Franksummers3ba's Blog

I may possibly abandon this blog soon but before September 11 I hope to at least publish my list of the ten most watchable people in the series I had been working on before everything began to glitch out….

This has been a day very unlike the day when the Allies stormed the Beaches of Normandy in my own life. It has been a day when I have achieved little against small opposition. I have not even been able to post a note remembering D-Day and have lost two posts I wrote completely.

When I think of all that the American forces endured and others did it makes me want to make sure that we have done all we could do to make Americ and the world around America a good and strong place. They failed to save millions of innocents across Europe. Losses were horribly heavy and yet there is no doubt it was a glorious day and one to remember. It made certain the fall of the Third Reich. I want to at least mention their sacrifice and heroism here today. HONOR to the US and Alllied FOrces that won the day on the coast of Normandy…

This is a slighlty edited real dialog in which I participated on a friend’s Facebook page. She is not a public figure nor or her friends and so I have concealed their identities here and edited out some machine generated junk:

Frank Summers Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:21 PM
To: Frank Summers
My Friend the Hostess (MFTH): If you were going to compile a list of 25 spiritual classics for your growing son to take with him through his high school career and into his adult life, what books would you be sure to include, assuming he’s been sufficiently introduced to Sacred Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Imitation of Christ?
Sunday at 7:58pm
MFTH: My initial thoughts: The Story of a Soul, Confessions of St. Augustine, Introduction to the Devout Life, The Screwtape Letters, G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy….
Sunday at 8:01pm
Friend 1: Crazy .love by francis chan, My Utmost for His Highest
Sunday at 8:08pm ·
GK Friend 2: may be hard to find but “The Courage to be Myself,” Carlos Valles, SJ
Sunday at 8:14pm ·
GK Friend 2: anything by Henri Nouwen
Sunday at 8:14pm ·
MDE Friend 3: What about The Hiding Place? or Left to Tell? They could be “modern classics.”
Sunday at 8:50pm
SGF Friend 4: Honestly, talk with me about a book called Dateable. Not a spiritual classic but definitely an important part of a modern Christian high school “Marriage and Family” class.
Sunday at 9:02pm ·
Genie Summers (my mother) Chronicles of Narnia, The Cross and the Switchblade, Set All Afire (?) about St. Francis Xavier, my boys loved it. Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Little Flowers of St. Francis, Practicing the Presence of God,This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, Damien the Leper, What Does God Want (michael scanlan), A Concise History of the Catholic Church (Allen Schreck), Models of the Church Avery Dulles, Butlers Lives of the Saints….
Sunday at 9:31pm · Unlike · 1 person
Frank Wynerth Summers III Sands of Tamanrasset, Confessions of St. Augustine, Christianity Rediscovered, Something Beautiful for God, Love and Responsibility, When You Go to Tonga, Our Family’s Book of Acts, Introduction to a Devout Life, The Spiritual Exercises(by I of L),Original Blessing (by MF),
Sunday at 9:39pm ·
Frank Wynerth Summers III A Penny a Copy, Behind the Blue Door, Catholic and Christian, His Way(by Knight) — I would make a different list every day but all of these would be in the top 100 almosr every day.
Sunday at 9:42pm ·
RDM Friend 5: Definitely CS Lewis
Sunday at 9:47pm via Facebook Mobile ·

MFTH: Thanks, everyone, keep them coming….it’s hard to remember everything when you sit down and try to narrow down a list. I don’t want to present it as a reading list as much as inspiration…a way to be intentional about offering him good, holy, lovely things to think on as he matures.
Sunday at 9:51pm ·
XOBG Friend 6: Let the Fire Fall ~ Fr. Michael Scanlan. Don’t forget to share the list! 🙂
Sunday at 10:40pm
LVB Friend 7: “Wishful Thinking, a Theological ABC” We absolutely love Fredrick Buechner.
Sunday at 11:47pm

MFTH: I’m thinking Von Hildebrand needs to be on there too. Which one? And Abandonment to Divine Providence. Interior Castle…what about John of the Cross?
Sunday at 11:49pm via Facebook Mobile

AHH Friend 8: Love the Confessions and anything with St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. St. Catherine of Siena’s letters to Blessed Raymond of Capua are also very rich. Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing is excellent–a priest I know told me once that it was “the best book on Christian Spirituality in the last 20 years.” I read it and used excerpts for talks and retreats with student leaders many times over! I’d love to see the list! =)
Monday at 12:55am
AC Friend 9: True Devotion. Divine Mercy in my Soul Diary.
Monday at 3:40am
SS Friend 10: I love all the great Catholic suggestions! I’d add this though it is not religious – Life is So Good by George Dawson
Monday at 8:44am
Frank Wynerth Summers III I also add semi-secular ones here: St. Thomas More’s Utopia, Castiglione’s The Courtier, GK Chesterton’s Fr. Brown Mysteries and CS Lewis’s Perelandra trilogy — also the novel “Left Hand of God”
Monday at 11:10am

