH: Now, now. Brian, how silly is that? First of all, all these people…not all of them, but I am going to guess 70% of them are center-left. Maybe 80%. I see you have noted the Corner.

BM: You mean all the Fox News bloggers that we’ve put there?

HH: I’ve seen the Corner that you noted, but let’s run through it. Matt Yglesias, James Wolcott Tap, Noam Schieber, Scott Rosenberg, Hit and Run, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Craig Crawford, David Corn, an Altercation magazine journalist. The only one on that list of magazine journalists is the Corner who is center-right. Among newspaper journalists, I don’t see anyone who would qualify as anything remotely as a righty…
…
HH: …So you said you had one rule, but you in fact broke that rule to put in your favorites. So you’re actually imposing Brian Montopoli’s opinions on what is apparently an objective test.

BM: Hugh, I don’t know how to say this any other way. When you say you’re writing a subjective post, and then put out a subjective post, it’s very difficult to defend why it’s not objective. I mean, it said in the post that it’s subjective. I said name people you think we left off the list. It was merely a way for our readers to go check out some mainstream media people who are also bloggers. We thought they would be interesting.
…
HH: And so, but what you’re reflecting is, speaking on behalf of CBS, you list thirty blogs.

BM: Again, I’m not speaking on behalf of CBS. I’m speaking on behalf of Public Eye, which is…

HH: And so, Public Eye is a production of CBS. 25 blogs…

BM: That’s like telling the New York Times’ public editor speaks on behalf of the New York Times. I’m not Andrew Hayward.

HH: You’ve got 30 different blogs listed here. 25 of them are center-left or hard left. You’ve excluded obvious center-right people like Jack Kelly and Michael Barone. I don’t think intentionally. You’ve designed the rules to exclude people like me and Michelle Malkin, because you don’t like us, and then you purport to be objective…

BM: You’re on our blogroll, Hugh. How do you say we don’t like you. And another thing. I e-mailed you, asking you to do a critique of our website. We have this outside voices feature. Jonathan Last is doing it. You never got back to me.

HH: I don’t want to do anything for CBS. You guys are like…you’ve got the Plague.

BM: Well, at the very least, you could have written me back. Here I am on your radio show.

HH: I might catch what you have. If you have…If I end up working for you, I’m going to end up being identified with CBS, which has a terrible reputation, because of punk stunts like this, Brian.

BM: You’re saying if Hewitt critiques CBS in a critical way on our website, which is what we wanted you to do…

HH: I’m saying I’m not going to help you guys make money.

BM: …it would have ruined your credibility? You would have been kicked out on the street?
…
HH: And so, this is just basically what Brian Montopoli thinks about the blogosphere, dressed up as a list that some people might consider to be, because they’re not a sophisticated media observer, a definitive guide to journo-blogs.

BM: Are you suggesting that the people I put on the list are somehow endorsed? Because I mean…

HH: Absolutely I am!

Egad!

I think Hugh had a point, and he made it, but again - Montopoli’s post did contain the proviso that the whole silly exercise was subjective and non-comprehensive. While this interview probably made for very good radio, both men came off as being a bit defensive. Which, given the tenor of the times, is not surprising, but it is regrettable.

The problem is, PE, while trying hard to be a “blog” is a weird hybrid just now - it hasn’t quite figured out that there is a loosey-goosey quality, a free-wheelingness to blogging that is very distinctive, but that needn’t preclude serious writing or -as evidenced by Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney’s dogged work on Air America’s misuse of public funds (a story the mainstream media simply does not want to look at) real investigative journalism.

One can’t help feeling that on some level - subconsciously, perhaps - PE feels like it is slumming it a bit, and is looking down its nose at the company it finds itself forced to keep. As much as I like Public Eye - and I do like it - their “journalists stand here and bloggers stand there” vibe is detectable, and nothing demonstrates that better than these two battles the blog has now engaged in, with Jarvis and Hewitt, and today’s piece on Hewitt entitled “We Got Them Mad! We Got Them Mad! We Got Them Mad!” which really seems to go out of its way to distinguish just who the “them’s” and “we’s” are. And…I’m sorry, but it also seems kinda juvenile.

That said, bloggers like Jarvis and Hewitt…and yeah, me (although I am the least interesting) tend not to hide their disappointment in much that is mainstream journalism, today. Thus, there is a mutual lack of respect that feeds the defensiveness on both sides.

