the cassandra pages

Missing the Point of the Abuse Scandal

Vatican to Check U.S. Seminaries on Gay Presence

It boggles the mind, and sears the heart.

Two Meetings

Yesterday we arrived at the cathedral just as the bells were ringing, about ten minutes before the 10:00 am service. Because it was the day of the Montreal Marathon, a lot of the streets were closed, so we had sailed downtown from the Plateau on mostly-empty streets, not having to stop for stop lights and traffic at all. We were coasting to our normal bike rack when we noticed a film crew across the street, the "tournage (filming)/no parking" signs were on the street and the crew, mostly dressed in black and carrying lighting equipment and scrims, milled around outside the "les Ailes" department store entrance on rue University. As were were locking up our bikes, a woman who had been watching came up to me and asked, in English, if I knew what was going on. She had a southern accent and was both beautiful and perfectly turned-out in that blonde, model-esque style one rarely, if ever, sees around this city where "style" tends to be much more individual and funky than in the U.S. Her shoulder-length hair curled in the slightest flip, she was long-legged and thin, wearing tight expensive jeans, and a simple jade necklace. It was a sunny morning, and she had on movie-star sunglasses; when she spoke she flashed perfect teeth as white as her impeccable long-sleeved tee shirt, and she moved with an economy of gesture. I explained about the film crew, and said it was probably for a commercial - the name of a perfume was written on the street signs - and asked her where down south she was from, and what brought her to Montreal. She was here with her husband, she said; he was a surgeon attending a conference and when she'd heard it was in Montreal she had thought, great, I'd like to go there. She had thought maybe the leaves would have changed more by now. No, I said, it's still a little too early. This afernoon we're driving to Quebec City, she said. We're staying in that big hotel you always see pictures of. Ah, I said, the Chateau Frontenac. yes, she said. It will be a great drive, we're in a little sports car. I nodded; she was right, it would be a great day for a drive. You're going to mass? she asked. Yes, we said, and I wondered if I should explain that it wasn't a Catholic mass, but didn't. I'm just going to go get mahself some breakfast, she said, in the plucky tone wives use when they wish they weren't alone. There are lots of good places to eat right around here, we told her. By then we were at the corner, and she looked briefly up and down St. Catherine, already bustling, and then turned to me again. We were wondering yesterday, she said. Does American culture come up here? Like, do Canadians know who Brad Pitt is?

After church, during the coffee hour in the baptistry, we were introduced to two newlyweds who had come up from Queens last week and had been married in Montreal city hall on Saturday. They both wore conservative dark suits and ties, and were beaming, glad and surprised to accept sincere congratulations from this small group of friendly strangers. One man, the considerably older of the two, was small and quiet and hard of hearing, and had a slightly melancholy, tired air, and he kept one hand cupped behind his right ear as people talked to him. The younger was taller, with bleached blonde, spiky hair, dark-rimmed glasses, and a brightly striped tie, and was more outgoing. I shook their hands and offered my best wishes. The older man smiled sweetly and the younger one grinned. We thought it was about time, he said. We've been together for twenty-two years.

No Sharia for Ontario

Sharia law move quashed in Canada. It's wonderful (and weird) to feel like you agree with a government decision! Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty said that he plans to introduce a law that would ban ALL religious arbitration as soon as possible, saying that religious courts would "threaten our common ground." That means that currently-existing Jewish and Roman Catholic arbitration would be disallowed as well.

He said, "There will be no Sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians."

I'm sure there will be further problems over this, primarily from the other communities that want to have religious arbitration. But, in my opinion, this is the fair and common sense solution. On the other hand, I applaud Canada for grappling with the issues brought up by immigration and diversity so openly, and encouraging public debate.

Calm

Sharia Law in Canada?

Sharia move in Canada draws anger, from the BBC: This is not a new story, but there have been further developments today. The Premier of Ontario has said that the givernment will respond "shortly"to a proposal by former Ontario Attorney General Marion Boyd, recommending that Sharia (Islamic law) tribunals could be used to settle civic and marital disputes in the province of Ontario. Women's groups plan protest marches in many Canadian provinces and in Europe. As you will see from the short BBC article, the sticky problem in Canada is that Roman Catholic and Jewish tribunals already exist. Abolishing all religious courts seems like a much better, and fairer, policy to me - and more in keeping with the spirit of human rights that is so fundamental in Canada - but I don't know the details of how either of those other tribunals came to be (although I'd like to), or how difficult it would be to disallow them at this point.

