exorcism memorabilia trip!!!

One regret of my not having email is that sometimes I want to write an entry, but by the time I'm online next, my enthusiasm is gone... I feel that's the case with this entry...

I had been reading up on great exorcisms of the 20th c., and of the 2 most famous (one Iowa, one Missouri), the 2nd inspired the novel and then the movie. When I had visited my one Dutch friend in St. Louis, he had suggested that we visit the hospital there, but the online information at 1st suggested that the exorcism happened in the D.C. area, so I just glanced to see what book the information was gathered from and stopped looking...

And when I got home and was reading the book a couple weeks later, I realized the exoricism really did happen in St. Louis.

-BUT-

I discovered the religious order who owned the now-demolished hospital had their appointment-only provincial archives in my city, so I wrote ahead and scheduled a time with the archivist to come in and see their archive in general - including the statue of an archangel that was brought into the kid's room for the climactic final week of the exorcism.

I didn't say that straight up, because I didn't want the archivist to think that I was one of "those kind of people".

But, when I biked out to the commuter rail line and then hopped it to the 'burbs, and there were (white) businessmen reading papers, and this done-up middle-aged Greek woman with too much makeup and a short haircut who was the kid of the owners of the cafe where I got a chicken salad sandwich and older (white) ladies were lunching, and at the library there were tons of (white) moms with little kids running around and in strollers, and I kept thinking to myself, "These people have no idea that in their town there's a record of cosmic evil breaking into the universe."

Because, after all, the archivist also had the secret case files of the exorcism, which have never been released.

When I got there - I brought my bike on the train so I could bike out; the archives were a few miles outside of the downtown center where the train dropped me off - I was soaking wet.

But, the archivist was very cordial after I checked in with the desk guard and met her in the little side office with two rooms, one of which had display cases and one of which had the office where she and another woman worked.

"And why were you interested?", she was like, and mentioned my being a ph.d. student in a relevant area and asked if I was perhaps interested in archival research or something.

"Oh, I had come across the account of the St. Louis exorcism," I said - and I paused, to let that hang there - "and I had never heard of your order and saw your had a museum, so I decided to come to educate myself, like I had when I was in other cities in the past and saw that different orders I wasn't familiar with had museums.

"Oh," she was like, and mentioned the statue, as well as a window that a brother had saved from the hospital when it was demolished.

She gave me the tour, though, and the work of the order was *fascinating*, and I peppered her with questions about the different stuff in the cases, and mentioned intersections with what I had learned from my studies, my great being a nun, etc.

Then, when we got to the statue, she mentioned several things:

- she gets a ton of calls from journalists around Halloween.
- the museum is mostly for the brothers, not outsiders.
- people have wanted to take pictures of the statue.

About that last point, I was like, "Why not? If it has special powers, I don't see why it's any different from a relic, and why deny access to it. Maybe you should put it in a chapel or something so people can pray to it, without telling anyone what it is, to keep away people with the wrong intentions."

She also said that the book that everyone reads about the case in is inaccurate, since it incorporates old newspaper articles like they're the truth, instead of sorting through it against eyewitnesses.

"Gotcha," I was like. "It's almost like the telephone game, where stuff gets distorted, but there's really something there at the beginning..."

"Exactly!", she was like.

She also said it was a shame that the brothers who were attendants were dying, since no-one would ever know the real story, and she hinted that she indeed knew it...

"That's true in one sense," I was like, "But even if you get all that down and publish it, you don't know what people are going to do with that information. It's a story of the victory of Christ over dark forces, but I bet a lot of people are interested in it because it proves that things are out there that they can contact, and do you really want that? Maybe it's just better to let it die..."

At that she made a face, and then said that when the brothers were clearing out the hospital before it was demolished, they found that someone had entered the room and set up candles and pentagrams to do a ritual there.

I totally called that.

ADDENDUM.

I forgot -

After I left hipster karaoke a few weeks ago, it turns out that the host suddenly realized his tip jar was gone from in front of his hosting stand, so he stopped someone mid-song and shut the place down while people looked for it. They finally found the tip jar emptied out in the women's restroom, and the host got pissed, said, "Fuck this shit," and stormed out and didn't come back the rest of the night (though he has sent out an email since saying he'll be hosting a night at the same place in a few weeks).

