April 2013 City Beat Column, ICON Magazine

Participation in a paid focus group used to be relatively easy with just a few quirks along the way. Focus groups are opinion forums where participants are paid for their thoughts and opinions about a wide variety of products and services.


One of the largest Center City-based focus groups is Focus Point Global.

It’s not unusual for FPG subscribers to answer 150 to 200 online screeners per year to determine eligibility for a 3 to 4 hour session that can pay upwards of 75 to 150 dollars. In a down economy, subscribers generally try to “out trick” FPG’s eligibility screeners, even if 90 percent of these pre-qualifying questionnaires ask applicants if they work (or have ever worked) in TV, radio or print journalism. A ‘yes’ answer in this case is an instant disqualifier, as the corporations who pay FPG to conduct the surveys don’t want journalists in their focus groups.

A similar thing happens when it comes to serving on juries. A Yes answer to one eligibility question-- Are you a journalist?-- will likewise guarantee an automatic rejection.

Want to get out of jury duty? Tell the attorney in charge that you’re a journalist. Watch and see how fast they run.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to state: journalists need not apply?





Tarnished Sidewalk Plaques

Let’s here it for Philadelphia’s Walk of Fame!

That mantra sounded big in 1987 when the Philadelphia Music Alliance put into action its plan to create a Walk of Fame along the Avenue of the Arts. The idea then was to install in the sidewalk commemorative bronze plaques with the names of famous-born Philadelphians who made it big in the music world. Developed as an idea of the Philadelphia Music Alliance, a community-based, non-profit organization founded in 1986, the first plaque inductees included Philadelphia greats like Marian Anderson, Mario Lanza, Dizzy Gillespie, Bessie Smith and Chubby Checker.

For a decade at least, the South Broad Street plaques were shiny and bright. With every new inductee there were parties, photo ops, champagne toasts and gala dinners.

The last Walk of Fame commemoration in bronze was in June 2010 when The Tonight Show’s band leader, Kevin Eubanks, was awarded a plaque. Since then the Walk of Fame has gone the way of Philadelphia’s abandoned and boarded up houses:

It has become the Walk of Neglect.

A good many of the plaques are partially sunken in cement or so dirty and corroded it makes you wonder if anybody in the city even cares about these bronzes anymore. Gone also are the parties, the plaque galas, the on site photo ops.

In the 1990s there’d be periodic “Star dust” cleaning parties where music celebrities and others would lend a hand scrubbing grime off the various plaques. Parties like this are no more, which may be indicative of either a change in PMA’s financial priorities or a change in the way the normal citizen perceives celebrity.

Our age is the age of instantaneous celebrity when people expect to become famous for nothing. A musician working for decades may not achieve the star power of a silicone lipped reality TV bit player who happens to catch the eye of a lascivious producer. So yes, the nature of celebrity has changed: A square sidewalk star has become a cheap thing, indeed.



Traditional Catholic Liturgical Art

What’s a nice Jewish couple like Roberta and Richard Huber doing collecting 17th century Latin American Catholic art? Richard began his career at the First National Bank of Boston but later relocated to Buenos Aires (where there’s always been a large Jewish community) with his wife, Roberta in 1962. The couple decided to purchase local sculptures and paintings that interested them—mostly Catholic iconographic or Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art. They say they bought only what interested them with no thought of where an item stood on the art hierarchy scale. That artistic intuition has resulted in the transformation of the Exhibition Gallery at PMS’s Perelman Building into a small basilica. The timing, of course, blends well with that other “Argentine” event in the city of Rome: the election of a pope who was known to join with local Jews in Buenos Aires to celebrate Hanukkah. Viewing the plethora of startling silver, ivory and wood masterpieces--most imported to Latin America at the bequest of patrons-- we were reminded of the Museum’s The Arts in Latin America exhibit in 2006, organized by Joseph J. Rishel and aided by the Huber’s, who also happen to be Rishel’s longtime friends.


Bold and Brassy: hanging out in the local Casino
The brassy, neon world of casinos stands in stark contrast to almost everything else in life, but when we were invited to check out a Philly Style party at Sugar House in Fishtown recently, we jumped at the chance. The gambling arena is only slightly larger than a casino on a cruise ship, but the players—poor, minority people at the slots, most smoking and drinking robotically, confirmed for us what we’d always known: casinos are mainly a draw for the down and out. The faux glitz put us smack down into a “garden” of life size Queen of England cardboard cut outs meant to advertise this year’s British themed Flower Show. The Queen looked odd in this mix of Secret Service -looking male employees in ultra-sheen polyester suits and party-happy Style babes primping for vodka martinis and photo ops. We thought we’d die of Stylitis until Einstein Healthcare ‘s Senior Manager of Communications, Kerry O’Connor, took us aside and made the observation that if Sugar House was savvy they’d make arrangements for a pier to be built on the river so that boaters could anchor up for a Sugar siphon from the rear of the building.



No sooner did we toast Kerry’s proposal then we found ourselves thick inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center to take-in a special Wedding Wednesday party for brides-to-be. We watched as future brides sampled a variety of wedding reception miniatures, from chocolate candies, cupcakes and wedding cake squares to (very) carefully measured portions of vodka and wine. The Queen, still cardboard stiff, acted as a magnet for photo-op brides, as did a cutout of Prince Harry, whose mischievous grin seemed to suggest, to the future wives at least, that one last round of dirty dancing before their big day might be the way to go. We ran into photographer HughE. Dillon, who snapped our picture, after which we checked out the wedding gown samples which unfortunately made us think of Mummers costumes. We recalled the bridal gown shop near 13th and Locust Street with its storefront displays of over-the-top dresses that always put us in mind of the Fellini film, Roma, especially the scene where the clergy of Rome, some on roller skates, model holy taffeta and brocade. “Where is the simplicity of the Aubrey Hepburn or Jackie O?” we asked a woman offering us cupcakes. “Why do so many brides in modern weddings have to look like white plume ostriches on parade?”

 The Sham of (much of) Modern Art 

Pablo Picasso confessed that he was a fraud when he stated, “…I am celebrated, I am rich….But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt were great painters. I am only a public entertainer.” Picasso even adds, “The less [my public] understood me, the more they admired me….Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear.” Architect Al Holm forwarded us this quote shortly before the annual Al Holm lecture at the Athenaeum on Washington Square. These lectures, though named after Holm, offer a different speaker every year. This year’s topic was “The Great American House: Tradition for the Way We Live,” by New York architect Gil Schafer. An Athenaeum lecture is the next best thing to being in Rome or Paris, though this year’s event was packed to the gills due to the renovation of the new Bush Room (which Bush was never specified). Al and his wife Nancy joined us at the congested after party where we chatted with Wesley Parrott, former president of the Franklin Inn Club. We ran into a smiling Daniela Holt Voith of Voith & Mactavish Architects who told us that the firm’s move to 2401 Walnut Street, 6th Floor, has finally been made and that-- despite reports to the contrary-- the new digs do offer spectacular view of the city.

