Another September weekend in the bag. I’m growing to enjoy these things, these “weekends.” This was Friday night: A couple of brew-pops at a local dive bar marked for destruction. It’s in the way of the hockey arena, but until then, it remains your proverbial not-particularly-clean-or-well-lighted-place, and delightful. Graffiti in the outdoor smoking lounge:
For the record, Dan Gilbert is not the Detroit-transformin’ tycoon responsible for the Comet’s death sentence, but Mike Ilitch. Disclaimer: I don’t believe he touches boys, except in the usual sense of the phrase, like how you might pat a dude on the shoulder. But people get upset when good dive bars go down.
Saturday was a local music festival in Windsor. I can never shake the weird feeling I have when I’m in Canada — everything is the same, but not. Windsor is closer to my own house than Bloomfield Hills is, but it’s just so not-U.S., especially in the sense that you don’t have to drive many miles to get some fine Asian food. We had pho at a Vietnamese place, with that wonderful pho broth that arrives at the table exhaling the scent of a place you’ve never been, but really want to visit one of these days. The music was…well, it was Canadian. Everyone sounded CBC-ready, but not a lot of stank on anything.
And now it is Sunday, the cool weather continues, and I just concluded a 45-minute twilight bike cruise. This is another thing I’m enjoying, this after-dark and pre-dawn cycling. The night time is the right time.
Some bloggage:
If I remember my catechism correctly, the actual corpse of a potential saint is considered key to their beatification process because of incorruptibility, or something. It all sounds terribly macabre, which is how this story about the delayed beatification of the late Bishop Fulton Sheen sounds so damn medieval:
By canon law, the body should be exhumed and authenticated before beatification, and relics — bone fragments and other physical remains — taken for the purpose of veneration.
An interesting look at a variety of Catholicism most Catholics wouldn’t even recognize.
Have a good week, all.
Dexter said on September 15, 2014 at 4:01 am
Before we got got a TV in 1954, Mom would take my brother and I next door, which was down the country road a half mile to our neighbor’s home to watch Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s TV extravaganza. I was four years old but I remember that, and later when we got the TV, I remember what a mesmerizing speaker he was. Mom was fearful and distrusting of Catholics…where she copped that attitude was a mystery to me , but she too watched him. Two big shows back then were must-see teevee, Sheen and Liberace. What a pair.
I think it was just last year when the Vatican paraded Pope John XXIII’s corpse around the vias and piazzas of Vatican City commemorating the 1963 death of the greatest pope in my lifetime. The death mask was creepy only because it was being paraded around. Pope Francis is so progressive, I would not put it past him to end this and call for cremation of everyone, popes and bishops and cardinals alike. 🙂 Ha ha.
And…NETFLIX has added one more season of episodes of the classic Nova Scotia comedy “Trailer Park Boys”. I was so glad…I have been savoring one episode daily and truly laughing myself sick. So damn funny
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alex said on September 15, 2014 at 8:06 am
My ex was related to Fulton Sheen. His was a family of cafeteria Catholics. Kids went to confirmation classes so the parents could get them out of the house and have themselves a bang on Sunday morning. Otherwise there wasn’t much church attendance. This stands in contrast to the family of my current partner, who spend lovely summer weekends cooped up inside doing CHRP retreats (which I guess is sort of a modern confessional where lay people lay out their dirty laundry for one another instead of titillating the priests). I’m so glad I was raised by heathens and we can just talk trash whenever the spirit moves us.
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brian stouder said on September 15, 2014 at 9:14 am
. Caught most of Burns’ Roosevelt opus, and was struck anew by all the cousin-marrying. It was interesting that they did have a late flurry of disclaimers and forewarnings about Teddy’s war-loving dark side. His belief in the superiority of “Aryan” peoples, and his actions in the Pacific (it seems to me) makes TR a key part of the chain of events that leads to Pearl Harbor…but we’ll see what the Burns crew has to say.
