Franksummers3ba's Blog

Epiphany, Carnival and the State of Thought and Theology
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Sunday, January 6, 2013 at 5:16pm ·
This is the Feast of the Epiphany. In this note which I hope to reproduce on my blog I will discuss it at length while quoting a Facebook friend twice without permission and plagiarizing myself repeatedly at great length. I will provide a good summary of the basics of this Feast in my first quotation from the Epiphany sermon of Father Jason Vidrine published on Facebook:

The Lord gathers us together in His holy presence as we continue to celebrate His birth during this Christmastide. Today we celebrate one of those events involved in the mystery of Christ’s birth: the Epiphany of the Lord. The word Epiphany comes from the Greek, which means “to manifest”…“to make known”…or “to appear”. This is a feast of the revelation of Christ as the newborn King of the nations; the three strange men come from far away to lay their gifts before Him. It took them a while to travel, so the Epiphany is traditionally celebrated the day after the 12th day of Christmas – January 6th – which happens to be the date of this Sunday.

For me there is a great deal about the Epiphany that is important and a great deal to remember about it which I would likel to remind my own readers of as best I can in this brief and likely tardy note. This feast commemorates the visit to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph by the three Magi who had come from the East. These Magi brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to honor the newborn king who by then would almost certainly have been out of the manger but who was born there. Because Christmas is celbrated every year and because of that the Epiphany is kept near Christmas. The feast does not indicate anyone who scheduled it believing that the three kings of the East arrived only a dozen or so days after the Birth of Jesus. The Holy Family already had several reasons to want to re-establish their ties to their ancestral House of David and its ancient site so that they might have stayed there even as long as a year. The star if it appeared at his birth and was researched by the Magi may have become more meaningful as news arrived of various royal births and perhaps among the goodly number some rumors of an already growing Jesus story. Then they visited the royal palace of Herod in Jerusalem. His scribes agreed that the Messiah should be born in the City of David. They made their report to the King who met with his guests who then journeyed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Their coming would help provide means and incentive for the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt while they themselves returned home by a different route.

I have many Epiphany memories, a few are centered around more festive than temperate Twelfth night parties. Some momories are very religious and some are more mixed like the memories of four years ago this week. For the wedding of Sarah and Kevin which occurred during the Christmas season we had three visitors from the East here in Big Woods which is West of Israel. Two Spanish priests and a seminarian came to us, the Priests concelebrated with the wedding mass and they have stayed and celebrated the Epiphany as well. One of them had been baptized on the feast of the Epiphany many years ago. All were young, mindfully zealous and from a country which really celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany. It has been special to have them here at this time.

Today I participated in the celebration of my Epiphany mass in my local Saint James Chapel where Fahter Manny presided. He spoke of his native Philippines a place where the full Christmas season is very much observed. I remember the Philippines well and I enjoyed the mass before returning to the party for my Dad’s 70th birthday which actually occurs later this week. But I also read Father Jason’s sermon which appeared hear on Facebook. He is on myh friend’s list and I quote it again.

The most important thing in the world is seeking the truth; you don’t find it without seeking it. There’s a (true) story told about the modern philosopher Bertrand Russell (an atheist) who was on his deathbed. A preacher came to him and said, Betrand, you know, you just might be wrong; there might be a God after all…you’re gonna die in a couple of days, don’t you think you need to ask the question,what if you’re wrong? What would you say to Him? Russell said fair enough…I think I would ask God a question: why didn’t you give us more evidence? (a very rationalistic question, but a fair one.) And the answer the Church gives – which we see especially on this feast of the Epiphany – is: if God gave us too much evidence, He would compel us against our will. If God gave us too little light, even those who sought Him, wouldn’t find Him. If He gave us too much light, then even those who didn’t seek Him would find Him. So He gives us just enough light (just enough signs/clues) so that those who truly love Him and seek Him will find Him…and those who don’t, won’t. So what determines our eternal destiny is not our IQ but our love.
Father Manny spoke also of the journey of the Magi and how their long journey was one of the best parts of the whole event. We must seek God and his Christ they would tell us… Journeys are a big part of Epiphany and journeys have been a big part of my own life.

The journeys on my mind on any Epiphany Feast are numerous. One way in which journeys enter into this season for me is through the journeys of Marco Polo. Because I have traveled a great deal and because for much of my life I wanted to go to China and then did go and now remember going to China — Marco Polo has interested me. In his of tale of his journeys he tells of meeting worshiping communities, monuments and sites of ancillary wonders that were related to the Magi who visited the Christ child and which still survived autonomously into his own day. Marco Polo’s book has never been very respectable. Each generation has found something about it incredible and dismissed most of it. Usually those points of contention have been shown to be reliably and fairly accurately reported from Marco Polo’s point of view. Journeying always can bring people face to face with one thing or another that is almost incomprehensible to those who stayed behind. Probably the real magi who really did visit the real Jesus left behind a legacy which he observed transformed by retelling and ritual into a lovely heritage of magic and belief. Anyone who reads me knows that my respect for the modern kind of cynical skeptic has benn almost destroyed entirely by a 1000 experiences of their ridculous ignorance and fanaticism.