Goodbye Toothless Yahoos

Philadelphians who still refer to Kensington as a terrain of toothless yahoos and empty syringes need only to walk along the Frankford Arts corridor to see that a revolution has occurred. Bundled up in winter scarves, we got an eyeful in late February when we headed to the FJord gallery at 2419 Frankford for their annual Valentine’s Dessert Party. The Frankford Avenue renaissance got us thinking of New York’s Soho because this once barren industrial-waste land dotted with deserted lots, boarded up factories, remnants of soup kitchens, now looks as though it’s been combed free of infestation with RID. The FJord Arts collective was co- founded by Philly-based urban planner and antique car expert, Rick Shnitzler 28 years ago. Rick introduced us to Fjord’s new president, Lindsay, who gave us an impromptu tour of the upstairs studios for working artists. These small rustic spaces crammed with canvasses, paint, and preliminary sketches had great window views of nearby tall factory smokestacks. For a peek: http://frankfordavearts.org/?tag=fjord



North Philadelphia is another neighborhood beating the odds despite the long lines there at many PhilAbundance outlets. We headed over to the new Stephen Starr 11,000 square foot commissary at 667 North Broad Street for an evening of “interactive stations and demos.” Although the commissary’s understated wood Swiss chalet entrance is located near a small Dunkin Donuts and a gas station/car wash named East Coast, the place is a culinary Kubla Kahn. Are their people anywhere in this city who can claim to dislike Stephen Starr food? We chatted with Laura Krbes (Cashman and Associates), and Janet Binswanger and Morgan Bedore (Starr restaurants). High energy reigned supreme as A. D. Amorosi remarked, “It’s a sexy night,” and as Queer Times Three Musketeers Thom Cardwell, James Duggan and Josh Kruger gave us their spin on local politics.



Philadelphia’s Weekly Press celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, not an easy fete in an age when hard copy newspapers are not only shrinking in size but in content. Bob and Claudia Christian, publishers of the Weekly Press along with its West Philly counterpart, The University City Review, have weathered intense competition from online publications and two other alternative city weeklies. Through the years, they’ve have had to dodge snide attacks from some who have dubbed their paper, The Center City Toilet Weekly, which is far from the truth, really, considering that from the very beginning the couple took an oath that they wouldn’t accept ads from massage parlors and escort agencies to help fund the paper. Turning down the lucrative ad cash flow of the T and A industry is no easy task when you’re almost always in the red, but this newspaper has managed to do just that. More interesting still is the fact that many of the stories in The Weekly have been picked up (and expanded) by the competition.

The City Beat Patrol, somewhere near Rittenhouse Square.

May 2013 City Beat Column, ICON Magazine

Decades ago when you walked into a Philadelphia state store you had to ask a guy behind the counter what you wanted. They had state store catalogs with numbers; the customer would give the guy a number, he’d disappear into the back and come back with the bottle. The operation was run like a pawn shop. Not only that, but by law the guy behind the counter couldn’t give you any recommendations.


While Pennsylvania Wine and Spirit Shops have made a lot of good changes since then, the fact remains that the state is still in the business of selling alcohol.

As far back as 2003, a Hershey Philbin Associates Online Poll revealed that 75% of Pennsylvanians said they favored abolishing the LCB.

The poll numbers since then have favored privatization even more, although politicians—in this case, Democrats—don’t seem to get the message.

In March, the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives voted to end the legacy of Prohibition in the Keystone State. The House voted to privatize wine and liquor sales, a positive move that promises to move the state into the 21st Century.

Since the vote State store liquor clerks and their allies have launched a staunch defense of the system despite the fact that the vast majority of Pennsylvanians want privatization. In some ways it’s easy to understand why the clerks are up in arms: they want to save their jobs, an understandable albeit selfish sentiment that pretty much ignores the wishes of the majority: to get the state out of the alcohol selling business.

Unfortunately, the longer the state is involved in alcohol sales, the harder it will be to uproot that alliance. We are seeing the first effects of that rupture now.

The fact that every Democrat in the Pennsylvania House voted against privatization is telling. Think about it: Democrats voting to retain an antiquated system with roots going back to the days of bathtub gin.

Privatization, generally, is not a good thing. Privatization ruined the airline industry, it threatens to destroy the US Post Office (and replace it with expensive Fed Ex style deliveries) and it is always ready to pounce on Social Security. Yet privatization in this case is very good, and the Democrats who voted against the measure stooped to a new low when they stated that privatization was “as bad morally as it was fiscally,” and that “increased access to drinking would lead to increased drinking and the social ills that come with it.”

We don’t believe we’ve ever heard a Democrat say that something could be “bad morally.” That charge is usually reversed for right of center Republicans on any number of social issues. Democrats, at least in the abstract, are supposed to be moral relativists, so this “moral” thing is queer indeed.

How is a greater access to a bottle of wine for a dinner party, “bad morally?” Civilization will not fall if a bottle of Merlot is sold next to the Tastykakes in the local grocery store.

We would have had more respect for the Democrats who voted against privatization if they had said that they were concerned about the loss of union jobs or the loss of PLCB annual profits totaling some 170 million which wind up in state coffers. Instead, they blabbered on about “social ills” and that left us… cold.

Union League Dress Codes
We had every intention of catching a Royal Oak Foundation Lecture, The Day Parliament Burned Down, in the Grant Room of the Union League, until we were stopped by a UL overseer who asked, “Do you have jeans on?” We might have been carrying zip lock weed from Colorado, judging from her full frontal lunge in the direction of our shoes. “No, mam,” we said, respectfully, “In fact, our natural tendency is to overdress. We are wearing dress Levi’s from the Glivenchy store in London to match this very hard to find Calvin Klein caudoroy jacket.” “You are wearing jeans,” she said, ignoring our Ralph Lauren sweater, Italian shoes and Helsinki-made dress belt. A fashion debate then ensued at which point she mused, “So far this evening we’ve had to turn away 16 people.” “Sixteen?!” we exclaimed, happening to glance at a man on a UL lobby bench in the act of removing his jacket when, like a bolt of thunder, she targeted him with an extended finger. “Please do not remove your jacket, sir!” Two men standing behind us, also wanting to know why Parliament burned down, were in skinny (Pee Wee Herman) ties, tight jackets and a hybrid version of hipster painted- on casual slacks. To our astonishment, the overseer gave the men a pass, perhaps mistaking them for the A-list UL Gays featured in a recent edition of Philadelphia Magazine. When we (in good humor) subtly suggested that these men were wearing something ambiguous, she radioed the rear door UL guards to double check the men for… denim. Though we never did find out why Parliament burned down, we knew that our love affair with faux dress casual hybrid Levi black “slacks” was over.


