Daily Rome Shot 550, etc.

There’s a shop on the Piazza Navona where there are many chess sets for sale.  Note also special decks of cards for Italian games like scopa and briscola.  There are decks from different regions for their games, Brescia, Naples, Lombardy, Piacenza, Sardinia… Salzburg.

Click for larger.

Once upon a time, there was no internet.  There were no smart phones.  People had to engage with other people.  One of the ways they engaged was through games.   I recently read an interesting book –  Birth of the Chess Queen: A History – about the evolution of the chess piece the Queen.  It was written by a feminist, but there was some good history and, in the balance, not strange.  The book served to underscore the importance of games in history.

On the theme of chess…

Fifty years ago TODAY, 1 Sept 1972, the Match of the Century came to a close.

On 31 August, Spassky and Fischer entered into a Sicilian Taimanov [1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6] face off.  The game adjourned for the say at move 40, Spassky sealing his next move into an envelope for the next days, today’s, resumption at 2 PM.

At Noon, Spassky called the match’s arbiter and resigned the 21st Game, which made Fischer the 11th World Champion.  He asked that the announcement be made from in the hall from the stage.  Hence, at 2PM, the arbiter went to the microphone and said

‘Ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Spassky called me at 12.50 today and resigned the game. This is an accepted and legal practice.’ Schmid continued: ‘Mr. Fischer has won game no. 21 and he is therefore the winner of the match. The final result is 121/2-81/2!”

Fischer stood there as the thunderous applause went on.

Spassky did come to the closing ceremony on 3 September.

During the speeches Fischer was analyzing the 21st game on a pocket set.

For more, and a source I used, try…

The Match of All Time: The Inside Story of the legendary 1972 Fischer-Spassky World Chess Championship in Reykjavik

US HERE – UK HERE

The edgy Roman writer Martial said that if, during the summer, a boy is healthy he has learned enough.  (Epigrams 10, 62)

I was 12 when the Match was going on.  It was 1972.  The first hand-held calculator was on the market ($395 = $2800 today).  The IRA was bombing.  The Godfather had premiered.
Bobby Orr was still playing.  In August, Nixon was renominated at the RNC.  During the chess Match in Iceland, the Summer Olympics had started in Munich, with a bad end on 5-6 Sept.  During the Fischer-Spassky Match, it was the depths of the Cold War.  I was in the great American West, with my grandparents in Montana and Wyoming, living a boyhood now hard to imagine in these troubled times.  The summers had been filled with sun and grass and horses and games, some organized, some not so much.  I played a lot of chess in those days.  Each day during the Match, I couldn’t wait to get the newspaper so I could see what had happened.

Aestate pueri si valent, satis discunt.

It was 50 years – half a century – ago.

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SEPTEMBER: Month dedicated to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

September is traditionally associated with the Seven Sorrows devotion.

Back in 2019, because the Church is pretty obviously hurtling into chaos from the top down, I determined to write reflections on the Seven Sorrows of Mary.  I started writing these when we were a week out from the Feast of the Seven Sorrows which occurs after Exaltation of the Cross. I just started writing. It only occurred after I posted that I would have to do all Seven, one a day.

So here are links to the Our Lady of Sorrows Project.

1st Sorrow – The Prophecy of Simeon
2nd Sorrow – The Flight into Egypt
3rd Sorrow – The loss of the Child Jesus in Jerusalem
4th Sorrow – Mary meets Jesus on the way to Calvary
5th Sorrow – The Crucifixion of Jesus
6th Sorrow – The Piercing of the Side of Jesus, and His Deposition
7th Sorrow – The Burial of Jesus

Music for meditation.

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The agony of their “ecstasy”

You will want to watch this before it is expunged from on orders from high atop the thing.  Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue on 31 August 2022.  He goes over the many ways in which the left, fully in charge, is weaponizing government and demonizing resistance.

If you swap out some terms and name of players, there is a parallel with what is going on in the Church today.  Try it as a mind exercise.  One to one parallels?  No.  But they are close in a way that is creepy.

Does this surprise?  No, it does not.  The same players are on both playing fields, secular and sacred.  Hence, their bed-sharing with the one world government crowd, people pushing population control, forelock-tugging in the direction of China for the sake of money, and determination to crush what they perceive as a threat.  For the political left in these USA the new threat to everything is anyone who didn’t vote for them.  For the ecclesial left pretty much everywhere, anyone who clings to whatever was before their interpretation of Vatican II.

