Thursday, March 14

Whew. Blogger's been down all day. Just went back up, I guess. More later.
Many, many thanks to my friend Meggan who adds to the "Is it meat?" discussion with this article about the Capybara, a South American rodent whose meat is a favorite down that way:

When Venezuelans' appetite for capybara clashed with the church's ban on eating meat during Lent, a local priest asked the Vatican to give the world's biggest rodent the status of fish. People rejoiced when the Vatican agreed, declaring that capybara isn't meat. More than two centuries later, they still consider the 130-pound capybara a delicacy and pay big bucks to put it on their dinner tables.
"It's the most scrumptious dish that exists," says Freddy Colina, 17, who lives on the southern Great Plains of Venezuela, where a Lent without capybara is like Thanksgiving without turkey in the United States

Meggan's a librarian. I guess that's why she knows stuff like this!

When in doubt, ask the Pope, even if your cause is endangered sea turtles:

Pope Asked to Call Sea Turtles 'Meat'

A group of conservationists from the United States and Mexico on Wednesday asked Pope John Paul II to declare sea turtles to be "meat," as opposed to "fish," in an effort to halt the Mexican tradition of eating endangered turtles during Lent.

Wildcoast, a conservation group, estimates that as many as 35,000 sea turtles are slaughtered each year by poachers in Baja California to feed a black-market demand for turtle meat in Mexico and the United States.

At a downtown Los Angeles news conference, the team made a public plea to the Vatican, and to the Latino community in California, to discourage sea turtle barbecues; they reach a high point in celebrations leading up to Easter...

Wallace J. Nichols, a sea turtle expert, was tracking a 250-pound green turtle via satellite when it disappeared at Magdalena Bay. He later was horrified to learn that the animal ended up as the main course at a feast for 100 people.

Perhaps you've seen the haunting then-and-now photographs of the National Geographic "Afghan girl." Here's the story of how they found her again.
Tried to go to Mass this morning. "Tried" is the operative word. Katie was reading the Responsorial Psalm, so I thought we'd go show her our support, as I always do when she's got a role to play at Mass. We were doing fine until she got up to read and I made the huge mistake of pointing her out to Joseph.

"Ka! Ka! Ka!" went the cry from our pew. Silence for a few seconds. Then waving and more "Ka! Ka! Ka!" followed by attempts to get down (presumably to go to her), followed by enraged squeals, followed by a quick exit. Temporary, I hoped.

I could tell he was pesty - he has a runny nose, didn't sleep well last night. (Oh. Does he ever? No. Slept worse than usual, I should say). I stayed out until the end of the homily (real sorry to miss that....), and then came back in during a musical interlude. We did fine until right after the consecration, when unquenchable restlessness struck again, and we left for good. I think the next year of Mass-going promises to be quite a challenge....

There's a Carmelite monastery near Florida's east coast. We drove around it a bit last summer and saw the outdoor Stations of the Cross described in this article.
This should be interesting. The Boston Archdiocesan newspaper, the Pilot, is doing a special pull-out section on the abuse scandal to supposedly set the record straight.