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Pam said on September 15, 2014 at 10:37 am
My main take away from the Roosevelt special was Teddy’s quotes about people in government and big business. And how nothing has really changed in that arena.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 15, 2014 at 10:38 am
By canon law, the body should be exhumed and authenticated before beatification, and relics — bone fragments and other physical remains — taken for the purpose of veneration.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGG.
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Jolene said on September 15, 2014 at 10:38 am
Franklin and Eleanor were fifth cousins once removed, Brian. Not a very close relationship. Think of how many generations would have to come after the original children-of-siblings relationship between first cousins.
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brian stouder said on September 15, 2014 at 10:52 am
A fair point, Jolene – which lead me to Uncle Google, and this –
http://listverse.com/2008/07/20/10-famous-people-who-married-their-cousins/
which is worth a chuckle
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Dave said on September 15, 2014 at 10:55 am
I’ve never quite been able to grasp the once-removed label. As I understand it, a first cousin to a person’s parent would actually be, not a second cousin as I’ve always thought, but a first cousin once removed. Is that correct. There are charts but I tend to get boggled down with them.
I didn’t know until last night that Eleanor was Teddy’s niece, let alone that her father, Teddy’s brother, had such issues.
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Jolene said on September 15, 2014 at 11:24 am
Yes, Dave, you’re right. The child of my first cousin is my first cousin, once removed. The children of two first cousins are second cousins.
For second cousins, the generations match. That is, they both have the same relationship to the original sibling pair. The “once removed” generation indicates that the two people in question are of different generations in relation to the sibling pair.
Does that help?
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Dorothy said on September 15, 2014 at 11:29 am
I watched the first hour of The Roosevelts and really enjoyed it. I must have forgotten about what happened the day after Alice Roosevelt was born. How tragic was that?!
I recorded it at 1 am so we can see what we missed another day. (And I’m recording the other 6 as well.) Did anyone else think that young Teddy bore a close resemblance to the late Paul Walker of the Fast and the Furious movies? I certainly thought so.
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MarkH said on September 15, 2014 at 11:58 am
Columbus peeps, particularly Dispatch Printing Co. employees here, past & present (Kirk, Nancy, Borden and myself, that I know of), how familiar are you with this story:
http://news.yahoo.com/feds-chase-treasure-hunter-turned-fugitive-002700582.html
What’s fascinating about this is that the staid Wolfe family would be so taken with the notion of this treasure hunt that they would risk the $1 million. Either that, or Thompson was such a capable Battelle-based con man. Oh, sure they probably invested in a few more unlikely ventures, like ‘Living Single Magazine’ in the early ’80s. But that was chump change compared to this. Any of you have any more background on what motivated the Wolfes here?
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MarkH said on September 15, 2014 at 12:03 pm
Dave, Jolene is correct. Here is a series of charts that will go further to explain cousin convolution:
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/l/a/n/Gerald-Langenhoff/FILE/0002page.html
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Jolene said on September 15, 2014 at 1:57 pm
Have just been listening to a couple of talking heads spout off about how employers other than the NFL treat domestic violence much more stringently. The idea was that a person publicly and credibly accused of DV would be put, at least, suspended while the legal case was adjudicated. This struck me as BS. Have never heard of such a policy or, for that matter, any incident in which an employer responded to such an accusation.
But maybe I am just poorly informed. Anyone here know anything about HR policies in thus area? How about accusations of other crimes? Would an employer typically suspend someone charged, but not convicted, of, say, DUI?
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Dexter said on September 15, 2014 at 2:20 pm
twitter is still going crazy over Miss Nebraska showing off her underwear by exposing her crotch at Miss America last night, was it? In this age of two-clicks-to-porn, how could anyone flip out over a little glimpse of panties?
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LAMary said on September 15, 2014 at 2:34 pm
Where I work we won’t hire anyone convicted of domestic violence or any other violent crime. We run background checks. DUI is a matter of how long ago it was. I think we like it to be at least five years ago. I don’t know what the policy is if you’re already working here and you get convicted for DV, but I suspect you get let go.