In a more detailed article in today's Globe and Mail (Toronto), Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said whatever the government decided would be "in keeping with the values of Canadians and Ontarians." Marion Boyd, whose report has been being considered by the government for nine months, said "I think they're actively looking for solutions... they have to have the political courage to recognize they're not going to satisfy everybody." Today's issue also contains a story of one Canadian Muslim woman's struggle to gain a divorce when she consented to Sharia arbitration: it highlights the difficulties faced by observant Muslim women who have come to the West expecting to escape the harsher restrictions imposed under strict Islamic law. This is, however, only one side; I'll try to find a story giving a female perspective on why Sharia should be allowed, because some of the vocal proponents in Canada are women.

The Watermelon Vendor

For the first time today, my father-in-law met us seated on his little red electric scooter, and instead of getting off and walking into the dining room, continued to drive it right up to the side of our table. I think that's what he does most days, but his pride has kept him on his feet when we're there. He walked over, quite bent, to the lunch buffet and slowly gathered a plate of food - a big pile of sliced red onions, tomatoes, some seafood salad, a blueberry muffin - that J. carried to the table for him, and he stayed behind, toasting a piece of bread for a sandwich and picking up a dish of blueberries and some wedges of watermelon along with the inch-high stack of paper napkins he always insists he needs. We were already seated by then, and I watched to see if he could manage thsi balancing act. "I'm coming," he said, exhaling with a moan on every step, the blueberries sliding toward the rim of their dish. "I can make it."

"Oooouff," he said, slumping heavily into his chair and shaking his head. "It's not a good day."

"What's wrong?" I asked, smiling at him.

"Everything!" he said. "All systems are in decline."

"Such as?"

"This morning my eyes... I had my glasses AND a magnifying glass and still it was hopeless. I don't know..." he shrugged resignedly. "I just seem to be  'down' today."

"Then we'll have to cheer you up," I said. He gave me a withering but somewhat affectionate look. "You're hearing pretty well today..."

"Yes, that part seems to be working all right! It makes no sense."

"Seems to be the way it is - sometimes you just have a difficult day."

"Yes, that's how it is. Have some blueberries," he said, gesturing to his son. "Don't you want some?" and then grinned as he suddenly remembered something. "In Syria we have these, but white. One time I was with Alice," (a childhood friend who he had thought he wanted to marry) "when we were children, and something happened, I don't remember, but she fell into a stream and got wet. And her blouse got wet and was...you know... transparent." A little smile played around his lips, and he laughed. "Another boy was with us, and he said, 'Oh look, she's got berries under her blouse!' meaning this kind of berries. And I got furious, and went up to him and punched him. It's the only time I ever hit someone." He shook his head, laughing. "The only time I ever did something gallant in my entire life!"

He finished the blueberries and went on to the watermelon. I went and got some too, and we sat there eating it - it was very good today, sweet and fine-textured. "Ummm," I said. "It's good."

"Yes, it is good today." (My father-in-law loves watermelon; it's one of the foods I most associate with him because of the pleasure he gets while eating it.)

"My father used to buy a really big one--" he held his arms out to show how big -- "and he'd sink it into the pool in our courtyard so it would stay cool." He wiped his sticky fingers on several napkins. "And then he'd cut it, and we'd all sit there and eat it, around the pool." He smiled, enjoying the memory. I thought of the pictures of that house I've seen: the lemon trees in pots, rose bushes, the paved courtyard with its small stone pool and fountain.

"Where did he get them?"I asked.

"The watermelon vendor!" he said, as if I had asked a particularly obvious question. "He grew them - he was the farmer and he came into the city with a cart and a donkey and came around to the neighborhoods." He was quiet for a minute, and then looked up. "And he never called out, 'Watermelons!" like he other vendors did, calling the name of whatever they were selling. He always called, 'Only Allah is forever!!' -- in other words, 'come and get your watermelon and eat now, while you can!'"

Determination

For those of us who are interested in publishing, printing, and digital processes, here is a fascinating story about how the New Orleans Times-Picayune has kept publishing this past week.