You can see the two streams cross over today at Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter).  The Madame Defarge of the Fishwrap, Michael Sean Winters, provided an exemplary piece of high-level brown-nosing of the breathiest sort about the elevation of San Diego’s Bishop to the College of Cardinals.  See if you don’t get the same impression.  Take note of how he exposes his priorities and expectations:

As you can imagine, I am not often speechless. But when I finally reached the end of the receiving line at the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See’s residence to greet Cardinal Robert McElroy on Aug. 26, I couldn’t find the words. It has been three months since the news of his elevation to the cardinalate arrived — three months for it to sink in — and I was still not sure what to say.

Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, knew what to say. “Ecstatic” was how he described what so many Catholics were feeling at this moment. Wester spoke at a dinner for McElroy’s family and friends after the Mass of thanksgiving on Aug. 28. In discussions with pilgrims from San Diego, friends of McElroy’s from San Francisco or from college and seminary, and his brother bishops, “ecstatic” was the exact word.

For progressive Catholics, McElroy has been one of a handful of bishops who would go the extra mile, make statements of support for gay Catholics, push back against conservative efforts to hijack church teaching for political ends and participate in conferences on climate change. The Catholics whose hearts have been warmed and encouraged by McElroy’s leadership for many years were among those “ecstatic” at the appointment.

[…]

  • FIRST AND FOREMOST … support for the homosexualist agenda (“support for gay Catholics”)
  • Silence – not “push back” – those who defend the sanctity of life (“hijack church teaching for political ends”)
  • Embrace population control and the Bill Gates “cricket diet” (“climate change”)

No?  Did I get that wrong?  Read that last paragraph and tell me what he meant.

For decades we have heard from the catholic Left about the dichotomy of intellectual v. pastoral.  Rather… pastóreal, as some agents of the Left pronounce as a matter of proving their point.  For Madame Defarge, however, all things ascend and converge in their church’s newly acknowledged wunderkind:

Massa added, “McElroy has the intellectual firepower that can use Murray’s insights in a pastoral way.”

Cathleen Kaveny, who teaches both law and theology at Boston College, agreed. “Most people think there is a sharp divide between the intellectual life and the pastoral life. Cardinal McElroy is living proof that this is not necessarily the case,” Kaveny told me.

He’s so dreamy.

And he’s ready to put on his garb (rarely worn cassock) in intellectually pastoral humility and fight against the enemy.

McElroy has articulated the teaching of the church in ways that some traditionalists abhor, but his arguments were always grounded in our Catholic teaching, not in some bizarre, Americanist interpretation of that teaching. This is one of the outstanding challenges facing the English-speaking wing of the Catholic Church in the United States, to rescue it from the misinterpretations and misrepresentations of Catholic teaching that have been foisted on the laity for the past 40 years.

Create a fiction and fight against it.   Just like what Biden has been doing lately: call anyone who isn’t knuckling under to the new plan a “fascist” and then violate their civil liberties at will.

FORTY YEARS of “misinterpretations and misrepresentations of Catholic teaching”.

What side of the spectrum has been in charge for the last 40 years?

This is perfect nonsense, of course, because the catholic Left has been in control.  This is code for the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

What does “standing up to” look like for the Biden catholic Left?  In 2018 Winters wrote this:

Normally, when I get into a debate with a conservative friend and we are at an impasse, with no hope for resolution, I try to ease the tension with levity, and say, “Well, when the revolution comes, I will put in a good word for you and your family.” To my friends in the Republican political and legal establishment who have not stood up to Trump: When the revolution comes, you are on your own, and I will be clamoring not for mercy but for a seat next to the guillotine, where I can do my knitting.

As the French Revolution descended into the Reign of Terror, the women of the streets and markets who had been active were sidelined from politics.   In sullen protest, they parked themselves near the guillotine and did their knitting.  Thus, Tricoteuses … knitter women.   In literature, you might remember the ghastly figure of Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities.

And HERE Defarge thinks that converts shouldn’t be allowed to voice an opinion… because they are conservative.

But Card. McElroy!  Ecstasy.

Winters’ sycophantic peroration:

It is remarkable to me that the Holy Father is so well informed that he was able to make this choice. The pope has pointed the way forward for the U.S. church with this appointment and the future is looking brighter today than it has in a long, long time.

Build Back Better!

UPDATE:

How do we Build Back Better in the church of the Left?  Celebrate Communists, of course!

