The Anchoress

I confess, after excitedly looking forward to HBO’s presentation, I am a little disappointed. Not tremendously so, because I knew the book could never translate perfectly to the screen, but…yeah, disappointed.

I had thought Paul Giamatti - an actor I admire a lot - would be the perfect John Adams, but it seems to me he has not managed to get inside him. Adams was a man with a temper, a tendency toward vanity and stubbornness, it’s true, but he also seems to have had boundless energy, a liking for talk and company and a genuine sense of humor, all of which seems lacking, here. Also, when Adams is passionate and inspiring, Giamatti is only shrill. He seems dreadfully uncomfortable, almost all the time. I never forget that I am watching a 21st century actor playing an 18th century man.

Laura Linney as Abigail is a bit better, although she too seems to miss Abigail’s bright humor. I suspect the film wants to impress us with Abigail’s undeniable wisdom, but too often she comes off as merely grave.

Worse, I am a little disturbed by the film’s fascination with Charles Adams to the exclusion of John Quincy. While McCullough paints Charles as a true scamp, he also drew lovely characters of Nabby Adams and John Quincy. Repeatedly it is only Charles who shows curiosity, courage, passion or liveliness in this film, and I have to wonder if the viewer is being set up, there, for a later indictment that Charles became a drunkard - which pained his parents profoundly - because John Adams did not appreciate him enough in his childhood. While it is true that Adams was often gone for long periods of time, he also wrote specifically of Charles, “I love him too much.” I don’t like being so obviously set-up to think ill of Adams down the road.

The sets and scenes are terrific, although the production seems a little CGI happy and it shows, particularly in an early scene were Adams goes to the Boston gaol to meet with British soldiers and we see shipmasts so perfectly fitted behind the wall as to be distracting. More distractingly, the director Tom Hooper sometimes makes me seasick with his tilted camera. For some reason he has chosen to shoot some scenes at such an angle (think Batman in the 1960’s) that one must tilt one’s head to get back into the frame and the story. Hooper seems to be one of those “look Ma, I’m directing!” sorts who wants to be artsy when it really doesn’t help. When watching Ben Franklin clue Adams in to the nuances and niceties of political give-and-take, we had to do it peering through the shadows of ceiling spindles and dusty windows, or over the sides of large benches. In part I, before Adams is introduced to his neighbors as a delegate to the congress, we see him seated in a pew, barely tall enough to peer over its edge. We get it, we get it, is the man big enough for the job? Please just tell us the story and save us your arcane visual metaphors, Mr. Director!

Tom Wilkinson is note-perfect as Franklin and he’s clearly relishing the role. David Morse, once you get past the distracting foam nose, is Washington precisely as we have come to know him; soft spoken, commanding, gentlemanly and rather hauntingly aware of all that is before him. Whenever either of them are on screen, the whole enterprise has a different, more alive feel.

But this is not a pan. I am enjoying the series. Zeljko Ivanek is wonderfully moving as the Quaker, John Dickinson, Adam’s most fierce opponent in Congress. I love watching a rather droll John Hancock keep competing egos and interests in order; the passing of the Declaration of Independence was fascinatingly quiet in light of the great noise the action has had upon history.

I just wish William Daniels’ John Adams, in the musical 1776, hadn’t spoiled me for Paul Giamatti. One of the reasons I loved David McCullough’s book so much was because it finally seemed to bring Adams out from between the overwhelming (and tall) towers of Washington and Jefferson. Without a strong actor to bring him forth, Adams - sadly - ultimately gets left in the shadows again.

Beldar notes that Washington, Jefferson and Franklin were far less quirky and far easier to lionize into legends than the complicated Adams. That is probably true. He loves the series, and you’ll enjoy his review.

Ann Althouse has more.

Tom Shales gives the Tom Hanks-produced series a predictable rave. I rather wish Stephen Harper had reviewed for the WaPo.

In the NY Times Allessandra Stanley feels much as I do, particularly about Giamatti and Daniels.

Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney as John and Abigail Adams

When I was a kid it was a rare thing to own a book and a hardcover book was real treasure, so my family, now, will often gift me with hardcover books that I put into the “to read” pile, and sometimes I don’t get around to reading the book until it comes out in soft cover.

