Sur le pont d'Avignon

The sound of Peruvian pan pipes will always remind me of Avignon. An elderly gentleman clad in what I hope is an alpaca poncho can sometimes be spotted at the entrance to the Woodley Park metro station down the street. He plays the pipes directly into a microphone, which, apparently is the traditional way of doing it. Last October, I recall sitting in front of the colossal Gothic mountain of the Palais des Papes, sketching the facade. For the entire hour and a half that we ambled around the plaza in order to correct and perfect our sketches, the air was filled with the sound of Peruvian pipes being blasted over loudspeakers by a group of be-ponchoed street performers. In an interesting parallel, the neurotic feeling imparted by listening to loud pipe music while trying to concentrate on a sketch pairs rather nicely with the bizarre episode of Church history represented by the papal palace.

Apart from the Gothic palace, the other well-known monument in Avignon is the Pont Saint-Benezet, the remains of a bridge that used to span the Rhone River. In what is perhaps another, more durable symbol of the Avignon Papacy, the Pont of the Supreme Pontiffs never held up. We will recall that one of the Pope's titles literally translates as "Great Bridge-Builder". The bridge built between the Avignon popes and the French monarchy was not one to last. It does however, leave us with a rather romantic ruin. It is a perfect spot from which to watch the afternoon sun bathe the city in colors like "burnt sienna" and "ochre", for instance. I recall being there at such a time. Ahead of me was a father with his little daughter. She was holding his hand, skipping along, singing the little French school-children's song Sur le pont d'Avignon, which has as its subject the very bridge we were standing on and the supposed copious dancing that took place thereupon.

A single-line contour sketch I made of the Pont Saint-Benezet

As I was walking home today from the metro at Woodley Park, the pan pipes were playing. I thought back to Avignon. I am thinking of the malaise and unease setting into many corners of the Church at the moment as a rather contentious Synod of Bishops is underway. I confess that I have not been following it too closely: I'd like to think that my faith does not much depend on the deliberations of some fellows in Rome for a few weeks. But, I thought of Avignon. What wreckage the 14th Century Papacy must've done to the faith of that time. The popes were literally being bankrolled and installed at the behest of the French king. These guys were no paragons of humility, either: of ol' Clement VI it was written, "a fine gentleman, a prince munificent to profusion, a patron of the arts and learning, but no saint." Surely some perspective is afforded by some of these more grotesque periods of Church history. There is a saying that I heard somewhere that says that in the Catholic Church, everything has happened at least once. And yet, here we are still: warty synods and all.

Winter wanderings

My thesis is reaching that crucial time when decisions must be quickly made, committed to, and expanded upon. From now until dim days of December, it shall be one headlong, maddening plunge toward graduation. Architecture students, much like architects proper, are often to be found talking about ourselves and our work - and all of its invariable complexity, and difficulty, and depth, and philosophy, and, oh, you should be both pitying us and marveling at our tenacity at this point! We, as a profession, share a bit of character with the Irish - the greater the number and intensity of your struggles and misfortunes, the higher your rank in a room. Needless to say, a bit of exaggeration goes on. Yet, I shall indeed be very busy for the next two months.

When it is all over, I will be heading out on another journey. It is perhaps a bit of the "millennial goes traipsing before growing up" genre, but there you have it. The prospect of two weeks vacation for the next ten years means that I shan't be heading to Europe again for awhile. So, I'm going now. In the wintry depths of January, I'm going to go to Helsinki in Finland for a few days. From there, I'll make a quick tour of the pint-sized Baltic countries before continuing into Poland. I'll be making a point to visit the famed Jasna Gora monastery, home of the holy icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa -- the spiritual heart of Poland. After a stay in Krakow, I'll hop over the Carpathians and across Slovakia to Vienna. The Austrian capital is another place that has always held my fascination. I think it will merit the better part of a week. I may make a trek up into the Wiener Wald to the Cistercian monastery at Heiligenkreuz, where there are relics of the True Cross and a growing community of monks. After Vienna, things are hazy at the moment and are dependent on friends and the ability of their couches. The goal is to end in Paris for a few days before coming home.

