I told you I’m taking this swim-instructor course? So last night the woman teaching it called me over to explain butterfly stroke to a bunch of level 3 kids, which is to say, 8 years old and younger. I bent over at the waist, held my arms out and said, “Your hands should enter the water at 11 and 1,” among other things. And then I thought: Noooo, not an analog clock reference!
If you have young people in your life, be advised: They don’t understand analog clocks until they get older, some as old as fourth grade. I first learned this lifeguarding in 2023, when I was the only one who wore a watch and my colleagues, deprived of their phones, were always asking me the time. “Ten ’til one,” I might say, to a blank stare. “Twelve-fifty?” I’d say, and they’d nod. “Quarter after” meant nothing. You had to say “two fifteen.”
The wonders of technology. So I told the kids, instead, to start the stroke with their arms close to their head, like so. It’s humbling, when the world moves on without your permission.
Welcome to the end of the work week, a very long one for me. How to cheer myself up? Hate-reading another Tim Goeglein adjective party about a notable Lutheran church in Fort Wayne!
Zion Lutheran is indeed a lovely church. I don’t know what it did to deserve this, however:
As you drive down Creighton, Zion’s beautiful and lithe central spire rises like a phoenix as if welcoming an old friend.
I have found that steeple most inspiring on semi-foggy, semi-misty Hoosier Sunday mornings when the spire seems to lift itself heavenward as if peeking out of a cloudburst.
Zion’s sheer dimensions are awe-inspiring, and you can clearly see its unique cuneiform shape from the top of the Lincoln Tower when glancing southeast: 124 feet in length with its landmark transepts jutting out 80 feet.
Tim struggles with basic vocabulary. “Lithe,” for instance, means “slim and flexible,” which would seem to be the last thing you’d want in a church steeple. As for “slim,” aren’t all spires? Here’s the church in question:
Looks pretty standard churchy to me. But never mind that. The rest of that sentence is a disaster. For the thousandth time to the hundredth writer, a phoenix is a mythical bird that rises from the ashes of its own pyre (depending on the version of the myth) in rebirth, not to “welcome an old friend.” And again, flames are exactly what you don’t want near a historic church; ask the folks in Paris about that. Anyway, a building that’s been there for more than a century cannot be said to rise, even in a metaphorical sense. Let’s count the various mangled metaphors here, and on second thought, let’s not. As Alex said when I sent him this earlier this week, “Tim’s a late starter, having been a plagiarist until now.”
Indeed. Also, what is a cuneiform shape, in a building? One of you architects tell me.
We’ve had a lovely stretch of warm weather — high 70s on Thursday — and that has officially launched this tardy spring. I’m looking out the back windows at blooming trees and hostas in overdrive. The birds are already chattering when I leave for the pool or gym in the early dark. My plan to throttle down my paid work in favor of having more time to enjoy my dwindling number of springs and summers could be going better, but oh well.
Some miscellany ahead.
I don’t like to make too much out of women’s appearance, but mercy, has anyone seen Sarah Palin recently? What a tragedy, and I’m not talking about natural aging, but what plastic surgery has done to someone who was once strikingly pretty…
…and now looks like this:
She was a silly woman, wrong about everything, but she had the gift of a pleasant appearance. Looking at the 2024 version, I see evidence of chin, cheeks and lip work. The sunglasses are hiding her eyes, but likely there’d be something else going on there. And what on earth is a serious person (see above; she’s not) doing with a cartilage piercing that deep in their ear? You’re 61, not 17. Shudder. But this is what MAGA beauty standards can do, even to beauties, and say what you want about her, but Palin had that, at least. For a more standard-pretty girl like Kristi Noem, it just spells disaster:
Note: Eyebrows drawn with a Sharpie, those ridiculous false lashes (WHY?), and enough foundation to make her uneven complexion look even worse. Again, let’s compare and contrast. 2011:
And 2025:
Which one looks like the human being, which the fembot? Her eyes are disappearing into caves lined with kohl, and good lord, that hair. Nothing wrong with it, except that it’s the same hair every woman who passes through Trumpworld ends up with, the . High-maintenance bed hair, the tonsorial equivalent of a flag pin and MAGA hat.