David McCullogh’s comprehensive and incredibly readable John Adams was a book that had been in the pile so long I nearly missed it. I picked it up last week and couldn’t put it down. This is no dry history tome - from page one McCullough grabs the reader and throws him right into the saddle with John Adams and a companion, heading to Philadelphia in the snow, and it is gloriously immediate and real. He brings these truly amazing people to life right before your eyes. I finished the book in less than a week and have been spending idle moments thinking back to the story of John, his astonishingly wise and capable wife Abigail, their son John Quincy and all of the heroes of that age, Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Franklin and the rest. I’ve thought how glad I am to have made their acquaintance and how sad I am that this age has none their equal, none so selfless or willing to inconvenience themselves so unstintingly for America. And I’ve come to a better-informed, mature appreciation of the singularity of their accomplishments.

Mostly I came away loving John Adams, who has seemed rather forgotten behind the heroism of Washington or the glamor of Jefferson, but who perhaps more than any other founding patriot literally pulled the original 13 colonies together into a glorious whole, and - rather like Churchill - never flagged in his effort. Like Churchill (and President Bush) he was thoroughly hated for his single-minded and unwavering commitment-unto-obsession. He was mocked (sometimes rightly, he knew) for his vanity. (In that he reminded me a little of Churchill also, who once noted his delight in a good review of his work, “I had never been praised before!”) The press was as astonishingly cruel to him as it was laudatory toward Jefferson (the press, it seems, never was the bastion of facts and fairness I’d once believed) but - for all that - Adams was respected as an honest man whose interests were always to the nation’s before his own. He was, for a small-statured man - a giant of his era, and none can touch him.

Yes…I now love John (and Abigail) Adams. And what an undertaking of research (Adams and Abigail were both beyond prolific correspondants and diary keepers) and sublime prose on McCullough’s part; what a well-earned Pulitzer! Although I couldn’t help but think at one point; does every president have to wait over 200 years before someone will study him thoroughly enough to do him justice against the perceptions of his own time? I also wondered if Adams, Jefferson and the rest could ever have accomplished their undertaking with a hectoring 24hour media at their backs, but I’ve wondered that before. In this book I see much from that era that is familiar in our own, although we seem to be in much shorter supply of both scholars and heroes.

Today at the post office, I saw a huge poster advertising a 7 part dramatization based on McCullough’s book, and I got all excited. Then I saw it was an HBO presentation and got a little sad, because I don’t get HBO. (But my neighbor does, and she’s getting Monk Coffee from me for her birthday so…maybe I can bother her for seven nights!)

The film trailer looks terrific. It stars two of my favorite actors, Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, as John and Abigail and the always-great David Morse as Washington. This looks like one worth owning, but I can’t urge you enough to buy the book. I actually kept a notebook beside me as I was reading it, both for quotes and for my own musings - it’s that inspiring. One of my notes to myself was about Adams’ profound dislike of slavery, and his initial attempts to address it within the Declaration of Independece. I wrote:

Adams had no use for slavery but knew he could not allow the Declaration to sink or swim on the issue. He chose to first get the independence, get the nation together, and then come back and deal with slavery later…rather reminds me of Reagan’s remarks that you take your 75% and come back to fight another day for the rest, an idea that neither the right nor left extremists in instant-gratification America seem willing to entertain, which is perhaps why so little gets done, anymore.

A few excerpts - maybe they can inspire us through our ugly political season. Certainly some of it feels and sounds awfully contemporary:

“I wander alone, and ponder. I muse, I mope, I ruminate,” he wrote in the seclusion of his diary. “We have not men fit for the times. We are deficient in genius, education, in travel, fortune - in everything. I feel unutterable anxiety.”

Hmmmph. Nowadays, we seem to have politicians who feel the times are unfit for them and their “gifts.”

…The mood of the city had become extremely contentious. “The malignant air of calumny has taken possession of almost all ranks and societies of people in this place, ” wrote Christopher Marshall, an apothecary and committed patriot (though a Quaker) who had become one of Adams’ circle of Philadelphia friends.

The Rich, the poor, the high professor and the prophane, seem all to be infected with this grievous disorder, so that love of our neighbor seems to be quite banished, the love of self and opinions so far prevails…The [Tory] enemies of our present struggle…are grown even scurrilous to individuals, and treat all characters who differ from them with the most opprobrious language.