As of now, I am planning this as a solo trip. I have traveled by myself only sparingly. I think there is a lot to learn about oneself in solitude, especially in unfamiliar circumstances. The practical side of things is that I can spend my time exactly as I would like - indulging my idiosyncrasies at will. It is weird not to talk to people though. I went to Caen in Normandy last October and didn't speak the whole day apart from ordering lunch. It was liberating in an odd way. Sometimes I talk too much (see first paragraph) to no profitable end. Silence and solitude are valuable teachers.

24 and the Pontiff

Last week was pretty momentous on this side of the computer. I turned 24 on Tuesday. The day was pretty unremarkable for the most part. I was at work, on site. I have been on site a lot recently. I have been doing punch lists for an 11-story apartment building that is almost completed. Basically, I have to go around into every unit and mark everything that is wrong with blue painter's tape. An employee from the contractor firm walks with me and inputs everything into a system so that it can be fixed by the appropriate subcontractor. It's not the most fun. However, it does get me up and out of the office. After work, I had a nice dinner with three good friends at a French restaurant. It was a wonderful treat.

On Wednesday, the Holy Father, Francis, celebrated Mass on the east portico of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. During Mass, His Holiness canonized St. Junipero Serra. I was way in the back of the congregation, but I had a clear sight line to the altar (designed by several of my colleagues here in the School of Architecture). The Pope looked fairly tired (I don't blame him), and his voice was quite soft, but it was an extraordinary event.

September

Fall is upon us. Though, unhappily, fall weather is not, at least around your scribe's abode. The busy-ness resulting from the agitated confluence of work, school, and the rest has launched me into a whirl of activity. Are your Septembers busy? Mine always are. The air needs to get cooler to accommodate the annual rush of activity that attends the end of summer. In bygone years it was football games and homecoming and new friends, now it's thesis projects and work deadlines pressing down after the summer lull. Someday, I will have a restful September, a calm and golden-tinted transition into the radiant glories of October, which I will be able to relish appropriately. Brooding November will be as placid as a newly frozen lake. December will arrive with coziness and warmth shining from its frosted windows. One's advanced years are often called the autumn of one's life. Perhaps that is the only time we will be able to experience autumn in its completeness without the often superficial rush of quotidian tasks. The term certainly did not arise to draw a comparison to the September of a twentysomething graduate student. 

Monsignor

Since I moved in May, I've been attending St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, which is just a few blocks from my new apartment. Its clergy are Oratorians, a group of professed religious who take a vow to exercise their ministry in a certain specific place. The Washington Oratory, which is St. Thomas, is quite young and is still technically an Oratory-in-formation. In this early stage, the local clergy are being assisted by Monsignor Wadsworth, a British priest of some renown.

Today I almost ran into Monsignor. I had just gotten off the escalator at the Metro. I had just received a text apiece from two friends I had not heard from in many months -- Isn't it funny how that happens sometimes? I was walking on the sidewalk along Connecticut Avenue, clogged with slow-walking tourists most days, but especially this week in anticipation of the Fourth of July. I dodge a stroller, look down at my phone, look up and find myself staring into the eyes of Monsignor Wadsworth, not more than a foot in front of me.

He's a kind man with a gentle demeanor. He gives pointed, but well-considered homilies, with their share of one-liners:

"Not much in our world is imperishable. I think Our Lord asks more of us than a can of tomato soup." (on the imperishability of the soul)

"Our dear Cardinal, a good friend and a lovely man, has not yet realized that the New Evangelization is the same as the old evangelization" (on Cardinal Wuerl)

"The message is the same. God does not change. The message does not change. If you came to church last Sunday, last month, last year, five years ago, ten years ago, fifty years ago, the message is the same. I doubt many of you would've been at mass one hundred years ago -- those people come on Sunday mornings." (on the perennial nature of the Gospel)

