Ellicott City - Cincinnati

March 9, 2014 Peace and Good, Most of last week I was just trying to recover from the jet lag of coming in from Australia. The trip itself is brutal. It took about 26 hours of travel to get from Melbourne to Baltimore. Then there was the eight hours difference in time zones. It was a week before I was sleeping well at night again. Last Thursday I spent meeting with a number of people with whom I had to do some business. I was able to get it all done, and actually things have gone very well. Friday I flew into Dayton, Ohio to give a parish mission in St. Maximilian Parish. This is the very last parish mission that I had committed myself to before I was chosen to be the Assistant General. All of my other commitments were cancelled, but the pastor of this parish asked me if I might be able to keep the commitment, given that this was part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the parish. Furthermore, given that the parish is named after St. Maximilian Kolbe, one of our friars, I thought that I should not back out. This is a very large parish, somewhere around 2500 families. It is very active, and I can sense that there is a good spirit among the parishioners. I will be here until the end of the week. I have finished some books: Two Graves by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child This is a detective story about a New Orleans born FBI agent who is investigating the kidnapping and murder of his wife by a Nazi band in Brazil. There are many twists and turns, not all of which are all that believable. Nevertheless, it is a good book that shows the reasoning skills of Pendergast and his friends against a fiendish plot. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North by James M. McPherson During the Civil War, there were many people in the North who were opposed to both the war and especially the emancipation of slaves. This is their story. They were at times considered to endanger the republic. The danger seems to have been local more than national, but they nevertheless did constitute a type of fifty column that at times threatened to collaborate with the southern forces. This book speaks of the rise of the movement and their eventual downfall following several victories by the northern forces (Mobile, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, etc.) and the victory of Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 election. Snyder, Timothy Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin Snyder writes about the area between Poland and Ukraine and Belarus during the period of 1933 and 1945 where some 14 million people were murdered by the Soviets and the Nazis. The Soviets tended to kill their own, such as the 3 million or so Ukranian peasants who were starved to death during the move to collectivize farms. There were also many killed during the Great Terror, especially Ukranians and Poles who lived in the Soviet Union. Among the Nazi’s, it was especially Jews and Slavs (especially Poles and Russians) who were murdered. It is incredible to listen to such horror, but it is so important to know what happened and why. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt by Daniel Rasmussen This is the story of the largest slave rebellion to take place in the United States. It occurred just before the War of 1812 in New Orleans. Hundreds of slaves picked up their field tools and found arms and marched toward the city from the plantations along what is called the German Coast. The book is well documented, although it becomes a bit polemic about the fact that this rebellion has been studied so little in the decades afterward. It even speaks of how various accounts of the rebellion (whether by white supremicists or communists) were written to defend a position rather than to discover the truth). Overall, the book is good and informative. I hope you have a good week. Shalom fr. Jude