MFTH: I’m adding Transformation in Christ, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, and the three Jose Marie Escriva volumes…what about apologetics and Thomistic philosophy, what would be your classics there?
Monday at 11:14am
MFTH: Oh, Love and Responsibility by John Paul II.
Monday at 11:15am ·
Frank Wynerth Summers III I recommend that in addition to a Kempis that you mentioned (an in preference to him) you include My Way of Life as a daily prayerbook. These are refelections on the Summa. I recommend Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira , Do What You Love and the Money will Follow, the short books of Henri Nouwen…
Monday at 11:23am
Frank Wynerth Summers III My number one recommendation outside scripture is as much as possible of Henri Daniel Rops History of the Church of Christ. If you only pick two volumes pick: Church of the Apostles and Martyrs and Cathedral and Crusade. But know that some of the best stuff around is in the ten volumes you did not read. I also recommend the same authors books on Jesus and the Holy Land. I also recommend a secular book: Lest innocent Blood be Shed and a very Protestant on by Dietrich Boehnhoffer(sp) The Cost of Discipleship.
Monday at 11:30am ·
Frank Wynerth Summers III Pheme Perkins Reading the New Testament, Marsha Sinetar ‘s Do What You Love and the Money will Follow, most of Shakespeare and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Dudley Leblanc’s Acadian Miracle and The Man Who Founded California: The Life of Blessed Junipero Serra by M. N. L. Couve de Murville.
Monday at 11:36am ·
Frank Wynerth Summers III I guess I alone getting near twenty-five without mentioning Story of a Soul,Interior Castle, Dark Night of the Soul, Mere Chrisitianity, the Everlasting Man, Seven-Storey Mountain, These Stones will Shout (by Claver), any papal encyclicals, Greeley’s How to Save the Catholic Church, Malcolm Muggeridge’s Chronicles of Wasted Time, JFK’ Profiles in Courage, the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and ” Entre las patas de los caballos (Diario de un cristero)” by Luis RIVERO DEL VAL and not available in English…
Monday at 4:41pm ·
Frank Wynerth Summers III The truth is we ought to have a good Catholic library in this diocese with real circulation and we don’t in addition every middle class family should five or ten of these books only two or three of which are owned by all. But life goes on and darkness lays upon the land…
Monday at 4:44pm ·
MFTH: ‎@Frank: ‎@Frank: I’m hoping to do my little part to lift the darkness. First Son’s Name will be in 8th grade this year. My plan is to compile the list of 25, obviously there are many more I hope he reads in his lifetime, and spend this year collecting as many as I can in used copies or Kindle versions so that he has the collection in his hands at the start of his high school career. I’ll let him choose 5 to take with him when he leaves home to start his own good library and replace those for the next brother, and so on. Thank you for all your suggestions, it’s really nice to have input.

Monday at 5:10pm
Frank Wynerth Summers III Thanks for your kind words… I applaud your effort.
Monday at 6:05pm
CY Friend 10: Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love by Edward Sri (based on JPIIs Love & Responsibility -it’s “L&R for Dummies” 😉 –discusses mature material. I Believe in Love by d’Elbee–everyone needs to read this book, IMHO!
Tuesday
Frank Wynerth Summers III A Grief Observed by CS Lewis, Poustinia, Tragedy is my Parish, Models of the Church by Dulles (mentioned), Fathers a Fresh Start for the Christian Family by Iatesta, Jesus’s Saving Questions by Scanlon, The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America – the paperback abridged Bedford–, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Augustine’s City of God, Damian the Leper by John Farrow, Love, Medicine and Miracles by Bernie Siegel (secular Jew), Letters from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King,
Tuesday
Frank Wynerth Summers III Heroes of the French Epic: A Selection of Chansons de Geste [Paperback]Michael A. E. Newth, JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings and Silmarilion, Poems of GK Chesterton, On Loving God by St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
Tuesday
Frank Wynerth Summers III The Canticle of the Sun properly published and a good biography of Saint Francis and a prayerbook based on his writings and sermons and St. Anthony of Padua and The little Flowers of St. Francis all function separately and all have their place — I put the Canticle first. Meet Katharine Drexel: Heiress and God’s Servant of the Oppressed, Jacques LeGoff’s Saint Louis especially if you do not get Cathederal and Crusade by Rops. I think ROps has fiteen tiny biographies in his Histoire de la Eglise de Christ better than most full-length bios. Person and the Common Good by Jacques Maritain, Reflections on the Natural Law by Jacques Maritain,
Virtue Of War: Reclaiming the Classic Christian Traditions East and West,
Tuesday Afternoon·
Frank Wynerth Summers
Elizabeth Ann Seton: Saint for a New Nation, The Mass of the Early Christians by Mike Aquilina, Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert and Go! You are Sent. The books I have listed here are all essential for any small Chrsitian community of educated American Catholics in my view. However almost no community of American Catholics has them all so my view must be unpopular. I am sure you will find a list from many places with 25 good books…