"We need to learn the language of heaven. If you go to another country, it helps to learn a language rather than just talking LOUDLY and slowly like we English speakers tend to do. I've been here for six years and I'm still learning the language." (on American English)

"St. Philip [Neri] was often asked what authors to read. He suggested - and I suggest to you - authors whose names begin with the letter S... Saint..." (on what to read)

I managed a "Good evening, Father!" before stepping out of the poor man's way. He was with the parish priest and the novice who recently took his first vows. They were wearing the distinctive cassock and collar of the Oratory. It is always nice to see clergy dressed like clergy while out and about. I saw one priest this weekend in the National Gallery of Art in a cassock.

In the final analysis, a near run-in with Monsignor was not nearly as embarrassing as when I sneezed on the Bishop of Lafayette-in-Indiana.

Kriol

"Orait, longtaim bifo enijing bin jidan, det Wed bin jidan, en det Wed bin jidan garram God, en det Wed na im God. Wal brom longtaim det Wed bin jidan garram God, God bin meigim ebrijing garram det Wed. Im nomo bin meigim enijing nomo garram det Wed, det Wed na bin abum det pawa blanga gibitbat laif, en det laif na bin det lait blanga ebribodi, det lait oldei shain langa det dakbala, en det dakbala kaan neba audim det lait."

--- John 1:1-5

This well-known scriptural passage is rendered here in Kriol, an English-based creole language spoken by many Australian Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory. Creole languages are fascinating to me because they rely so much on actually speaking the words, as the language being creolized is often not a written one. In the first sentence we read "longtaim bifo enijing bin jidan" which looks pretty foreign until you speak it aloud and realize it's "longtime before anything [was made?]". It's not exactly "in the beginning" but you get the drift. I once saw some Haitian Creole (which is based on French) written someplace. It was amusing to me because the French-derived words were actually written like they are pronounced (ça as sa, qui as ki, dite as di, etc.). I didn't understand what I was reading until I tried reading it aloud to myself.   

On accents

Isn't it interesting that English lacks any accents or other diacritical marks? I can think of no other language off the top of my head where this is the case, apart from Latin. As English is a hodgepodge of various languages, one would think that some of the diacritical marks of French or of the Norse languages would've survived. Middle English still used some of the old Norse letters like ð, æ, and þ, for instance (these are preserved in modern Icelandic). Perhaps accents would make English easier to learn for non-native speakers? But then again, sometimes spelling is so disconnected from pronunciation that this may be impossible. It would be difficult to explain the difference in pronunciation of "cough" and "through", for example, with the mere addition of a diacritical mark or two.

I am in the midst of reading Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. The subject of language has always fascinated me, especially when it comes to the evolution of sounds and words. Last night, I was at a friend's 25th birthday party. Several of us were talking about how we are getting to the point of "not understanding kids these days." We were discussing the use of the expression "on fleek" which has apparently arisen recently. Synonyms include "on point". We decided it sounds far better if one pretends it was a French phrase. Thus, en flique, was added to the modern lexicon. Nous etions en flique hier soir...

Home for Holy Week

I am at home for a few days for Easter. This is the first time I've been home for Easter with my family for many, many years. At Ball State, we had no time off for Easter (indeed, many of our studio deadlines seemed to fall on Good Friday) so my family would come down to Muncie for the weekend.

Yesterday, I arrived home and spent much of the afternoon napping. Last night after dinner, I went with my parents for a drive out to the lake. It was the first time in a few years that I'd been to Grand Haven. We parked and walked along the riverfront out to the pier. It was sunny and mild, but as we reached the lake, it got windier and colder. There was still a lot of ice on the pier and on the beach side of the pier. The wind blowing across the ice made it pretty chilly. Still, it was nice to walk around and enjoy the sunlight and the beautiful sunset. We met an old man on the pier who appeared to be a local photographer. He was eager to tell us how much ice has melted in the past week (and how it compares to last year at this time, and sundry other factoids). Later, we joked that that would be my dad in retirement because he likes to strike up random conversations with strangers. We drove back to Grand Rapids and got ice cream with my little sister from the ice cream stand where I used to work. It was in the 60s even that late in the evening.