These wise kings are also some how a reminder that a kingis both royal and a monarch but the tow qualities are separate. Not all monarchs are royal and not all royals are monarchs. This is part of what Christians should understand because of the importance of Jesus’s identity as king. So it is perhaps a final Christmas reflection from me in these notes.

When one thinks of the message to the shepherds recalled on Christmas one thinks of Peace on Earth to Men of Goodwill. Christianity is largely an anti-magical religion that celebrates the three Wizard Kings and their goodwill to their central figure. Though, Marco Polo found the remnants of the Magi’s tradition often at war with Islam it was not a coherent tradition in the way Catholicism is. Quite possibly these Magi left some seeds to germinate in Arabia which when fused with Judaism and Christianity and the traditions of his particular tribe helped to create both the historic Mohammed and the historic early Islam. Later more official sort of people might have de-emphasized their influence since they are not entirely reputable from and Islamic point of view. Possibly even the genes of some of these kings and their ilk have meandered around into the blood of such men as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia whether known to them or not. This journey of mystery and subterfuge might be both historical and historically significant in many ways that we will not ever know now. The long struggle of Christians and Moslems in the most important regions has probably erased any trails that could be profitably followed. I would mostly blame Islamic forces but think that Moslems might see things differently.

So we come to this holiday observance of the Epiphany and the Twelfth Night and the occasion between seasons. It is a bit of a contrast with much of what is discussed as a spiritual journey these days. I mentioned earlier that this has a unique role in the calendar. In the official calendar of the Catholic Church there are two large blocks of Ordinary Time. One stretches from the end of Christmas (depending on the century and country either January 6 or the Feast of the Epiphany or both simultaneously) and ending on the day before ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. The second block is from the very end of all things Easter after Pentecost and going to the start of Advent on the First Sunday of Advent. That Ordinary Time season ends with a bang as we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King on the Sunday before Advent. However the season is truly traditionally ordinary. Whereas the season we are currently in from Epiphany to the day before Ash Wednesday which is Mardis Gras “Fat Tuesday” in French is really an unofficial season which has been celebrated in many Catholic countries. That season is Carnival Season. The meaning of “carnival” is agreed upon by most people to be a late popular transformation or bastardization of two Latin words meaning “Farewell to Meat” in English. To do a sloppy etymology that all can remember: the first part of the word shares a root with “carnivore” and the second part shares a root with “valedictorian”. The season of Lent was a season in which meat was not eaten in all the Middle Ages in Southern Europe and most of the rest of Christendom. A few Germanic countries gave up milk products and some others gave up eggs. But in most of the Christian history of Lent meat was abstained from by most people. Carnival was the season for saying good by to eating meat — that was its full apparent meaning.

However, Mardi Gras and Carnival are among the most complicated of all celebrations. They have a completeness and complexity born of the fullness of what they represent in the development of an enitre mega-social complex of Christendom. Within the Carnival tradition there is a great deal of diversity and variety. There is enormous organization, planning and structure in an event which is largely a celebration of freedom, chaos and spontaneity. Krewes, Mardi Gras Indians, Courirs, Brazilian Dance Clubs, Ridelles, Courts of Misrule and Mardi Gras Associations are all different phenomena but they all resmble eachother in strange and wonderful ways when one pays close enough attention. These publicly known but esoteric and slightly mysterious institutions with deep local roots and ties from the backbone and fabric of Carnival and Mardi Gras experience around the world. Within that context and under the umbrella of various authorities which tolerate or foster the celebration there is a who worldwilde complex of tourists, travel agents, vendors, folklorists, historians, journalists, police, healthcare workers, restauranteurs and others who are deeply committed to the process of Mardi Gras and carnival. These people also make up a huge part of the total event that we all experience as Mardi Gras.