One of the things I most like about blogging is that I have my space, and I have my say. I have never battled another blogger, even if he has attacked me, because my feeling is - hey, everyone’s entitled to their opinion - no one says we all have to agree. But I have gone head-to-head with people who have shouted at me in my comments section, and I can tell you that there is a way to engage in discourse on the blogs - a tone of polite detachment, a willingness to crack a joke at one’s own expense, an ability to concede a point without giving up one’s integrity, so that neither one has to lose face. Maybe that’s not how every blog works, but I think it’s how the best ones - the ones I want to read - operate and grow. Right now, Public Eye has a nice format and excellent writing, but it is missing that tone…and it is causing Hugh Hewitt to growl “give me my propers” in a way Aretha never could.

I think Public Eye will really begin to succeed when it can lighten up a little, when the crew can be proud of their “mothership” which is the venerable Columbia Broadcasting System, but also be able to mock it, and themselves, from time to time - as the folks at The Corner at NRO do.

The Corner folks came into their blog, however, knowing who they were and who their audience was, while Public Eye is trying to find its way even as it is unspooling from a somewhat fractured bobbin, which may give it a rather defensive spin. No pun intended.

Okay, pun intended.

Perhaps Public Eye would lose some of its formality and stiffness if it were to fill out the blogcrew - currently thick with “journalists” - with a few “non-journalist” blogging types who are able to let fly. It needs a voice or two who are less “Buttondown-J-school-with-suspenders” and more “I’m posting this from my pub…”

After all…once upon a time, all the best journalists were doing their writing from the pub.

UPDATE: This is turning into quite a shootout. Meanwhile SCA have some thoughts on all of it. Also, Jeff Jarvis is commenting, suggesting that Dick Meyer deserves some respect for entering into these debates in various comments sections (I agree), and he has some further suggestions for CBS.

Need to print out some lunchtime reading? I’ve three goodies for you.

Start with neo-neocon’s thoughtful piece on the excesses of pacifism.

Absolute pacifism–the most extreme form–eschews war in any guise. And what would absolute pacifism have suggested as a response to the Holocaust? Many years later I came across Gandhi’s answer, in an essay he wrote in 1938 advising the Jews on the subject of what to do about Hitler. In it, he sets out the case in unequivocal terms; and clearly, he understands that the Jews face grave dangers:

And what is?

Sensible Mom is thinking about the problem of power:

We see this time and again; the powerful brought down at the height of their careers either because they felt they were immune to the law or because too many were jealous of them.

These men were the major power brokers in the nation, and the spoils of the postition were not lost on them. For a woman to suggest sex was just part of the job to take advantage of, and for a staff member to suggest burlgary was viewed as an acceptable means to retain power.

Finally - and a little lighter, but no less insightful - Ed Driscoll takes a look at the Hollywood Slump. Interesting stuff.

And not bad for a bunch of people sitting around gassing away in their pajamas!

Doug at Stones Cry Out links to a terrifically exciting article on how much progress is being made on spinal injuries by using ADULT stem cells.

Writes Doug: Remember the ad showing a walking Christopher Reeve? Remember John Edwards saying that someday folks in wheelchairs would be able to get up and walk? Both were extolling the virtues of embryonic stem cell research. Turns out that adult stem cell research, which doesn’t require the destruction of embryos and has none of the ethical issues, is on its way to fulfilling that promise.

In an apparent major breakthrough, scientists in Korea report using umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal-cord injury patient.

“The patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation.”

Doug rightly points out that, were this account refering to EMBRYONIC stem cells, there would have been a great deal of coverage. I believe he is correct. I have noticed that only the embryonic stem cells excite the press, and that the current US policy about stem cell research - which is that we favor and support research on adult stem cells, but will not federally fund research using new lines of embryonic stem cells - is routinely misreported as “Bush is against stem cell research and science.”

There is another story out there - I cannot find it on google and forgot to save it to my hard drive - about two seperate women who suffered spinal cord injuries in accidents and who were now walking (with canes) after being treated with stem cells from their nasal cavities. I’ve got to look for that piece.

This is exciting!

Barkay said that the find was the first of its kind from the time of King David.

There’s more! Go read it. Comes on the heels of the finding of what seems to be King David’s Palace and the Pool of Siloam.

Confirmation, as we head into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that the Jews have a long and primary history in Jerusalem.