In my life there has been little opportunity to celebrate the Memorial Day Weekend in the grandest style. I do often watch the big concerts and pyrotechnic displays on television. This Memorial Day I am aware of both the Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana National Guard fighting against the great flood of 2011 in the Mississppi Valley. So far it has been a battle which has gone very well in South Louisiana. The dangers have not yet passed, we have not reached the forecast crest anywhere in the State of Louisiana that I know of in any sense that is irreversible and there is no place where the post flood repairs and maintenance can go on without the enormous risk of the vast quantities of water.

So far it is good to have the sediment flowing into swamps and marshes and although it is not perfectly directed and slaty oyster bed are being hit yet again there are many things to be glad about. Sunday, God willing, my mother and I will be driving to New Orleans to see my nephew and two nieces perform in a production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing directed by my sister and featuring members of a homeschooling acting troupe she directs. I will be glad to be there and be with them and will also be hoping that all the military assurances of safety for the city will include the residence of my loved ones in Metarie and the Actors Theater of New Orleans. The struggles of recent years starting with Hurricane Lilly (which produced a small but real economic boom for me despite hiiting my hometown), through Katrina and Rita, Gustave and Ike, the BP Oil Spil and now this flood have all taken place in the context of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the (largely undeployed) war in Libya. My cousin Sev, whom I did not know all that well but of whom I have real and distinct positive memories, was killed in Afghanistan. After Rita sometmes I and my companions were coming back into areas before other returners and saw the military and in a minimal way assisted them with clearing roads.

All of these facts and experiences will color my Memorial Day Weekend. I am kind of reeling right now from things on my mind I cannot really discuss here but even they relate to Memorial Day sentiments. Normally, if I write about Memorial Day I write about the history. But this year, fairly or not, I write of empathy and fellow feeling with my fellow Louisiana citizens who are also US citizens and unlike me serve our Union in arms and uniform. I think I can relate to how long and weary a decade this has been since 9/11. Yes, there have been good times. But we had already seen an uptick in coastal and othe problems and were already stressed and the blows have kept on coming. But the military has been part of this struggle which has really been a struggle for survival although in that sense it has not yet been a close one for the whole state. This weekend we are once more in danger. Once more they are fighting the danger.

There is a great deal to be said about the flood and all that it involves but I cannot say it all here.There is such a need to rethink things and the recent bout of technical difficulties on this blog certainly hurt views and discouraged me fro working here as well. Nonetheless, there are things I want to get across.

I am including a video link which will not be accessible outside of the USA jurisdictions because it has ome proprietary content and that is apparently how it is licensed, However, for those who can link in from here I think it has some things to say:

I am hoping to avoid technical problems with this post and am recycling some materials that do not have to be linked for now. Here goes:

Text mostly from: “There is a Record Flood coming to South Louisiana”

Posted on May 6, 2011 by franksummers3ba

This is facebook note containing an earlier post from this blog:

There is a record flood coming to South Louisiana. This crest of high water will probably hit us around the week of May 18-25. The Mississippi River will bring the vastness of these waters in the upper and middle reaches of its course down on us. I think we also have to consider the risk of these natural conditions being made worse by human action in these dangerous times.

I am often critical of wetlands and water policy but I do think the Bonne Carre and Morganza Spillways have some things that they do well. I hope that they and even the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR GO) will be able to handle the water crisis better than it was handled in 1927. Of course alot of bad human action made the floods of 1927 worse than they needed to be.

What follows is a blog post from my WordPress blog in October of 2009. I want to say that it is not about dealing with two hundred year floods primarily. However, I may comment on it later or mention it in a future post and discuss how huge intake of water could have been distributed through the infrastructure I describe here. Of course we cannot do these things in two weeks. However, it reminds us of some issues we need to address. I ENCOURAGE EVERYONE IN THE FLOOD PLAIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AT LEAST TO PREPARE TO EVACUATE. But here is my post on topic:

Family on False River Louisiana Vacation there is recreational value in water policy

“Ideal Wetlands Policy on the Louisiana Coast
Posted on October 2, 2009 by franksummers3ba

I have decided to address the issues of wetlands conservation in Louisiana briefly in this post. In the past I have conspired for significant political change which would address the challenge of wetlands and coastal preservation and restoration along with many other issues that would be addressed only in the context of some very large political changes. This post is sort of an admission of defeat compared to those nearly forgotten goals. On the other hand it is for more than I am ever likely to see happen.