However, there is even more to Mardi Gras and Carnival than all of that vastly complicated stuff that we could never fully explain or examine, experience or drink our way through. Carnival is one of the socio-cultural sites (indeed the principal one) where mostly pagan but also Jewish and Muslim rites, associations and traditions could remind people subtly of their continued existence within Christendom. Further, it is a place in time and space where the unresolved tensions and energies of society can be expressed in a variety of ways. The tie to paganism came a few different roots. One was a sort of positive tradition and the other was not so positive. The positive roots in essence simply show that there is an imperfection in Christianity as it is actually lived. That an all good and perfect God is different than the forms in which he is served by imperfect people on Earth. There is some real good in old pagan practices which people need and while there is no way to safely integrate some of these into ordinary Christian life there are time when with masks and crowds and the excuse of alcohol we can turn our heads and not notice all that is done in adherence to other than approved traditions. Jesus was a very devout Jew –that is a fact which both Jews and Christians have at times chosen to reject or de-emphasize for various reasons. But he was also a Jewish Rabbi who reminded his disciples that Naman the general healed, Rahab an ancestor of the House of David, the widow fed by the prophet during a grat famine and numerous others favored by God in the Old Testament were both gentiles and pagans. He honored gentile Godfearers like the Centurion whose servant he healed.He did all these things without ever ceasing to emphasize various kinds of primacy for Israel, for his House of David and the importance of both synagogue and temple. That is the foundation for an open tolerance in Christianity beyond that of other Abrahamic traditions within Islam and Judaism. In practice, Christianity has not always been aware of the world beyond its own system. However, Catholicism with its tolerance of Carnival and Mardi Gras has left a door open to moderating influences. Comus, Endymion, Bacchus and non Hellenic entities like Titania and Oberon remind us in Louisiana of religious traditions we no longer adhere to which our ancestors observed. It is not a false catechism but an awareness. That awareness of other spiritual arts and sciences is enough to prevent the growth of a great many evils oftentimes.

Part of the idea of Carnival and Mardi Gras is to do some things one would not choose to describe in cold clear light and sobriety at a keyboard to people all over the world. I just might have a few stories in that category but there is a story I can tell which is not so confidential but still illustrates my point well enough. Along life’s journey there was a particular love affair in my life which was not ever without quite a bit of decency, friendship and even rule abiding but nonetheless was lived out off and on between relationships and in secret and private places. This went on for a long time and was a relationship where we never really achieved an open couple status that was indisputable. One day at Mardi Gras in a parade setting with lots of people we knew and I knew whom she did not know in a crowd of thousands I lifted her up as high above my head as my arms would stretch and held her there by the waste for a while. It did not lead to wedded bliss but it did not make things worse and it was a way of being honest within the bounds of world and social framework we were living in at the time. There are fistfights that prevent gunfights, flirtations that keep homes from breaking up and times of excessive drinking that help keep people from becoming sots. Mardi Gras, followed by the severity of Lent is a place where such things can happen.

Then there is another part of Mardis Gras which is perhaps not functoning so much in recent decades. There were real evils that were embedded in the pagan institutions of the past and they have always taken advantage of the chaos of Mardi Gras and carnival for occasions of acts ranging from robbery, to torture to murder to human sacrifice. Why would any decent society allow there to be an occasion when revelers and ordinary criminals might lend cover to the very people they most wished to oppose? If they were doing this when not yet corrupt, why did they do it?

There is a fact about good cops and good tough guys that we don’t often want to admit. They tend to restrain themselves of the love of a productive and orderly way of life. However, when they do happen to come across the most horrific human threats at carnival they tend to be less restrained. As long as society is producing enough of them then they will tend to assure that the damages of the carnival or fewer than there might be if there were no carnival.

There is a lot more to carnival than all of this. There is a redistribution of weatlh in the form of beads, toys, plastic coins and coconuts. There is the whole host of ways that the communal gumbo of the courir is a form of Acadian taxation in a world where Acadians have no state that is ethnic. There are roles reversed and genders bent and classes mocked within a structure that provides a safety net. Jesus left his encounter with the Magi kings and went to the pagan land of Egypt where from the relative safety of the Jewish community he observed pagan and gentile culture with his family at their full and developed extremes. and with the King Cakes along the way cultures influenced by him make a journey into paganism before repenting and believing the gospel in a new way. What percent of modern revelers will get ashes Wednesday? I don’t know buit Lent and Christmas are the intended frames of Carnival season.

Lent is a long way from today. Is it right to think of parties and even moral imperfections as part of a spiritual journey? Is it right to remeber Chrsitmas and Lent as we sample a different season starting?

Whatever carnival may be for you all I hope it is part of a meaningful life journey. There is a seeking which is part of what it means to be human. There is a journeying that encompasses the journey of the Magi, the Holy Family’s Journey to Egypt and our own troubled journeys. Christianity is not about the free-spirited seeking typical of Hippy culture in the sixties. It is about seeking, about gifts, mystery and courage. We must all find our way and Carnival can be part of the finding if we don’t take it to seriously but take it seriously enough…

A Note both Personal and Inter-Personal at the End of 2012
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 12:09pm ·
This is not likely to be the most widely read note I have posted in Facebook nor post on my own blog. It is perhaps unpardonably dark in tone when it ought to be more lit with hopes I have trouble finding. It probably ought not be. I really note the passing of my grandmother Beverly Marie Miller Summers, Mrs. Frank Wynerth Summers as a very notable passing. I have posted about her passing and I could post a great deal more as well. It is also a year when some famous strangers have died who have affected my own perception and experience of being an American and a human being. The famous American strangers whose deaths marked the end of an era which impacted my life include in their number Neil Armstrong, Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Whitney Houston, Ray Bradbury, Dick Clark, Dave Brubeck, Don Corneilus and Phyllis Diller. It is simply true that as little as these people have or had to do with me or one another my life would have been notably different if they had not lived and acted as the people we knew them to be in this country. As I live in a phase of life where I am not sure what my own future and experience of life as an American will be I do look at these Americans as a constant reminder of my own American heritage and identity. I am truly connected to them and they truly were to me and it is a USA connection.