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brian stouder said on September 15, 2014 at 3:49 pm
A DUI will probably get you the heave-ho hereabouts, too. It would presumably cost the company more money – for increased liability premiums and so on, not even to mention what the price might be if you wrecked a company vehicle while impaired.
As soon as the NFL guys see their income stream (or income river, as the case may be) diminish, THEN (and only then)they’ll get serious.
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Dave said on September 15, 2014 at 4:31 pm
My old employer would have suspended them without pay, pending the outcome of the case. They call it, “Conduct Unbecoming”. Same goes for the DUI, but not always. My position was federally licensed and there was a driving record check every three years connected to that, although we never thought connecting a driver’s license to a locomotive engineer’s license was quite fair. Regardless, sooner or later, the company was going to learn if there’d been a DUI event and railroads are death on drugs and alcohol, every since the Amtrak/Conrail collision at Gunpow, MD, in 1987. This collision was the final straw in what led to licensing and drug tests by 1991.
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Jolene said on September 15, 2014 at 6:18 pm
I did a bit of googling after posting my question and found that some organizations do have policies about domestic violence. Of course, no private organization posts its employee manual on the web, but some public employers do. Those I looked at don’t say anything as explicit as, “An employee charged with or convicted of domestic violence will be terminated.” Note that I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do–just that it doesn’t appear that such definitive policies are common.
Instead, the policies seem to focus on ensuring safe workplaces, directing affected employees to resources such as employee assistance programs, complying with orders of protection, and preventing the abuse of the organization’s resources (e.g., using an email system to harass or threaten someone).
Here’s an example:
http://www.binghamton.edu/human-resources/policies/domestic-violence.html
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Charlotte said on September 15, 2014 at 7:36 pm
My younger cousin who started SoulCycle (which is causing agita by closing a studio to expand http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/fashion/at-soulcycle-tribeca-the-spinning-stops-panic-ensues.html) — anyhow, she and I are actually first cousins four or five times removed. My great-great grandfather and her great grandfather were brothers. But we grew up together, travelled in Asia together, lived in Telluride together — so the cousin part of it is really tight. And the fact that she became an exercise mogul is hilarious — so proud of her, but totally unexpected.
My mother’s social circle was all people whose families went back three and four generations —
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J. Bruce Fields said on September 15, 2014 at 8:32 pm
“My great-great grandfather and her great grandfather were brothers.”
Nit: that’d make you third cousins once removed, by my count.
(The “once removed” because you have to go back one generation to get to the same level of family tree as her, the “third cousin” because you have to go back 3 generations further to get to siblings.)
Wikipedia’s page for cousin has some pretty good diagrams.
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MarkH said on September 15, 2014 at 9:19 pm
J. Bruce, by both your wiki link and my chart link at #12, Charlotte’s and her cousin here are second cousins once removed (by my count).
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Sherri said on September 15, 2014 at 9:38 pm
The Vikings announced that they were reinstating Adrian Peterson while the legal process worked its way out. (The Vikings lost this weekend.) The Radisson hotel chain announced that they are suspending their sponsorship of the Vikings: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2014/09/15/radisson-suspends-minnesota-vikings-sponsorship/15697121/
Maybe that will get their attention.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 15, 2014 at 11:31 pm
Hey, cousins.
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Dexter said on September 16, 2014 at 3:07 am
This obituary from The Times reports the death of a man who is likely to be the only man I knew personally who got a Times obit. I met Andy in New York in 1977 and again in 1980 where he and some other friends of his and mine attended a political conference in Manhattan. Andy was brilliant and a real visionary. I also met his estranged wife Dierdre when she ran for President of the USA in 1980, at a rally in Cobo Hall, Detroit. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/us/andy-stapp-soldier-who-tried-to-unionize-the-military-dies-at-70.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
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ROGirl said on September 16, 2014 at 5:24 am
I read a biography of the Rothschilds, and it turns out that in the 19th century a number of the men married their nieces, keeping it all mishpocha (in the family).