Off topic, but just wondering - how come my kid’s school calendar clearly marks the days off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and NAMES the days…but Christmas and Easter vacations cannot be called that?

Reading this made me sick to my stomach.

Cindy Sheehan has signed with a speakers bureau.

Hey, there is nothing wrong with that. The woman has been proclaimed to be the “voice of the anti-war movement” and “the face of the Democrat party,” and I say “let ‘er rip.” She’s clearly never going back to a 9-to-5 world if she can help it. If we learned nothing else about Mother Sheehan last weekend, we learned that she likes her crowds and cameras and will do whatever it takes to knock a cat 5 hurricane off the front pages.

And she has “absolute moral authority,” you know.

She wants the spotlight, she can have it, and all of the attendant riches. But lady…don’t make excuses, and DON’T exploit your son’s death - AGAIN - by using it as an excuse for your career move.

Which is what she has done here, in this disgusting line - the one that made me sick to my stomach:

She said her contract with Speaking Matters, which has not yet disclosed how much a Sheehan appearance will cost, will help her “finally make some money …’cause Casey’s insurance money’s going to run out pretty soon.

Yes…Mother Sheehan wants you to remember, with every line she utters, that her son is dead. She also wants you to understand that she has been spending the insurance money of her dead son to embolden the insurgents who killed him, so that other mother’s sons may die, as well. She wants you to know that she has been spending the insurance money of her dead son…to give praise and support to the guys who killed him, and to march in the street with people who would spit on her son and call him a mercenary and a babykiller, were tragic, heroic Casey Sheehan still alive.

There are mercenaries in the world. I don’t think our rather low-paid soldiers fit the bill.

But there is more…Instead of simply saying, as I - a sane woman - have, that Sheehan has every right to sign with a speakers bureau if she anticipates a career in public speaking, that indeed such a move is sensible - Sheehan’s supporters do exactly the same thing Sheehan has done - they make excuses for her choice and then…exploit poor Casey, yet again.

Peggy Noonan has gone and done it, again. Just as she once wrote the definitive piece on JPII, today she gives us the definitive piece on Hurrican Katrina, in all of its ugly tumult, and she makes the distinction - the important and necessary distinction - between authority and responsibility. This is the read of the day. Of the week!

The day before hurricane Rita hit Texas, last Friday, I saw on TV something that disturbed me. It was not the usual scene of crashing waves and hardy reporters being blown sideways by wind gusts. It was a fat Texas guy swimming in the waves off Galveston. He’d apparently decided the high surf was a good thing to jump into, so he went for a prehurricane swim. Two cops saw him, waded into the surf and arrested him. When I saw it the guy was standing there in orange trunks being astonished as the cops put handcuffs on him and hauled him away.

…I thought: Oh no, this is isn’t good. This is authority, not responsibility.

You’d have to be crazy, in my judgment, to decide you were going to go swim in the ocean as a hurricane comes. But in the America where I grew up, you were allowed to be crazy. You had the right. Sometimes you were crazy and survived whatever you did. Sometimes you didn’t, and afterwards everyone said, “He was crazy.”

This sort of thing of course has been going on for a long time. In Katrina and Rita it just became more dramatically obvious as each incident played out on TV.

Wonderful. In a just and perfect world, this piece would win Ms. Noonan accolades galore and a prize.

Brava, lady!

Hello?

Hello, RNC?

You remember last night, when you called my house and asked me to donate to the RNC? Remember how I very politely told you that the Republicans in the Senate and in the House were so spineless and ineffectual that - until things changed - they would be receiving no money from this household?

Remember how I pointed out that the GOP Senate’s pathetic, “please promise not to illegally look into our credit reports and we’ll be your friend” response to Chuck Schumer’s deplorable dirty tricks had disgusted me?

Well, I have to tell you, when I read the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee agreed in advance not to ask poor, quivering, completely incompetent Gov. Kathleen Blanco any - that’s right - ANY, questions about her response to Hurricane Katrina (after, it must be said, some of those same GOP senators were pre-tty darn vicious to former FEMA head Brown), simply because she asked them not to - because, I guess, she needs time to construct whatever myth she deems necessary…well!

I can think of plenty of other good uses for my money than to support this nonsense. As a woman I am appalled at the kid-glove treatment of Gov. Blanco who makes all women in positions of power look bad. As a fairly new conservative, I just don’t understand. What gives? Is this still the “new tone?” Is there some brilliant strategy I am missing here?