As I type these words my nephew Dominic is turning nine and he is a great kid. He is one of the joys of the recent years of my life and there are quite a few such. My ex-wife Michelle will celebrate a birthday on New Year’s Eve. This year on the nineteenth of December we passed the milestone of what would have been our silver wedding anniversary. I observed the day among pleasant distractions but was not that distracted. Michelle and I have been apart far longer than we were together but she was the closest I have ever been to another human being except for early infancy and the nione months in my mother’s womb. Truthfully I do not remember those days in the womb very well. Any hobbies I had then seem to have slipped away. I remember my marriage of over seven years pretty well.

On November 15 I took the Revised GRE to replace my obsolete and aged GRE score. My Revised GRE Scores were 169 (better than 99% of all scores) on the Verbal Reasoning Measure, 5.0 (better than 92% of all scores) on the Analytical Writing Measure and 149 (better than 39% of all scores) on the Quantiative Reasoning Measure. At this point I am unlikely to go to graduate school soon but I am able to keep the scores for a while.

This 2012 calendar year I also became a grand prize winner on the Lords of the Blog, Lord Norton’s Quiz. That means I have a sort of invitation to have tea at the House of Lords with Lord Norton if the details can be worked out. I was happy about that.

During this year of the bereavement of so many at Aurora’s cinema, Sandy Hook’s school, the mall in Oregon, the countless bad highways and dangerous neighborhoods it seems out of sink for me to see my own life as being particularly bleak or sad. Yet I do. My harshest brush with death personally was a heart and stroke even around the seventh of August which was financially devastating and inspire me to lose sixty pounds. I have gained a few back over the holidays. But really my life was not measurably violent or tenuous compared to several other years. I could find some reason for contnetment in all that I suppose.

But contentment is not one of the emotions on my mind and heart as I live through this year’s end. I am coming to the end of this year and I have a great deal on my mind. However, the great deal is not in an expansive and liberated kind of great deal. In fact I feel very circumscribed and limited in every important way this year. It has been my practice to seek to live as a Christian for a long time. I still do seek to do so and always have. I am not able to say that life has seemed all that successful and sweet in any way. My conviction in the choice of Christianity as my continuing path is affirmed by a long list of achievements, contributions and shared experiences which I do value and rejoice in regardless of how important or unimportant they my seem to others. Christianity has been part of those good processes and events and that is why I not driven to great doubt by my own unhappiness which has been pretty much the norm. I am more than a bit worn out. I am more than a bit the worse for wear. That is the modaility of my life as I look back on this year and try to put down a few words about this trip by Earth around the Sun.

September 16, I accepted my first subbing job of this new era which was in the one of the same schools where I used to sub the most years ago. I worked a great deal until I stopped and then in the end I could not even get on to the Aesop online system. It was a sort of twisted and bad way to end what had been a fairly good association without anyhuge catastrophes. I had quit subbing for the VPSB before I wen to China to teach in 2003.

The recent shooting by a very young man named Lanza of twenty-seven people at an elementary school in a nice safer and more suburban than suburbia kind of town has sent ripples flowing through the community and region which certainly reach to the ehole country. Gestures of solidarity and offers of prayers from figures grand and distant as Pope Benedict XVI have shown how this event evokes the empathy of the entire world to at least some degree. We are all reminded by the pain and the promise of long remebrance which we know the families are experiencing that no death ends a human story. Not even for an honest atheist materialist does the loved departed really equate to a lifeless body. The memories, the story of a life, the status that must be filled in each web of relationships all survive. For many of us rthere is a near certainty of more although we may not agree on how to describe that more which we believe exists. These precious lives have been snuffed out and the pain of their loss is part of them and part of all of us. I do not feel much of the pain myself but I know it is there in the lives and minds of others. After Virginia Tech, the Stockton California shooting ofdecades ago, the Gabby Giffords rally shooting, the shooting at the Oikous College, the Aurora Colorado cinema shooting, the bombing of the Murray Building, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or September eleventh 2001 and the violence of the Rodney King riots we cannot really pretend that there is a great deal of shock and surprise when violence occurs. Horror, grief, anger and many other emotions are justifiable. We can be surprised that it happened to this particular child or teacher but we cannot really be surprised that violence has disrupted and American community. The United States is not the most violent place in the world but it is a place where much violence has occurred and is likely to occur. However, this is a violent world overall. It is importsnt to know this….