Grand Haven beach

Along the pier

"crazy people"

The snow fences are still up

Sunset

Pier

Today the rain was torrential. I went to the bank and paid off a loan I had taken to go to Paris. It was a nice feeling to have that taken care of. The teller was surprised when I asked for my balance to pay in its entirety. She said, "Like, the whole thing? We don't get too many people wanting to pay off the whole thing! Good for you!" I don't like the idea of being in debt. I read Independent People by Halldór Laxness last fall, and the plot centers on a character who has worked for eighteen years to be free of debt and has been overtaken with an extreme aversion to being indebted to anyone - even to the point of refusing charity. His quest for "independence" is exaggerated to point out its faults. But that was in rural Iceland in the early 20th Century. One was in debt to one's neighbors, not to vast banking conglomerates.

Saturday Prime

How long shall sinners, O Lord: how long shall sinners glory? / Shall they utter and speak iniquity? Shall all speak who work iniquity? / Thy people, O Lord, they have brought low: and they have afflicted thy inheritance. / They have slain the widow and the stranger and they have murdered the fatherless. / And they have said: The Lord shall not see. Neither shall the God of Jacob understand. / Understand, ye senseless among the people: and, you fools, be wise at last. / He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? Or he that formed the eye, doth he not consider? / He that chastiseth nations, shall he not rebuke: he that teaches man knowledge?

--- Psalm 93:3-10, Second Psalm for Prime on Saturday

Many good works

Today I went to mass at 12:30. It was the first time I've been to daily mass in awhile. The chapel was hot. We are at that time of year when the air conditioning is not on and one day of hot weather - like yesterday - can cause heat to linger in buildings for a bit. The priest was one I did not recognize. He had a booming, measured voice. He was a skilled orator. In his brief homily, he focused on these words from St. John's Gospel:

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus answered them, "I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?"

--- John 10:32

I had never noticed this particular verse before. It is one where I can really hear the voice of Jesus for some reason - a verse where he sounds particularly human. There's just a tinge of sarcasm present. The priest asked us to consider the times that we attempt to metaphorically stone Jesus despite the blessings we are given continually. He then related the scene to the temptation of the devil in the desert: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." If something we want isn't given to us from God, what is our response to be? First, thanksgiving for the other blessings we have. Second, hope in the plan of divine providence which is beyond all of our understanding. 

This passage presents a difficult lesson in humility. After mass, there was exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. There's humility.

Nothin' to see

Travel has always been a predominantly visually-focused endeavor. We have always wanted to see the sights, or if there were any sights worth seeing. In our Age of Instagram, the visual is even more paramount to the experience of travel. As an aspiring design professional, I am of course biased toward the visual both naturally and as a consequence of my education. In terms of our popular culture, I suppose that means that I could probably get more Instagrams-per-square-inch out of more places than the average non-designer.

But, what happens when there's "nothin' to see." In Louisiana, apart from New Orleans, I was told there was "nothin' to see." On the face of it, that's fairly accurate: "the sights" are few and far between. But, it's often a separate joy finding the poetry in the mundane and the routine - even if it's not visually arresting. You can't photograph the chewiness of a piece of crawfish, described by a friend as "a little dirty shrimp." One can take a photo of the magnificent live oaks that shade the campus of LSU, but you can't depict the joy that they bring to the eyes of a winter-bound Northerner who is amazed that such great green things are such an ordinary part of daily life in some places in the world. And, since I attempted it, you can't really photograph the sense of benevolent enclosure those magnificent trees provide. I'd almost consider moving South just for the trees. And what about the rain? In five days I encountered several species of that multifarious creature. There was the light rain that was largely intercepted by the live oaks, leaving the pathways damp but puddle-free; there were clouds that simply stooped to eye-level and deposited their moisture radiantly; and then there were downpours worthy of Noah, soaking, flooding, washing dirt where it shouldn't be and then washing it clean. Then there were the various sociologist's delights. There was the fraternity house of Delta Chi where I was lodging (my friend - a student affairs Masters student - took a job as their house director) which gave me a few fleeting glances beneath the surface of Greek life. The campus provided further people-watching opportunities. I was amazed at how easy I found it to pick out people who were of French descent - the long Norman faces and often long wavy hair I saw everywhere made it seem like I was looking through my grandmother's old family album. The Cajuns were Canadian before they were Louisianian after all.

