Saturday Night Radio Drama - Jennifer Johnston - Old Men Are Jealous

Old Men Are Jealous 

We continue to celebrate the memory of writer Jennifer Johnston who died on the 25th of February 2025. Best known for her novels including The Captains and the Kings, How Many Miles to Babylon?, Shadows On Our Skin (which was Booker shortlisted in 1977) and The Old Jest (which took the Whitbread Book Award in 1979), Jennifer was also a prodigious playwright.

Tonight Drama on One presents, Old Men Are Jealous by Jennifer Johnston - A reimagining of WB Yates's, Deirdre of the Sorrows

Eileen Colgan played the old woman

King was played by Ger Carey

Dee was Roxanna Níc Liam

Laurence Kinlan played Nick

The Dramaturg was Jesper Bergman

Sound Supervision was by Damien Chanel, and

the broadcast coordinator was Margaret Hayes.

Old men are jealous by Jennifer Johnston was produced by Kevin Reynolds

Old men are jealous was a commissioned response to WB Yates's, Deirdre of the Sorrows

The late Jennifer Johnston, gave the announcements to her play.

More Pullum On The Passive

THE ADMIRABLE RMJ who is more qualified than I am to have an opinion on the topic has a critique of Jeffrey Pullum's video on the passive.   It's certainly worth reading.

I still agree with the fuller arguments that Pullum made.   Here's a post to what will play as a play list if you follow it up.   It takes a few of the short videos to get to the heart of his argument.  

I Don't Have Any Idea

 who will be elected to replace Good Pope Francis but I doubt it will be the candidate I'm seeing pushed all over the trad-cath web,  Robert Sarah, who has been rumored to aspire to be Pope Pius XIII.  For one thing he's almost eighty, for another he was clearly an enemy of Francis and, indeed, of the entire last sixty years of modern Catholicism.   I can't think of anything the Cardinal Electors could do that would more damage not only what Francis has accomplished but, in fact, every Pope since Pius XII.   As I mentioned here the other day the real hard-core trad-caths think Pius' changes such as having the Epistle and Gospel read in a language the congregation could understand,  who knows if someone as wacky as Sarah would try to go back even farther than that.  

As I said the largely multi-millionaire-billionaire financed "trad-catholic" LARPing cult* will almost certainly either mount or force a schism between those who believe the Catholic Church is a Christian Church and those who don't have much need for Jesus other than the name and title and holy pictures and statues.   If someone like Sarah became Pope those who take Jesus seriously would have no home in the Church.

I've read that the millionaire-billionaires have had hired hacks digging up dirt and rumors on alternative candidates and there are at least several of those who will be in the Conclave who would carry that into the meetings.  They dug it up on Francis even as he was Pope, even some of those who he either appointed or kept in offices,  Sarah's infamous book which he lied about Benedict XVI co-authoring was part of that kind of stuff.  The late and scandal tainted George Pell anonymously during his life and explicitly after his death was another such prominent vilifier of Francis.  He was often named as an alternative to Sarah in the dreams of the trad-caths,  he definitely wanted to turn back to some of the worst of the pre-Vatican II church.

I would guess that by this time next week we will know who they've given us and within six months we'll have a pretty good idea of what they've given us.  Till then, it's going to be a bumpy ride no matter who comes out a Pope and not a Cardinal. 

* Every time I see a young Woman or Girl wearing a mantilla at mass (a good sign of someone trad-cath LARPing) I remember when, before they relaxed the rule about Women having their head covered in the 1960s the ones who wore the longest mantillas often had the shortest mini-skirts on.   I'd forgotten that but it must have made an impression on me at the time.  I should talk to some of them because I'd really like to know what they imagine they're getting out of it.  Especially those whose families aren't affluent,  I know what the affluent hope to get out of it.  

Update:  I forgot, they changed the rules so it will be a couple of weeks before we have a new Pope.   The Conclave won't even have begun by a week from now, at least I think that's true. 

The Law Is An Ass

HERE I AGREE WITH attorney Dave Aronberg in my extreme dislike of Sarah Palin and everything she stands for - or rather sinks to - while I think he, like the conventional lawyer's POV, entirely misses the real significance of her second loss in her lawsuit against the New York Times.

First I'll give him his say:

 

I analyze this differently,   it's Sarah Palin getting bitten by a Supreme Court ruling and media practice that no side has benefited more from than her Republican-fascism and, especially Trumpism.    If the Sullivan decision had been a loss for the NYT and the instruction was that they pay a nominal fine and court costs and issue a retraction the entire sixty years of Republican-fascist ascendancy through media lies about Democrats would never have happened.  She and Trump and a series of the worst politicians in the subsequent decades would never have had political careers and the subsequent Rehnquist and Roberts Courts would likely never have been appointed to the Court.   In no area is the legal profession as this one exposed as being supremely superficial and wrong.