The way my stint of work with the School Board ended is not easy to boil down and there is always the possibility of law suits. I am really very eager leave the subject behind I suppose. But it did make the Sandy Hook shooting more present to my mind. While I am not sure what official records will show in the electronic jungle of third parties and misfiles I did walk away. I think it will show that they let me go because I did not complete an online ethics course by the deadline. Those are some kind of facts but not the truth. This marks another breaking off, quitting and departing in a life of such transitions.

I have given up on a lot of things in my life and almost always as I look back on the situation I feel that I did the right thing. This is the case despite the fact that I wish there had been a lot more continuity and fewer of these breaks in the timeline. I have quit a good bit and also stuck out a good bit too. I know the things I hve kept up for decades or moreand the things I have attempted despite repeated difficulties. These are thefact I know. Beyond cognition of such facts I also feel that I have endured and persevered a really prodigious amount.

I do not feel bound to say that things are great and getting better. I do not feel inclined to say so either. For me much of life has been truly horrible and I have known dozens of people fairly well whose lives have been vastly more horrific than mine. I consider the world to be truly a disaster by countless measures and from countless points of view. For all the brillint contributors, decent people and natural abundances I have no trouble seeing countervailing bad trends. While I have counterbalanced my endurance with hopes, plans and optimism the balance has shifted over the years and hope has slowly faded into a near oblivion as regards the more soaring and intense hopes. In the horror movie which my journey through life has sometimes resembled I have had a chance to make many happy and helthy friend and family movies for which I am grateful. Some of those are the ones I have posted as videos online in the past year and a half. This can create anot entirely flase impression of a happy barge floating through a bucolic life but off camera I remember a good number of occasions of being forced to make my life worse in order to pursue the good in a vile and horrific milieu although I knew there could be very little or no reward. I have few videos of shootings, people dying in shacks, of polluted and ruined lands, of despairing victims of terror. But these memories also fill my mind on quiet days. They take a toll not erased by cake, wine and laughter. Yet they are not crippling abnormailities either.

While I have lost weight and retaken the GRE without finding a new path in life I am more aware than ever that I must make some real changes and they are not likely to be changes that please me a great deal. They are likely to be further personal admissions of the bankruptcy of institutions, plans and commitments among other entities on which I have relied. Such things as I describe are not the way one hopes to embody and recognize the thought, “The time has come for a new chapter in my life”. But I know that I am at place where such change is mandated.

America is facing a fiscal cliff, it has a downgraded credit rating, it is plagued with a reash of mass shootings, it has a North Korean opponent that may be able to put a nuclear device on any city in America and there is a remaking of the Middle East that is not encouraging. But the real crises in this country are not found in these headlines. I think the country may be as unduly optimistic as I am uninspiringly pessimistic. Such things are hard to judge.
It is hard for me to imagine that I will find a way forward in my own life that is really happy. However, I can now imagine making a break regrdless of the conseuences in the short term. I have reached a point where there is enough misery and horror in my current situation for me to strike out in a hopeless and worthless direction on the off chance of something better happening simply because I have reshuffled the deck.

Like many people I could compile a long index of what have been bleak and terrible moments. I could focus only an the bad times and make up a narrative that includes a great deal of the time I have lived. In such a narrative I would look back on what has often been a horrible life and forward to what will be a more horrible life. However, I also will say there have been many good times, events and happenings. I am trying to hope there will be some more of these and that whatever time I have left will also help preserve some of the good from what I have done in the past. My mother this year has published her book Our Family’s Book of Acts: To Love and To Serve the Lord. Her book is her story and yet is often about me. I endorse the book to a significant degree. It leaves out some of the glories I would include and also some of the shames and sorrows. It is from a diffrent point of view but it is also a record of my own life that came out this year and satisfies in many ways some need I have for a record of the personal and familial beyond transcripts. My life has always been a post tragic story with a great deal of the mad, bad and sad. But in all that misery there were more good things and causes than I could name. Life has often been hell but hell not in the most depraved spiritual pornography of some Christianity nor in the richer horrors of Dante but somewhere between Dante and the more nuanced and nearly pagan views of much of early Christianity. However, the time has come for the bleak and horrible to devour all the rest and I would prefer to move now as all this happens.

I have opposed President Obama this year most of the time. I still feel good about that. But he is the returned to office President. That is important in shaping 2013 as it is likely to be for us all. Besides the election what are the large factors which have determined the shape of this year. I have no chance of disussing all the events which have made this year tough and will make the next one tougher in probability. Beyond politics I have plenty of other problems…

Politics is also global. Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood exists as the leading party in one of the central polities of the first Greco-Roman Christendom . The Coptic Pope Tawadros II was ordained November 18 and has my prayers as he seeks to preside from the throne of Saint Mark in these bleak times.