On first meeting, Adams and [Benjamin] Rush had misjudged each other. Adams thought Rush “a sprightly, pretty fellow,” but “too much a talker to be a deep thinker,” while Rush found Adams “cold and reserved.” But they had quickly changed their minds, discovering much in common besides the love of talk. Like Adams, Rush was without affectation and unafraid to speak his mind, sometimes to the point of tactlessness. (”Prudence,” he was fond of saying, “is a rascally virtue.”)

Newspapers were filled with eyewitness accounts of the suffering and defeat. For days in Philadelphia the talk was of little else. then, to compound the atmosphere of uncertainty, the captured General Sullivan appeared in the city. He had been paroled by the British to report to Congress that Admiral Lord Howe wished to confer privately about and accomodation.

…with the outlook as dark as it had ever been…Jefferson decided to delay his departure no more…Having settled his accounts, he mounted his horse, and with his young servant following behind, started for Virginia.

Adams, too, had reached a decision, as he explained to Abigail in a letter…Events having taken such a turn at Long Island, he would remain in Philadelphia. When Joseph Bass arrived the next day with the horses to take him home, it made no difference. “The panic may seize whom it will,” Adams wrote, “it will not seize me.”

I could cite dozens of other bits, but just buy the book and enjoy it. I thought it might lose steam after the revolution, but it never did. McCullough doesn’t offer a dull or dry minute through all of Adams’ long and event-full life. I can’t wait to see the movie.

Related: John Quincy Adams

Heh. John Hawkins has a post up with 10 reasons why this blog is not succeeding while others do.

I try! I don’t feel comfortable networking, but I link out! I try to be interesting and varied - most days I post at least three or four new things. Seems I’m just not all that provocative, and undoubtedly I’m too long-winded. Still - it blows my mind that other people manage to support themselves blogging. This little endeavor nets yer girl something under $2,000 per year, and with two kids in college I’ve more and more begun to think all this fun must soon end for a job managing an office, somewhere…but I’ll plug gamely on for a while yet, because you know it and I know it…I’m hooked. So is Melissa Clouthier who is also pounding her head on the desk over Hawkins’ piece!

Speaking of successful bloggers, my dear blogfather, Ed Morrissey who writes brilliantly every single day (ahhh…there’s how you succeed! Be brilliant and steady!) mostly about politics, has written a very good piece on confession - and more specifically on the Vatican’s advise to the faithful to consider modernity and the “new sins” when examining their consciences. In his cleverly-titled piece, Ed writes beautifully about his personal adventures with the sacrament and then:

the addition of sins based on political correctness demeans the process. If pollution is a sin, do I have to give up driving a car? Lighting my house? Burning wood in the fireplace? Or is there a level at which sin arises; if so, will the Vatican provide the formulas? It’s silly, because excessive consumption is already covered by gluttony. This looks like a desperate attempt at temporal relevancy when the Church should be concerned about eternal truths. It’s like watching your parents try to rap.

If the Vatican wonders why Catholics feel that reconciliation has become less relevant, perhaps it’s because the Church tries to impose faddish notions of sin on its members. If the Vatican doesn’t take sin and repentance seriously, why should Catholics?

Perfectly said.

Margaret Cabannis over at Inside Catholic has a little fun with the excesses of the British press, and then writes:

I think I’ll wait until I hear something a little more concrete — preferably from the pope, rather than the British news media — before I start confessing my sins of recycling.

Margaret is referring there to what Amy Welborn calls Rule 27: If the news story is from the British press and involves the Pope….DON’T BELIEVE IT.

Speaking of Welborn, (another very successful blogger) she links to a much more interesting (and off-the-cuff) homily from Pope Benedict, speaking yesterday while visiting a youth center in Rome:

I am confident that [America], established on the self-evident truth that the Creator has endowed each human being with certain inalienable rights, will continue to find in the principles of the common moral law, enshrined in its founding documents, a sure guide for exercising its leadership within the international community.

Amy has a new book coming out soon that looks pretty scrumptious, Mary and the Christian Life. You can pre-order it at Amazon (see below - and whoever ordered the lazer jet printer - THANK YOU!).

Last bit on confession, from Siggy, who is actually writing about larger issues.