Sometimes when there's nothin' to see, I think I come home with a better sense of the place and its people.

Extraordinary architecture

As part of my research-assistant duties, I've been editing a collection of 700-some written accounts of people's 'extraordinary architectural experiences' which were submitted as part of a survey of over 3,000 people in 2007. Reading them closely - in addition to taking a hideously long time (the Word document is about 500 pages) - has been interesting. There are some patterns and some buildings (the usual suspects) that crop up again and again. But, it has gotten me thinking about what I would submit to such a survey. I have been fortunate to be quite well traveled in my short life, and I've seen a lot of architecture, but to boil it down to a few 'extraordinary experiences' would be difficult, let alone a single one. The other, more formidable trouble is how to muster the appropriate words to describe the experience. Many of the stories sound flat simply because what they are attempting to describe is as difficult as pinpointing what is special about the architecture in the first place. One particularly poignant story that sticks out in my mind simply said, "I have no words. If I did, why bother building?"

I think my post the other day about Casa Malaparte would be perhaps the closest I could get. But that was a single moment. I could never describe the whole experience of the architecture of that place in the same detail.

To buy peace at the expense of logic

"One of the most familiar weaknesses of the human mind is the wish to reconcile contrary principles and buy peace at the expense of logic. Hence there have always been and will always be men who, after submitting certain of their religious beliefs to some authority, will seek to exempt other beliefs from that same authority, and who will allow their minds to fluctuate erratically between obedience and liberty. But I am inclined to think that the number of such people will be smaller in democratic centuries than at other times, and that our progeny will tend increasingly to fall into one or the other of two categories: those who abandon Christianity entirely, and those who join the Roman Church."

--- from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (1840)

Freshwater people

Kurt Vonnegut once declared that you were either a freshwater person or a saltwater person. He argued that those from the Midwest, surrounded as we are by the greatest reserves of freshwater on the planet are inherently freshwater people. I admit the ocean has always unsettled me. I still regard its repugnant taste, its boundlessness, and its mysterious depths with suspicion. The outward-looking nature of the ocean is disturbing. Lakes and rivers are finite and knowable. My ancestors clung to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and the Seine and the Danube. They moved from the middle of Europe to the middle of America, buffered by thousands of miles of land from the vagaries of sea breezes and oceanic uncertainties. Chicago and Detroit and Milwaukee - though they engage in shipping - are not port cities. Not like New York. In New York, you never know what might show up. What might that saltwater bring? Not the certainty of life inherent in freshwater.

The pre-revolutionists

I don't think we give enough thought to the pre-revolutionists, suckers as we are for the drama of the guillotine and the shots heard round the world. But, revolutions - like humans - are not born ex nihilo but have intellectual genealogies replete with venerated progenitors and strange uncles alike. I think often of the Second Vatican Council. There are those who fault it almost exclusively for all manner of changes and insurrections that occurred during and immediately after its promulgation. Are we not equally as curious about the teachers in the seminaries that taught the prelates that wrought the changes? Political upheavals are often easier to chart, but again it is curious to dwell on what the germ was that grew into massive change. We trace the Communist slaughter of Tsarist Russia back almost directly to Marx, but Marx was not created with those ideas in his head, nor was Marx Russian. And what had predisposed the proletariat to believe in Lenin's Marxism in such numbers? These, to me, are the interesting questions, and the ones that those with eyes to see might find interesting when looking at our own times.