Archbp. Paglia of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who recently divulged that the Church’s teaching on contraception is up for grabs (i.e, will change to allow intentionally sterile sex) swooned over Michael Gorbachev recently when giving him an award in Terni (where he was bishop and where there is a homoerotic fresco in the cathedral which he sponsored and in which he is depicted). In ANSA. L’Osservatore Romano and Avvenire of the Italian Bishops Conference were right there to swoon along.

In case you didn’t know, it was Gorbachev – who tried to save the USSR – who ended the Cold War, never mind Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II. Never mind the tanks he sent to repress Georgia or the Baltic, dissidents he put into psychiatric prisons, funding of global terrorism and the spread of Communism.

BTW… the other day in an interview, Paglia said that the current abortion law is now a “pillar” of society.

Remember… 40 years of foisting a false narrative! Gotta “push back”!

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31 August: Bl Idelfonso Schuster

As I write, it is still, for a little while, the Feast of Bl. Idelfonso Schuster, OSB, (+1954) who was Archbishop of Milan and a great liturgist.  I’ve learned a lot from him.

Last May when I was in Milan, I made of point of finding his tomb in the Duomo.

Having read quite a bit of his writings on worship, I think it is safe to say that he would not have recognized the Novus Ordo as the Roman Rite.

Perhaps you might ask him to intervene with God to obtain for us the favor of conversions of hearts and minds and the reversal of the cruel, needless punishments of Traditionis custodes.

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St. Raymond Nonnatus: A Patron Saint of Canceled Priests

Today we have the amazing St. Raymond Nonnatus (yes, from Latin non natus because born by Caesarian section).

St. Raymond became Master General of the Mercedarians who labored to raise money to ransom slaves from the infidel Muslims, took up the sword to fight for them, or offered their own persons in their stead.

St. Raymond exchanged himself for a captive in North Africa and was tortured.

Members of the religion of peace spiked St. Raymond’s lips and sealed his mouth to keep him from preaching.   

Perhaps St. Raymond Nonnatus could be a patron saint of cancelled, muzzled priests.

He was eventually ransomed.

It is also the Feast of Sts. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea, New Testaments figures.

It is also the Feast of Bl. Ildefonso Schuster, the great Cardinal of Milan and liturgist.

Shall we see his… their… like again?

Pray for us.  Pray for cancelled priests.

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Wherein Fr. Z’s screen time break, or rather, broken screen time

Because I didn’t post yesterday, I had a few notes asking if I was okay.  I acknowledge that it is rare for me not to post at least something.  Yesterday, however, I wound up pretty busy and hampered by a bandaged ring finger.

I needed a break from screen time.

That didn’t stop me from doing a few things that require some dexterity of the non-typing kind.

For example, I am reviving a Canon digital SureShot Powershot camera which had sort of died on me.  Rather, the view screen died, which made the camera less than useful.  It could take photos, but you couldn’t see what you were shooting, change settings, etc.  So, I ordered a new view screen from a spare parts store online and set to work.

This unit had seen quite a bit of action, and it took great photos.  I considered buying a new one, but figured that a few bucks repairing this could be worth it, even as a back up.   What I found about sending it somewhere for repair was daunting in regard to time and expense.  Nope.  DIY!

This is the offending screen.

Gotta get the back off.  Screw removal commenced.

Take not of that yellow connection ribbon that goes up and turns orange.  More on that later.  First it has to be detached.

Time to remove a bunch of tiny screws that hold that dial assembly on.   Note that there are different lengths, though the heads are the same.  It is important, as you extract assembly screws, to know which go where.

With a red pen I made marks where the longer screws go.

Time to detach the offending screen.  A data ribbon and power ribbon (I surmise).

The data ribbon connection point had a little flippy flange on it, to hold the ribbon in place.  It took me loads of time to get that dratted ribbon inserted into that connector.  It just wouldn’t go and it was not quite as rigid as the one I took out.  Very frustrating.  Eventually, I got the dratted thing in and clamped down the flippy.

Ta da!

But that’s not the end of the story.   Remember that small orange ribbon that was involved with the removal of the case back?   Well, in trying to reconnect it to the board… it broke.

So, I got to discover another part of the camera, the part that handles power and also changes settings to presets.

Once I got a good look at this, I hunted some down online.

The whole project is now on hold while I wait for three of these little buggers (I’m not taking any chances in case I break another in trying to connect it) to arrive from China.   Not expensive at all, but not exactly local.