Speaking of priests, Deacon Greg has a poignant story about what they need from us.

Secularly, Ace brings us a 19 year old soldier who has earned the Silver Star. Props to Spc. Monica Lin Brown, who - while under fire - pulled wounded to safety and saved their lives. If you need a “female hero” you don’t need to look to politics to find them.

Obsidian Wings looks at all the ways Hillary Clinton is no hero and where Rwanda is concerned, she is even less. Jake Tapper suggests Hillary is going to go My Lai on the Democrats and “destroy the party” to save it - or at least to serve her own ambition. Andrew Sullivan goes a little purple on the subject of Clintons.

Bob Owens disagrees with the idea that if you don’t vote for Obama you are a racist and probably a religious bigot as well. Bob also has a very helpful post up on Fair Use situations and the Associated Press. He suggests bloggers go through their posts. Good advice.

You see that coffee ad just to your right, in the sidebar? The Mystic Monk Coffee? It really is the best coffee I’ve ever had. Made the Hazelnut this weekend. It was unbelievably good! We drank too much of it, then brought a pot to the neighbor’s house and had some more! Please patronize those talented Monks. We want to keep that coffee coming!

Finally, my Elder Son notes that (just in time for his birthday - funny how that happens) a new Dresden Files book, Small Favor, is due out this April 1! I thank reader Busy Bee for the recommendation of two book for my musician sons, Barry Green’s The Inner Game of Music and The Mastery of Music: Ten Pathways to True Artistry. This reminds me of a joke Julie at Happy Catholic posted this weekend:

St. Peter’s still checking ID’s. He asks a man, “What did you do on Earth?”

The man says, “I was a doctor.”

St. Peter says, “Ok, go right through those pearly gates. Next! What did you do on Earth?”

“I was a school teacher.”

“Go right through those pearly gates. Next! And what did you do on Earth?”

“I was a musician.”

“Go around the side, up the freight elevator, through the kitchen…”

I’m currently reading a wonderful bio of John Adams and will be writing more about it soon.

In the mail today - received this excellent-looking book from Our Sunday Visitor:

Within, editor Michael Dubruiel gives us accessible Pope Benedict XVI - records of his conversations with children, students, priests and others, and the exchanges remind me of these lovely exchanges between Benedict and young people, which I posted a while back. My favorite:

During a question-and-answer session with a half-dozen children, one boy told the pope that he had been told that Christ was really present in the Eucharist, or Communion.

“But how? I don’t see him,” the boy said. Benedict chuckled.

“We don’t see him, but there are so many things that we don’t see that exist and they are essential,” Benedict said. “For example, we don’t see our reason, but we still have reason. We don’t see our intelligence, but we have it … We don’t see the electric current, but we still see it works: We see how this microphone works, the lights.

“We don’t see the risen Lord with our eyes, but we know that where Jesus is, men change, become better, become a bit more able to have peace and reconciliation.”

A book full of that? Sure. Thank you!

Also in the mail,

The Greatest Gift; The Courageous Life and Martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang

I actually read a bit of this during lunch and it was pretty intriguing - the biography of a sister who went from teaching in Catholic schools to the Amazon rain forest, where she was slain.

Both of these books teach a lot about selflessness and service, which seems to be my theme today!

Catholic Media Review has a more in-depth review of the Benedict book.

Grotto at Lourdes, shamelessly cribbed from Fr. James Martin

…a dirt-poor, uneducated girl saw a beautiful lady in the most humble of places.

Thus begins a true story whose epilogue has not yet been written.

The key to the story of Lourdes is not the Marian apparition. It is not Bernadette’s story. It is not the healings which have taken place at this holy spot where heaven kissed the earth. It is the notion of service to others. It is knowing what is meant for you, and what you are actually supposed to simply do for the good of others. It is a remarkable living lesson, every day, of the tender mercies of God and the need for prayer, faith and service in our lives.

Fr. James Martin, who wrote movingly about his personal experiences at Lourdes in his wonderful book, My Life With the Saints notes the anniversary and writes:

It has become fashionable in recent years, especially after Vatican II, to downplay the miraculous, the supernatural or the otherworldly aspects of our Catholic faith…Are these things, people ask me, consistent with a mature faith?