The Most Dangerous Woman in Journalism

Escaping the grit of the city for the ivy-draped tapestry of the Penn campus always gives us the feeling of a small vacation or even of slipping into Grimm’s Fairy Tales. At the Kelly Writers House (which somehow reminds us of Hansel and Gretel) we watched as KWH director Al Filreis introduced The New Yorker’s Janet Malcolm, called the most dangerous woman in journalism, to a cramped crowd of mostly (bagel munching) grad students. Malcolm’s demure countenance—she could blend in easily with a pack of ladies looking over an Entenmann’s display---was countered by steely eyes that held hits of a Scorpion’s Den. As a speaker, Malcolm has none of the exterior thunder of a Susan Sontag or a Camille Paglia, even if Robert S. Boynton, in The New Journalism, warned potential Malcolm interviewees to beware. “Don't ever eat… or show her your apartment; or cut tomatoes while she watches. In fact, it probably isn't a good idea even to grant her an interview, as your every unflattering gesture and nervous tic will be recorded eventually with devastating precision. You most likely won't be happy with the results; you may even want to sue.” Part of Malcolm’s talk focused on The Journalist and the Murderer, Malcolm’s book about former Inquirer columnist Joe McGinniss’ book, Fatal Vision, about Captain Jeffrey Mac Donald, M.D., convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and two daughters in 1979. But the real reason we like KWH events is because they remind us of our own student days, when the “good” students sat up front and asked the most questions, even if the woman of the hour, as a writing student in college herself, only earned a C grade. “In college—the University of Michigan—I took a creative-writing course with the novelist Allan Seager, who gave me a C for the term. It was mortifying but probably helpful. I never tried to write fiction again,” Malcolm told The Paris Review.

Writing "Teachers"

Theresa Rebeck’s play Seminar at the Suzane Roberts Theater, about a group of grad student types learning how to write from a pricey sadistic writer instructor, should never be seen by beginning writers. Leonard, the teacher (Rufus Collins) is a caricature of the impossible-to-please critic who gets his students so wound up that when they sit down to create they are barely able to get the words out despite Hemingway’s admonition to “Just get to the typewriter and bleed.” There was plenty of onstage bleeding, however, in terms of hurt feelings after Leonard excoriated the prose of all present. The end result of these autopsies had us thinking of a literary companion called Rotten Rejections, where the Leonard’s of the world panned works that later went on to become classics. To wit: Lolita: “..It will not sell, and it will do immeasurable harm to a growing reputation’; Valley of the Dolls: “…Dreadfully dull and endless talk”; The Fountainhead: “Badly written”; James Purdy’s Malcolm: “Incomprehensible”; Madame Bovary: “Utterly superfluous”; The Time Machine: “Not interesting enough for the general reader.” After the play, we chatted with Sara Garonzik, Lisa N. Heyman and Christopher Munden (Philly Fiction) and then headed over to Fergie’s bar to forget the whole excoriating experience.


  WhAS 'UP?

 
We lowered our trousers, dusted off our bling and baseball caps and headed over to the Ten Six Club on Walnut Street for the Smimoff vodka-sponsored VH1 ‘Master of the Mix’ premier party with Philly’s own DJ Royale. Though as out of our element as Mayor Nutter at a Westboro Baptist church protest, once we got the finger symbols down pat we had to contain a passion to jump on stage and scratch some LPs. In the 1980s DJs were called record spinners and had not yet entered the realm of celebrity. That’s all changed. There are genius polymath DJs as good as Bach, Beethoven, and the Beatles—or so they say. We met the tall and handsome Mr. Royale who has 4 years of Philly Sound DJing under his belt, who seemed eager to compete for Best DJ in Master’s Season 3, a cable reality show we admit we’ve never watched. We enjoyed the subculture anthropological scratchiness of it all even though the Smimoff “open bar” was not open at all (wine not included). More women (in heavy perfume) than men moved through the crowd with guest Djs like Elvis Sunrez, Arun and Mr. Sonny James. Mr. Royale, as it turned out, made it past the first and second round.

Jackie O wants a cup

We previewed the 52nd Philadelphia Antiques show, courtesy of Cashman Public Relations, and got a pre-show glimpse of early American pewter objects, furniture, art and decorative pieces from 65 antiques and art galleries. Exhibitors set up booths as buzz saws and fork lifts had us thinking we were in a classy Home Depot. We were invited to touch, smell and squeeze every type of antique imaginable, which eventually led us to the booth of Gemini Antiques Ltd. (of New York fame), where one of the Weiss family proprietors pointed out the shops’ specialty: antique toys. The Weiss’ were full of stories, most notably how Jackie Onassis once swooned over a small cup, insisting that she had to have it and that if she were given it “as a gift” she’d tell her friends to shop at Gemini. Weiss, whose shop has a huge celebrity cliental, ended the conversation when he told the former First Lady, “Didn’t you just inherit 100 million from your late husband’s estate?” John F. Kennedy Jr. was also a regular visitor and, according to the Weiss’, the only word they heard him utter when commenting on an item was “Cool” (“Here’s the son of a President, and the only word he knows is cool!”) This wasn’t the end of it. One day when the handsome heir of Camelot wanted to buy something, he had to ask the Weiss’ how one goes about endorsing a check. At the end of the day, we thanked our tour guide, PAS Chair Katharine Eyre for her economical maneuvering around the forklifts and unopened boxes.

Nigerian Pancakes
Zebras stand alone: that’s what we told ourselves when we got into a staring contest with a Zebra at the Philadelphia Zoo some time ago. The Zebra in question kept us visually engaged for a full five minutes, locking eyes in the steady manner of a shaman, even following us as we made our way to another animal habitat. This unusual eyeball dance remained a mystery for years until The Sofitel’s Patricia McDonald showed us the work of Paris artist Norma Bessieres, “Taming of the Stripes,” on display in the hotel lobby through June 2013. Bessierres’ work illustrates many examples of the Zebra eye, what the artist calls a “sensual gaze in the intimacy of a tête-à-tête.” In conjunction with the exhibition, Executive Chef Jim Coleman and Chez Colette of Sofitel’s Liberte Lounge have prepared an African-inspired menu, such as Uganda Veal with Bananas and Ginger and Nigerian Pancakes with Smoked Shrimp. Now we can all have a farm in Africa.

Dallas, Texas, 2007 Press Tour

Dallas Press Tour 2007, the day we visited the Grassy Knoll and the Book Depository Building.