Description

Do you ever think about yourself in the third person? I often catch myself thinking about how some situation might be written about in a book. I think it's interesting to ponder how the description of a scene and the act of committing it to words changes the coloration of the experience in the mind.

I catch myself thinking of the past few weeks: of French being badly and loudly spoken in the small basement of a brick house, of the temporary loss of a bluish-gray scarf, of the worn out and curling soles of shoes bought in September, of the color of Earl Grey when it refuses to dislodge itself from the bottom of a teacup, of a symphonic car alarm that sounds down the street at the onset of twilight - the antithesis of the cock-crow, of garbage men yelling to one another as their truck moves in fits and starts down the hill like a loud mechanized crustacean stumbling down the windswept dune, of the smell of tomato sauce at midnight on dirty dishes, of the circling of helicopters at night in the black sky that is really quite pink, of a large moon rising between ancient trees at the top of a hill, and of many other sensory delights that we must sift through each day, only to discard most of them in the eternal oblivion of that part of the brain whose job is forgetfulness.

A conversation in a bookstore

This week has consisted of many overtime days at work due to deadlines on several projects on which I am involved. Today, I needed to only work one hour to get to my 40 hour work week. Fortunately, things were drastically less busy today, so I left the office around 4:30. On the way to the Metro, I stopped off at Bridge Street Books, as I hadn't paid them a visit in two or three weeks. Sometimes one just needs to soak in the bookstore atmosphere for a bit - gathering bits of miscellany from the travel section and the politics section for no particular reason.

I was upstairs, moseying around the philosophy section (too much Marx, not enough Kierkegaard), when I overheard two young women, about my age, conversing near a display of the works of the late Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"I have to say I like nonfiction more," quoth lady the first.
"That's a good quality to have, I think," replied her friend.
"I think so. I try to like great literature, but I can never get into it."
"Oh, I can. I just love fiction. But, it sort of sucks, you know? What practical benefit is there to just liking stories?"

At this point, the pair proceeded downstairs. I was a bit flabbergasted by the turn the conversation had taken. Why do we all of the sudden need a "practical" justification for reading literature? Is this where our utilitarian mindset has taken us? Will we soon have no art in schools and no fiction in bookstores simply because they are impractical? Will we replace all of our novels with mechanic's manuals? Surely, those are practical.

I exaggerate, of course, but only to make a point. Perhaps we have too much distorted the meaning of the word "education" so that it now only means something like "acquiring facts." We have developed a cult of "practical education" where workforce training is seen as obviously superior to the training of the mind to reason and to wonder. Surely, in the spirit of true education, there is much that Shakespeare and Hugo and Garcia Marquez and other mere fictionists can teach us about the world and about ourselves. Perhaps this conclusion is not as obvious as I naively suspected.

I bought a seven dollar copy of The Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard (a piece of nonfiction) and left.

Saint Jean Baptiste Day

Meanwhile, the crucifix remains in Parliament

Today is the 180th celebration of the Fête National of the Quebecois - the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. Though this midsummer festival was observed with feasting and fanfare from the earliest days of New France, the first "official" celebrations of the day as a 'national' holiday date to 1834. St Pope Pius X encouraged the public celebration of St Jean Baptiste Day and named the Holy Forerunner of Christ as the patron saint of French Canadians in 1908.

There is perhaps no better way to start to understand modern Quebec than through the lens of St Jean Baptiste Day. Since the so-called Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, which upended the Catholic Church's societal dominance throughout the province, the day has taken on a much more nationalist tone. Some years, depending on the provincial government, the celebrations are more separatism-friendly than others. Regardless, the religious undertones have been largely expunged and relegated to the sterile confines of "cultural heritage".

