And onward we go

I've realized recently that I really dig the presidency. I know way too many trivia facts about it. (Did you know John Quincy Adams liked to skinny-dip in the Potomac?) I've seen the Smithsonian collection of First Ladies' gowns multiple times and bought the commemorative coloring book. (Nancy Reagan's cream evening gown is the only time I've used a white crayon.) And of course, I really enjoy the hoopla of inaugurations. When I was a child, they meant waving flags and eating patriotically colored cupcakes.

Ironically, I almost watched the inauguration of the Gen X, internet utilizing president on old-school technology. Judie in Development brought in an old portable TV set from home so it could enjoy a last hurrah before the DTV transition makes it useless. Online streaming wasn't behaving, so for a while it looked like the entire office would be huddled around her cubicle.

Eventually we did make it to the flat-screen in the conference room, where I made the following random observations. Most of them are about wardrobe, which is always tricky in January's weather. (Remember Hillary's controversial hat in 1993?)

• Michelle Obama's fashion sense did not disappoint. Love love love the embellished yellow outfit. It was flattering and unique.
  
• Aretha Franklin's hat was out of control, and I gotta respect her for that. Singing at an inauguration is once in a lifetime, so you might as well go full-on diva.
• Awww the Bushes Sr wore matching purple scarves. Clinton was in a cheery yellow. The Carters apparently missed the scarf memo, nor did they feel like hugging Bill and Hillary.
• Awww the Obama girls are ADORABLE. I'm already cringing for their awkward teen indiscretions.
  
• H W Bush's fur hat is also amazing. I would wear one if I were an ex-president.
• Aren't Yo Yo Ma's fingers cold?
• Can we remember the words to the oath of office? No? Ok then. I'm not sure if Obama or Roberts is to blame here.
  
• We are always "remaking America"? Hmmmm.
  
• Please don't make "wrong side of history" a catch phrase. Please.
  
• Yes, let's make choices for love and inclusion. Can that involve unborn children too?
  
• Not gonna lie, I got goosebumps at the end of the speech.
  
• The DC skyline makes me so homesick I can't stand it.
  
• The benediction minister seems like a real character. "When the red man/ can get ahead, man"
  

Now, as I'm back at my desk with tv coverage of state luncheons in the background, I really, really want to watch Duck Soup, the best Presidency-themed movie ever. His excellency's car!!

Two new church finds

Today I attended mass at St. Anthony, which is next door to the pregnant women's shelter one of the other volunteers works at. St. Louis seems to have a great respect for old buildings, and St. Anthony is one of many neo-Gothic/Romanesque houses of worship that would not have survived Vatican II unscathed in, say, Chicago. In fact, a plaque in the entry praises the firefighters and restoration crew who rescued the church from a 1994 fire.

Whether that restoration is entirely a good thing is another matter, however. There were really lovely elements, like the delicate Life of Christ windows and intricate pastel details on walls. Others were a little distracting, like the almost-gaudy Stations of the Cross. And were those marquee light bulbs framing the side chapels? I hate to call God's house tacky, but there it is. Six confessionals were skillfully carved of dark wood, but also ponderously large. The baldachinno (or chuppah, as Jessica likes to call it) featured so many gold-on white intricacies, all I could think of was a huge frosted wedding cake. Mmmm, icing.

Earlier this week I visited what is nearly St. Anthony's polar opposite. Central Reform Congregation is a relatively young Jewish congregation in an even newer building. Their Central West End location is all modernity, with clean lines, simple metal and wood, and rooms that fan out from the circular lobby like spokes of a wheel. It's easy to tell that social justice is CRC's main focus - the food pantry and clothes closet are right past the front door, and there dozens of meeting rooms buzzing with activity. When I met CRC's Rabbi Susan Talve and complimented her on the building, she replied that the design came to her in a dream. Also, CRC originally didn't want a building, thinking it was a waste of money that could go toward programming instead. When some Section 8 housing nearby got condemned, though, they were happy to buy the property and move out of the Unitarian Church basement nearby. Funny how priorities can change - that reluctant building reflects CRC's priorities more concretely than any "mission statement" plaque.

Cold Snap

We're experiencing some of the coldest days so far this winter. Windchills have been below zero the past few days. Thursday had a high of 11, and today 25 degrees felt just balmy. Thought turn to the plight of the homeless and investing in better gloves. Happily, one lunchtime conversation about a client in a heat-less trailer has led to a space heater purchase and hopefully warmer nights for her and her children.

I can see the River De Peres from the Metrolink overpass, and I've enjoyed monitoriing its progression into winter. The water has shifted from an unnatural dark turquoise flow to blue stillness to proper opaque iciness. I almost want the temperature to stay below freezing so I can watch it solidify.

Last year I made a New Year's wardrobe resolution to buy more cute sundresses. This year, my "new year, new clothes" list includes a longer coat, black dress boots, and maybe a tweed skirt that can go with said boots and a pair of tights. My JCP order for suede gloves is already underway.

We love free stuff!

I just finished a phone conversation with a woman in New Jersey who saw NFNF founder Sharon Rohrbach on CBS a few months back. This lady has a preemie infant in her family, and was touched by our efforts to help medically fragile babies. And so, she is shipping us several boxes of new and barely worn outgrown preemie clothes!

Every now and then, we volunteers get some great free stuff as well. Kristina brings home piles of extra bread from the shelter where she works. Emma's school sends her grocery gift cards every month. Target gift cards from a generous VSC board member were happy surprises in our Christmas stockings. its encouraging to see that when you are generous with your time and yourself, other people will be generous to you.