Bearded Male Hipsters and other Old Men

The Local Lens


Published• Wed, May 08, 2013

By Thom Nickels



We live in a hairy age, when stubble or hair on a man’s face is thought to be a wonderful thing. Proof of this is all around: full beards on the pasty white faces of twenty two year olds; Ho Chi Minh goatees on the chins of drug dealers, the homeless, karate kids, bankers, supermarket clerks and bicycle messengers. And in that other hairy world, or the world of facial stubble, the famous five o’clock shadow has become the nearly permanent ten o’clock shadow, proving—as if you needed proof at this point—that this is the season of facial hair.



If you want additional proof that the beard is king, stand under the El at Front and Girard on a Friday evening as students from Penn, Drexel and Temple stream onto Girard Avenue from the El to the Fishtown bars. Try counting the number of men with beards and I guarantee your mental calculator will go off the charts as the number of beards will spin into the hundreds.



While beards look great on some people, the operative word here is some. The beard, or the ten o’clock permanent shadow, has become a sort of conformist non-conformity badge, like tattoos and piercings. Men today grow beards whether or not they have faces that look good in hair. Only one thing matters: to have a beard! With so many faces hidden behind Jerry Garcia paste-on hair, it’s as if life has become a never-ending celebration of Halloween.



"Boys across the country are laying down their razors and fighting back against metrosexual revolution. It’s back to feeling like we’re kissing mom’s sewing needles. Now guys are proud to show their man mess in the face area," wrote a blogger named College Candy a few years ago.



I grew a beard at 22 because I wanted to emulate my college literary hero, D.H. Lawrence, who sported a beard to die for. I began with a goatee but because the goatee didn’t grow in properly (think hairless gaps), I opted for a trim beard around the jawbone (as opposed to a full Moses beard). Unfortunately, the finished hairy product got poor reviews from the people I used to hang with. "You know," one friend confided, "why do you go out of your way to make yourself ugly?"



I was devastated. My jawbone beard was filled with empty spaces where hair would not grow. "Life’s not fair," I thought, "why do I have beard gaps?" I wasn’t thrilled when those same friends compared my beard to a "bad imitation of Abraham Lincoln."



Since that time, I’ve shaved every morning except during those periods when I took long or short forays into the Land of the Mustache. I never experienced any hairless gaps when I had a ‘stache and in fact I even went so far as to spruce things up with various shades of mustache wax. Then they stopped selling mustache wax, and I thought, "Enough—this is too much work, more work than shaving as a matter of fact." It didn’t help matters any when I started to notice a few gray facial hairs. I’m a fan of many things in life, but gray hair is not one of them.



A recent article on philly.com cited a survey of 351 women in which the women were asked to rate a man’s appearance in terms of facial hair. Are bearded men more attractive than clean-shaven or stubbly-faced men? By a slim margin, the women found that men with at least a 10-day growth of stubble were the most attractive, and that overall hair on a man’s face conveyed "masculinity and maturity." In addition, most of the women thought that bearded men or even those with thick ten o’clock shadows had potential "good parenting skills." (Yes, you read that right.) While fully bearded Moses-style men and clean-shaven guys also scored high in the survey, men with a 10-day growth of stubble won hands down every time.



Stubble, of course, is really just a beard-in-progress, and has a shelf life of about ten minutes. Maintaining stubble means shaving it off before it reaches the Moses stage. Stubble men, therefore, are also clean-shaven men, at least for a while.



One common criticism of the full Moses beard is what can happen when you try to plant a kiss on the lips of the man hidden inside all that hair: Might those hair follicles contain remnants of yesterday’s food?



My hunch is that most of the women quoted in the survey voted for facial hair because it’s something wired in some females’ brains, a genetic thing that goes back to hunter-gatherer times when men were mostly protectors of women and had to look big, burly and hairy.



Some men, of course, grow beards because they want to hide a weak chin or mandible. Not so long ago a strong chin used to be an emblem of masculinity. While there’s little talk of strong chins anymore, a man with a pointed or weak chin can always camouflage it behind a beard. You can also hide acne scars and wrinkles behind a beard. Double chins can be hidden with neck hair.



Other men grow beards because they believe their clean-shaven faces are too feminine or pretty. Some people call this the Justin Bieber effect: "No pretty boy look for me!" When you’re 22 it is not uncommon to want to make yourself look as old as possible. A beard will put on five years, maybe ten.



Beard wearing among the hipster subculture has become a signpost of everything ironic and cool, even while a beard is hardly a sign of rebellion when everybody has one. As Hal Neidzviecki wrote in his 2008 book, Hello, I’m Special, "…Non-conformity is now the accepted norm of society...Individuality is the new conformity."



On the other hand, beards can be a good thing, at least according a study from the University of Southern Queensland as quoted in an article in the World Observer. The study found that beards block 90 to 95 percent of UV rays, thereby slowing the aging process and reducing the risk of skin cancer. As for asthma, the study suggests that pollens and dust will get stuck "in that lustrous facial hair." The study also says that "all that hair retains moisture and protects against the wind, keeping you looking young and fresh-faced. What’s more, shaving is usually the cause of ingrown hairs and bacterial infections that lead to acne."



So what will it be—beard, stubble, or clean-shaven? And what about men like me who can’t seem to grow anything except the now defunct and thoroughly out of fashion ‘stache? Shocking but true, a facial toupee may be the only answer!

You see him everywhere: on a bike, walking with a knapsack, on trains, walking along the highway. Years ago he would have been a hitchiker; today he is likely to take Greyhound (to Wildwood, NJ) or the Mega bus to New York. He probably has a drug habit of some kind. An ex-wife or girlfriend and maybe a baby (who lives with the ex-girlfriend). His story is still evolving. Any day now he will shave off the beard. 

Politics and Political Issues as Religion

The Local Lens

Published• Wed, Apr 24, 2013

By Thom Nickels



A developing trend in American culture today is how people are replacing the gap in their lives once filled by religion. Religion and church attendance used to be central in the lives of most Americans, but according to almost every poll, this is no longer the case. Many people have lost trust in institutions, both secular and religious, and tend to adopt a view of skeptical detachment. If you want proof of this, just walk into all the half-empty churches on Sunday. Synagogue attendance is also down, according to most poll numbers.



In 2012, the Pew Research Center found a major decline in mainline Protestantism, with Catholics barely holding their own in terms of numbers (no mention was made of Orthodox Christians, which is standard fare in the world of pollsters). Pew also found that in 2013, close to 20% of Americans did not identify with any religion. The vast majority of these non-identifiers, or "nones" as they are called, are not atheists or agnostics but people who are indifferent to religion despite the fact that Pew found that 74% of them were raised in religious traditions. The large numbers of people who "identify with a faith tradition culturally but not theologically" would include people who observe Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving without any classic religious associations.