The same statement might as well be applied to the entirety of La Belle Province. Flannery O'Connor once described the American South as "Christ-haunted" - the same could be said of Quebec. Our Lord haunts the countryside in the names of His saints, applied to every little village. Our Lord's cross and His Blessed Mother's fleur-de-lys haunt the provincial flag (one of the most graphically-pleasing flags in the world, but I digress). Our Lord even haunts the chambers of Parliament, where a crucifix has been allowed to remain "as an important component of the historical character of the Province."

Yet, rates of weekly mass attendance throughout the province are among the lowest in the Catholic world. In a society where formerly large families were encouraged and commonplace (my French Canadian great-great-grandmother was one of eighteen), the birth rate now limps toward replacement rate. What can we make of the rapid secularization of what was formerly one of the most devout regions on earth?

It is indeed a riddle. On the one hand, I am wary of seeing the Church too powerful or too cozy with the political establishment, as this has often lead to abuses. At the same time, the Quebecois church was not an egregious offender in this way - society simply changed the government and threw the Church out with it, because they were viewed as such close allies. Political abuses were projected onto the Church. Now, there exists what the French term laïcité - religion may play a discreet and private role in an individual's life, but that is it. This model is decidedly more pointedly secular than our American model, which envisioned churches as operating more or less as they please outside of government interference, with free exercise being a well-defined right of all citizens.

The more important question than how we got where we are, is to consider how we might successfully evangelize in such a culture that has actively decided to privatize religion and sees any corporate, institutional religion as a threat to a culture's way of life. How can the Church in Quebec, which was once an institutional marvel, recenter itself on Christ and authentic discipleship? How can things grow from the ground up, so that people are attracted to the lifestyle of other people and not to the perceived "institution" and its historical baggage?

The answers to these questions are many and can be difficult to parse, but things certainly can get much worse in Quebec for the Church before they get better. That's not to lose hope, though. Among the first batch of cardinals named by Pope Francis was the Archbishop of Quebec, Gerald Cyprien Lacroix. The Pontiff allegedly told the Cardinal in an audience that "the Church needs Quebec!" Perhaps to underscore this point, His Holiness canonized François de Laval, Lacroix's predecessor - the first bishop of Quebec - who evangelized much of the province himself. The Pope knows what needs to be done. Let us pray for the day that the Church in Quebec will stand proudly with her patron, John the Baptist, announcing the saving presence of Christ!

The City of Magnificent Distances

 Washington is a walking city. If you've read any of my accounts of my own lookings-around the city (with or without friends in tow), you will have noticed the distances covered on foot are not negligible. For starters, the Mall is about two miles long from end to end, so to traverse it at a leisurely pace takes about forty-five minutes (inclusive of waiting time at crosswalks, which, in this city, can also be a considerable use of one's time). But, as spread out as the city is, it is sometimes downright pleasant to walk around in. Perhaps the human-scaled architecture, prevented by law from reaching much more than one hundred feet, lends the city a more agreeable street scape. The streets themselves - even the busy ones - are generally no more than four lanes wide, which keeps traffic slower (much to their chagrin, I'm sure).

In any event, even in the summertime humidity it has proven a pleasure to stretch the legs after work and walk around the city. Just last Wednesday, I met up with a friend who had an extra ticket to go to the top of the Washington Monument, which has just reopened to the public. To meet him, I walked along the Potomac from Georgetown, enjoying the trail along the waterfront before turning east at the Lincoln Memorial to head down the Mall. This past Friday evening, friends were picnicking at the Sculpture Garden for the ever-popular Jazz in the Garden summer concert series. I again walked from work, but chose the more direct route of Virginia Avenue, as I was in more of a hurry. Both walks were probably about two miles when all was said and done, but they were quite nice.

I had been toying with the idea of walking to or from work at some point, just to see how it went. The route I currently take to work, detailed in a post or two below, is rather convoluted if you map it out with geographic accuracy. As the crow flies, I live about four miles from work. As the Metro runs (or doesn't run) and as the Matt walks, my current commute shakes out to about seven and a half miles. I figured walking would be a happy middle-ground distance-wise. So, today I tried it out and clocked in at just under five miles walking at about an eighteen minute mile average pace. That brings us to an hour and a half walk. Getting home via Metro and walking takes about an hour. So, I saved $2.60 by adding a half hour to my commute today.