I’ve never had that problem. Or those questions. I consider myself a rational person, and a fairly well educated Catholic, who is also not a literalist in any way when it comes to things like, say, Scripture. But…I’ve always believed that we need to be exceedingly careful to say what God can and cannot do, and how God does and does not act. Or, worse, how God should act or not act.

That’s one of the things that landed the scribes and the Pharisees in so much trouble.

I concur. One of the things I’ve always said is that for the God who raised himself from the dead, such things as virgin births, Immaculate Conceptions and changing bread and wine to flesh and blood are cakewalks.

I just recently reviewed, and loved this new and uplifting book on Lourdes. Within it, the author recounts the last visit to Lourdes of an ailing Pope John Paul II, who was so ill that observers wondered at one point whether he had died.

Deacon Greg reposts the prayer of the pilgrim pope which John Paul gave as he left the place of healing.

I highly recommend both it and Fr. Martin’s book, if you’re still looking for some Lenten reading!

I gave this book - reviewed here to a few people at Christmastime and have heard back from several of them that they love it. Last weekend one of them, a woman who “struggles” with faith (who doesn’t, sometimes), caught up with me and said it was changing her whole outlook for the better. That’s nice to hear.

I like this interview with the book’s editor, Raymond Arroyo - his impersonations of the old nun are hilarious - because her story is a fascinating one that is never told outside of “church” circles. When the secular press periodically names “Amazing women,” they never think to mention this cloistered nun who - outfitted with childlike, boundless faith, $200 and a garage - began a global Catholic television and radio network (EWTN) that has become an enormous resource for both Catholics and non-Catholic Christians that presents takes an unblinking look at the modern church, the historical church and the day-to-day life of faith. Love her or not, she has been a force for change, and her story is downright remarkable.

A few days ago I reviewed this book and highly recommended it. Julie at Happy Catholic did, too, and you know you can trust her!

I wrote:

Do yourself a favor, particularly if - in this bleak mid-winter full of election noise and bloviation - you feel the need to be refreshed and uplifted, and pick up this book. It will have something to say to you.

The author, Elizabeth Ficocelli will talk about the book with Father Benedict Groeschel’s on his program, “Sunday Night Live” on EWTN, and I’m sure it will be a very interesting show. I would love to hear her expound on what she saw and learned at Lourdes, and particularly about the extremely inspiring people she met there.

Sadly, we do not get EWTN in this neck of the woods until after midnight, and the show is on at 7PM, so I won’t get to watch - but if you can, you might enjoy it a lot.

The book is marvelous.

Lt. George W. Bush. His wife recently said he was the most beautiful creature I ever saw.

Reuben F. Johnson has a terrific piece in the Weekly Standard (Via); it ends up wondering when - between the recent temperamental campaign hijinks of Bill Clinton and the less emotional goings on in Russia - we can again expect to see some maturity on the world stage.

But gets to that question taking a route through the US presidential campaigns of 1992, and writes:

How soon the Clintons forget the despicable lows to which they themselves sank in casting aspersions on the honor of George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) in the 1992 presidential campaign.

During that campaign Clinton’s artful dodging of the Vietnam draft was contrasted with the fact that Bush 41 had served his nation as a naval aviator in the WWII Pacific Theater…The elder Bush flew 58 combat missions by the time he was 20, making him one of the youngest pilots in naval aviation. At about the same age Bill Clinton was writing letters about how he needed to preserve his future political viability, Lieutenant JG George H.W. Bush was dodging anti-aircraft fire in order to reach his assigned targets and drop a load of 500-pound bombs. [Emphasis mine - admin]

In a 1985 article written for Naval Aviation News one of Bush’s squadron mates, Jack Guy, was interviewed and told the author “I can’t say anything but good things about him. In WW II we all felt we could depend on George to do his job. We never had to say, ‘Where’s my wingman?’ because he was always there.”

This article was written three years before Bush became president and seven years before the 1992 campaign. In other words, at a time when there was little attention focused on Bush 41’s war record and quite some time before the controversy about Bill Clinton’s having avoided conscription gave cause for the Clinton campaign to try and denigrate Bush’s own war record to divert attention from the issue of how the Arkansas Governor had stayed out of the draft.

Maybe you remember what happened next. A poison-pen trashing of Bush 41’s wartime exploits appeared a month before the election in the New Republic. Did the Clinton apparatus have a hand in that? You make the call.