Ribbon by ribbon.

If you want to help with this project, and liked the Rome photos both daily and when I am in Rome, I’ve put two batteries for this camera on my wishlist.  HERE

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Daily Rome Shot 549, etc.

Today is the Feast of St. Raymond Nonnatus.  Here he is venerated in the Church of Sant’Eustachio in Rome.

St. Raymond has his name, “non-natus”, because he wasn’t born, but rather removed by caesarian-section when his mother had died.  He was Spanish, a Mercedarian and a close associate of St. Peter Nolasco. There is confusion about his having been a cardinal, as you see depicted in the image. It was thought that Pope Gregory IX in 1239 made him Cardinal Deacon of Sant’Eustachio but he died going to Rome. However, scholars dispute this claiming that it was really an Englishman, Robert Somercote, who was Cardinal Deacon of S. Eustachio from 1238–1241 and they say St. Raymond was never a cardinal. I hope Robert Somercote was a saint.

Raymond was canonized by Pope Alexander VII in 1657 and his feast in the Vetus Ordo is celebrated on August 31.

On this day in 1972 in Reykjavík, Iceland, the Match of the Century between world champ Boris Spassky and challenger Bobby Fischer was drawing to its terminus in Game 21.  Literally “drawing”.  Fischer was ahead in the points scheme (the first one to reach 12 point, 1 being a win and ½ for a draw) 11½–8½ –  Fischer was ahead and Games 14-20 were draws.

Game 21 convened on 31 August with Fischer, black, playing a new line of the Sicilian.   Spassky did not play his best, but struggled along to an adjournment at move 40.  They did this back in the day, as shown in the TV series from the book The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis.  [US HERE – UK HERE] The next player to move would write his next move on a piece of paper that would be sealed in an envelope.  The next day it would be opened and the move put on the board, thus continuing the game. That gave opponents time to study and prepare.

Also, after Game 20 the Finance Minister of Iceland determined that both Spassky and Fischer would not have to pay taxes on their prize money.

The conclusion to the match came the following day, 1 September.

Your use of my Amazon affiliate link is a major part of my income. It helps to pay for insurance, groceries, everything. Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance.  US HERE – UK HERE

By the way, there is a film about the match, focused mostly on Fischer and his psychological spin.  Pawn Sacrifice    US HERE – UK HERE

In 2016 Spassky gave an interview about his life and its twists and turns.  He said that he was unhappy with Pawn Sacrifice because it was too one-sided, focusing on Fischer and his antics.  Spassky said, “They failed to show the main thing: how I agreed to continue the match.  I could have just stopped everything and walked away as the champion!”

3:16 isn’t just in John.  Click the mug for more.

UPDATE: Someone recently used my link to join WISE, about the best way I know to move money around from currency to currency with extremely low fees and a great exchange rate.  Thanks to “Gregory”.

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29 August – Beheading of John the Baptist: exposed corrupt priests

I celebrate as my onomastico or “name day” the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist, 29 August.  “He must increase,” said the Baptist, “I must decrease” (John 3:30).  I need that rule of life.

St Augustine of Hippo (d 430) connected John’s sudden, violent “decrease”, his head’s removal from his shoulders, with the autumnal shortening of daylight, while the feast of John’s birth coincided with the vernal lengthening of days.

In the Art Institute of Chicago, there is a tempera on panel depiction of the Beheading of the Baptist by the Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo (d 1482).   You view the instant after the deed.  Seen from outside the prison, John leans out of his window, guillotine like, his headless shoulders and angled arms still in place as a massive gout of blood jets forth the jutting neck.  A servant with a platter stoops for his head.  The executioner sheathes his man-length blade.

Speaking of shoulders, the poet Carl Sandburg described Chicago, in defiance of the world’s other great cities, like London, Rome, and Paris.  As he explained it, “The poem sort of says, ‘Maybe we ain’t got culture, but we’re eatin’ regular.’”  One of the things I regularly eat in Chicago is the indigenous hot dog.  I’ve learned to order these like a native speaker by cordially growling, “drag it through da’ garden”, to make sure that all the necessary hot peppers, onions, tomatoes, celery salt and pickles are included. When they weren’t eatin’ so regular here, they loaded up the bun with veggies.  What was once famine fare is now a feast.

If you are ever in Chicago, check out “Superdawg” for the best experience.

I digress.