Read more: http://www.ctpost.com/news/world/article/Egypt-s-Copts-choose-new-pope-for-uncertain-times-4006708.php#ixzz2BHejoc80

My parents gave me some coins that belonged to my grandparents this year too. It was one of many milestones in this unique year. This was a moment of relief ina wearing down year. But it was a bittersweet one at best. Often I wake at the end of this year thinking that I am really tired and my health is not very good considering that I have transitioned from my formerly very heavy state to what should be a healthier state. Perhaps after alife like mine it is realistic to say that 50 is older than it would be for some and I am forty-eight. Perhaps I should think after a litany of ills that; “I have hit one of the many points which mark the transit from some degree of happy exercise of one’s human faculties to the dissolution of death. I think that today is in many ways the worst day of my life but that more and more days will have that distinction until my life ends. I am committed to engaging in life’s challenges and seeking a future for as long as I can. But there is no real point in the enterprise….” But the counsel of depsair is unattrative from many points of view.

So I look to put this year in the books and to move on from here. I run out of time for this note and go to post it . Happy New Year!

For those looking for insight into the place where I live there is another entry on the cultural landscape that can provide some insight while providing some entertainment.
This is my blog review of the movie “Blood on the Bayou” which is a feature length debut by principal screenwriter, lead actor and director Russell hebert. the review which appears below as copied from my Facebook profile was accompanied there by a photograph and followed several status posts and photos from the premiere. That is why these extra words are added here.
I am not able to negotiate this blog as nimbly as I used to do. Perhaps I will upgrade my account eventually. However, I am also posting this on a computer other than my own and so cannotupload the photos just now.

In the earlier Facebook posts I mentioned that Joe Horn is a New Orleans Saints stand-out. I credited the good acting by April Covert,David Bertrand and Darryl Robassa. The cast was a large on and several actors who performed well are not mentioned here but these deserve special mention. I think that if the reader of this blog can keep these things in mind then the Facebook Profile review is adequate.

Blood on the Bayou: A Review Online
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Thursday, December 13, 2012 at 7:36pm ·

I am busy with many events related to the end of the year, Christmas and many other things that make up my life. However, I took the time to go to the premiere of Blood on the Bayou and to write and post this review. I am glad I did.

This film was a real effort to make a real movie which was largely an entertainment. However, it did a bit more than that. First it dealt with the racial boundaries,mixes, interplay and other conditions not of some fictional place but of a fictional version of Louisiana, Acadiana, Vermilion Parish and Abbeville. There was a little bit of an affinity to some of the Southern characters of fiction and screen that have come from Grisham novels and even more of a sense of being in communication with Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novel and their screen adaptations. But private invesitgator Travis Richard and the other characters are not rip=offs or imitations of anyone else.

The ring of truth is part of the movie from the landscapes and architectural shots bathed in natural light to the plot line which includes fishing, going out to the camp in the country which has been damaged by a hurricane and the fact that a stripper and prostitute is both very vulnerable and comes from a famliy that stay in touch with one another and care about her. This is a world those of us who live here and grew up here recognize. The assasination of the gubernatorial candidate played by Joe Horn may be attibutable to race, class, greed corruption, political philosophy and the answers are not simple. The police and sherriff’s office play and important role but Richard moves in a big world that flows all around theirs and is made up of risks and demands that are related to his values. Richard is a Americanist in the political sense, a Saints Fan, a hardworker and a believer in tolerance for marijuana, sexually imprpoper exprexxion and the use of coarse langauage among men in his sphere. We can recognize bith the character and Russell Hebert’s portrayal.

The film was made on a shoestring but it is not riddled with iomperfections. It boasts a credible original soundtrack and the acting is sound. Are thre no weaknesses in this first effort?

Yes there are some. The film had one serious misprinting which lasted almost a scond and the frames before that set of frames were meant to be speeded and were not. That was an error anyone could agree about without trouble. The strip club was a sequence that many could disagree about for a long time. Personally, I thought that given the story and locale it was not real enough to do the show only in English. There should have been a few lines and phrases in Cajun and Creole French and maybe in Vietnamese. The effort was sizable enough that not showing a fish being caught and not having a big enough crowd at the political rally were notable weaknesses.

But the film was more than watchable. It is an entertaining film which offers some real insight into this region and was a big hit with the packed house at the premiere.

Good luck Hebert and company. In this venture and future ventures may you have success.

