New York Times notable books for 2009

Out of the 100 books they list, I have read a whopping two: Columbine and Zeitoun. Sigh.

It's not that I don't read. Both night tables are full of books. I guess it is just that I am reading books a couple of years old, such as Robert Clark's Dark Water about the 1966 flood in Florence and the controversial restoration of the Cimabue crucifixion, or finishing off Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma which I started flying to Stockton, CA in January; or Peter Chapman's Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World (title says it all), or Ron Hansen's novel, Exiles, an interweaving of Gerald Hopkin's poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, and Hansen's depiction of Hopkin's life and the lives of five nuns who perished in the wreck; Terry Tempest Williams' Leap, her in-depth meditation on Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Delights; and finally Julie Greene's The Canal Builders which speaks of the silver, not gold, people who built the Panama Canal (the non-white people were paid in silver and had none of the perks that the whites did, surprise, surprise).

So there is plenty to read... just not what is on the NYT book list.

FLASH: It is snowing!!!! Hooray (never mind that I don't have snow tires on yet)!

Here we be

The Pew poll found that the recession was having its deepest immediate impact on those in the “threshold generation,” ages 50 to 64. They were most likely to have suffered significant investment losses, and three-quarters of them said the recession would make it harder for them to afford retirement, a greater percentage than of either older or younger Americans.

But if that generation does end up working longer, workers in their 30s and 40s could find themselves facing more competition for jobs and promotions. Even if the recession does end this year, as the more optimistic economists forecast, the effects of it could be felt for years to come.

Right on, Joe Sharkey

Joe Sharkey writes a regular Tuesday column in the business section of the New York Times, but he also maintains a blog about travel issues. Recently, and I add, sadly, he has been on a roll about the price hikes in the airline industry. He hits the nail on the head in his 27 June entry.

Here's Your Free Ticket ... 50 Bucks Please

We have commenced upon another slippery slope.

Delta said it will ding customers $25 for frequent flier award tickets in North America and $50 for international award tickets starting Aug. 15. Delta calls it a "fuel surcharge."

Here's Delta's press release announcing the new charges for formerly free tickets. Note that it is headlined "Delta Continues to Adjust to Unprecedented Fuel Costs with Addition of Fuel Surcharge on SkyMiles Award Ticket Travel."

On June 12, US Airways made a similar announcement about charging $50 ($100 internationally) for award tickets.

The headline on its press release was: "US Airways Accelerates Business Model Transformation."

Hmmmm. "Continues to Adjust...with Addition" ... "Accelerates Business Model..." All these forward-sounding words!

Let me ask a question: Who the hell do these airlines think they're kidding? Why do they find it impossible to simply come out and say what they're doing in a straightforward manner?

I can't tell you the number of business travelers I have heard from lately who say: I wish the airlines would cut the crap, raise their fares to whatever it takes to stay in business, and stop nickel-and-diming us and insulting our intelligence. The leisure travel market is about to shrink substantially, and it's probably a really, really bad time to keep pissing off business travelers.

Hey airlines: Continue to adjust. To this.

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Today I read that US Air, United will now charge $7.00 for one of those bitty bottles of wine. Guess the fun days are over. That's way too much. And they aren't ruling out charging for the regular beverages. Pues, I suppose we should suspect nothing since we have to pay for everything on trains and there are no options on buses. Maybe as we dinosaurs who remember the elegance and excitement of flying back in the 1970s (!) die out, there won't be so much flap about the cutting of costs.

But I really would like the airlines to stop nickel-and-diming us.

It's pretty discouraging actually: last Monday I priced RT fares for December, Hartford-San Salvador and they were running $900. That's out of my range now.

Rumble at the border

The radio just had this travel advisory: I-89 is shut down in both directions at the border crossing in Highgate Springs. People on the Canadian side aren't being allowed to enter the US and people on the US side are having to leave the interstate before getting to the border.

Why? Because of a 'suspicious-looking package.'

Skeptic I am, it's hard to believe that anyone would bother with a small Vermont border crossing.

The fact that we are a border-state has raised my consciousness... but not because of fear on my part. One hundred miles south of the border on I-91 the Department of Homeland Security put up a checkpoint. Senator Leahy has protested against it and when he asked Michael Chertoff about its permanency, Chertoff said it was just temporary. Leahy shot back: then why were $8M put into the budget to set up a permanent checkpoint?

An Episcopalian, who adopted a daughter from China, said when the checkpoint was last operating (it hasn't for two years), they were routinely stopped.

So I am not convinced that this checkpoint does all that much, even if they have caught drug dealers. (My first time being summoned for federal jury duty, I made it as far as the first seating for a jury than involved a Québecois truck driver who had gotten caught at the border with 20 lbs of cocaine hidden in a bunch of golf bags inside the 18 wheeler. He maintained that he had picked up the container part of the truck and didn't know what was in it. I think I got booted from the jury because I am clergy and fluent in French.)

