November feasts

Happy feast of All Souls and a belated Feast of All Saints!  Our celebration was marked by eating lots of candy left over from Halloween, which conveniently fell on a Saturday before Fall Back time changes.  What could have been a great excuse to have a late night party was just a good excuse to watch scary movies past midnight. (Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer, anyone? Sorry, Abe, I couldn't stay awake to see how your honesty might be tested, and I forgot to ask the kids how it ended. The kids also watched the original Ghostbusters, which is the inspiration for some cute little kid costumes for the DIY crowd, but I wonder how many of those littles will be begging to watch the film before they are old enough to overlook the innuendoes...) 

To mark the holy days, we pulled out some coloring pages and lit a candle with saint stickers on it. Usually I set up the photos of the great-grandparents and line up our selection of pewter saints on the table. Maybe tomorrow... Our pewter saint selection contains patrons of each of the kids' name saints and most of their confirmation saints, but St. Elizabeth of Hungary was sold out this year. I waited months before finally contacting the company and asking for a refund.  They offered to send one of those cheap plastic saint statues painted by machines that miss the exact placement of the eyes and lips, but I declined. 

We actually did have a festive brunch with homemade cinnamon rolls that didn't quite complete their second rise. Our oldest came home for the weekend - well, he stopped in at the house as a rest stop on the way to and from visiting his friend in Ventura whose first baby was baptised this weekend. Almost like a grandbaby! The baby was born a couple weeks ago, but I haven't sent a gift yet. I have about 5 different books in the cart, but can't decide which ones to send.  Do you like to send books as baby gifts? Do you have a favorite go-to baptism gift for a young Catholic family? I'm thinking A for Altar to read and appreciate now and The Clown of God to appreciate later, but I like some of the newer baby board books out right now. Such pretty designs! We often send Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever as a baby gift, so I might send that, too, along with a stuffed lion in honor of the baby's name. Richard Scarry never gets old. 

For dinner tonight we ate baked chicken tenders that looked like bone fingers - as close to pan de muerto as we got.  I forgot about making it, partly because I spent all day talking to students in Zoom conferences. While these conferences have been the highlight of the semester, they have drained my days and my energy.  I met with some students in person one day on campus, masked and sitting across a six-footish table.  It was truly a delight to see them in person and talk to them instead of looking at their distracted faces or avatars on Zoom.  And it was a thrill to be on campus. The school where I teach is located right on the coast, along a cliff that overlooks a favorite surfing spot. People come to this school for the view.  We could easily hold class outside almost every day of the year, but it would be a bit distracting on a warm day to watch the surfers crest the waves below. 

Although I found the conferences to be really fruitful and a great way to give the students a chance to talk freely, they took up four entire days. Now I am behind on everything, grading, laundry, planning, dishes, teaching the first grader, motivating the high schoolers, exercising, making special feast day treats -- you name it.  Oh well. The end of the semester is three weeks away, plus an additional week for finals, which I hardly count. I'll be ready for a pause.  I've a big stack of books to read, after all the holiday prep is done... or the Covid Christmas version of holiday prep. The Christmas card letter will be short this year.

This week is full of big events, right? Tomorrow we can stop being confronted with election ads, even if the election decision continues to be postponed to count straggler mail in ballots.  Our church is holding a day of adoration and prayer for peace. I've signed up for an hour to pray for peace, for an end to the pandemic, and for all the people and things on my prayer list, even though I won't be praying for either candidate to win, and will instead be praying for peace in our hearts and peace in the whole world. 

I know my position as a conscientious objector to this election is not popular - I have been told by people on both sides that my refusal to vote is actually a vote for their opponent - so they each get a vote! Or ... neither does -  neither will be able to claim my vote in their tallies of the popular vote.  I did send in a ballot and voted for other offices and referendums after doing a little research. I am grateful we are still registered in Illinois as that ballot had about 8-10 bubbles to fill in, while the California ballot had dozens.  Our four young adults over the age of 18 each received a ballot at our home address, even though only one lives here, and one is not registered in California anymore.  It has the most complicated propositions in the nation, I would hazard to guess. 

I am not going to explain why I feel like I can't in good conscience vote for either candidate here, - but I am expressing my surprise at the number of people who responded negatively to Peggy Noonan's article in which she expresses her reasons for refusing to choose between Biden and Trump, and instead writing in a candidate. I looked it up online after reading it in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal because I was thinking about sharing it with a friend with whom I had been discussing this idea since we both had similar perspectives.  However, when I read it online, I was surprised to see that 901 people had taken time out of their day to write comments on this article.  How many of these 901 would take the time to compose a handwritten letter to the editor that might be printed in the hard copy of the paper?  I hazard to guess only a small portion - although I could be mistaken.  I was surprised to see how many angry commenters there were - which led me to keep reading, wasting my own time.  These angry commenters appeared to take both positions: How dare you not vote against Trump and for Biden? How dare you not vote against Biden and for Trump? (there seems to a be a number of people who see voting as a way to vote AGAINST someone instead of FOR someone else.) 

Here is a long portion of what Noonan wrote.  I can see why some people might be angered by her position.