A Review of my Mother’s Second Book: “Our Family’s Book of Acts: To Love and Serve the Lord”
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 1:54pm ·
The book is Our Family’s Book of Acts: To Love and to Serve the Lord and so I suggest that if you or someone you know likes books with a harried mother’s view of family dynamics this book has plenty of that. If the romance and adventure of travelogues with locales in Mexico, Colombia, New Zealand, Australia and the Philippines are more your style this could still be your book. If in seeking to understand your own life or the world you read books about birth mothers and adoption then read about my mother and my half brother Paul. If you crave stories about children born with rare diseases and syndromes read about my brother Simon. If you have any reason to support the proliferation of stories about people dying of AIDS and the troubles they face then the story of Paul ending his days in Louisiana may be worth reading and this might be a book you would like to buy. The story is plenty compelling if one surrenders to reading it — if you like to follow a family and see the many ways in which people change and yet stay the same across decades you might like this book. If you have read my blog, follow me on Twitter, read my newspaper and other published pieces in bygone years or are an attentive Facebook friend maybe you could not do much better in terms of investing in your understanding that buying and reading this book. If you read and enjoyed the first of her memoirs Go You are Sent: An Incredible Odyssey of Faith you ought to read this one as well. If you like the dark and troubled side of idealism and religious adventure there is a bit of the Mosquito Coast film’s vibe in this book as well. For those seeking to follow the spiritual path our family has struggled upon the book has a different appeal much nearer the center of the narrative.

My mother has just come out with her second book but it is a text she labored with for decades. I think it is well written and an extraordinarily difficult book to write within the context of memoirs. Among lives few lives can be harder to write witrh accuracy than mine or my mother’s lives. I hope those reading this will consider picking up a copy. It is bound to be a view of life and places you have not experienced in life or in letters as well as having some views of the more familiar parts of the time in which we who buy books have lived. I am not a disinterested observer in that the book is as much about me as it is about anyone except my my mother and father. However, it is a very complicated history and relationship with these words which leads me to this time at the keyboard. While I discuss the book I also want to discuss my relationship to it. I have my opinions and ideas out pretty well in the open in many venues although they are not so very well publicized and famous as they might be in life. This book had it come out as it has many years earlier might have made it possible for me to reach a better concord with the society in which I have been born and labored much of my life. Now it is not really relevant so much in that regard.

There are only two errors regarding my life which contradict the facts in my view although even those could be susceptible of a correct ifactual reading. That is disappointing but really my mother even with my editing a draft years ago, with her use of the internet and hiring an occasional fact checker has faced enormous obstacles in putting these events on paper. So much change, travel, struggle and correspondnce as we have known is a rare thing. The book inevitably lists some characters it does not let the reader really get to know but they are real people whether dead or alive. Much is left out for a wide variety and what is included does make for a real and readable narrative. My mother does have a perspective on divine interaction with the unioverse and with her won life that will be alien to many readers of my stuff. I would challenge you to buy and read the book and using what else you may know about my life and theories of phenomenology try to work out what you feel is the truth of the text. Let me settle for any who trust me that it is no facile fabrication.

I am glad to have the text out which makes it possible to understand a bit about my life and origins. When take with her first book it certainly provides a rubric and structure of fact and narrative. However, this is certainly my mother’s story and her book. It is not the book I would have written even had she not gotten there first. The reality itself is much beigger than its distillation into text will alllow as is true of most lives.

Things have worked out much better than they could have for me and many I love. Yet, there are many sorrows not detailed in the book too. There large parts of many lives barely suggested. The book was work not reverie and is a work of narrative in a good and high sense. I will be more likely to entertain
personal questions from those who have read the book than from those who have not read it. I have a good bit to distract me and am taking the time to write and post this Note.

This postis appearing as a Facebook Note and then will appear as a post recopied into my blog. This is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Day. It is an odd time in some ways to begin posting a review of my mother’s second segment of her memoir. In addition, the book itself is in a state which has some strangeness as regards distribution. One store which has long handled my mother’s first book and I am pretty sure has her second as well is Crossroads Catholic Bookstore which can be reached at the contacts provided in the information below:
(337) 988-3569
4416 Johnston St,Lafayette,LA 70503

In addition the book is available at Family Missions Company which can be googled and which can be located from information on my Facebook Page. None of these people endorse this review. The book retails at $15.95, its ISBN is 978-0-615-45595-2 and is published under the tradestyle of Summerise Media. That title reminds me of when I used to put out a column under the title of a Summery of the Local Cultural Scene. The book is 386 pages. It can be considered a fairly fast read and is really important to anyone who really wants to know me for example

I do not have a long post now but I may have one relatively soon. I need to do a variety of things but I do have the retaking of the GRE behind me. It may be that I will soon have a post or two for this blog.

Thanksgiving Day for me and many others is Thursday. My family has a large feast in Mexico which some will attend as well as I and others in my family gathering here in Louisiana in the USA. I hope all goes well for my folks but also for all of you.