John was not only a martyr for the Truth.

The miraculous son of the elderly priest Zechariah was a priestly martyr.

John stood against Herod and his crony cadre of corrupted priests who backed his violation of the truth of sexuality and marriage.

Herod used his power to sin.  John’s blood exposed also priestly corruption in a way that no one could ignore.

By the way, Herod’s command to kill John, the incorruptible priest, came from his lust for a child.  Salome was a “little girl” (Greek korásion).

That’s the direction, of course, of the radical and aggressive homosexualist agenda.

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Daily Rome Shot 548, etc.

This seemed appropriate.

As featured in my recent cooking post…

The waving flag is for donations for my upcoming trip to Rome in October. However on a daily basis please remember, when you are shopping online at Amazon, to enter Amazon through my links. If you do that, Amazon remembers how you arrived and I get a small percentage of each sale. You get the same price. I can’t see what you buy. It really helps. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE

On 29 August 1972 in Reykjavík, Iceland, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky sat down for their 20th game. Fischer had white and Spassky had a black. Fischer twice pushed for a draw by threefold repetition. After 54 moves Fischer claimed that there had been a threefold repetition, but there had not been. Spassky agreed to a dry anyway. With each draw, each player received one half point. Since Fischer was way ahead anyway, draws suited him just fine. The 21st and last game would be played on 31 August.

White to move. I find endgame puzzles to be very tricky.

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Fr. Z’s Kitchen: In honor of Hungary’s Birthday

Some of you were asking me to make food posts. Lately, I have been very lazy in this regard. Frankly, I have not had much motivation to cook, especially do to the disgusting news and photos from Rome lately. There is something about sycophantic toadies that makes me lose my appetite. I’ve mainly been eating sandwiches.

That said, I developed a craving for some Hungarian food, especially because it was recently the birthday of Hungary as I saw on Twitter. [Now watch this. During the cooking process I cut my finger using a mandolin. I therefore have my thumb clamped to my ring finger of my right hand to speed healing by primary intention. I am using a dictation program called Dragon. Let’s just say that it does not handle Hungarian very well.]
There was nothing to do but make puppy cost UK… Chicken pot because…. Paprikás Csirke with Egg Noodles instead of Nokedli, pretty much like Spätzle and cucumber salad or Uborkasaláta. [I had to cut and paste that part because…] Space space.I was missing a couple of ingredients I would usually use but I improvised and overcame.

Since I did not have any pork lard, I rendered some salt pork cut like lardons.

HINT: Just because you might not have every specific ingredient for a classic recipe, remember that there are very few real recipes that are set in stone.  Adapt, if you have to.  Just go ahead.  It usually turns out okay.  Sometimes it’s better.

Browning the chicken.

Removing the chicken from the French oven.

The spices involved several tablespoons – heaping tablespoons – of sweet paprika quite a lot of ground black pepper and salt.

In go the onions and some cherry tomatoes.

As you can see I had both yellow onion and green onion, left overs of each that I wanted to use.

After giving the veg some TLC, at this stage remove the pot from direct heat, because paprika is delicate.  High heat can make it bitter.

Indigo the spices.

The chicken goes back in.

Cover with stock.

Bring back to a simmer, then back off on the heat.

After a while remove the chicken to another bowl.

Make a kind of roux, from flour and sour cream.

Into the gravy it goes.

Let it reduce for a while on very low heat.

Meanwhile, I have also been making the cucumber salad.  Slice the cucumber (and your finger) as thin as you can.  As I sliced it into a bowl, in layers, I sprinkled it with a little bit of salt along the way.  Then I transferred it to a salad spinner so that the liquid from the cucumbers could pass through the screen and I could spend more out of it.  I did this in stages, while keeping it in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Once the cucumbers were ready I put them into a bowl with the dressing, comprised of white vinegar, salt, a little oil, chopped green onions, and dill.  I left it to chill longer in the refrigerator.

I don’t think I have to show how to cook egg noodles.

Behold, supper in honor of the birthday of Hungary.  I did not have any Hungarian wine, such as their famous “bull’s blood”.  However, I did have a bottle of red wine from the vent to region… Ventoux – Rhône Valley – of France made by the Benedictine monks at the Abbey of the Buffalo… le Barroux. [This dictation program also does not like French.]

I didn’t have any more sour cream, or I would have used more at the end.

And now it’s time to do my daily Hungarian lesson, Office, and bed.

 

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