Sunflower 2

out

there, Bee

wears yellow pantaloons.

here,

Flower nods

a heavy head

casts

in sleep

its powdered gold.

Updates

As I sit in my comfortable living room in New England, drinking coffee this morning, it appears that the chaos is abating in New Orleans and relief is beginning to arrive. By now, we've all heard how money was asked for and cut form budgets, we've heard the outrage and the blame, we've seen more pictures and read more stories of human suffering than we can bear, in this latest round of what is haping up to be The Decade of Suffering. And so it's hard to hear even the weariest and most sympathetic politicians saying things like "eventually we'll be all right": for so many, will life ever be all right again? Was life EVER all right? I suppose that's what political leaders do in a media age: they encourage, they try to inspire, and the media picks up the best sound bytes. But I'm tried of rhetoric and tired of platitudes.

One black leader I've always admired, Andrew Young, was quoted in the New York Times today.

Andrew Young, the former civil rights worker and mayor of Atlanta who was Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, was born in New Orleans 73 years ago, walked on its levees as a boy and "was always assured by my father that the Army Corps of Engineers had done a masterful job." But, Mr. Young said, "they've been neglected for the last 20 years," along with other pillars of the nation's infrastructure, human and physical.

"I was surprised and not surprised," he said of the failures and suffering of this week.

"It's not just a lack of preparedness. I think the easy answer is to say that these are poor people and black people and so the government doesn't give a damn," he said. "That's O.K., and there might be some truth to that. But I think we've got to see this as a serious problem of the long-term neglect of an environmental system on which our nation depends. All the grain that's grown in Iowa and Illinois, and the huge industrial output of the Midwest has to come down the Mississippi River, and there has to be a port to handle it, to keep a functioning economy in the United States of America."

I hadn't thought about that because I wasn't aware of it. I think of grain moving through Chicago and up the St. Lawrence, but I know perfectly well that the huge grain elevators lining the shore of the river in Montreal have been empty for years.

Young is right: what we're seeing is the breakdown of whole systems because we are not good -- not good at all -- at taking our interconnectedness seriously, and as Americans we are receiving an enormous lesson on both the large and the small scales. Interconnection is both an enormous strength when it works and a great weakness when it fails, whether we look at it in terms of human lives, or infrastructure, or the allocation of resources. We take oil and wheat and diapers and National Guard troops and helicopters for granted. And we take each other for granted too: surely my neighbor will come to my aid. Well, maybe not, not if things have been cut down to the quick and I have a boat that he needs and he's desperate. None of us know how we'd act in those situations. I like to think I'd be noble and heroic, but maybe I wouldn't, if my own husband or child or elderly parent were injured or dying. In that situation, where does heroism lie, exactly?

I've been following the story of the hospitals particularly, and this piece in today's Times told of the evacuation of patients to the New Orleans airport. There were two bits in it that stood out for me as incredible: one which will probably not have a happy ending, the other showing the kind of trust and hope humans are capable of:

...there were worrying hints that the forgotten nursing homes of New Orleans might ultimately be found to be worse charnel houses than the stranded hospitals. The head of a Louisiana ambulance service said he had been told of one home in lower St. Bernard's Parish where 80 patients had been found dead and of an apartment home for the blind where the staff had abandoned the residents. The reports could not immediately be confirmed...

and this:

"At Touro Infirmary, these mothers were just giving my medics their little day-old babies. They were just looking at us with fear and horror on their faces. We would put four of them in an incubator and just fly them out. They're scattered all over the country now. We couldn't keep track of where everyone was going."

All the babies, he said, had identification bracelets on, so that their mothers would presumably be reunited with them. A spokesman for the hospital later said he had little idea where the evacuated patients were.

Doctor Sets up Makeshift Hospital

The BBC is running eyewitness reports from various people who are in New Orleans, and I've found them to be reasoned, matter-of-fact journalism as well as non-sensationalized human stories: i.e., they tell us a lot. This one is from a New Orleans doctor who was attending a medical conference when the hurricane hit; he and some colleagues have set up a makeshift hospital in the relatively-undamaged hotel in which they were staying. He has some observations about the looting and who is doing it, as well as describing a situation he clearly never expected to be in. Well worth reading.