The Sign of Spring in Scranton...One of the sure fire signs of Spring...at least it is Scranton...is the annual St Patrick's Day. For the un-intiated, this is where...
...120,000 people descend on downtown Scranton
...bar owners needed to be coaxed into NOT opening at 7am
...the local DA brags about getting bar owners to not open at 7am
...that smelly stuff in the gutter that you just walked in was, 5 minutes before, just in someone else's stomach
...you can say "Up the Irish!" and it's somehow taken as a compliment
For the record, NO ONE needs to be drinking beer at 7am. Anyway and as for me, I haven't been to the parade in decades. And I'm really okay with that, thank you very much. In Scranton warmer weather begins with the Irish (St. Patrick's Day Parade) and ends with the Italians (La Festa).
Brewing Idea for a Posting...dealing with performance appraisal feedback. More to come.
Why do I pay $20 for tee shirts?...Three words: Extra + Large + Tall. Kudos to Eddie Bauer for being the source for extra large tall shirts. That's why half of what I own has Eddie's name emblazened. In fairness, the shirts I get from Eddie Bauer also wear like iron (I've had some 5 years and they show no sign of decay) and are very soft. One of these days other stores will carry more tall sizes and I can go there and overpay for their stuff. Until then, Eddie gets my sheckels.
Facebook Follies...I recently did some cleaning up in the Facebooks. Now for the record, I've never had more than 110 Facebook "friends" (quotes to denote silliness). Even that felt like too many though. My children, for example, probably have enough Facebook "friends" between the three of them to staff an aircraft carrier, but I personally believe that NO ONE has 500 real frends. Well maybe Bill Clinton, but not most people. So in looking over my Facebook "friends" list I had some criteria I used to determine which "friends" stay or go:
...if I know you in the real world you were likely to stay
...if you had over 200 friends and I only marginally knew you, you were likely to go
...if I only marginally knew you and you had less than 200 friends you were likely to stay
...if you were a politican you were likely to go
...if you never posted on your own Facebook account then you were likely to go
None of this amounts to basically nothing really, other than the underlying fact, I think, that we all need to be reminded that virtual reality is just that..."virtual". When that strays to far from actual reality then maybe we all need to make an adjustment or three.
The Strange Case of Cardinal O'Brien...You can read about it HERE. What's remarkable about this case is that Cardinal O'Brien has been accused of sexual misconduct related to priests. The result? Well after he came out with a statement suggesting that the Catholic Church should allow for married clergy, he was almost immediately forced to resign. Consider this though: how many members of the clergy have been accused of sexual misconduct related to children but yet were not forced to resign? As I have noted many, many time before, I do not believe that clergy...from any denomination...is more or less likely to engage in the abuse of children. That's not the issue. The real issue is that the Catholic Church seems to act much faster when misconduct allegations are made against someone questioning core teachings than they are when it's just run of the mill children potentially being harmed. I know that many devote Catholics choose a "I don't want to think about this" mentality when it comes to the abuse of children and Church corruption (as evidenced by the failure to act against credible accusations of sexual misconduct...see the case of Monsignor Lynn of Philadelphia...famous Church "bag man" for Cardinal Bevilacqua), but this kind of thing will never, ever change unless the faithful rise up and demand that it changes. Period.
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