1. I would like to see some kind of stimulus fund used to by not one very large single tract but a series of many smaller tracts operated as a single National park with a total of perhaps 100,000 acres in all from the Atchafalya Swamp, the Chandeleur Islands, Cheniere Au Tigre, Grand Isle, Vermilion Bay’s coast, the Mississippi natural levees, and Ile des Dernier among other places.
2. I would like to see each oil and gas drilling and production corporation which has a part in developing the resources of Louisiana’s share of the Gulf madeto participate or have its own artificial barrier island. Each of these would have to include a fish hatchery, a wetlands plants nursery and an artificial beach as well as a grassy wetlands section of several times the dry acreage on the inland side of the island. These islands would also have to hold a clinic, a regional drilling office, serve as a juncture for pipelines and have a public docks and small hotel. On the gulfside of the islands the corporations must operate or lease out underwater habitats and laboratories joined to a central umbilicus running up the island. The islands must be built of at least eighty percent certified clean waste such as wrecks, broken concrete, compressed and sealed garbage and other materials.
3. A Louisiana State Park should be set up in long lanes connected to several giant purification and oxidation farms worked by convicts and detainees as well as other workers. Part of this farm would be leased out as cattle pasture to offset expenses. As much as possible of emergency drainage and partialy cleaned sewerage would go from the cities of South Louisiana to these farms. After going through a simple plant and oxidation ponds the waters would go through an artificial eco system until reaching the park lanes. These lanes would resort to canals and pipes where necessary but would generaly run as continous fishing, hunting and camping stips of wetlands and coulees depositing their flow after natural work into the Gulf waters.

sketch of some water and coastal policy plans

4.The lanes would enter the fully flooded areas and there would be an artificial long island causeway with many breaks through which as many as possible future pipelines should be run. The surface of this would have to be ninety percent suitable and reseved for ither simple recreational use or pure wildlife reservation.
5. There would be a designated spillway zones between the island causeway and the ends of the lanes. These zones would have a concentration of wetlands preserves, erosion fences and jetties and all of the storm water pumps sediment rich floods and excess waters which could not be used in ordinary diversions would be pumped ad diverted into these areas. The state would also operate commercial species hatcheries and nurseries for seafood supported by a special tax and operate lease and overseen new oysterbeds in this zone.
6. When this was done a series of sites for artificial islands set in between and landward from the oil and gas islands would be leased to casino resorts.
7. A series of levees and canals would be built around and between the lanes which would try to use existing structures and make a coherent feature of wildlife, wetlands, transit and drainage policies.
I expect things would be far from perfect if we did all of this. However, I also expect this is far better than the horror to which we are headed and have always been headed.”

See also any information about the Atchafalaya including myu own here in the blog’s glossary:

Atchafalaya One of the largest riverine estuaries in North America. Probably still the largest. The traditional Aboriginal American territory of the Chitimacha or Chetimache people. It produces a great deal of the crawfish, fur, alligator meat, fresh water fish, retting moss, sunken cured cypress, ecotourism revenues and freshwater sports fishing revenues for the State of Louisiana. It is the place where many of the most important Aboriginal American archaeological sites have been found. The area is sacred to the Chetimache traditional religion and retains a sacral character among Chitimacha, Acadian and Creols of Colors who within the context of an orthodox Catholic Christianity inculturate the Gospel into folk religious sensibilities.The Cajun or Acadian presence and involvement in the Atchafalaya has been documented in the Leslye Abbey film Angels of the Basin by Snowflake Productions. I feel this film started off as the sort of subtle anti-Acadian propaganda which even Acadians end up making in the mainstream American sewer of anti-Acadian propaganda. However, the coming of Katrina tended to confirm what the crawfishermen and others were saying about the death of this great South Louisiana region and its effect on the whole state and region. The main Acadian contention at varied levels of organization has been that we must invest in fresh water circultaion and intake infrastucture. I myself have put out a variety of plans for this sort of thing which are not as radical or expensive as the get-rich-quick petroleum boys always like to portray them as being. Rather the mainstream postion is simply pillaging, genocidal and wanton piracy”

Obviously this whole field of concern is very emotionally charged for me and it is even more so for many others…

I am having technical difficulties with this blog. Last time this happened I lost many of my readers and my recovery was just firming up when this happened. So this is all part of the big crash I am experiencing online I suppose…