Losing your religion is considered by many to be part of the growing up process. Chucking the so-called "brainwashed" data we received from parents during childhood is seen by some as the beginning of adult independence. While chucking the beliefs of our parents and starting from scratch in some cases can be a good thing, all too often this sort of obliteration stems from selfish personal reasons rather than theological ones. Just because the parental "God info" was given to us as children, doesn’t necessarily mean that the "info" is false. Another part of the growing up process is a willingness to admit this fact.



The huge religious spectrum—from mainstream denominations to cults, sects and organizations (like Scientology) that seem to ape religion—can be confusing to the uninitiated. In Christianity, for instance, there are conservative and progressive churches that are often at war with one another when it comes to social issues. Among Christians there are also those who act as cheerleaders for their brand of church, applauding those who leave one brand for another.



No wonder some people opt to walk away from religion rather than subject themselves to this overwhelming Tower of Babel of clashing and overlapping voices that must seem like a George Crumb concert gone awry. Still, it’s my belief that people who grow up with religion, but then walk away from it, are left with a vacancy to fill. Do they sometimes, without even knowing it, spend the rest of their lives trying to fill that spiritual vacancy with any number of ordinary things from life? Like politics?



We’ve all met people who are so ardently political that their happiness as human beings seems to be dependent on whether their favored political ideology is "winning" the war in Washington or in the world of popular opinion. During the last presidential election, for instance, I encountered people who viewed either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney as their authentic "personal savior". I noticed that these people would seem to fall into a deep depression, or even prolonged fits of anger, if it appeared that the opposing candidate was "winning." The same is true in the post-election world, where ideologues of both the right and left see the world and everybody around them through a narrow political lens—the "saved" and the "unsaved."



I may be as wet as a catfish in the Schuylkill, but it’s my theory that when there is no God, no faith, no belief in a divine purpose, then things like politics can take on an imbalanced transcendental importance. It’s not that people of faith cannot hold strong political opinions, or that people without faith cannot be balanced or moderate in their views. They certainly can be and are balanced in many cases. The general trend, however, is in the opposite direction, for it seems to me that the "faith replacement" people approach their brand of politics more as holy dogma and often have little tolerance for people who disagree with them. Some of these people will even end friendships over political disagreements.



While I consider myself a political progressive, I have noticed that progressives can be far less tolerant of differences in this area than so-called reactionary conservatives. Once I attracted the wrath of the transgender community because I used the wrong terminology when describing my first meeting with a trans person back in the late 1970s. Although I try to have thick skin as a journalist, the attacks I experienced then topped the scales in the mean and vicious department. But I’ll spare you the details.



"Faith replacement" people can use many social causes to fill in empty spiritual gaps. They can go to radical extremes with vegetarianism, animal rights, feminism, LGBT rights, music, UFOs, Rand Paul, yoga (which is its own religion, actually), dogs, or Sunday brunch. While these alliances and activities may be terrific causes and pastimes, to elevate them into a kind of dogmatic lifestyle is something else entirely.



Exotic eastern practices like meditation and yoga have replaced religion for many people despite the fact that they are only relaxation techniques to help soothe the mind or help the body "stretch." I call these things mental aerobics, but as answers to the deeper questions of life they offer little if anything. Because they are dogma-free products, their merits are extolled in a culture that has come to disapprove of narrow interpretations of spirituality. Ultimately, however, it has been my experience that yoga and meditation leave most of their adherents feeling empty and unfulfilled.



On a lighter note, there are other things that "faith replacement" people tend to do to fill in those huge spiritual gaps. For instance, there is the Sunday brunch, something that many use as a replacement for church on Sunday. In an article entitled How Locals Spend a Sunday: The Church of Axe in Venice Beach, writer Andrea Arria-Devoe says, "For those of us who do not attend church or any other religious institution, Axe feels like a fitting Sunday substitute. There’s a monastic quality to the restaurant: its neutral hues, austere tables and benches, the earthy scent of incense."



But as that Schuylkill catfish might say if it could talk: Okay, whatever.

Former Catholic convent at Girard near Broad Street, North Philadelphia.

The days when being a Catholic nun was serious business. Pre-stretch pant suit days.

Same order of nuns in the new Novus Ordo chapel.

Dressing UP and DOWN in Philadelphia

The Local Lens


Published• Wed, Apr 10, 2013

By Thom Nickels



Philadelphia is basically a "dress-down" kind of town, where it’s not unusual to see theater and concert-going patrons in casual clothes bordering on rustic. By "rustic" I mean torn or split jeans, corduroys with holes or stains, or shirts that resemble lumber yard work frocks.



I sometimes think the "dress-down" style here has something to do with the city’s Quaker heritage. The original Quakers liked plainness over ornate or showy materials. New Yorkers have often observed Philadelphia’s penchant for dress-down attire, especially when it comes to theater audiences. A long time ago I remember reading a New Yorker article about Philadelphia men wearing bib overalls to the theater. Bib overalls, of course, are what farmers in the country wear. You don’t expect to see men in bib overalls when attending opening night in one of the city’s major theaters.



When it comes to dress, Philadelphia is also a city of extremes. Consider the class of men who like to wear bow ties. These fellows can be any age; they can be prep school grads, conservative Republicans, men from old money, rich suburban families or even men who aspire to attain something of what wearing a bow tie seems to suggest: sophistication beyond the pale. In some cases, a bow tie can looked affected, although wearing the right bow tie with a nice seersucker suit is a sure way to suggest money and class.



Suspenders are another specialty dress item. They can look like the Farmer in the Dell or just downright cool, depending on what they are holding up. I wore suspenders as a boy with white shirts and a small checkered bow tie. To get my attention sometimes or to make a point, my mother would snap my suspenders. Perhaps that’s why I opted to stop wearing them, although it may also have been because suspenders were sometimes known to come undone in violent recoil that had me holding up my trousers for dear life. To this day whenever I see somebody in suspenders I experience a slight urge to go over and give them a snap. As for bowties, we wore them in parochial school as an alternative to the sometimes boring necktie.



I grew up when boys and men wore ties to school, church and work, when shirts were tucked into trousers in the classic Brooks Brother’s mode rather than left to hang over trousers like untailored drapery. Today it is fashionable among many twenty-something men to wear shirts - dress, casual or grunge - hanging over their trousers, a fashion trend started years ago by overweight designers who wanted to hide the huge expanse of their waistlines. A tucked-in shirt, after all, accentuates body image.



Many, though not all, younger men go to extreme lengths to avoid wearing sports jackets and suits. I have seen these guys underdress at social and press events where almost everyone present is wearing a jacket and tie. What amazes me is how these guys don’t seem to care that they stand out like boiler room janitors or party crashers. Don’t get me wrong: I love old, sloppy clothes. Weather-beaten clothes are fun to wear around the house and to do work in. I tend to wear one work shirt, for instance—something I bought at the local thrift store—that is starting to sport holes, but because I like the shirt I have come to regard it as my work uniform. But would I go to a museum exhibition opening in it? I don’t think so.