The trek

I think it may be worth it to make a habit out of this walk (perhaps in the mornings, when it's cooler, instead). The neighborhoods that I pass through are generally the green, leafy sort, so there is ample shade. There's a lot of fine landmarks to look at. And, lastly, there's many different changes in route that I could make to keep things interesting.

Today, I took the most direct route I could think of. Turning north off M St just before Rock Creek, I cut through a small park whose path led me to the P St Bridge, which I crossed and then immediately turned left onto Florida Avenue. After a brief stint on Florida as it winds past the Cosmos Club and the Embassy of Estonia, I turned north on to the mighty Connecticut Avenue. This was perhaps least pleasant portion, as the street is five lanes and quite busy during the evening rush hour. But, it lasted for only a block or two before I turned northeast on to Columbia Road, which I followed through Kalorama, Adams Morgan, and into Columbia Heights. Columbia Road is interesting in that it provides almost the entire spectrum of the socioeconomic strata of the city in less than a mile - from the Neoclassical severity of the Russian Economic Mission to an Ethiopian laundromat. From Columbia Heights, it was but a quick jaunt over to New Hampshire Avenue, then on to Rock Creek Church Road, which I followed along around to my humble abode just across North Capitol Street.

I have toyed with the idea of biking as well, but there is something downright nice about walking that you don't necessarily experience while biking. You get just as sweaty, but see half as much. Plus, it's a hassle to get my bike out of my apartment, down the stairs, and out the door (and then back in), and at 8am, I am just not one to deal with it. Anyways, we'll see how the walking goes, and whether I stick with it periodically or not.  

Men of Letters

I am almost finished reading The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by popular historian David McCullough. It has been a fascinating look at the "long Nineteenth Century" in Paris, during which time it was the undisputed world capital of the arts, science, and culture (and maybe still is). The author follows the lives of many notable Americans who made long stays in Paris, including such luminaries as James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel Morse, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, among many, many others.

An interesting thing to consider about the book, which deals about day-to-day existence as well as wider historical happenings, is that the primary source material is from personal letters and journals. Though only a few were "writers", everyone was constantly writing. Of course, it was out of necessity in those days, but it gives me pause to consider how my generation will be reconstructed by historians. We are, generally, not writing very much. At least, not in any intimate or personal way to one another. The phone call has generally replaced the letter for such needs. But, though they may serve a similar purpose, they are not perfectly analogous. First, the letter is permanent, while the phone call (apart from some clandestine word-for-word transcription being generated by the NSA) is transient. Second, the letter, as a literary form, can pack in much extemporaneous information that is notably absent from most phone calls. Poetic descriptions of the weather, or musings on the culture that one is immersed in, are predictably absent from most phone calls that I am apart of.

We might then suppose that the internet, in all its myriad social media platforms, may be the other replacement for the letter. But, as a public forum, it is necessarily deficient in the exact opposite ways as a phone call. The internet is public, and largely permanent (though it feels transient), so a degree of intimacy and personality is inherently missing. We hurl our thoughts out into the abyss on the internet (I am doing so now) without much thought about the person-to-person conversations or discoveries that they may engender. And, when they do engender discussion, the case is that it often rapidly devolves into nonsensical shouting (have you read the comments on anything, ever?). No, the letter, with its one intended recipient, has a way of provoking thoughtful response that no blog or Facebook post ever will.

So, that leaves me to my original question, I suppose. How will we be discovered by generations yet nonexistent? Will they google us and find our blogs? Will they be able to read our Facebook messages and updates to get a sense of what we were thinking and doing? Will they raid the digital archives for our Instagram photos? And, will they, when all of this is said and done, come away with only a shallow impression of our existence - as shallow as we are accused of being by other generations for delving so deeply into the fleeting things of the digital age?