(=the version of the story from my one [white] friend from Mississippi).

==tidbits for the weekend==

1) I had a dream last night about my friend's papillon, only it didn't have big ears and looked more like a guinea pig then anything. We were on a lawn and I called it over to me, and it stopped to burrow into a patch of soil, and came up with a huge earthworm that it then proceeded to eat. I looked closely at it, and there were large black beetles clinging to the fur on the underside of its face.

2) Last night I was talking with my one Mormon colleague who studies Roman suicide about how he got that interest... He can't remember, though he did remember that during the Heaven's Gate mass suicide newsblast, he was thinking, "Wow, those people are really brave and dedicated..."

3) The other night I texted my one French colleague who lives near me to stop through and check email (which he said I could do if I ever needed to), since I wasn't sure if I had an appointment the next day... By the time he texted me back, I had already checked it somewhere else. Anyhow, the next day I ran into him on campus, and he was concerned about me losing my apartment - and then I realized that I had texted him something like -

can i stop by to check my email? not sure if i have an appt. 2mrw

- and he misread "appt." for "apartment", not "appointment".

Odd 2nd meeting w/the state rep.

A few weeks ago, there was a follow-up meeting between the community-organizing group that I've been volunteering with, and that state rep in the area.

Most of the meeting was follow-up points, though there was some rehashing of basics. I got stuck holding the agenda, and it was a little to shepherd everyone through in a timely fashion, since there were tangents, etc., and it also represented questions from different people.

Anyhow, there were two weird things.

First, he completely switched his advice on how to fight against budget cuts. Before, he had said not to advocate for individual programs, but rather equal cuts so no-one's program was gutted, but now, he said to find specific programs to advocate for (? - and he also said that we might not have a good grasp on what programs are vital across the state). Before, too, he had said to contact committee chairs who were making cut recommendations, but now he said they wouldn't listen to us since we weren't their constituents, and plus we couldn't tell them any concerns that they hadn't already heard a ton... He also said before that we should try to set up a meeting with a committee chair (who's a rep from a neighboring district), but he now said that was pointless.

Very odd, with the only commonality between everything, it seemed, being that he wanted us out of the process, and to say that he had no control over results.

Second, towards the end of the meeting, I was trying to wrap things up, but then someone spoke
up with some other concern, and then after I tried wrapping things up again after a silence, someone spoke up again, the guy made some crack about not having to follow an agenda so closely, like I was a bad chair or something...

I didn't think much of it at the time, but later I realized that that was really shitty of him to make a joke like that in front of a group of people, esp. since I hadn't really wanted to chair, was trying to do a good job, and was in a vulnerable place.

After the 1st meeting, I was all fired up to maybe volunteer for him in future campaigns - he has a very good grasp of policy and what to do - but now I really don't care so much. I might not go out of my way to attend meetings with him in the future, either.

First Communion relic of 1951 or 1952.

Going through old boxes at my great uncle's house, my mom found among her cousin's First Communion stuff a mimeographed sheets that the nuns at his grade school gave him in the 2nd grade back in 1951 or 1952, for his Confession before his First Communion...

It was a list of possible sins to take into the confessional, in case he got flustered and forgot.

Items included (I'm remembering here; perhaps I should scan this in for everyone and post it):

I was late for mass.
I used profane language.
I made fun of old people.
I stole _______ what?
I asked others to steal.
I had impure thoughts.
I saw impure pictures (movies).
I went to non-Catholic services.
I went to fortune tellers.
I ate meat on Fridays.
I wished evil upon my parents, teachers, and priest.

We talked about that list all weekend. I got some coats from my great uncle - they were my size - but I didn't take any pants even though they fit, since they looked too old for me. When my uncle asked again why didn't I take any and I said they were looked too old, my dad raised up his finger and pointed it at me and was like, "Don't make fun of old people!"

My parents also wondered all weekend why a 6 or 7 year-old would know what a fortune teller was.

Another response to the picture of me at the protest.

From a friend from high school who still lives in my hometown, with his wife (we had been emailing about something else and I sent the link to him):

Wow! You look ready to crack some Scab skull.