A fun recent windfall came with Jessica as she finally returned from Texas. Her luggage was bursting with random stuff from her mom, including tons of Mary Kay products in discontinued packaging! We spent a good hour sorting dozens of little hot pink boxes, smearing lipstick shade testers on the backs of our hands. The deep bronze foundation and dark blushers will go to Covenant House, where Jessica's teen girls should be able to get good use out of them. As for me, I probably won't buy eyeshadow or lipstick for another 2 years, given how seldom I actually apply it. I'll probably finish it off around the same time NFNF opens the last box of prescription-advertising post-it notes and anti-bacterial soap that recently were donated by the truckload.

When government inefficiency turns deadly

Daily Telegraph: Children Left to Die by Social Workers

"A baby of seven months died in bed with her mother, whose alcohol intake contributed to the death. Social workers who previously found the mother drunk in bed with the infant had asked her to sign an agreement to tackle her drinking, which she signed after consuming eight cans of beer.
In the case of the three-year-old, who was on the child protection register in Reading, just 25 of 84 attempts by social workers to visit her family were successful.
Despite her parents’ refusal to co-operate with social services, action was not taken to protect Trae-Bleu Layne, who died of a methadone overdose.
Even when her parents took her on a violent raid on local shops — which ended with a high-speed chase by police, who found the child in the back of a car next to drug-taking paraphernalia — authorities failed to step in to protect the infant."

This heartbreaking story is from England, but I could see it happening here in the US. It's good that we have a system to protect children from abuse, but so often that system is horribly dysfunctional. I've heard dozens of stories about some parents losing custody over misunderstandings, and then truly abusive and negligent people are given second, third, and tenth chances.We still have a long way to go before every child is safe and nurtered.

Where Does God live?

New York Times: In quiet rebellion, parishioners keep faith

At first, this story seemed a poignant example of church architecture's emotional pull. Images of parishioners lovingly shoveling walks and dusting Stations of the Cross are designed to pull on the heartstrings. I'm just as disgusted as anyone at the Archdiocese of Boston's scandalous ineptitude, so I can understand the parishioners' frustration. It breaks my heart when alienation and hurt drives Catholics away from the Church.

But then I mulled on the situation some more, and I began to wonder. "We are not protesters, we are vigil-keepers," a woman testified. Vigil means waiting, keeping watch until the dawn. What exactly are these people waiting for? I'm assuming for the Archdiocese to reinstate the parish. This multi-year vigil is a display of devotion and resistance usually associated with repressed Catholics in communist countries. What are the people of St. Francis fighting for? What is being threatened?

Not an historic building - it's recent and rather bland-looking. Some seem to be fighting to preserve the past - but memories of first communions and weddings won't fade away without the building. I live across the country from the site of my baptism, but that doesn't invalidate it. Really, what these people want is their own way.

There is a marked self-centeredness in the parishioners' comments.
"The God I believe in doesn't do things like this."
"I've gotten a lot closer to my faith and my God keeping these vigils." (emphasis mine)
These statements imply a faith that only the individual can define and thus an ethics independent of and even in spite of, church leaders. Such individualism is quite modern and not unlike contemporary wishes that the Church were more like a democracy. Pope Benedict XVI once wrote that we do not make the Church. Jesus made it, and we preserve what he gave us. The people of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini seem to eager to call all the shots.

Such sentiments also obscure the fact that St. Frances is part of a larger church, a larger community of believers. What if the money from the parish sale was meant to help some other laypeople like them? What if it could pay teacher's salaries or patch a church roof or care for elderly nuns in a nursing home? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. The Archbishop making parish-closing decisions is not Cardinal Law, the inept and corrupt administrator who got Boston into this mess.

Put in perspective, this parish's suffering is pretty light. All over the country, Catholic schools are closing and parishes are consolidating for financial reasons. These won't be the first people to have to change their Sunday Mass location. Have they been deprived of the sacraments? Has their faith been attacked as invalid? No, there was just a forced change in geography.

All in all, this story illustrates the dilemma underlying my big church architecture project. Is it God's house or a house for God's people? St. Frances Xavier Cabrini seems to be the latter. God doesn't need a building or statues or a shoveled sidewalk. He can reside everywhere, in fact He lives in the tabernacles across town. These parishioners have misguidedly pinned their faith identity on a pile of bricks and mortar, not the Body of Christ it represents.

Close Enough for Government Work

Today was one of those days where I attend mysterious meetings where I do my best to look professional and not betray how completely ignorant I am. That's especially hard to do when you are sitting through 2 hours of Medicaid acronyms and legal advice. Basically I learned that obtaining medical benefits from the government is crazy complicated, and that they often fail to give you everything you could be eligible for. At which point you should call the legal aid hotline, where a short androgynous woman inexplicably named Missy will put her mullet and New York accent into action and help you stick it to the man.

The cruel irony is that this alphabet soup of programming and forms is meant to help poor, often under-educated people. If college-educated adults are intimidated by the system, what does that mean for high-school dropouts and immigrants? For all those people salivating at the thought of single-payer health care coverage, I could tell you a ton of stories about how exasperating and inefficient Medicaid is. My boss asked Missy, a former state of Missouri employee, if there was any hope for the system becoming simpler/easier to understand.

As if that would happen in our lifetime. Missy gave the best explanation I have ever heard for the Hydra that is government waste. "Government doesn't want things to be simpler, implementing that would cost them money." One of our nurses weighed in "that is costs them even more, though, to pay for those gnomes who sit there putting poor mothers on hold for 20 minutes wasting all their cell phone minutes."

I like that image, of a vast cave where squirrelly gnomes sit in nooks and crannies wasting taxpayer dollars. I also couldn't help picturing the sterile offices of Insuricare, where Mr. Incredible surreptitiously helps old ladies navigate red tape until he snaps and throws his greedy boss through a wall.