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ROGirl said on September 16, 2014 at 6:45 am
I finally realized who the guy in the picture looks like.
http://www.tvguide.com/news/will-arnett-the-simpsons-guest-star-1066349.aspx
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basset said on September 16, 2014 at 8:23 am
Going over to Windsor… been over thirty years since I’ve done that, and I understand that now you need to show a passport every time you cross, is that right?
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nancy said on September 16, 2014 at 8:34 am
Yep, you do. Which is one reason Windsor is not the Junior Detroit it once was.
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Connie said on September 16, 2014 at 8:49 am
Or you have the option of paying $25 for a “high security” Michigan driver’s license that is good to cross the Canadian border.
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brian stouder said on September 16, 2014 at 9:13 am
Thanks to RO Girl’s link, I stumbled into this one –
http://www.tvguide.com/news/bill-oreilly-divorce-1062941.aspx
which made me laugh out loud here:
The website also claims that, at the pressure of O’Reilly, McPhilmy has been formally reprimanded by the Catholic church she attends for continuing to take communion, despite having been divorced and remarried. The reprimand tells McPhilmy to stop telling her children her second marriage is valid in the eyes of God, Gawker reports.
Because, of course, God views His creation precisely the same way that Bill-O does, eh?
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Charlotte said on September 16, 2014 at 10:42 am
When my parents got divorced, my mother went to get her marriage records from the Archdiocese to see about an annulment. There weren’t any. She doesn’t know whether her great aunt, “The Duchess,” who ran the Madonna House, a Catholic settlement house, and was in with all the Catholic bigwigs had them pulled, or whether they were married by a fake priest (The Duchess was in charge of such things in her family). Both of her sisters were married in Holy Family, in big ceremonies, and my mom and dad, small ceremony, in some chapel. So now she likes to joke that all three of us were illegitimate.
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brian stouder said on September 16, 2014 at 11:34 am
Sounds like you have a marvelous mom!
The Bill-O thing got me chuckling because they report he donated $66,000 to the church – and now they listen to him when he suggests who should not be allowed to receive communion(!!)
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MarkH said on September 16, 2014 at 12:38 pm
Brian, O’Reilly is just a loud mouthed snitch…with cash. My understanding is that any woman in his ex’s position is supposed to be denied communion in the Catholic church. Catholics still do not recognize divorce. Bloviating not required.
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MarkH said on September 16, 2014 at 1:34 pm
Also, obviously, O’Reilly himself should not be allowed o take communion for that matter.
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brian stouder said on September 16, 2014 at 3:40 pm
And speaking of Communion and blood and flesh, tomorrow is the 152nd anniversary of the single bloodiest day in American history.
Not Iwo Jima, nor D-Day, nor September 11 (although when those towers went down, I thought 9/11 would be the single worst day).
September 17, 1862, in beautiful western Maryland, near the small town of Sharpsburg, along the Antietam Creek, the American armies of Lee and McLellan smashed into one another.
I cannot think of anyplace more beautiful than the mountains and valleys of western Maryland, especially when the autumn colors come alive.
Pam and I were there on the 130th anniversary of the battle, and the place was remarkably quiet. There were a fair number of other visitors there, but the atmosphere was hushed.
Whereas Gettysburg is almost gaudy with all the flags and touristy stuff, Antietam was much more funereal, complete with beautiful floral arrangements and memorials
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 16, 2014 at 10:00 pm
http://www.nps.gov/nri/resources/customcf/place/BloodyLane_dusk.jpg
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 16, 2014 at 10:03 pm
My ancestor, great-great-grandfather William W. Gill, fought his way at the end of the day across Bloody Lane with the 53rd PA, and camped that night just beyond in the Piper fields, undoubtedly hearing the moans and cries of thousands of dying soldiers all around him that night.
His death in 1868 I suspect is due to alcoholism with a link to what I can only call PTSD from those days and nights on the Antietam battlefield.
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