Meanwhile, I can only imagine the confusion at the border today and am thankful I am not trying to get into Canada.

In the time it has taken for me to write this, the state police have decided to reopen the highway.

More on BXVI's sartorial predilections

The New York Times
Benedict, Fashionisto

By Father James Martin

“What is that?” a television commentator asked me about Benedict’s white silk mozzetta, the ermine-trimmed half-cape that he wore before the Vespers service on Wednesday night at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. Afterward, the pope changed into a brocaded gold cope, the large cape used for vespers and benedictions, and was escorted down the aisle by two deacons, who held open his cope to reveal a rich red lining. Atop his head the pontiff sported a tall golden miter, and in his hand held a heavy gold processional cross.

It has long been known in Rome that Pope Benedict XVI is a fashionisto. Not simply for his affinity for highly polished red-leather shoes (John Paul’s were more likely to be scuffed oxblood tie-ups), which were reputed to be Prada (no, say Vaticanologists, they are made by a single cobbler), nor simply for his predilection for (by some reports) Serengeti sunglasses. Rather, it is his use of vestments and other liturgical attire not seen since at least the 1960s that has some Catholics surprised, bemused, befuddled, charmed and, in some quarters, disturbed.

Vestments carry meaning in the church. During the different liturgical seasons priests will change the colors of the chasubles (the large poncho-like garment) that they wear during Mass. During “Ordinary Time,” that is, most of the year, we wear green vestments. During Lent and Advent, purple. During Easter and Christmas, white. On the feast days of martyrs, red. Special meanings are attached to each vestment: the stole, the scarf-like cloth worn under the chasuble, or over an alb, symbolizes authority. Many of these vestments date back to Roman times.

Since the Second Vatican Council, the use of some of the more elaborate vestments (or “vesture”) has been scaled back, if not discontinued, especially under Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. According to some friends in Rome, John Paul sometimes wore whatever vestments were provided for him at the parish, cathedral, or outdoor venue where he was celebrating Mass. He seemed to have simpler sartorial tastes.

Benedict, however, has brought back a number of items of papal clothing not seen for decades, sometimes centuries. In an article for Religion News Service, David Gibson, author of “The Rule of Benedict,” noted the pope has worn “the high mitre of Pius IX, a 19th-century pope known for his dim views of the modern world, and on Ash Wednesday he wore a chasuble modeled on one worn by Paul V, a Borghese pope of the 17th century remembered for censuring Galileo.”

On Good Friday of this year, the pope appeared in the “fiddleback” vestments familiar to Catholics from pre-Vatican II Masses. And around Christmastime he often turns up in a camauro, a red-velvet cap familiar to art history students: no papal portrait in the Renaissance seemed complete without one.

Keith Pecklers, S.J., a Jesuit professor of liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, noted in an article in The Tablet, a Catholic magazine based in London, that many see a wider agenda at work. “Conservative critics, then, see these changes in papal vesture as indicative of a wider papal liturgical reform under way,” wrote Father Pecklers. “Perhaps they are correct, although the reality appears to be much more enigmatic and complex.”

In general, says Pecklers, these innovations are a reminder that this is a tradition-minded pope. After all, last year the pope relaxed the restrictions on the celebration of the Latin Mass, as a way of reminding Catholics of its centrality in the tradition of the church. (The move angered some Catholics who saw the move as a retrenchment, and even a rejection of the reforms of Vatican II.)

Benedict is also an aesthete, and I mean this in a positive way. He is a highly educated and cultured man who enjoys quoting St. Augustine, loves listening to the opera, and relaxes by playing Mozart on a piano in the papal apartments. So besides indicating his theological views on tradition, his use of ornate vesture may simply represent his personality.

Still, his elaborate garments are not without its critics. “What does that have to do with Jesus?” a friend of mine asked the other night, referring to his mozzetta. “What does it have to do with the poor carpenter from Nazareth?” Hearing someone speak about the need to listen to the “cry of the poor” may be made more difficult when it comes from someone wearing watered silk.

But for Benedict these seem not to be in conflict. The tradition of the church — which includes a call to live simply, care for the poor, and work for justice — also includes the tradition of not only the arts, and of liturgical artistry. The pope embraces these traditions even if it may sometimes make him look outmoded or overly concerned with his appearance.

Finally, when I see him “arrayed in splendor,” to quote Scripture, it makes me think that perhaps Benedict also grasps that many Catholics want their pope to look like the part. It reminds me of something that Brooke Astor, the New York socialite, used to say. When asked why she dressed up for every single event, for example, a meeting at a poor school in Harlem, she said, “People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady.”

Many Catholic expect to see the pope, and Benedict, in his finery, does not disappoint.