When I was in my twenties I began to think of wearing suits and ties as the province of old men. You know the look: oversized sheen jackets, fat clown ties, neatly pressed baggy trousers and shiny black shoes that not reflect way, way up into Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden universe. My beloved old great aunt, who once corresponded with Clare Booth Luce and knew Connie Mack, expected me to dress in a tie whenever I visited her in Cathedral Village, a retirement/nursing home in Roxborough. Sometimes I complied, although I would only put the tie on when I entered the Village, and never wore it on the bus going there or returning home. There were other times when, out of stubbornness, I would decide, "NO tie for great aunt!" so I’d visit her with an open collar.



At no time, however, did I visit her with my shirt hanging out of my pants like those hipster exhibition janitors. My great aunt, who was born in 1895, had no time for an open collar, while an open collar to me was a beautiful thing (like reading the poetry of Walt Whitman), especially in the summer. The prospect of having lunch with me and my open collar in the Cathedral Village dining room once drove her to tears. In her panic to make me look presentable, she suggested that I wear one of her broaches in place of a tie.



Of course, it not being Halloween, I did a double take. "I’m sorry I didn’t bring the tie," I said. "I will next time, if it means that much to you, but I’m going nowhere near that broach." We decided on a compromise: I would button the top button and leave it at that. Later, however, I saw that I was being unfair to her and so I made the decision that if a tie made her happy, why not wear one, especially if she’s paying for lunch?



Through the years I’ve come to realize that when it comes to dressing for events, it’s always better to be overdressed than under. In some cases it’s actually possible to do both, as hybrid dress configurations like the sports jacket/sweater/ jean combination manage to bypass any suggestion of janitorial influences. Suits and jackets today have lost the Square Bob look of yesteryear, thanks to certain European influences like shorter, tighter jackets, slimmer trousers and slim ties.



Of course, there are things I’d never wear, even if I found myself (during a terrible war with North Korea, say) crawling on all fours in the streets in a search for water and food rations. These items include: (1) sweat pants and sweat suits, which should never be worn outside a gym or the backyard. (2) Flip-flops: No self-respecting man should wear flip-flops in the city (the beach is okay). There’s no sadder sight in contemporary life than watching a grown man in flip-flops trying to descend the steps at Girard and Front after getting off the El.



Please don’t think of me as a fashion expert. I flunked a big test recently when I went to cover a Royal Oak Foundation Lecture, The Day Parliament Burned Down, in the Grant Room of the Union League. As I entered the building, I was stopped by a UL overseer who asked, "Do you have jeans on?" I might have been carrying a ziplock of weed from Colorado, judging from her full frontal lunge in the direction of my shoes. "No, ma’m," I said, respectfully. "In fact, my natural tendency is to overdress. I am wearing dress Levi’s from the Port Richmond Plaza thrift store to match this very hard-to-find Calvin Klein corduroy jacket."



"You are wearing jeans," she said, patently ignoring the Lauren sweater, Italian shoes and dress belt from Helsinki. A fashion debate then ensued at which point the overseer mused, "So far this evening we’ve had to turn away 16 people."



"Sixteen?!" I exclaimed, happening to glance over at a man on a lobby bench in the act of removing his jacket, when like a flash of lightning the overseer pointed at the culprit and said for all to hear, "Please do not remove your jacket, sir!" Two men behind me, also wanting to know how and why Parliament burned down, wore skinny peg ties (Pee Wee Herman), tight jackets and a hybrid version of hipster petite casual slacks. They were also waiting for the overseer’s green light. To my astonishment they were allowed to pass through without the overseer ever checking their trousers.



Life is unfair sometimes.



It was not a good day, and I did not like being number seventeen, but out on the sidewalk, in the sunlight of truth, I could plainly see that the Levi’s on my body were in fact denim (or black jeans) and not cotton.

PENNSYLVANIA'S MEDIEVAL LIQUOR LAWS

The Local Lens

Published• Wed, Apr 03, 2013

By Thom Nickels



On March 22, the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives voted to end the legacy of Prohibition in the Keystone State. The House voted to privatize wine and liquor sales, a positive move that promises to shift the state into the 21st Century.



Lightning did not strike the state capitol when this happened, although it might as well have because now we are seeing state liquor store clerks defending the state store system despite the fact that the vast majority of Pennsylvanians want privatization. On a human level, one can understand why the state store clerks are rising up in protest: they want to save their jobs, an understandable albeit selfish sentiment that pretty much ignores the wishes of the majority: to get the state out of the business of selling alcohol. Unfortunately, the longer the state is involved in the sale of alcohol, the harder it will be to uproot that alliance. We are seeing the first effects of that rupture now.



The fact that every Democrat in the House voted against privatization is a curious thing indeed. Think about it: Democrats voting with the status quo, to retain an antiquated system with roots going back to the days of bathtub gin? Aren’t Democrats supposed to side with the will of the people?



Privatization, generally, is not a good thing. Privatization ruined the airline industry, it threatens to destroy the US Post Office (and replace it with expensive Fed Ex-style deliveries), and it is always ready to pounce on Social Security. Yet privatization in this case is a good thing, and the Pennsylvania Democrats who voted against the measure stooped to a new low when they stated that it (privatization) was "as bad morally as it was fiscally," and that "increased access to drinking would lead to increased drinking and the social ills that come with it."



What?



As a registered Democrat, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a Democrat say that something could be "bad morally." The "bad morally" phrase is usually reserved for right-of-center Republicans on any number of social issues. Democrats, at least in the abstract, are supposed to be moral relativists, so this "moral" thing is peculiar indeed.



Murdering your neighbor or trashing his car might be "bad morally", but how is a greater access to a bottle of wine for a dinner party "bad morally"? This is what those Democrats are saying: If wine and spirits are sold everywhere, the average person will fall prey to temptation and desire to overindulge. This is a Prohibition mindset that the state has been fostering since the state store system began. But civilization will not fall if a bottle of Merlot is sold next to the Tastykakes in the local grocery store.



I’m sorry—no, I’m not—but responsible citizens should not be held hostage because there are undisciplined folks who do fall prey to sloppy overindulgence. I would have had more respect for the Democrats who voted against privatization if they had said that they were concerned about the loss of union jobs or the loss of PLCB annual profits totaling some $170 million which go into state coffers. Instead they blabbered on about "social ills."



I don’t know about you, but when I hear the term "social ills" I think of mass murders in movie theaters, shootings in Old City, or even a random baby stroller murder on a sunny afternoon. What does Fish Eye wine for sale in Thriftway have to do with social illness?



