Nun memoir cynicism upended.

So the other week I started reading the second volume of the memoirs of Sister Lucia, one of the Fatima visionaries (the other 2 died in childhood).

Unlike the first volume of the memoirs, which deal with the apparitions and were written down like in the 1930s and 1940s, the second volume has to deal with details about her parents, and was commanded by her bishop in like 1980 because they were redoing her house as a tribute to "the family".

In the introduction, the introducer just gushes about John Paul II and how he stressed the importance of the family, and you can tell that the bishop ordering the old nun to do this was some move to catch the pope's eye and move up the ranks.

And not that it's not that, but I actually found this memoir much more moving than the apparition memoir!  I've only just begun reading it, but there's this wonderful section where she describes when the Spanish influenze hit her hometown in Portugal, and her mother made chicken broth to take to all the sick people who couldn't leave their beds, and her father commanded her mother to stop for fear of infection, and she said that she had take the chickens to make broth from other people, so to deliver the broth with her, and then see conditions for himself and see whether to continue.

The next thing you know, Lucia's father comes back with a child in tow, and then leaves and comes back later with more - all the children of the sick, who were wandering around houses because there parents were deathly ill in bed with fever.

Lucia also talks a lot about the poor who would always come to the door for food and maybe a place to sleep the night, and that made me think a lot about how social programs have alleviated much of that.

The entire time she kept talking about the big extended families, though, I kept thinking about how many women were the victims of domestic violence, or how many children were abused and kept silent.

I think about that a lot, after the abuse crisis, and also this one early New England diary my advisor talks about, which is "the most blood-chilling source you'll ever read" (as she describes it), as a married woman describes the vicious beatings received by her husband.

Neurotic cleaning.

I disassembled my fan that I had gotten out of my grandfather's basement 6 years ago and have used ever since.

Black gunk was on the blades, interior, and fan protector grids, so I screwdrivered off the grids, soaked them in soapy water in my bathtub, and wiped them down, and then wiped down the interior of the fan while they were off.

The whole thing probably took me like 30 minutes, but my fan looks much better now.

Even more Mexican-Polish interactions!

The other week I went to a soccer game with a (Mexican) engineer a friend used to date, and then I hit up a few bars in the neighborhood after.

The last one I was at this rundown combo liquor store-bar, which was in a 2-flat building and had an opaque square glass block window in front with a blue neon "LIQUOR" sign in it, and in the back there was this thick-built blonde (Polish) woman in her early 40s, who was talking with this (hispanic) couple at the end of the bar, who were picking at food in a styrofoam tray set on the counter in a white plastic shopping bag.

Heavy club music was pounding - some song called something like "Hang on World" - and when the bartender got me a beer, I asked her the name of the bar.

"[initial removed] & [initial removed] Chateau", she was like.

"Why is that?", I was like.

"Because my father is [name starting with the 1st initial] and my mother is [name starting with the second initial]," she was like.

"And the Chateau part?", I was like.

"I don't know, because they felt like this," she shrugged, congenially.

Later, 2 drunk old Polish men came in, one with long brown grizzled hair and a beard, and the other cleancut with a very red nose.

Every once in a while, the one with the long hair would get up and dance around in an exaggerated fashion to the club music, and he and the other guy would laugh.

Eventually, they started talking to me, and I introduced myself (in Polish!), and they were delighted, and the one bought me a 2nd beer.

When he went outside for a smoke, the grizzled one said that he was his brother, and that he drank too much and drove home, and he didn't like that, and that they had been drinking all night.

Then, when the other one came back in from smoking, they said something (in Polish) to the bartender, and she came over and yelled at them for 3 minutes solid (in Polish), and they got shamefaced and drank very quickly, and she turned their back on them, calmed down, and went to the jukebox to put on that "Hang on World" heavy club music song again.

As the guys left, the one was grabbing a sixpack in front and called out and asked me if I was fine for beer, and offered to buy me a 3rd, but I politely refused, and they left.

A few minutes later, a couple (Mexican) guys who were offshift from a mariachi band came in in these white outfits with gold stripes on the side of the pants, said hi to the bartender, and headed to use the restroom in back.

Then, they came up to the counter in the liquor store part and chatted with her as she rang up a couple of sixpacks.

Pig Roast!

This weekend is a pig roast, I'm very excited.

My one (white) colleague from Mississippi and couple Chilean grad students he knows are getting a pig from somewhere, then setting up an all-day roast in the public park.  To come, you just bring beer/liquor and a side.

I'm stoked, I'll totally make up some home-made veggie pasta salad and buy a 6-pack.

I ran into my one (white) colleague from Mississippi, and he was saying the pig was pretty reasonable, like $100, and there's 5 people chipping in, so between $12 on a 6-pack for good beer and buying/making a side, it evens out for hosts and guest, it would seem.

Bars, New Project...

Oddly, even though I'm only in the 850s when it comes to bars (like maybe fifty some percent done?), I feel like I've already got that under control, and I need a new big project.

So, I'm thinking of trying to decipher the Voynich Manuscript, since I already do puzzles anyways, I might know the language underneath (Latin?), and it would be like this really really hard puzzle I could work on in my spare time.

I'm already in the process of contacting a graphic artist a friend has hired to see if she could take the pdfs I have of the manuscript, play with the contrast, and put them in a format where I could print them out easily so I could take a pencil and play around with the sheets.

What I keep wondering, though, is if I do decipher it, will it get me some ass.

Intermittent haircuts.

Since my one stylist left, my hair isn't quite cut right, and it sticks off my head at one place at a funny angle when it gets long.

Though I aim at 5 weeks between haircuts, that odd-looking place around the cowlick shows up around week 4, and so 6 weeks is way too long for a haircut!

Also, the last couple times I have tried to specify a very short haircut since it's summer, and the Japanese salon owner has made it one shearing size too long both times, though I think next hair cut we're agreed on the length and I'll get the length I want.

Visit to a black gaybar (3 of 3): Afterwards.

After the poems, they had a "warm fuzzy" where everyone just went around and hugged everyone else "since you don't know where someone is and why they came here tonight, and everyone needs encouragement," and then the evening broke down for socializing, and at that point there were like 30+ (black) lesbians in the room.

Me and my one (British) friend drank up, and I asked the cop if it was okay we were here.

"Oh yeah," she was like, "Men drift through here every few weeks, and we have a men-as-allies night last night of the month."

I then told her that I thought it was a poetry night and not so much a lesbian social hour, and she told me that up until 4 years ago, the bar used to be mostly (black) and (gay) with some (black) lesbians coming in, but "then the women took it over".

"You know how women are," she was like, "They take things over!".

She also told me that 3 Sundays a month they have 60s music night for (black) lesbians of that generation, from 5-10pm.

When we left, my one (British) friend said he quite enjoyed himself, and he also said he was surprised how the few other men there turned out to be women, both the old man with the 2 women tucked away in nursing homes, and the security guard, who seemed to be a (black) guy with a hat tucked down around his ears, but was actually a woman.

Many of the announcements had to do with "butches" and "femmes", and he said he was interested in how that was such a prominent part of that community (he's an anthropologist).

Then, we biked back through the sidestreets, and it was 10:30pm and very hot out, and some (black) kids sitting on a front porch stoop on a street with a lot of broken glass heckled us.