OK, enough snarking for one day. The announced retirement of Dick Durbin prompted Neil Steinberg to unearth a few columns the senator appeared in. This passage, from 2006, was striking:
Had breakfast the other morning with Sen. Dick Durbin and Dan Seals, the young Democrat who just might unseat Mark Kirk in the 10th Congressional District next week. We were discussing that age-old question of whether the current election really is the most mean-spirited in history or only feels that way. Conversation naturally moved to George Allen, the Virginia senator who, having pretty much dug his own political grave with his mouth, is desperately lashing out at his opponent, Jim Webb, by pointing shrilly to salty lines culled from Webb’s war novels as if they were evidence of perversion. Durbin used a phrase I hadn’t heard before.
“George Allen is a spit tobacco senator,” he said. “One of four in the Senate.” Meaning that he dips and chews tobacco, a vile habit better left in the barn. But Allen doesn’t leave it in the barn. Durbin entertainingly described a flight down to Guantanamo he and Allen shared on a military airplane, and the cringing revulsion the clean-cut, dignified and ramrod straight military hosts extended toward Allen, a drooling nicotine addict dribbling brown saliva into a plastic cup. That’s a grosser image than anything in Webb’s novels.
Ewww. Happy weekend, all.
Deborah said on April 25, 2025 at 8:38 am
I had to look up tonsorial, I see that my autocorrect doesn’t recognize it either, it kept trying to change it to something else.
When my husband wakes up I’ll ask him what cuneiform means in architecture circles.
We had a late night at our first book club meet up last night. Out of 10 attendees, 8 enjoyed the book, 1 hated it (she’s a writer) and 1 was so so. The book was a graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monsters.
Back in the 70s when I lived in Texas there was a lot of good old boy tobacco chawing going on. Gross.
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Deborah said on April 25, 2025 at 9:15 am
According to my husband cuneiform is not an accurate architectural application of a term. It’s not a commonly used architectural term to describe a structure such as a church steeple. I looked up cuneiform on Google and it’s explained as meaning wedge shaped, coming from the shape derived from pressing the end of a reed into clay which the ancient Mesopotamians did to create marks to denote what we would call letters or numerals today.
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nancy said on April 25, 2025 at 9:25 am
Thanks Deborah, and I would guess that because a steeple is wedge-shaped, Timbo thought he’d fancy it up with a $50 word.
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Julie Robinson said on April 25, 2025 at 9:30 am
Cuneiform is an ancient system of writing. I believe Timmy meant cruciform, or cross shaped. Until the recent barn shed movement, most Lutheran and Catholic churches were cruciform. Zion really isn’t all that unique, sorry “matchless”, either, more dime a dozen in Fort Wayne.
They do have a great organ, though. Casavants rock.
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Icarus said on April 25, 2025 at 9:31 am
I motion that we refer to Kristi Noem as Dog killer, especially in public comments.
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alex said on April 25, 2025 at 9:42 am
Rather than wasting column space on a bunch of misapplied foofery, there’s a much more interesting story to be told about that particular church: that of its survival as a congregation more than sixty years after the “white flight” of its ethnic German congregation from the surrounding neighborhood, which got redlined into some of the worst desolation and decay in the entire city of Fort Wayne. Of course one would have to be a deft writer to avoid offending the sensibilities of those living there now, a job better left to someone other than Tim Goeglein. But the families who abandoned the neighborhood didn’t abandon the church and it’s still going strong. Apparently it even has enough money to do a first-rate renovation.
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Julie Robinson said on April 25, 2025 at 9:49 am
Alex, I went down the rabbit hole and looked at their newsletter, in which the pastor gently preaches with kind gravitas about all the good Trump has done. Don’t go there unless you want to be sick.
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ROGirl said on April 25, 2025 at 10:15 am
I said cuneiform and that’s what I meant, you godless, fact-driven liberals.
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Mark P said on April 25, 2025 at 10:40 am
Nancy, I was thinking how mean-spirited it was to make up the three stupidest paragraphs I have seen strung together in the last week or ten years. I was thinking, surely no one, even Tim Googlyeyes, could have actually written that and turned it in. But then I realized you were serious. But I think ol’ Tim’s playing eight dimensional tic-tax-toe and trying to see just how stupid his writing can be before his editor calls him out on it. Nice church, probably worth saving, but its story is probably more interesting than its looks.