That the Clinton machine would cast aspersions on the service record of a true war hero (enlisting in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday, Bush earned the Distinguished Flying Cross by age 20) to win an election is unremarkable; the sun also rises. What is remarkable is that, in an age saturated with media, most Americans know little about President George H. W. Bush beyond the goofy caricatures; endless loops of the president taking ill during a diplomatic visit overseas, or of him marveling at a cashier scanner were presented by the press, but there was seldom a balancing profile to counter the punch, and that is a shame.

On 2 September 1944, Bush piloted one of four aircraft from VT-51 that attacked the Japanese installations on Chi Chi Jima. For this mission his crew included Radioman Second Class John Delaney, and Lieutenant Junior Grade William White, USNR, who substituted for Bush’s regular gunner. …Bush’s aircraft was hit and his engine caught on fire. He completed his attack and released the bombs over his target scoring several damaging hits. With his engine on fire, Bush flew several miles from the island, where he and one other crew member on the TBM Avenger bailed out of the aircraft. However, the other man’s chute did not open and he fell to his death. It was never determined which man bailed out with Bush. Both Delaney and White were killed in action. –Naval Historical Center

George H. W. Bush is 84 years old, now. Better to appreciate a man while he’s still alive, than when it’s too late. Johnson’s article triggered in me a desire to re-familiarize myself with what little I know (and appreciate) about this very good man. I liked this interview in which he talks of his admiration for Abraham Lincoln, his strong attachment to his family, the death of his daughter, Robin, at age 4. One quote:

Q: If you had a tip to share with young people, what would that be?

George H.W. Bush: …I’d have to say, don’t neglect your family. Politics is important, sitting at the head table is glamorous. Traveling around the world, trying to do something for world peace was wonderful. But…It’s family, and it’s faith, and it’s friends, and it’s not the glamor of the Presidency, or the wonder of going to receive the Nobel Prize. All those are important, of course. But maybe it’s just that I’m 71 years old now. It’s family, and it’s faith, and it’s friends. I would tell them that. Don’t forget that. In your brilliance, don’t turn your back on your friends. Don’t think you’re entitled to something, because you’re smarter than the next guy.

In 1999 President Bush published a collection of his letters entitled, All the Best, George Bush, and it is a wonderful biographical sharing of a man; his letters begin in 1941, with letters to his family from Naval Aviation Pre-Flight School and end in 1998, with a profound and loving letter written to his children. In reading them you see a man in full, growing from an enthusiastic, patriotic and idealistic young flyboy, gaining experience and wisdom, enjoying political successes and failures and suffering grievous loss - his letters concerning the death of his daughter, and his advice to his sons made me weep - this is no caricature, nor a burnished hagiography that skips over the messy parts. The president allows the reader to see him, warts-and-all, and it is quite remarkable. A few excerpts:

Sept 3, 1944: I will have to skip all the details of the attack as they would not pass the censorship but the fact remains that we got hit…There was no sign of Del or Ted anywhere around. I looked as I floated down and afterwards kept my eye open from the raft, but to no avail. The fact that our planes didn’t seem to be searching anymore showed me pretty clearly that they had not gotten out. I’m afraid I was pretty much of a sissy about it cause I sat in my raft and sobbed for a while. It bothers me so very much. I did tell them and when I bailed out I felt that they must have gone, and yet now I fell so terribly responsible for their fate, oh, so much right now.

Summer 1958: (After the death of his and Barbara’s daughter) There is about our house a need. The running, pulsating restlessness of the four boys as they struggle to learn and grow; the world embraces them…all this wonder needs a counter-part. We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blonde hair to off-set those crew cuts. We need a doll house to stand firm against our forts and rackets and thousand baseball cards…we need a legitimate Christmas angel - one who doesn’t have cuffs beneath the dress.

We need someone who is afraid of frogs.
We need someone to cry when I get mad - not argue.
We need a little one who can kiss without leaving eggs or jam or gum.
We need a girl…

To George & Jeb, 1998: Do not worry when you see the stories that compare you favorably to a Dad for whom English was a second language and for whom the word destiny meant nothing…I am content with how historians will judge my administration - even on the economy. I hope and think they will say we helped change the world in a positive sense…
[…]
Nothing that crowd can ever say or those journalists can ever write will diminish my pride in you both, so worry not. Those comparisons are inevitable and they will inevitably be hurtful to all of us, but not hurtful enough to dividek, not hurtful enough to really mean anything.

