"Harrisburg Catholics unite in prayer for Amish community" - Catholic News Service, 10/06/06

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CNS) -- In a demonstration of support for the local Amish community, Catholics in the Harrisburg Diocese filled St. Catherine of Siena Church in Quarryville and the Cardinal Keeler Center in Harrisburg Oct. 5 for prayer three days after the shootings at the Amish schoolhouse.

The Mass at St. Catherine's and the prayer service at the Keeler Center took place the same day the Amish community buried four of the girls shot in the schoolhouse. St. Catherine of Siena Church is located just seven miles from the scene of the tragedy. The Oct. 5 Mass was celebrated by Harrisburg Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades and concelebrated by several diocesan priests. It drew an overflow crowd.

"As a Catholic community of faith, we pray for our beloved Amish neighbors, our brothers and sisters in the Christian faith. We pray for the children who have died, so precious in the sight of the Lord," Bishop Rhoades said, praying also for the girls who remained hospitalized, for the victims' families, and for Roberts and his family.

TCM appeared over the weekend.

I caught the last ten minutes or so of The Fountainhead last night.

Now, she wrote the screenplay, supposedly, so why do I have the impression that the movie doesn't do the book justice?

I'm not a snob who thinks that no movie does its book justice because there are some. And some movies are even better than the book (insert title of just about any Tom Clancy book-turned-movie here). Or, at least different. And the difference here locks the movie into its late 40's era with patriotic, cold war propaganda.

Of course Rand saw the ugliness of communism, so I'm not suggesting that anti-communism wasn't a part of her philosophy. But even though communism is still a serious threat, the Red Menace isn't so much foremost in my mind. Pictures critical of it don't speak significantly to me. I just don't remember the book being as political as the movie. Oh, dear, did Rand herself sacrifice artistic integrity for Hollywood's propagandistic purposes?!

I used to think that Cooper was perfect in the role of Roark but he really came across as weak in the courtroom scene like never before. He was Meet Joe Doe weak, not High Noon strong:

Like dogs, if you can't eat something, you bury it! Why, this is the one worthwhile thing that's come along. People are finally finding out that the guy next door isn't a bad egg. That's simple, isn't it? And yet you talk about killing it! The John Doe idea may be the answer, though! It may be the one thing capable of saving this cockeyed world! Yet you sit back there on your fat hulks and tell me you'll kill it if you can't use it! Well, you go ahead and try! You couldn't do it in a million years ... Because it's bigger than whether I'm a fake! It's bigger than your ambitions!

But for the life of me, I can't think who else could have playing Roark.

George, there's a rumor 'round town that you've closed your doors. Is that true? Oh, well, I'm very glad to hear that...

Potter to George Bailey, after the run
on the Bailey Building & Loan -- It's a Wonderful Life

---

To quell a rumor I had not heard, the note said the school will not close in January.

I hate being right about these things.

I hate the school being such a source of concern.

I really don't need this extra aggravation.

Who in their right mind would pay for this worry?

The Catholic Carnival is up.

#88: "Tapestry of Posts"

The cell phone saga continues ...

Jeff predicted that my new phone would be delivered at 7 this evening. Instead, a delivery attempt was made at 10:30 this morning while me and the boys were at the park.

To boot, the Verizon Port Center called to inform me that my port request had been cancelled. They wanted to confirm the cancel request.

I returned their call and said that I did not initiate the cancel port request and that I still want my number ported from Cingular. They got in touch with Cingular and claim to have straightened everything out. We'll see.

Provisioning is such a kludge.

We always assigned our worst programmers to it.

I have mental images of ASCII files of pipe-separated, binary fields with no key getting sent to and fro. Somewhere in that mess is a single-line record with my mobile number and my life story ... which hopefully doesn't include my social security number!! This all goes beyond having an employee discount for seven years.

After five, I drove over to the indicated FedEx facility to pick up my phone rather than wait until morning.

I was only vaguely familiar with the area having delivered a hot meal to a convalescent there once. Sure, I looked it up on Google maps but the hard copy didn't print legibly. Besides, once I knew the general vicinity, I could reference maps in my car if I got stuck.

While waiting for a green arrow from Windsor Road to Old Trenton Road, a FedEx truck pulled up behind me.

"Oh, I bet he's going to the depot," I thought. "I wish he was in front of me so I could just follow him!" All I could do was watch him in my rearview mirror.

The intended route took me along the southwest corner of the county park and the FedEx driver ducked into the park!

"Oh, he knows a short-cut," I thought but following after him didn't seem necessary.

Maybe the traffic was lighter than usual due to the holiday, but for whatever reason, I managed to keep ahead of him when he emerged from the other park entrance on Hughes.

I drove past Youngs by mistake. Watching the FedEx truck in my rearview mirror turn in confirmed my error.

I turned around in a driveway, maybe Mary's house (Hi, Mary, it's been a while, eh?). Usually Hughes at rush hour is busy, but I pulled in and out in one motion without waiting.

I caught up with my FedEx truck lead and had him right where I wanted him, in front of me! And from there I just followed him into the facility on industrial drive and got my phone. It's charging right now.

So, it was almost a no-brainer, if only I could have gotten on the right side of that FedEx truck from the start!

My kids call it "Fighting Children," the Flash animation of Alan Becker. (Caution: cartoon gun violence).

Whenever I am on the computer, they come to me and ask, "Can we do 'Fighting Children?'"

But, are they children?

TTTT, I think my kids like the sound effects best of all. And the four-year-old believes that he's controlling the action when he runs the mouse cursor over the images.

United 93 came via Netflix last week. I found the low-key, slow pace, at least early on, appropriate.

I mean, I found the early chaos understated, as all terrible things must be, because the full-impact overwhelms.

I mistook Jeremy Glick for Todd Beamer for nearly all of the movie, tsk, tsk. It wasn't until Beamer mentioned his two boys that I figured it out. Jeff's acquaintance was the man who ducked into the bathroom and called 911 before the counter-offensive.

Insofar as we haven't any true idea of the majority of the dialogue, I found it similar to watching The Perfect Storm.

Subtitles on the Muslim prayers would have been helpful in providing some insight into Islamic spirituality. I mean, I wonder what they were (likely) praying, whether the prayers were improvised (spontaneous), memorized or mantra-like.

And the ending, which failed to depict clearly who was doing what, met my expectations.