I occasionally see a video comparing a well-known actress’s looks when she was maybe 25 to her current looks at maybe 65, and think, JFC, give her a break, everyone gets old if they are lucky. The ones that look the best are the ones that embrace their age. The most pitiful ones are those that get Walmart quality plastic surgery and end up looking like they stuck their face into a blender and fixed it with Bondo.
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Peter said on April 25, 2025 at 10:41 am
You know those anti smoking ads where they have someone with a tube trying to talk to scare the kids from taking up cigarettes?
The Lincoln Project ought to show those Sarah Palin before and after photos and tell women this is what you’re going to look like if you keep on loving Trump.
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Suzanne said on April 25, 2025 at 11:21 am
A sitting judge in Wisconsin was arrested for interfering with ICE agents.
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/25/fbi-arrests-judge-wisconsin-hannah-dugan-kash-patel
But sure, we non-MAGA people were being alarmist…
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Jenine said on April 25, 2025 at 11:34 am
I call that ‘mermaid hair’, carefully arranged in front of both shoulders. It was in for a broad swath of young women for a while. Now it’s stuck for the magas.
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tajalli said on April 25, 2025 at 11:38 am
Possibly a huge contributor to the deterioration of Palin’s looks is what she’s doing *with* her face, rather than what she had done to it.
In the more recent one, she has jutted out her jaw so her lower teeth are in front of her uppers, producing that weird square look. Maybe she’s attempting to look tough, given the biker or trailer trash style clothes.
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Bob (not Greene) said on April 25, 2025 at 11:41 am
“Cuneiform”???????!!!!
The word that dumbass is looking for is “cruciform” — in the shape of a cross. That’s what he’s referring to when looking at the church from above and seeing the transepts “jutting out” from the nave. What a dipshit. Can’t even use a thesaurus (or a dictionary, apparently) correctly.
Edit: I see Julie beat me to that. And she’s also correct in stating that far from “unique” a cruciform church design is probably the most common church design in Christendom.
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Jeff Borden said on April 25, 2025 at 12:07 pm
Some smart-ass has suggested that if a film biography of $arah Palin is ever made, Mickey Rourke should play her. He’s Exhibit A that men can mutilate themselves with plastic surgery, too.
Working my way through the A section of the NYT today has left me dispirited. Stories on tRump’s yo-yo tariffs, his whiny texts to his man crush Putin, European dismay at the U.S. surrender of Ukraine to Putin, obliteration of the Meals on Wheels program, cancelation of prestigious lectures and ongoing book bans at the Naval Academy in service of the anti-DEI effort, eliminating due process for migrants…it’s overwhelming. And it’s just the beginning.
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Sherri said on April 25, 2025 at 12:40 pm
Trump continues to improve my strength. At my meet last weekend, I squatted 286.5 lbs and deadlifted 292 lbs, both new PRs for me.
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Julie Robinson said on April 25, 2025 at 1:27 pm
Whoo-hoo, Sherri! In our workouts I neither squat nor deadlift and my body has been resistant to increasing weights. I can’t imagine lifting that much. But I’m slow and steady, twice a week at the trainer and four or five days a week in the pool.
When I said Zion was a dime a dozen, I wasn’t referring to the shape, but the gothic style, with intricate altar, reredos, elevated pulpit, etc. A whole bunch of those churches were built in Fort Wayne by German and Irish immigrant families. Some have come down, especially as the numbers of the Catholic faithful shrank or moved out to the suburbs. Some have been modernized and made more friendly, with pulpits lowered and altars moved forward so the pastor faces the congregation instead of having their backs to them.
I’m a bit of a church nerd and studied church architecture in art classes, and I really love this stuff. When we go places I always have to visit at least one old church. There is such rich symbolism, stemming from the era when parishioners were illiterate, and the building itself was employed in telling the story.