After reading his book in 2002, I wrote to President Bush telling him how much I admired the noble husband, father and public servant I met within the pages, and thanking him for sharing them, and for serving all of us so faithfully. I think what I was really thanking him for was his authenticity - something so sorely lacking in our culture, these days. I’m a nobody, but he actually responded with a lovely thank you (!) joking that he and “Barbara” were glad to still be here, and asking me to pray for his son, which I gladly did, and do.

Sometimes, when I really have nothing else to think about, I imagine what sort of man and president Bill Clinton would have been, had he had such a constant and loving father.

Thanks, President Bush, for everything. All the best, sir!

UPDATED: Newsbusters is, co-incidentally, remembering a Bush moment, this one with Dan Rather.

2008 is the marks 150 years since a sickly and ignorant Pyrenees peasant named Bernadette Soubirous experienced visions of a “beautiful lady” at a grubby pig-watering place called Massabielle.

Bernadette Soubirous

During those visits, Bernadette was exhorted to pray, and to do penance for the sinfulness of humanity. She was instructed to give messages to the local priests, to tell them that the lady wished for a chapel to be built in her honor, and for “processions” to come.

In one dramatic instance, the “lady” instructed Bernadette to dig with her hands in a particular spot, and immediately there was revealed a spring whose waters still flow to the tune of 28,000 gallons per day, even in times of drought.

After repeated requests from Bernadette, the “lady” finally identified herself, in words the poor peasant girl did not even understand: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

And the waters she revealed through her little visionary have brought immense healing.

To note the anniversary of this fascinating and consoling interaction between humanity and the Mother of the Christ, Paulist Press has released Lourdes; Font of Faith, Hope and Charity by Elizabeth Ficocelli, and I am highly recommending this informative, moving and faith-affirming book to you.

The book is a quick read, but its effect is powerful. Ficocelli succinctly covers the events of 1858 without reducing Bernadette to a pious caricature - indeed, she stresses how completely normal, but graced, was this visionary - and in recounting the initial miraculous healings attributed to the revealed spring, the author is almost matter-of-fact, which is persuasive. The author also runs the reader through the very rigid discovery process that guides the Catholic church in ruling healings as “miraculous” - and how that process may soon change - and makes pointed reference to the psychological and spiritual healings which take place there daily.

But it is in discussing the volunteers who help transport, bathe and console the millions of visitors to Lourdes that this book strikes its memorable and moving notes. There are in particular two stories, which render the reader awestruck, both at the workings of God, and at the graces which flow so freely to those who are willing to receive them.

Vittorio Michelli…informally he is referred to as Miracle Number 63. In 1962 when he was twenty-two and serving in the military, Mr. Micheli was discovered to have a malignant tumor on the left side of his pelvis. The cancer had eaten away much of his left hip and left him in excruciating pain. The disease was spreading rapidly…doctors declared him to be terminal. To please his brother, Mr. Micheli agreed to go to Lourdes but in truth he was rather indifferent about the whole matter. During his pilgrimage, nothing notable happened, except he bathed his good leg, as his affected leg was in a cast from the pelvis to the foot.

When he returned home, [he] experienced a rapid return to health. His appetite came back and chronic pain subsided. WIthin two months he was able to walk again, and X rays revealed a remarkable and inexplicable reconstruction of his hip. Since 1963 the Italian has returned to Lourdes every year…serving as a stretcher bearer, to serve other afflicted pilgrims.

There are other inspiring stories and quotes, from the ordinary people who have participated in the extraordinary, throughout the book. Parts made me weep.

For five decades, Philippe has served [as a volunteer] in all possible capacities…”The sick are for us, the image of Christ suffering,” [he said] “we must be for them the image of the compassionate Christ.”

The story about Marlene Watkins, an American who, in 2000, visited Lourdes as the rather disinterested guest of a friend, and who has since founded an organization bringing hundreds of North American volunteers to Lourdes is remarkable enough - poignant, funny, surprising, awe-inspiring and ultimately humbling - to warrant a future book.