Michigan politics.

My dad is a totally dyed-in-the-wool Democrat now. He can't understand the gov's wanting to cut taxes for the rich and increase them for people "who can't afford to give".

"And they're the ones who would spend money on necessities if they had more, so he's killing the economy by giving the money to rich people who just horde it," he was like.

My uncle, too, who is economically populist but tends to be disenchanted with both parties, was also very concerned about the gov.

"I need to look into this more," he was like, "But I can't find any reasons for their actions besides being dictatorial. The unions aren't the problem, and they said they'd make concessions, but he still wants to do away with them."

Both said they'd sign a recall, though my dad didn't think it'd succeed.

"But I'd sign it just so the thing got signatures and made him nervous," my dad was like. "It's good to shake things up."

He, by the way, especially *loved* the picture of me protesting at the Wisconsin rally, and said that it reminded him of a 1930s portrait.

An Afternoon in Detroit (II of II): Museum.

The museum was hopping and very busy. The exhibit was a ton of fun - it was like 4-5 rooms full of copies, forgeries, and frauds, oftentimes genuine works of artists were exhibited right next to fakes, which made you look really closely at the difference in technique etc. There was also a lot about the science behind detecting forgeries, too, which was fun.

My favorite was the last room, though. One of the exhibits was a photograph that was consistent with Man Ray's techniques and whatnot, but there was no conclusive evidence that it was by him, so the exhibit asked, can you appreciate it without knowing for certain that it's by him? Another was a painting that was trimmed off of a larger canvas and saved and then sold by the trimmer, and the artist disowned it. So, in one sense it was genuine, but was it? The last question asked was whether you could appreciate something's beauty, even if it was a forgery.

After that, we went through a couple other galleries, and every once in a while my godmother would be like, "Fake, fake, fake," as she passed by different pieces.

My mom, too, was like, "I can't look at anything now and appreciate it, because I keep worrying that it's a fake!".

Later that night, when me and my mom were telling my dad and my uncle about the exhibit, my mom was talking about the exhibit and how daring it was to confess that the museum had bought forgeries in the past, and she was like, "And then, in the last room they asked whether you could appreciate something fake, to cover their ass, after they spent all that money to get it and then have all those specialists look at it."

"Huh," my dad was like.

An afternoon in Detroit (I of II): Way there.

Me, my mom, and my godmother went in to Detroit one afternoon to go catch this art exhibit on forgeries.

We got off the freeway a little bit too early, and we drove around trying to find a cross street to get us to the museum.

"This is like a war zone," my mom kept saying, since most houses were boarded up or with windows knocked out or were just empty frame standing, for block after block after block, and that was just where there was houses; most of the streets had a lot of empty lots.

She reminisced, too, when we were going down one street, what a high-class neighborhood it used to be in her youth...

(Overall, I really thought that the residential streets were worse than similar parts of Chicago or Gary, though the downtown was much better than Gary.)

Anyhow, a little after that, we hit a pothole, and within a minute the tire on my godmother's car deflated, but luckily we were near to a gas station and pulled up to it without having to drive too far on the rim...

All the customers were (black), and there was this old (black) lady on drugs who kept coming over to us, and groups of young (black) (male) teenagers coming in and out of the gas station to get sodas and junk food and stuff.

We got the trunk open and I was starting to unscrew the emerency tire in the trunk (it was bolted down way tight; we had to dig out included tools to get it off), but after a few minutes this (hispanic) guy and a (white) guy came up and asked if we needed help...

It turned out that they had a company dropping off dumpsters in front of repossessed houses (others filled up the dumpsters), and they were stopped at the gas station and saw us.

As the (hispanic) guy changed our tire, we were all talking, and he was saying that when they dropped off the dumpsters, people would always come out and shout and them and telling them to take it back, and that they had the wrong address, etc., but they would just be calm and say that they had the right address, and leave the dumpster.

He said sometimes after others took out all the people's crap (a lot of times people didn't do it themselves), at night the people would move it all back in the house, so they'd have to go back and do everything all over again - except this time the people clearing out the house would make sure to knock out the windows or something so the place was uninhabitable.