Praying hands of monk churchman resting on table during mass at St. Benedict's Abbey.Holy water is sprinkled on praying monks by Father Theodore, the prior of St. Benedict's Abbey, at the day's last service.Novices being received into the order at St. Benedict's Abbey where they will prepare to take vows for the priesthood.Priest elevating host and performing other functions of mass at St. Benedict's Abbey.
Monks outside monastery, at St. Benedict's Abbey.
Monks praying before meal, at St. Benedict's Abbey.Monks cleaning windows of the monastery's sacristy, two young clerics exemplify St. Benedict's ruling that all be employed in the work, and that then are the monks in truth if they live by the work of their hands.
We don’t have many traditions in my family. We don’t sit around the Seder table asking questions; we don’t eat Chinese food on Christmas; we don’t have Taco Tuesdays or Gefilte Fish Fridays. We are pretty ordinary people in that sense. Or every sense.
There is one tradition that I’d like to keep and pass along to my kid – sitting down for the road.
Every time we were about to leave on a trip my Dad always said “Let’s sit down for the road” and we would set down our suitcases and sit quietly for a minute. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do – when you are a kid on the way to an exiting destination the last thing you want to do is to be stopped in your tracks and sit around even for a minute. But then again it’s a minute well-spent. You could realize you forgot something, or just look around one last time so a memory of your place will travel with you and eventually make you homesick. You could concentrate, finalize a plan, prepare for the departure, as a pilot might say revving up the engine. Many useful things you can do in a minute. Or you can just not do anything and wait for your Dad to signal that the sitting down for the road is over and open the door to something that awaits outside.
I’ve done this ever since I can remember. I sat down in places I’ve never returned to; I sat down with people who I never got to see again; I sat down before the trips I remember and many forgotten ones. Now I get to tell my kid to sit down and I like the continuity of it. It’s a real tradition, beautiful in its simplicity and as meaningful as one wants it to be.
This tagline struck me as being weirdly funny, but I don’t write them, I just copy them. Without further ado – some photos from the William M.Boyle Jr. testimonial dinner conducted in Kansas City in October of 1949. William M.Boyle Jr. was the Chairman of the DNC at that time.
Banquet of the Century. The home folks of Kansas City were proud of Bill Boyle—none more vociferously than shrewd, elephantine Roy Roberts, Republican president of the Kansas City Star— and they had vowed to give him the banquet of the century. By the time the President entered Kansas City’s vast civic auditorium that night, they had come comfortably close to success.Three thousand men & women in evening dress were sitting at tables on the great floor (at $15 a plate). Among them were virtually all the ranking officers of the Administration and all shades of local politicos, including Democratic Boss Charlie Binaggio, who had just been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to tell what he knew about the revival of racketeering in Kansas City. Six thousand non-diners watched and applauded from the flag-bedecked balconies. An army of harried waiters served 3,000 tenderloin steaks without allowing more than minor peripheral cooling to set in—no mean achievement since all had come from the kitchen of the Muehlebach Hotel, three full blocks away.
This article in the Time “Boyle’s Law” talks about his rise to prominence, connections to Truman and Pendergast, and shady machinations for which he was investigated. Some passages in the article read like they were written today.