The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has done a lot to adapt to the modern age, such as initializing Sunday sales and regular wine tasting events in random stores. A few years ago there was a master plan in the works to put wine vending machines (kiosks) in up to 100 supermarkets. Obviously, this project failed. The kiosks were supposed to hold a number of popular wines chosen by the LCB while the machines would have filtered out purchases by minors and the intoxicated. While the "how-to science" of these filters was never made clear, the proposed prototype was supposed to get a test run in Harrisburg. Years ago, Governor Rendell (swayed by unions) postponed and then nixed the pilot program.



For anyone who has traveled to New York, California and to the South—where wine can be purchased in local supermarkets—Pennsylvania’s LCB system seems like an H.G. Wells trip into medieval times. Walk the streets of Manhattan, and you’ll find it hard to count the number of shops that sell wine. Or travel to Canada where you will see wine for sale beside candy bars and pound cake in neighborhood drug stores.



Decades ago when you walked into a Philadelphia state store you had to ask a guy behind the counter for what you wanted. They had state store catalogs with numbers; the customer would give the guy a number, he’d disappear into the back and come back with the bottle. The operation was run like a pawn shop. Not only that, but by law the guy behind the counter couldn’t give you any recommendations.



In 2003, I interviewed then Director of Communications for the LCB Bill Epstein about the possibility of change for Pennsylvania. At that time, Epstein told me: "If you look at the political horizon as I understand it, it is hard to paint a picture for any major change in the LCB anytime soon." This despite the fact that in 2003, a Hershey Philbin Associates Online Poll revealed that 75% of Pennsylvanians said they favored abolishing the LCB.



The poll numbers since then have favored privatization even more, although politicians—in this case, Democrats—never seem to listen to their constituents.



So don’t expect any miracles when the privatization bill comes up before the PA Senate. While Pennsylvanians want privatization, politicians have SHS (Selective Hearing Syndrome). As Epstein told me then, "I have people marching in front of my building and our stores who say that we should not be open on Sunday, that we should not allow credit card sales, or go into supermarkets. These self-appointed guardians of moral standards are really Prohibitionists."



"There is a coalition of conservatives who don’t believe that availability to alcohol ought to be expanded. There’s also a group of legislators who want to protect jobs at state stores, and these two forces combine to be a potent political road block to modernizing the system," Chuck Ardo, Press Secretary for Governor Rendell, told me back in 2009.



Face it, folks: Pennsylvania may never change.

Proposed Mormon Temple for Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Pennsylvania and Utah are the only two states in the nation that still have Prohibition-style state controled alochol sales. Will Pennsylvania ever change?

POPE FRANCIS: THE WALTER GROPIUS OF CATHOLICISM

Visiting the Orthodox cathedral in Helsinki, Finland. Orthodoxy never changes. No Novus Ordo table. No dancing nuns. No holding hands during the Our Father. Steel-bolted tradition.

From The Local Lens/Huffinton Post, Religion

Published• Wed, Mar 27, 2013

By Thom Nickels



A lot of people are asking, "What do you think of the new pope?" It’s a question that’s making the rounds like an ice cream truck on a hot July day. Most people, I find, are giving positive answers to that question. Who, after all, wouldn’t like a man who insists on paying his own hotel bill? Who wouldn’t like a man who isn’t afraid to break protocol, such as walking past the Swiss Guards to give babies a kiss and crippled elderly people a hug? Gestures like these are guaranteed to win public approval, much like President Carter’s famous bypassing of protocol when he and First Lady Roslyn walked rather than rode the presidential limo on Inauguration Day. These are true "man of the people" moments that fire up applause meters and warm the hearts of the sentimental.



When Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was elected the 266th pontiff of the Catholic Church, the first thing I did was reach for the William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White 1918 English grammar classic, The Elements of Style. ‘Style’ is mostly defined as a superficial outward form, like an innovative Calvin Klein suit or a new ladies’ hat. A demagogue can have a fantastic personal style; he or she can even be charismatic and warm with a winning smile, or they can have a sour disposition. In both cases, the substance—what they believe and stand for—has not changed, hence one can say with complete certainty that personal style is not an indicator of substance or "brains." "All style and no substance" is a popular phrase that comes to mind.



With Pope Francis, the Catholic Church is getting quite a change in style. In many ways that style is "low church," meaning plainer and quieter Masses and services, plainer-looking vestments, smaller miters. With Pope Benedict XVI we saw the rich liturgical tapestry of Catholicism despite the fact that Benedict may have gone overboard with those red shoes. Eccentric extremes, I suppose, can be controversial, even if sometimes understandable. What is less understandable is the arbitrary changing of ceremonial rubrics.



At his installation Mass, for instance, Francis wore an obviously ugly white miter and a rather drab uninspiring white linen vestment that seemed to downplay the importance of the event. He also made two abrupt ceremonial simplifications when, after his election, he went to the balcony of Saint Peter’s to deliver his first Urbi et Orbi address. He refused the red mozzetta and the papal stole, something that even liturgically liberal Pope John Paul I and John Paul II never did. Why did he do this? Why would a new leader ignore historical precedents? Imagine a future King or Queen of England refusing the trappings of office during a much-anticipated coronation. Is this ego at work, a kind of narcissistic streak of independence—"Look at me, notice me, I’m different!"—or is something else going on?



Some say that Francis’ liturgical minimalism is the result of his personal humility and concern for the poor. While these are laudable, even noble sentiments, as one commentator on the traditionalist Rorate-Caeli website put it, "The pope may be indeed humble in other matters, not when it comes to liturgy. When it comes to liturgy, to the rites and ceremonial of the Church, the humble attitude is to follow the traditional code, the prescribed rubrics or custom, even if that's not what you would like best. To impose one's will, one's personal preference, even if one is the Pope, over the established ceremonial of the Church is not humble attitude by any means. And the ceremonial of the Church prescribes that, when a solemn blessing is involved, Popes wear the mozzetta with the stole, and the pectoral cross hanging by a cord."

If I were to read the papal tea leaves, I’d say that as the first Jesuit pope, Francis will make other ceremonial changes that will shock traditional Catholics [see below]. Traditional Latin Mass congregations are especially worried that Francis will attempt to undo some if not all of the liturgical changes (the reform of the reform) brought about by Benedict. Modern day Jesuits, after all, are usually regarded as avant garde liturgists and edgy theologians. For proof of this just pick up any copy of America magazine, a Jesuit-run publication that’s been singing the praises, at least editorially, of liturgical minimalism since the days of Vatican II. Founded as a religious order by Ignatius of Loyola in 1539 to defend the papacy, many Jesuits today have evolved into theological naysayers at odds with the tenets of their own religion. While the freedom to philosophize and go out on a limb can be a fine thing, it seems weird to me when I hear of Jesuits and other Catholic priests telling priest friends of mine that they "don’t really believe in those things anymore," those things meaning not birth control or the Church’s teachings on sexuality, but in the Real Presence at Mass, that Jesus was the son of God, or anything having to do with the Virgin Mary. This sort of thinking has become common after Vatican II.



Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, famous for liturgical innovation and currently on the firing line for his role in covering up scores of clergy sex abuse cases, was reported to have been estatic at the election of Pope Francis. As reported by Rorate-Caeli, one of the Cardinal’s tweets went this way: "Mass with Pope Francis: moving from High Church to Low Church & humble Church! What a blessing that we are encountering Jesus w/o trappings!" As one critic of Mahony observed, what was this tweet if not a "reprehensible criticism of Pope Benedict?"



If you want to know a bit about Mahony’s liturgical style, check out his LA Masses on Youtube. There you will see hand-clapping, evangelical-style shakin’ and rollin’ along with dancing nuns twirling big incense bowls. Hopefully Pope Francis will not turn St. Peter’s into gymnasium central, although when he announced that he was replacing Monsignor Guido Marini, papal master of ceremonies since 2007, with a rotating team of Francisican liturgists, more alarm bells went off. Teams of liturgists, both lay and clergy, have contributed mightily to liturgical abuse problems since the 1970s.



Perhaps all this talk of style and liturgy doesn’t mean much to the average Catholic. My Catholic neighbors tell me, for instance, that they much prefer the current Mass to "the old one." In fact, they seem so content with the Conciliar Church—lay ministers, et al—that they probably didn’t even notice the radical change in ceremonial style happening in Rome. As one who grew up in the Catholic faith, I know that there are many in the Church who believe that any change in worship or practice, however radical, is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that it is the duty of Catholics-in-the-pews to go along with it. St. Thomas Aquinas, however, would disagree. He wrote: "There being an imminent danger for the Faith, Prelates must be questioned, even publicly, by their subjects."



Perhaps Pope Francis will prove to be a good pope, and in the coming months will quell the tendency to chuck tradition to the four winds. Many people in my Orthodox parish of St. Michael the Archangel in Northern Liberties seem to like Pope Francis. They see him as capable of furthering, or even accomplishing, reunion with the Orthodox Church. That makes sense in a way. Francis first considers himself Bishop of Rome, not an imperial wizard, so one can easily imagine him moving the papacy back to where it was in the early days of the Church, as the first among equals, no more, no less, but with far less control over the family of geographical churches than is exercised today.



Since most of my Orthodox friends at St. Michael’s have never been Catholic, they did not witness firsthand the dismantling of so much Catholic tradition in the years since Vatican II. I’d place any bet, however, that most of them would not be happy if Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople began minimizing the importance of icons or introducing changes into ancient ceremonial practices, not to mention turning a blind eye to [Orthodox] nuns doing a "nice" Mahony-style dance around the iconostasis.



"The buck stops here," as has been said in many corner salons.

Note:  As reported in Rorate-Caeli shortly after Western Good Friday:

"The Preacher of the Pontifical Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, preached in the Vatican Basilica on Good Friday what was formally a homily but truly a panegyric to the new pontiff with an embedded program of great ambition." Main excerpt follows:  

As happens with certain old buildings. Over the centuries, to adapt to the needs of the moment, they become filled with partitions, staircases, rooms and closets. The time comes when we realize that all these adjustments no longer meet the current needs, but rather are an obstacle, so we must have the courage to knock them down and return the building to the simplicity and linearity of its origins. This was the mission that was received one day by a man who prayed before the Crucifix of San Damiano: "Go, Francis, and repair my Church".

I though that was what Pope Benedict XVI was trying to do.

A destroyed Catholic church interior on the outskirts of Vienna. The Spirit of Vatican II at work. My Catholic tour guide was close to tears as she told me the story of the cathedral's destruction--in the name of "humility" and minimalism.  

Saint Paul's Catholic church in South Philadelphia, where there is a weekly Traditional Latin Mass. Father Mark Shinn of St. Andrew's Russian Orthodox church in Northern Liberties once told me that St. Paul's is one of the most beautiful Catholic churches he's ever seen.  

A non-Conciliar order of Catholic monks in Colorado. My nephew is among them. They have no time for "the Spirit of Vatican II" either.

Pope Francis meets Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev. You'd be hard pressed to find an Orthodox liturgical modernist. Had Pope Francis said to the Metropolitan, "You really don't need that huge icon around your neck! And as for that hat, please take it off as a symbol of humility and simplicity!" The Metropolitan's reaction? Most likely, "I am not amused, kind sir!"   

True humility is calling such a place a cathedral. Perhaps the poverty and humility of the new pope will result in all cathedrals looking like this. Perhaps.

Tradition Dismantling Updates: This just in from the Traditio Fathers:

"More and more people are wondering whether Francis-Bergoglio is really a pope. He doesn't want to wear the papal vesture. He doesn't want to be called "pope," but has directed that the Newcardinals and his staff call him "Jorge." Now we find out that he doesn't like the Mess. "Mr. Humility" wants the worship of God slashed further. Anyone who has observed him at the televised services of Holy Week, the most sacred and holy week of the year, bringing true Catholics as close to Christ as they can come, Bergoglio has been caught on camera totally bored and looking at his watch as if he needed to hurry to catch the next train to perdition!




Bergoglio ordered the Easter Vigil Mess trimmed back by almost half. The Traditional Latin Holy Week Rites had already slashed in 1956 by... Bugnini, Chief Architect of the Novus Ordo. Bergoglio didn't have time to worship God during Holy Week, but he had plenty of time to create a "press opportunity" by washing the feet of woman and infidels at a concocted "maundy" meant to spurn Tradition.



The twelve traditional prophecies chanted on Holy Saturday were slashed in 1956 to just four, and now Bergoglio has slashed them further. He was also too impatient to deal with the candle lighting. Bergoglio's Newvatican propagandists claimed that slashing these most sacred rites of the entire Church year were justified by his desire "not to have his Masses [sic] go on too long."

In Walking on Water, Dennis meets Thomas Merton in a very unusual Novus Ordo Trappist island abbey.

From The American Conservative:

 Bergoglio’s obvious disdain for Tradition, and his continual elevation of his personal whims and preferences above Tradition in matters residential, sartorial, liturgical, and canonical, has already reached disturbing levels and bodes ill for those who don’t think the Church began with Vatican II. It isn’t “substance over style,” but rather, a failure to appreciate and understand the true depth and substance behind those Traditions now denigrated as mere “styles” of the past.




His whole “I’m-so-humble-and-simple-shtick,” is wearing thin already, and actually, rather than elevating substance over style, it simply calls more attention to himself, subordinating the Traditions of the Church and the Papacy to his own style at the expense of substance.

LA Cathedral Liturgical Dancing Nun, 2020.