I’m not suggesting anyone crucify the woman, but come on! You agreed not to ask her ANY questions about Katrina?

I only joined the GOP because I supported W, you know. The rest of you have been - with rare exceptions - spectacularly unimpressive.

I’m sorry…but you sit around day after day watching the opposition savage your party leadership and blame your president for every ill in the world, with the full complicity and assist of the press, and then - on two occasions in one week - you find yourself with LEGITIMATE (not spurious) reasons to do some serious jawboning with members of the opposition party, and you roll on your backs and pant, “please rub our bellies…”

My dog has more self-respect than that, and she is a notorious slave to the belly-scratch.

No…nope! You’ll have to convince me that there is something going on in the GOP besides a suicidal desire to be loved, before I can - in good conscience - send another dime of our hard-earned your way.

WELCOME: Michelle Malkin readers. While you’re here, please take a look around. Today, we’re also discussing Peggy Noonan’s utterly perfect piece on Katrina and America, my son Buster and his generational bliss, the startling reminder that Bull Connor was a Democrat, Cindy Sheehan’s statement that Casey’s insurance money is almost gone and we’re thinking about Archangels. Check back later - I’ll be linking to some interesting posts and stories about extreme pacifism and yet another exciting find in Jerusalem!

UPDATE: Reader Brian Day brings this to my attention at NRO’s The Corner Jonah, I thought the same thing as you about why Gov. Blanco got off so easy. But then it occurred to me that she was in front of the Senate Finance committee, asking for money to get on and rebuild, and not before the House committee that was investigating what went wrong. My theory — which may be wrong — is that the Finance committee offered her an invitation to make a brief statement in response to Michael Brown’s testimony as a professional courtesy, since it has been all over the news, rather than because they needed to reconstruct any timeline. And that she chose to focus her efforts on making a case for the finances Louisiana needs now, rather than muddying the waters, so to speak, with a rehash of the past — which she is saving for another time (I’m assuming she’ll have to eventually appear before the House committee.) Read the following in that light and see if that makes sense.

Hmph. Well. Sorta. Jimmie Bise has some thoughts on that.

Because of our good Lord’s tender love to all those who shall be saved, he quickly comforts them saying, “The cause of all this pain is sin. But all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” These words were said so kindly and without a hint of blame.So how unjust it would be for me to blame God for allowing my sin when he does not blame me for falling into it.

– Blessed Julian of Norwich

September 29: Michaelmas. Feast of the Holy Archangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael.

Reading I
Rv 12:7-12ab

War broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night. They conquered him by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death.
Therefore, rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them.”

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 4-5

R. (1) In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
for you have heard the words of my mouth;
in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;
I will worship at your holy temple
and give thanks to your name.
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
Because of your kindness and your truth;
for you have made great above all things
your name and your promise.
When I called, you answered me;
you built up strength within me.
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
All the kings of the earth shall give thanks to you, O LORD,
when they hear the words of your mouth;
And they shall sing of the ways of the LORD:
“Great is the glory of the LORD.”
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.

Gospel
Jn 1:47-51

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.”

And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

We are more greatly in war and at war, I think, than any of us have previously realized. Listen. Observe. Pray on it. War is here.

So, Buster was wearing this tee shirt to school:

Lots of questions as to who was the cool dude with the shades and the beret?

The cool dude is, of course, a young Karol Wojtyla, newly ordained priest, touring the Parthenon.

When Buster explained that the picture was of a young, future Pope John Paul II, visiting the Parthenon, his classmates in this public school cooed appreciatively at the pope whom they all regarded positively - “he was great, man…”

But some of them had problems with that Parthenon part.

“You mean the Pentagon?”

“No, Parthenon,” Buster answered.

“Like the cheese?”

Buster is still not sure about the cheese line. He suspects someone was thinking of parmesan cheese…or something.

“Ma,” he said with a smile…”my generation has found its bliss. Ignorance, is bliss. We’re in trouble.”

It’s rare for Buster to say such a thing. But then again…

Parmesan???

It’s his own fault, you know. If he hadn’t spent the half of his sophomore year getting smacked around by all the girls he had crushes on, instead of working, he’d at least be in AP Social Studies, and his classmates would be familiar with the Parthenon.