Anywho, George Santos has been sentenced to over seven years in prison and was heard sobbing. Aww…
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Jakash said on April 25, 2025 at 2:11 pm
Evidently, I’m late to the party with regard to the description of that church. Really, I don’t know which is worse between wanting to use a $5 word and mistaking cuneiform for cruciform, or selecting the word “unique” to describe its familiar design. I suppose that having a copy editor at the Journal-Gazette who might be aware of either of those things is WAY too much to hope for. It’s a nice-looking building, but you’d be hard-pressed to drive 15 minutes in any direction in Chicago without seeing either one or more that are very similar.
If one would like to see an attractive woman who’s evidently embraced “natural aging,” one need look no further than Cherry Jones, who’s in the final season of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is currently unfolding on Hulu.
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alex said on April 25, 2025 at 2:16 pm
If Santos gets seven years, then by rights Trump should get way more than the rest of his worthless life, and it would be fitting if his corpse were put on display to be abused by the public for the remainder.
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Deborah said on April 25, 2025 at 2:34 pm
I’ve been house cleaning while doom listening to podcasts and I need a break.
At the book club last night the next book was selected for a June 9th get together. I hadn’t heard of any of the books they were throwing out as selections but now I have a bunch more books to add to my reading during the Trump regime project. The book they selected is On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, I have plenty of time to order it and read it.
I’m nearly finished with The Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kenzdior, which I recommend. I had to put it aside to read the last book club selection that I ended up reading both Book 1 and Book 2 of the graphic Novel, My Favorite Thing is Monsters. They were good but very different from what I usually read.
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tajalli said on April 25, 2025 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for the book recommendations, Deborah. Especially interested in the graphic novel.
My book club will be discussing Birding While Indian (Thomas Gannon) this month and You Dreamed of Empires (Alvaro Enrique) and The Chinese Groove (Catherine Ma) in subsequent months.
Currently, I’m immersed in Haruki Mirakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls. I’ve read several of his books (all in translation) with his emphasis on the interior life rather than action.
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Deborah said on April 25, 2025 at 3:54 pm
Tajalli, I’m a Murakami fan, I’ve read a number of his books. I was disappointed with 1Q84 which I thought was supposed to be his opus, I have avoided his latest because of that. I found 1Q84 a bit twee, I finished it because I wanted to know how it would end. I read it before being in Japan last year so it was interesting seeing some of the things that he has described in his writings.
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David C said on April 25, 2025 at 4:52 pm
Do they look in a mirror and say “That’s better?” or “Oh shit, what have I done?” and do the surgeons try to talk them out of it? Something simple like “There are two things worse than being old. One is being dead, and the other is what you’re about to have me do”.
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Sherri said on April 25, 2025 at 5:23 pm
Deborah Lipstadt is the leading Holocaust scholar. In an interview with Isaac Chotiner, she can’t bring herself to criticize the Trump administration disappearing people off the street. Jonathan Katz gets at why:
https://theracket.news/subscribe?ref=FmwjbJslhI
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Brandon said on April 25, 2025 at 6:41 pm
Re: George Allen’s chaw habit.
The spittoons of the U.S. Senate.
The Senate has a history with tobacco. Since the mid-1800s, the Senate had a supply of snuff on hand for any members that wanted to use it. Snuff is the type of tobacco that is inhaled through the nose. Two boxes held a supply of snuff, one on each side of the presiding officer’s desk. One box was for Democrats, and the other was for Republicans.
They had been placed there by then Vice President Millard Fillmore (and later the 13th President of the United States). Fillmore ordered the two boxes to be filled with snuff because he was tired of senators interrupting speeches to get a pinch from the one snuff urn that was there at the time. In addition to the two snuffboxes, there were a half dozen spittoons in the chamber for the senators to spit their tobacco in. The House of Representatives once even had spittoons next to every desk. Today there aren’t any in the House, but there is no rule against chewing tobacco and spitting as long as it doesn’t disturb someone during a speech.
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Colleen said on April 25, 2025 at 7:17 pm
Is that what they call “purple prose?” He sounds ridiculous. That picture of Zion looks almost exactly like St Paul’s downtown, where I was married.
Re: plastic surgery. I was talking with someone about the topic just today….they don’t look better or younger, they just look weird.
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Julie Robinson said on April 25, 2025 at 7:42 pm
Deborah, if you like road trip books, I just finished The Ten, by E A Hanks, daughter of Tom. She takes a road trip to try to figure out her late mother, who was Tom’s first wife. The wife was a mess of addictions and PTSD from her own childhood. E A is quite a compelling writer, and not surprisingly an excellent narrator.
I run hot and cold on Murakami and haven’t even looked at the most recent. tajalli, The Chinese Groove is a fascinating look at a culture foreign to me.
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Heather said on April 25, 2025 at 7:45 pm
If I may be allowed to be catty for a sec, Kristi Noem should have used some of that plastic surgery money for skincare. Get a peel or something, babe! I can see those pores from a mile away.
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Sherri said on April 25, 2025 at 7:58 pm
Growing up in tobacco country, I was around plenty of guys who used chewing tobacco, or other forms of smokeless tobacco. Old style chewing tobacco, which used to come in a plug, was falling out of favor, and dip was becoming more popular then, but both required a receptacle to spit in. The new popular style is to use nicotine pouches, eliminating the tobacco and the need to spit.
Until fairly recently there was a snuff factory in my hometown.
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Jeff Gill said on April 25, 2025 at 8:17 pm
From Fort Wayne to Dayton, all along the Indiana/Ohio border . . . it has a name.
https://www.landofthecrosstippedchurches.com/
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Sherri said on April 25, 2025 at 8:28 pm
My week of recovery is done, time to hit the heavy weights again. The administration is arresting judges and deported a 2 year old born in the US.
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Mark P said on April 25, 2025 at 9:26 pm
… and a Holocaust scholar is blind.
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Ann said on April 25, 2025 at 11:30 pm
On the subject of words with the wrong connotation, we have a new housing development in town named Hemlock Park. I’m also baffled by our Embers Credit Union–formerly the Catholic Credit Union. Why would you want to associate money with burning something up? I just realized I know someone who’s been on the Embers board for 40 years. I’ll have to ask him.
I want everyone to know that I also went through this post and took out all the extra spaces after the periods.
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alex said on April 26, 2025 at 9:04 am
This effort failed before in front of Indiana’s GOP supermajority, and I was hoping that it would fail once again, but the legislature just voted to make school board races partisan. A year ago the Republicans knew as well as anyone that injecting politics into the schools was a bad idea, and they didn’t let it happen. Apparently the burn-it-all-down zeitgeist has liberated them from having any conscience whatsoever.
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Suzanne said on April 26, 2025 at 10:35 am
The MAGA crowd are grown up toddlers. I recall telling a co-worker who was a young father with 2 year old that it was pointless to argue with a toddler because you will not win. They are irrational and persistent beyond belief and you just have to wait them out. Unfortunately, MAGAs don’t grow out of it and they will destroy the country if we try to just wait them out.
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Jeff Gill said on April 26, 2025 at 10:49 am
“Hemlock Park” sounds like one of Nancy’s writing prompts. The short story is already unspooling . . .
All other matters aside (and the pics of Zelensky & Trump under a giant mosaic of the baptism of Jesus in St. Peter’s are pretty striking) I will remember the store-bought, well-worn black orthopedic shoes visible in the casket before they closed it for Francis. Comfortable footwear is good theology. May that teaching of his endure, among others.
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Julie Robinson said on April 26, 2025 at 11:33 am
Sleep was favored over the funeral here, but I’ve seen a few pictures. Geez, Trump couldn’t skip the Murica blue suit and flag pin for some somber black? And Melania in that black mantilla or whatever it is, has quickly reverted to Slovenian peasant. Not a good look for her. Joe and Jill are much more stylish.
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David C said on April 26, 2025 at 12:01 pm
This shows how totally absurd the arrest of Judge Dugan by Trump’s brownshirts is. I expect this gets laughed out of court. The DOJ can indict her, but they can’t keep the judges from telling them to piss up a rope.
https://bsky.app/profile/annjacobsmke.bsky.social/post/3lnnzg7reys23
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Deborah said on April 26, 2025 at 1:01 pm
I see Trump asking the reporters and interviewers to repeat their questions a lot more than he used to. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me, because of my own hearing loss? His hearing seems to be deteriorating like it does for many people as they age, me included. I wear hearing aids now but I bet Trump wouldn’t do that in a million years because he thinks it will make him seem older and weaker. Either that or he’s using the ruse of not hearing the question to buy time to come up with a snarky answer.
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Brandon said on April 26, 2025 at 2:40 pm
Besides the Wikipedia article on papal shoes, see this: “The Story Behind Pope Benedict XVI’s Red Shoes”
When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, he stepped down as the Bishop of Rome — and out of his famous red leather shoes.
During his reign as pope, Benedict’s red shoes became something of a trademark, inspiring ABC News to call him a “fashionista” and Esquire to name him “accessorizer of the year.” At another point, his loafers sparked controversy after false rumors claimed they were crafted by the high-end Italian fashion house Prada.
Benedict’s choice of shoes stands out because his predecessor and successor — St. John Paul II and Pope Francis — opted for alternatives. But popes have walked in red for centuries.
Far from a fashion statement, in the Catholic faith, red symbolizes martyrdom and the passion of Christ.
…
When he retired, the pope emeritus put away his red shoes in favor of leather loafers designed by a Mexican-Catholic cobbler Armando Martin Dueñas. Those three pairs — two burgundy, one brown — came to him as another gift.
From photos the Vatican released today of Benedict’s mortal remains, it appears that he will be buried in red and gold vestments and ordinary black clerical shoes.
If Benedict had not resigned, he would most likely have been buried wearing red shoes when he died.
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Jeff Borden said on April 26, 2025 at 5:22 pm
Has anyone ever been so effortlessly classless as tRump? Vatican protocol called for men to wear black suits and long black ties. Fearless Leader wore blue –kind of a royal blue, not navy– and a bright blue tie. Photos show him falling asleep during the service as Melania stares forward. He is a boor. All the money in the world will never change that.
One other observation: Apparently, Zelensky received hearty cheers when he entered the service. tRump was ignored. I hope that stung his tiny little feelings deeply.
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Chris Winkler said on April 27, 2025 at 2:43 am
Zion deserves better. Its school population reflected the neighborhood and was nearly half black when I went there in the sixties. It was an interesting place. I’m a proud Zion Lion.
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alex said on April 27, 2025 at 8:58 am
Chris, that’s an angle that could have made for some compelling reading, but the writer apparently isn’t interested in storytelling. He’s all about blowing sunshine up people’s asses (which I suppose must be his penance for his past misdeeds with the written word, although his current crimes against it are arguably worse). As I mentioned to Nancy earlier this week, if there isn’t a Bulwer-Lytton award for unpaid dreck in newspapers, we should invent one.
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Suzanne said on April 27, 2025 at 9:51 am
In the 1990s (if my memory is correct), Zion turned their school into Zion Academy to promote what is now called “Classical Education”. They no longer had a principal but had a pastor with little or no background in education be the “headmaster”. They taught Latin and whatever else is considered to be part of a classical education. It didn’t work well. I knew two people associated with it back then, one who had a student there and one who taught there. Both said it was an unorganized mess, with mostly very young teachers who had no clue how to teach young impoverished kids from different ethnic backgrounds and no experience teaching at all. The school eventually merged with two other churches to form a school called Unity Lutheran South and I think it’s doing ok.
But Goeglein wouldn’t want to tell that story either.
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Icarus said on April 27, 2025 at 10:07 am
Jeff Borden at 41: I’m sure that guy who asked Zelinsky if he owns a suit will give Trump an earful.
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Deborah said on April 27, 2025 at 10:15 am
The photos of Trump at the funeral, slobbering asleep with his mouth hanging open, slacking face, inappropriate bright blue suit, jacket unbuttoned and gaping showing his paunch are pathetic. How embarrassing.
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Julie Robinson said on April 27, 2025 at 1:12 pm
IIRC, Zion put a tall tall fence around that property, which made going to sports events quite challenging. The church’s pastor is the one that tried to get our ELCA kids kicked out of the Lutheran bus system, lest our liberal theology contaminate the purity of the LCMS kids.
Today he is head of the denomination.
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