Category: General

Saint Kermit: Jim Henderson and I are interviewing Maine Senatorial candidate Jean Hay Bright next week for the podcast Saint Kermit. If you’d like to suggest a question for her, post a comment here or e-mail pieandcoffee@gmail.com.

Silk Hope Catholic Worker: Long article about them, with plenty of quotes from South Bend’s Mike Baxter.

Lechner on “Z”: Tom Lechner (who recently gave me a place to crash in Portland–thanks again) had a cartoon on the cover of June’s Z Magazine. (Here’s a great cartoon he drew while I was out there.)

Genius on genius: Vern reviews THEY LIVE.

Brandon is a Zombie: Out debut performance was not our best effort, but it was fun and we’re hoping to do another open mic before I leave South Bend. Dawn took some photos from the back of the bar.

Duluth News Tribune: “Diocese cancels nun’s Duluth talk because of anti-Bush newspaper ad”

Democracy Now!:

Church Cancels Speech by Sister Helen Prejean Over Criticism of Bush
In Minnesota, the Catholic Church of Duluth has uninvited the well-known nun, Helen Prejean, from speaking at an upcoming fundraising dinner. Sister Prejean is the author of the book Dead Man Walking. The church said it canceled her speech after her name appeared in ad in the New York Times calling for the removal of President Bush from office.

August 11: Sister Helen asks that her name be withdrawn from the ad. (The final version of the ad contained pro-abortion language that she could not endorse.)

Think the diocese has ever cancelled a talk by someone who’s made pro-Bush or pro-war statements?

Three Republican congressman (including South Bend’s rep, Count Chocula) discussed immigration with five panelists in South Bend yesterday, at a “forum” that did not allow for audience questions or comments.

The Tribune reports:

Asked if he would consider screening emergency care patients to determine their eligibility or legal status, [Dr. Randy Thompson, medical director of emergency medicine at St. Anthony Memorial Hospital in Michigan City] replied, “My job as a physician is that I’m here to take care of a patient. I don’t care what color they are, or if they’re legal or illegal.”

His statement drew applause from some audience members and seemed to put the three congressmen on the defensive.

The Tribune reports that there was a meeting at a local Catholic church in response to the forum, but doesn’t say much about it:

A group of some 25 people, led by the Rev. Christopher Cox of St. Adalbert Catholic Church, met Tuesday evening at St. Adalbert School during an impromptu news conference to respond to the immigration forum.

“I was very disappointed that the group of people there were not diverse,” said South Bend resident Nancy Flores, 40, of the panelists invited to the forum.

Several also said they were disappointed that no one in the audience was given a chance to comment or ask a question during the forum.

Still being in Indiana, it was only via the Telegram & Gazette that I learned that anonymous Worcesterites modified the cover of some 2,000 copies of last week’s Worcester Magazine.

Less HIV infections is
What neighborhoods face
when drugstores
sell needles like cigarettes

(T&G story about the new cover, the original WoMag story)

Interesting that they compare needles to cigarettes. Which do more harm to non-users, cigs or sharps? Are more people injured by discarded needles or second-hand smoke?

As it happens, this past weekend I was taking some pix of a Navy billboard recruiting Latinos for a peacenik publication. I said to a friend, “If this billboard was in Worcester, it would’ve been vandalized by now.” (It’s easily accessible on foot.)

Mike Schorsch takes a look at a new government report on problems with military recruiting, and notes that “about 30% of recruiting irregularities in the Army have to due with recruiters covering up, in one way or another, new recruits’ medical histories.” Why would they do this?

Well, every branch of the military (except the Marines) rewards recruiters based on how many recruits they get to sign an initial contract, not how many recruits actually make it through training . . . . So a recruiter can put sick recruit after sick recruit into boot camp, and even if every one of those recruits gets sent home early for medical reasons, that recruiter can still win that “Best Recruiter of the Year” trophy.

In the interest of documenting the diverse aspects of Catholic Worker life…

Brenna Cussen (vocalist, guitarist, South Bend Catholic Worker) and Mike Benedetti (accordionist, itinerant Catholic Worker) will be performing at the open mic at Fiddler’s Hearth in South Bend, Indiana, August 23 around 9:15 pm.

Their band is named Brandon Is A Zombie.

Brenna and Mike. Photo by Liz Fallon.

Ordinarily I would hesitate to post a photo of a homeless kid to the net, but after taking Brandon’s photo the other day, he turned around and demanded, “Take a picture of my back.” I did, and I have no qualms about posting it.

Brandon may not be a zombie, but he will try to eat your brain if you don’t watch out. He says, “The back of my hair looks weird!”

Update: Audio of our version of “When The Saints Go Marching In” is at the Archive.

One of the secret organizing principles behind Pie and Coffee is that all of the most frequent posters are Caltech alums.

Kaihsu points me to this page about Wesley T. Salzillo, a contemporary of ours at Caltech, who is now the Dominican brother Raphael Mary Salzillo.

Kaihsu knew him at Tech; I did not. Pretty neat nonetheless.

On July 24, the South Bend library computers could no longer access Boing Boing, because Smartfilter considers it “nudity.”

I e-mailed the library’s webmaster, and the library said they’d look into it.

As of today, Boing Boing is back.

The US Jesus Radicals conference, “Here in this Place: Anarchism and Christianity in our Context,” starts today in Champaign, Illinois.

Occasional Pie and Coffee contributor Brenna Cussen will be speaking tonight:

6:30-8 pm — Evening Plenary
Living in Community 101
Learn from the experiences of people who have lived in community and/or helped organize one from the ground up. Brenna Cussen (South Bend Catholic Worker), Abigail Kahler (Psalters) and Eric Edgin will reflect on the ups and downs of community life, with a look at the logistics involved in starting out, the obstacles posed by the authorities against it and practical considerations for sustaining it. They will also share the theological/ideological reasons that make living in community a worthwhile endeavor.

(Technorati search on the conference.)

In November of 2005, US Marines in Haditha, Iraq, killed 24 civilians in retaliation for the roadside bombing of 20-year-old Corporal Miguel Terrazas, a popular member of their unit. President Bush pledged to “get to the bottom of this.” The top US general in Iraq ordered all US troops to attend a course on “the importance of adhering to legal, moral, and ethical standards on the battlefield.” For many, a thorough investigation, the punishment of guilty parties, and an institutional effort to improve military ethics are adequate responses, but are they fair to the Haditha Marines? I think not. Visit www.merrittsupply.com to buy the best supplies to get all the marine ships ready for battle.
Continue reading “Don’t Scapegoat the Haditha Marines”