"Regular readers know where I stand. Repeating it feels redundant and impolite. [The president] is not a good man who became not a good president. He has had achievements: three sober Supreme Court choices, a strong economy until the pandemic, an attitude toward regulation unhostile to economic growth. Beyond that, bills of damning particulars have been done, some brilliantly. Kevin Williamson in National Review has it exactly right that conservative resistance to Mr. Trump is not about style and aesthetics. The president’s personal flaws are governance flaws. “Trump’s low character is not only an abstract ethical concern but a public menace that has introduced elements of chaos and unpredictability in U.S. government activity. . . . Trump’s problem is not etiquette: It is dishonesty, stupidity, and incompetence.” Ramesh Ponnuru in the same magazine notes something especially important to conservatives: Mr. Trump is an unwitting ally of political correctness. “It posits that the only alternative to left-wing views is bigotry, and he lends credence to that conviction. His presidency has accelerated the growth of our divisions and so been a gift to radicals of the Left and of the Right.” 

I add only two things. For 20 years this column has had at the back of its mind fear of a terrible and immediate crisis that could befall America from its foes. We have seen Mr. Trump’s crisis management in one that unfurled not over minutes but months. Last February I wrote I had a feeling the 2020 election was being settled then, that Mr. Trump had finally met a problem he couldn’t talk his way out of. I believe that’s what happened: He played down the pandemic, lied, made uninformed claims at briefings that serious people were struggling to keep useful. He produced chaos. The country can’t afford any of that in a crisis that is sudden and severe. He would only be worse, more dangerous, more careless, in a second term. 

You look at that White House and you know nobody’s really there inside. It’s a hollow government mostly populated by second- and third-rate people, with the seasoned and competent fired and fled. It’s all so dangerous. 

A vote for him is not possible for me. 

Of the two presidential candidates Joe Biden is more normal, and God knows that has appeal. But normal isn’t “normalcy.” We’ll never return to political normalcy again; we won’t wake up Nov. 4 and say, “Wow, things are sturdy and placid again, like they should be!” We’re in an age of drama and extremes. There are too many ways to avoid the problems of being alive, and the problems of your life, through politics now. The political tribe is the only family a lot of people have, the only religion they have too. And as government has taken up more space in our lives, a weird attentiveness has come to feel not like neurosis but like necessity. 

The Democrats in their current construction are animated and being pushed internally by a progressive left that punches above its weight and numbers, and will continue to do so until it achieves full party dominance. In the next few years, especially if Democrats have the Senate, the new administration looks to become a runaway train with Joe Biden its hapless and reluctant conductor. 

The progressive left endorses and pushes for the identity politics that is killing us, an abortion regime way beyond anything that could be called reasonable or civilized and on which it will make no compromise; it opposes charter schools and other forms of public school liberation; it sees the police as the enemy, it demonstrates no distinct fidelity to freedom of speech and, most recently, its declared hopes range from court packing to doing away with the Electoral College and adding states to the union to pick up Senate seats. The left is animated by a spirit of historical vandalism seen most lately in the “1619 Project” and the attitudes it represents. 

The political philosopher Edmund Burke, a man great enough to address a revolution personally, said to radical France in 1790: “You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you.” Burke knew that society, as his most recent biographer, Jesse Norman, emphasizes, is the product not only of reason but of affection. Burke: “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society . . . is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.” Only from warmth of heart—not with it alone, but it must be there—can you build what will last. Donald Trump doesn’t have it in his words, the progressives don’t in their policies. 

Those policies aren’t a way out, which is what you want in a policy—a way out of a mess or a way to avoid it. They won’t build on and undergird America; they’ll only continue to fracture it. 

I spent 2016 being lectured by hopped-up partisans about binary choices. I didn’t vote for either candidate then and will not now. Is abstaining an honorable choice? For me it is the only one. 

Sometimes you just have to hold up your hand and say no, bad choice, bad paths.
I thought I might leave the line blank as a statement: Neither. Then I thought no, make a gesture that shows what you mean to hold steady to. And so if on some readout of the recorded vote in northern Manhattan you see Edmund Burke, that was me."

* edited to add the Darwins have shared an article by the brilliant Alisdair MacIntyre that also makes an argument for abstaining from the vote when it does not allow a clear choice for good. And they also have a heckler in the comments who makes an ad hominem attack on their reason. And I have again spent too much time thinking about catty replies to this commenter, but am abstaining...

I would like to hope that after everyone makes their choices, and the votes finally tallied, our country will go back to business as usual.  But likely we won't. We can blame that partly on Covid, and partly on that sense of wounded pride, of rejection of "my tribe" that may characterize the losing party, Republican or Democrat.  Whoever loses will likely have a hard time letting go or their anger, perhaps even if there is a landslide victory. 

The sad thing is that this division is happening not just in the public sphere, but also in the church.  Politics has wormed it's way into our religious conversations, unfortunately.  Accusations of conspiracies and darkness are being tossed around by both sides of the political spectrum. It is troubling to see how quickly fringe elements are able to spread their messages via social media and appear legitimate and then are passed around by people who aren't usually fringe element people, lending credence to these ideas.

At any rate, I need to bury my head in grading papers some more. I can barely keep my eyes open. Someday it will all be over - in a month, in a year, in a century... 

Gratuitous puppy pictures plus a couple extra field trip photos: