Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Book Review: Saint Katharine Drexel: Apostle to the Oppressed by Lou Baldwin

Saint Katharine Drexel: Apostle to the Oppressed by Lou Baldwin

Katharine Drexel was born the middle daughter in an upper-class Philadelphia family in 1858. Their extended family had varying degrees of Catholic fervor but the three Drexel sisters were very devout. Katharine was especially devoted to the Holy Eucharist and wished she could receive daily communion, something not possible at the time. Her parents died and left a large fortune to the three daughters, though they only received the income from the fortune during their lives. Many young women were taken advantage of by fortune hunters and Francis Drexel wanted to protect his children from exploitation. Even so, the income was substantial.

Katharine struggled in her young adulthood with her vocation. She wanted to serve the poor, especially the African-American and Native-American communities that were at best neglected (more often despised) in late-19th century America. The Catholic Church, while interested in all peoples, only had limited abilities (and struggled with prejudice against it at that time). Katharine funded several missions out west and started schools in Philadelphia. The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions formed in the 1870s and Katharine was a staunch financial supporter.

She was convinced by her bishop to start her own religious order dedicated to ministering to these underserved communities. The process was long and arduous. She began with temporary vows and training at the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. Soon enough, she established a convent in Philadelphia and drew young women to her own Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Several years were required by the Philadelphia Bishop O'Connor before the sisters could go out west--they needed both spiritual formation and practical education to minister on the reservations. Drexel began a vocational school that would eventually transform into Drexel University. The sisters began serving a variety of communities in the American west.

She also funded several schools and parishes for African-American communities, starting in Philadelphia and branching out to the American South. Memories of the Civil War were still fresh in many minds and hearts. Fighting both segregation and discrimination became an ongoing battle for her nuns. She founded Xavier University of Louisiana, the first Catholic and Black university in America. Katharine traveled often to visit the sisters across the country. 

She lived to the middle of the twentieth century. Her cause for sainthood was opened almost immediately (several people who knew her thought she was a saint during her lifetime). She was canonized in 2000, the first U. S. citizen to be declared a saint. 

This biography does a good job recording Katharine's history and her personal character, going through the events of her life starting with her grandparents, the first Drexels to come to American in the 1700s. The overview in interesting and inspiring.

Recommended.

Sample quote, from Cardinal Dougherty, the Archbishop of Philadelphia during Katharine's Jubilee year in 1941:

Humanly speaking, the sacrifice was heroic. She did not give up nets and other fishing apparatus as the first Apostles; she did not leave poverty and drudgery; she turned her back on wealth, social prominence, enjoyment of all that money can buy in order, even in her early youth, with its bright prospects, to dedicate her life to the outcast, downtrodden despised Indians and Negroes of the United States. [p. 185]

Monday, February 17, 2025

Book Review: Space Usagi: Death and Honor by S. Sakai et al.

Space Usagi: Death and Honor written and drawn by Stan Sakai and colors by Emi Fujii

The Japanese medieval ronin Miyamoto Usagi has a descendant who both follows in his ancestor's footsteps and has traveled into outer space. Space Usagi is a rabbit warrior for a clan who follows the same bushido code that his ancestors did. He is a general in Lord Shirohoshi's fleet. When they are attacked by a rival clan, Usagi is assigned to protect the Lord's son, taking him away from the battle and to the Mino clan where an arranged marriage with the Mino princess will solidify their alliance. The story follows the typical Usagi arc with a lot of medieval-style ships and outfits in the science fiction setting. I enjoyed it a lot even as I guessed the ending.

The book also includes Space Usagi: Yokai Hunter, a short work about the medieval Usagi going to a haunted castle to save the daughter of some coal merchants. He fights a bunch of spirit creatures and monsters as he works his way up the castle. It's a nice exercise in creative creature craft and has a little twist at the end that goes on a bit longer than it needs to, but is still charming. I enjoyed it.

Recommended.

I read this on Hoopla, a service available from my local library (and maybe yours too!).

Friday, February 14, 2025

Movie Review: The Bishop's Wife (1947)

The Bishop's Wife (1947) directed by Henry Koster

Cary Grant stars as an angel named Dudley who is working the big city crowd one Christmas season, helping people safely cross the street and such. He runs across a somewhat lonely woman named Julia (Loretta Young) who is the titular bishop's wife. Bishop Henry (David Niven) is a young and ambitious fellow who wants to build a cathedral. He has to court big donations from wealthy donors who are not as spiritually motivated as Henry is. He really wants to succeed and, after a frustrating meeting with a donor who wants a memorial to her dead husband in the center of the cathedral rather than more appropriately on the side, prays for help. Dudley shows up at his house and promises to do what he can for Henry. Dudley is already a bit smitten with Julia, so when scheduling conflicts arise, Dudley volunteers to take Julia out. He shows her the fun time that she wishes she was having with Henry, causing some conflict.

The story is an endearing fairy tale told with a more-or-less straight face. Grant has his usual suave and charm. Niven is very young, not quite convincing as a bishop, but gives a good performance nonetheless. The story has a couple of magical moments from angel Dudley, including tree-trimming and refilling glasses of port. The narrative is enjoyable but not quite weighty enough to make this the sort of Christmas classic like It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.

Mildly recommended--this is a fun seasonal watch for Christmas, and maybe for Valentine's Day too?

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Winter Showcase 2024

Our ballroom studio, That's Dancing, had their Winter Showcase back in December. We performed two numbers in a delightfully full schedule.

Our first dance wasn't until the second act. We danced a tango and waltz comedy routine to I Can't Tell a Waltz from a Tango by Patti Page. My wife was the waltz advocate while I wanted to do the tango, as you can see in the video...


Nice swish to the skirt!

Interpretive stillness?

The "interpretive stillness" line is an ongoing gag with our instructor, encouraging her to make the choreography less complicated. The rose is a fake. For some reason, it has fake thorns. That was more desirable than the other fake roses I saw in the store that had petals going brown. Too much realism, people!

Our second routine was in the third act (we were the fourth couple to dance!). We had a fun East Coast Swing dance to "Red Light" by Indigo Swing. This performance was a more typical dance routine.



Nicely spun!

Wait, where am I?

Because of the song name, I acquired a light-up bowtie. It does a variety of colors and even flashing patterns. If that is not amazing enough, it also has a usb port to recharge the battery! I wonder if I can upload other patterns to it?

At the end, they gave out certificates of accomplishment and awards, along with announcing the theme for the Summer Showcase--Elton John. We have already picked out songs.

Each student gets a live rose

All the dancers for the evening

A thank-you gift from the studio!

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Book Review: From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

The Elliott family lives in a northern Illinois town in a creaky old house. A foundling is left on their doorstep, Timothy. He is unique to them because he sleeps at night, can't fly or turn invisible, and hasn't lived for hundreds of years. Timothy is a normal human child adopted by supernatural parents with an eclectic extended family who come for a visit when Timothy is ten years old. Uncle Einar has wings, Cecy sleeps all the time but travels into others' consciousnesses, and A Thousand Times Great Grandmere is literally older than Methuselah. All sorts of odd adventures follow.

Like many other Bradbury novels, this is a compilation or fusion of many short stories that came before this book was publish in 2001. In the afterword, Bradbury tells that the first story was written in 1945 and published in Mademoiselle magazine, which got Charles Addams (the cartoonist creator of the Addams Family) to make illustrations. Bradbury and Addams had planned to do a series of illustrated stories that would turn into a book but their careers went off in different directions. This novel embodies the charm of Bradbury's fanciful prose and elaborate imagination. After the first half, a more novel-like single narrative starts as the family deals with the rest of the world no longer believing in haunts and spooks and the like. It wraps up with the typical Bradbury winsomeness.

The novel is a delight to read and goes by too quickly.

Recommended, highly for Bradbury fans.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Geocaching January 2025

I started the new geocaching year off with a bang. Ease into the New Year 2025 was a community celebration event for 25 years of geocaching. A lot of cachers have been granted events (including yours truly), this is the first of hopefully many. The event was at Game On Arcade, which we had a gift card for, so my family came along to snack and play games. I did the socializing.

Mom and youngest do DDR

Earlier in the day, I was on the WB&A Trail to find Thomas Knowlton and Shughart Gordon. The day was windy and the trees were a bit too creaky for my taste! Just outside the trail is Race Track Road C&D with a fun container.

Woods on the WB&A Trail

The next day I signed another cache on the Odenton Cooperative Challenge Trail--OCCT #12: Unknown/Mystery 250 Challenge. The WB&A finds qualified me for the 250 mystery caches I needed. The day after, I found Mile Marker 14 on Old National Road along with two more mystery caches, A Little Piece of Howard County History and an old DNF for me, Mission Possible, which was indeed more possible to find after the summer vegetation was gone. I was surprised to see the previous logger was DG or Dudley Grunt, one of the Monday Morning Coffee people. Since I am part of Dancing Gophers, we would share the same initials except I usually put an S on the end for clarity's sake.

DG and DGS in alphabetically order on the log

I had to go shopping at a game store (does anyone really have to go shopping at a game store?) and found some caches nearby. Ha! Run Dale! is a pun on the town's name, Harundel. Code Cross 1 filled another mystery day and Slurpy or Icey was a bonus on the way home. 

Code Cross the Road is more like it!

The next day I had to take my wife to a Virginia airport so I found some caches in the neighborhood. Reader's Delight was in a Little Free Library (yay!) and not too far away I found Doggo Walking: Alice Never Lived Here, a trickier find with a cryptic name. I also found a pair of challenge caches nearby, Picky CHALLENGE: Doggo Walking 200 and Doggo Walking 400, which require cachers to have found enough caches with the "Dogs Allowed" attribute. At one of them, a cute little pooch was barking at me through the fence. The fence had a hole big enough for his face but not for him to escape.

Cold enough to freeze the pond out back

Maybe he just wants out?

The next day was a massive snow storm, so I used one of the caches I signed in Virginia to keep my mystery streak going. Picky CHALLENGE: Doggo Walking 600 requires 600 finds, I had 627 before making these finds.

Picky CHALLENGE: Ow! I'm Stuck! 200 requires 200 thorn-attribute caches, for which I have qualified. MTO 2014 Icebreaker is another mystery cache, this one requiring some mathematical wizardry at home before making the find. 

I really did have to break some ice here

Annapolis, MD 21401 is another fun mystery I found the next day. Picky CHALLENGE: Happy Baby 200 requires 200 stroller-friendly caches which I have far surpassed in my finds. Random Wiki Puzzle: 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix is an easy to solve puzzle that wasn't buried in snow at Ground Zero, as was Math Mnemonic. Another puzzle I solved had a buried cache which I could not unbury.

Lamp Post Cache...to find later

Witchcraft Horror Series #1 brought me to a cemetery.

Salem Cemetery, but in Maryland

Also nearby are RWP: Filipe Machado and Define Definite Definitions #2, a series I hope will continue. Where's The Beef? was a fun find the next day. 

Hair Is Tea Tour is by a supermarket. Nearby I found what was left of Bees by the River...

The cache was removed with extreme prejudice not by the cache owner

That's a lot of work to put into a message for geocachers! On Route 40 I found Old National Pike Mile Marker 14, part of a series on the old road from Baltimore to the west, and different from the Mile Marker 14 cache mentioned above. 

The next day I went to Annapolis's western suburbs and found Dentophobia, a tooth-based puzzle cache. Also in the neighborhood was C and D Version 2.0, which had a lot of creepy vultures around it.

What are they waiting around for?

Also in Annapolis I found Festival of Lights: Night One, Two, Five, and Six. Nearby I found Fuzzydave s Rocks #1: Maneskin and ON BOARD!

Another snow storm put a damper on caching for almost a week, but then I got out again. Been Around Since the 1950's - Who Knew? was an easy mystery to solve. Then I went into DC on an errand and did some caching. CAA DC Edition: South Dakota Avenue is part of a series "Cache Across the Avenues" with hides on each street named after a state. This was my first one, so I have a lot more work to do! Nearby I found the multicache Existence Intertwined Mural which uses some information from the mural to point to the final cache. A guy was out grilling on the chilly morning, which surprised me. 

View to the mural

I found an Adventure Lab in Langdon Park that also had a Bonus Cache that I found. The park has a memorial to Chuck Brown, a guitarist who was a local legend in the Go-Go Music scene (he's called the "Godfather of Go-Go"). I had trouble finding the final cache--after emailing with the cache owner, I was allowed to take credit for finding it. 

Chuck Brown Memorial

Empty final location?

I found another string of mystery caches to fill in some of the days I have missing: What's in Your Pocket? and Name That Richardson!!!! The day of the Richardson find, I found most of a Hanukkah Nights series: Three, Four, and Six. Five and Eight seemed to be missing, so I emailed the cache owner to let him make replacements if necessary. Nearby is Fuzzydave Comes To Town #1 which was an easy find. They were all close to this bowling alley where I decided to park as a central location.

Another potential hobby

We did a quick tour of The Catholic University of America with the Catholic University Fun Facts Adventure Lab. I also picked up the Bonus Cache that was an easy find near a cybertruck.

Probably won't be there when you go to find the cache

I finished the month finding Lakeside after failing to donate blood (not enough iron!), along with two Random Wiki Puzzles: NFL Top 100 Players of 2019 and Galegos (Povoa de Lanhoso)

I guess I could have taken a shortcut to the cache?

The month ends with 62 finds (two-a-day average!) and 1712 overall. I probably won't break into 1800 next month since February is shorter and I've already found mystery caches on every day, so my main project will be sidetracked. I'll concentrate on solving or qualifying for other mystery caches.

Monday, February 10, 2025

Book Review: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. 1956 by M. Mignola et al.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1956 stories by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, art by Mike Norton, Yishan Li, Michael Avon Oeming, and Paul Grist

1956 is a transition year for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense They are getting more funding, which means hiring more agents and getting better equipment. The small staff has been overworked since WWII ended, so the influx is welcome. Well, mostly welcome. Director Trevor Bruttenholm is a bit concerned with the new hires who are mostly law enforcement transfers. The paranormal research may be out of their league. More concerning is where their true loyalties lie...with the B.P.R.D. or their previous agencies (including CIA and FBI)?

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the Special Sciences Service (the Soviet equivalent of the B.P.R.D.) is also struggling with larger government interference. The Politburo wants the SSS to produce results, especially in developing weapons. SSS head Varvara (the demon girl from previous stories) is less interested in bureaucratic nonsense and keeps a tight and terrifying grip on the Service. She is keeping tabs on Bruttenholm and seems more connected with Hellboy's fate as Destroyer of the Universe than with the success of the Soviet programs. Her story runs parallel to the B.P.R.D. story, with the back half of each chapter set in the former Russia.

The story here is less compelling than in other volumes. Things move forward at a snail's pace, with little action and only punctuated moments of drama. The cloak and dagger stuff just isn't exciting. Some developments happen toward the end of the story, including the return of Hellboy from Mexico, but they are not a big payoff. Having separate artists and visual styles for the parallel stories is an interesting choice.

The final story in the book presents one of Hellboy's Mexican exploits--co-starring in a luchador film as The Devil, which is fun but inconsequential.

Mildly recommended. This is a narrative connector piece for larger stories but is not all that interesting in and of itself.