Rome

August 23, 2020 Peace and Good, I am still in Rome, which is a bit of a miracle. I think that this is the longest that I have been at home for many years. Once I begin to travel again at the end of the month, it will mean that I will be out for almost two months. This means that I am trying to get by taping of daily reflections and my writing of articles and talks done for the next few months. I have done that with the daily reflections, finishing them up to mid-October. I have just finished writing all 11 articles I need for the Messenger magazine from Padua for 2020, so I am done til December of next year. Now I have some editing to do on some projects, and a couple of new projects to get off the ground. I should be able to finished them by the end of next week. The weather is hot and humid, as it always is this time of year. The city is packed with tourists. I feel sorry for them, for when you walk down the street, you often see them sitting down on curbs with a look of exhaustion on their faces. I have finished some reading: The Night of the Long Knives by Charles River Editors This is the story of the rise of Hitler in Germany and his vendetta against some of his own followers. The Brown Shirts, the SA, had grown powerful, and like the Revolutionary Guards in Iran after the revolution which overthrew the Shah, they wanted to take over the army. The old Prussian guard and the rich businessmen who were financing the Nazis expressed their horror to Hitler at this idea. The SA were nothing but thugs who had no real plan for the future. Hitler decapitated their leadership by killing or imprisoning most of them, leaving the lower ranks to fade away. Thunderhead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child This is one of the many book that this team has written. Some of them are science fiction, others detective stories, others a mix of both. This one is steeped in Southwest Native American culture. A group of archaeologists find a lost city which contains dangerous mysteries that probably shouldn’t be discovered. There is also a group of skin walkers, the Native American version of werewolves, in the mix. It is quite a good, event filled book. Easter Rising: a History from Beginning to End by Hourly History This short book speaks of the Irish Rebellion at Easter time in 1916. The country had already been promised home rule when World War I would end, but given that there was no end in sight, and that many of the Irish did not want home rule but rather wanted total independence, they decided to do something extreme. The rebellion was not all that organized with one major faction withdrawing from it at the last minute. While with wasn’t totally successful, it nevertheless sparked a violent backlash from the British who over reacted, creating such a bad feeling among the Irish that many who would not have thought of rebellion now favored its cause. The Early Church From Ignatius to Augustine by George Hodges This is a short history of some of the Fathers of the Church. It was written a while ago, but it still is worth reading to get an overview of the topic. Have a good week. Shalom fr. Jude William the Conqueror: A Life from Beginning to End by Hourly History This is a short biography of the man who conquered England in 1066. The Hourly History series is very similar to the Charles River Editors series, providing a good amount of information in a relatively short format. I compare their books to extended Wikipedia articles. The Bear River Massacre by Charles River Editors This book speaks about one of the Indian Wars in the Northwest at the end of the 19th century. This one deals with the war against the Shoshone People and their almost total extermination during one of those wars. The only ones who reached out to them were the Mormon settles who had moved up north from Utah to southern Idaho (where they are still very numerous). The Bloody Shirt: Terror after the Civil War by Stephen Budiansky This was one of the most difficult books that I have read in years, not because it wasn’t good. It was a very good presentation of the topic. It was just painful because of what it speaks. It deals with the white backlash against the reconstruction in the South after the Civil War. It was racist and violent. The national government didn’t want to get too involved lest the war begin again. But this negligence left the African American population of the South all enslaved with the Jim Crow Laws and the successful effort to disenfranchise them.