In fact, Watkins’ story - and Ficocelli’s perspective of Lourdes in the 21st century - would make a terrific film.

Do yourself a favor, particularly if - in this bleak mid-winter full of election noise and bloviation - you feel the need to be refreshed and uplifted, and pick up this book. It will have something to say to you.

C’mon, now…that’s a provocative cover. The title, daring to use the deplorable label that has been flung about rather-too-freely in the past few years; the cover, the classic “happy-face” - ubiquitous in the early 1970’s and plastered everywhere as societal conventions came tumbling down. Just past Haight-Ashbury and the Generation Gap, in the middle of the “unisex everything” years of protest and upheaval, everywhere you looked that simple yellow face floated before you and said “be happy!” The cover is brilliant.

Haven’t read a word of it, of course, but I’ve suspected Jonah Goldberg had this book in him since ‘way back when he wrote this column in 2001 and this one in 2002

I’ve noticed that the “Nazi” flinging - which was nearly out of control a few years ago has decreased, and that’s a good thing. Probably that means it is a very good time for someone like Goldberg - who has made a point of reminding his readers that “Nazi” comes from National Socialist and that disagreements and differences in opinion do not a nazi make - to release this into the marketplace of ideas and (hopefully) encourage an adult discussion about what nazi-ism is, how it came into being, and where some of its tenets may be found in 21st century America and abroad.

I gather - from the reviews - that Goldberg (who points out in this column that Vladimir Putin takes a page from FDR) is doing more, here. A few review excerpts:

Rich Lowry:

Goldberg sees the fascist exaltation of youth, glorification of violence, hatred of tradition and romance of “the street” in the New Left of the 1960s, still the subject of the fond memories for the liberal establishment in this country. Goldberg argues that “liberal fascism” — the phrase was coined by H. G. Wells, and he meant it positively — is a distant heir to European fascism. The liberal version is pacifist rather than militaristic and feminine rather than masculine in its orientation, but it also seeks to increase the power of the state and overcome tradition in sweeping crusades pursued with the moral fervor of war.

Ron Radosh:

When Mr. Goldberg uses the term “liberal fascism,” he is not offering a right-wing version of the left’s smears. He knows it is a loaded term. What he is talking about is the historical idea of fascism: a corporatist and statist social structure that creates a deep reliance of its subjects on the government and engenders a sense of community and purpose. In American politics, this tendency toward statism has always been much more at home on the left than on the right.

It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the rich intellectual history of American liberalism that Mr. Goldberg offers to his readers. He has read widely and thoroughly, not only in the primary sources of fascism, but in the political and intellectual history written by the major historians of the subject.

Readers will learn that the very term “liberal fascism” came from the pen of H.G. Wells, the famed socialist author who delivered a speech at Oxford University in 1932 that included hosannas to both Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. “I am asking,” Wells told the students, “for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.” Democracy, he argued, had to be replaced with new forms of government that would save mankind, producing a “‘Phoenix Rebirth’ of liberalism” that would be called “Liberal Fascism.” Like the activism, experimentation, and discipline that made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany new dynamic societies, the West too could reach such a plateau by adopting the new soft fascism that suited it best.

Here’s hoping that Goldberg has the good fortune to be able to discuss his book with real back-and-forth in the coming weeks. I know that for some on the left there will be no need to open the pages of the book - the very fact that Goldberg has used that title, and that cover image, will be enough for a thousand breathless denunciations of the author as “the real Nazi, the Nazi apologist” or whatever. And some on the right may think they needn’t read it, either, but they probably should.

For thoughtful folks on both sides of the aisle, this book may be a useful opening to begin once again listening to each other instead of simply shouting down. If right and left can finally come to a point where both sides may look upon this one word and agree on its meaning, then maybe there will be another word down the road about which there may be mutual recognition, and then maybe another and another. Soon, maybe left and right may be able to dialogue on the meaning of whole sentences, in a peacable and enlightening way. Perhaps peace is built in such ways. Wouldn’t it be loverly?

So, good luck to Goldberg - he’s taking on a brave task - and my copies should be on their way as I write this!

As usual, a percentage of monies earned from anything you purchase at Amazon via this site is donated to the hospice that helped my brother and our family through his last weeks, and I thank you.