I wish all Veterans of the united States Military and their families a happy Veterans Day. This day I also honor all of you for your efforts on behalf of my country…

This is likely to be one of the quieter times on this blog despite the fact that it is a political season. I am busy preparing for some things I have to do later this month and cannot deal with later. Thus time is at a premium.

The Muslim crowds protesting outside US emabassies, the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his four companions at the consulate in Benghazi are all troublesome. I am troubled by these events. However, I have many other troubles on my mind as well. I have a great deal on my mind today. Much of it quite wearying in itself.

From 1776 to 1950 no United States Ambassadors were kiilled in office. Perhaps two or three died in transit from posts or even sickened and died after taking some kind of leave but none died in office. Just as with Lincoln no presidents were killed in office before him nor shot but a good percentage were shot or shot and killed afterwards. This leaves aside the Indian curse and natural deaths in office that made patter until Reagan survived his shooting. From 1950 to 1988 seven died violently in office. Two in plane crashes ruled accidental and five in armed attacks. The last one killed in an armed attack was in 1979. On September 11 the whole consulate in Benghazi was gutted and the Ambassador, an IT specialist and two armed men one of whom was a former US Navy SEAL and the other a State Department Security professional were killed. Meanwhile the US flag was torn down in our embassy in Cairo and desecrated and an Islamist flag was raised in its place. Other embassies surrounds are erupting and the potential for more killings is very real.

On September 10, 2012 I posted this paragraph in a note here:

I am concerned about tomorrow’s anniversary. There have been a lot more shootings in Afghanistan lately of our troops, there have been a lot of ammo dumps opened up to terrorist groups through the so-called Arab Spring. There are new governments with ties to these terror groups. There have been a lot of mass shootings in the USA lately. Our border is very porous with Mexico in which violence is breaking out in new ways daily. In addition the Arab element in Mexico has multiplied many times over in recent decades. Very little has been done to honor the woman who shot the Fort Hood shooter or to punish the Fort Hood shooter. I do not mean to predict that there will be ground based terrorist attacks on our soil this month. Probably there will not be. But if there are they will not be unpredictable.

Let’s break down this note shall we,

I am concerned about tomorrow’s anniversary. ( IWAS RIGHT THAT THE ELEVENTH ANNIVERSARY WOULD MARK A BAD MILESTONE IN THIS STRUGGLE) There have been a lot more shootings in Afghanistan lately of our troops (THERE WERE US TROOPS KILLED ALTHOUGH NOT REGULARS THEY WERE TROOPS IN THE BROADEST SENSE), there have been a lot of ammo dumps opened up to terrorist groups (THE ROCKET PROPELLED GRENADE THAT STARTED THE FIRE IN THE CONSULATE ALMOST CERTAINLY CAME FROM THE AMMO DUMPS LOST TO CHAOS IN LIBYA OR ELSEWHERE RECENTLY) through the so-called Arab Spring (THE FREEDOM OF THE SALFISTS AND OTHER CONSERVATIVE MUSLIMS TO ASSMEBLE PROVIDED COVER FOR THE ATTACK AND OTHER ATTACKS WHILE TRAIN TERROR SQUADS OPERATED BEHIND THAT COVER. THE MOVIE IS ONE OF MANY DATA POINTS COLLECTED BY TERROR GROUPS TO BE LEAKED TO THEIR MEDIA ASSOCIATE TO INFLAME THE SALAFISTS AND COVER THEIR MORE PROFESSIONAL SMALLER OPERATIONS. ARAB MUSLIM WAR OF A THOUSAND PINPRICKS IS ANCIENT AND EFFECTIVE) There are new governments with ties to these terror groups (IT IS CLEAR THIS MESS IS SOMEWHAT SUPPORTED BY GOVERNMENTS OF MUSLIM COUNTRIES).{ Overall, my predictions thus far were pretty apt. But the rest is unfulfilled: “There have been a lot of mass shootings in the USA lately. Our border is very porous with Mexico in which violence is breaking out in new ways daily. In addition the Arab element in Mexico has multiplied many times over in recent decades. Very little has been done to honor the woman who shot the Fort Hood shooter or to punish the Fort Hood shooter. I do not mean to predict that there will be ground based terrorist attacks on our soil this month(A CONSULATE IS NOT US SOIL THE WAY AN EMBASSY IS). Probably there will not be. But if there are they will not be unpredictable.

America must wise up and really improve in a lot of ways. I have reason to believe there are ties of some kind between staffers of at least of one of the Hezbollah members of the Lebanese parliament and one or more of the lieutenants in the Zeta drug Cartel who are seeking to develope the drug wars as an opportunity to build an Islamist attack route into the United States. This is very, very far from proven and in fact I have little chance to verify the crumbs from sources I won’t discuss. But if it is true it is concerning. I will possibly post more than this later. Merely reacting to such things is almost useless when our main policy is so bad in so many ways. But the risks are high I believe…