Most consequential to our situation today, if the Sullivan Decision had never been issued, the New York Times would not have so freely slandered Hillary Clinton, they would not have issued lies about her immediately before the 2016 election,  piling on with the Republican-fascist enabling and grotesquely sanctimonious James Comey to sway the election to objectively the worst president in American history, appointing the worst Supreme Court since at least the Taney Court of the 1850s.   

If the Sullivan Decision and the line of those decisions building on it,  Donald Trump would probably never have had a political career, he may have ended up sued into the flames of hell by those he slandered and libeled, including in a paid opinion piece published by the NYT as it published the original factually deficient ad that led to that decision. 

Lawyers are not, it turns out, deep thinkers.   Their ability to miss the ultimate consequences of their own profession's actions for the immediate benefits strikes me as more and more important.   It extends to the senior ranks of the profession in the judges and, especially the "justices."  

I Prefer To Take Advice From Someone Who Knows What They're Talking About - Pullum On Passives

I'D RECOMMEND LISTENING to all six as a bare minimum.  Then maybe we can have a brawl over it.   I'd say easily 9 out of 10 times when someone pulls the old "passive" on someone they don't even know what passive mood is. 

Update:   I'm surprised you didn't catch my mistake, I meant "voice" not "mood".   I guess I should have taken more than a minute to respond to the criticism.   Actually, that's a lie, I'm not surprised. 

On Listening to Jake Sullivan On A Youtube of Rachel's Show Last Night

Our "unique constitutional system" produced Trump and permitted him to not only misrule once THEN MOUNT AN INSURRECTION TO KEEP POWER ILLEGALLY, it let him off and permitted him to do it again .  The American "free press" invented the monster and promoted him politically TWICE as it sandbagged the most competent president of my lifetime,  Joe Biden.   Without addressing that and, frankly, the disaster of allowing the Supreme Court to re-write the Constitution (such as the 14h Amendment) without any means of recourse,  we're assuring that the world will be right if they judge the United States to be unreliable and that they have to treat us more like Putin's Russia than a reliable democracy.

Everything he's done, including crimes of the most serious potential and likely factual consequence that he has gotten away with only to gain power again HAS BEEN, IN FACT, PERMITTED UNDER OUR DANGEROUS CONSTITUTION AND THE "RULE OF LAW" AS IT IS DEFINED BY THE COURTS AND, ESPECIALLY THE CORRUPT ROBERTS COURT.   To merely want to go back to 2014 and do the typical American thing of refusing to learn the lessons of the most dangerous experience, relying on the failed 18th century theories embedded in the U.S. Constitution only means that our recurring though ever worsening history will continue to spiral.  

Jerome Richardson - Alpha

 

Jerome Richerdson(flute)

Hank Jones (piano)

Wendell Marshall (bass)

Shadow Wilson (drums)

Betty Carter - Can't We Be Friends

Betty Carter - vocals

Ray Bryant - piano

Jerome Richardson - flute

Wendell Marshall - double bass

Philly Joe Jones - drums

I needed some Betty Carter just now. 

Taking This One Hard

SEVEN POPES have died during my lifetime and this is the only one whose death has really shaken me.  I hardly remember Pius XII, so his death had no impact on me. I was too young to really take the death of Good Pope John the way it should have struck me.    

Paul VI's death didn't leave me feeling much, I was far from the Church at the time and saw it mostly as a political event.  His papacy seemed to diminish in importance as it continued. 

At the death of John Paul I did have deep feelings only because I had some real hopes that he would renew things after the increasingly timid unwillingness of Paul VI to build on the great work of Vatican II and because I found the circumstances of his sudden death a month after his election to be disturbing,  something I still feel.  

I felt revulsion at the disgusting show biz elaborateness and obvious right wing political spectacle surrounding the death of JPII and admit that I thought and still think he was the worst Pope of my lifetime, reactionary, power hungry, dictatorial, vindictive, appointing some of the worst bishops and cardinals in modern Catholic history (who still dominate the US Catholic Conference of Bishops) and someone who often seemed to me to be a lot more of a CIA asset than the representative of Christ.   His early betrayal of the peasants and clergy of Central America and Archbishop Romero (St Oscar Romero) fixed my opinion of him and his cult. 

Benedict did one and only one wise and pastorally responsible thing in his entire Vatican career, retiring from the papacy.    He was, if anything, even more of a pastoral disaster than JPII or Pius XII though in some ways he was a better Pope than either of them.   His clear desire to take back in some of the worst of the schismatic far right, the likes of the fascist-loving antisemite members of the cult of Marcel Lefebvre (whose excommunication was one of the highlights of JPII's reign) proved to be a disaster.   That along with his revolting attempt to revive the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass was even more of one, something which will eventually lead to a major schism backed by fascist Catholic millionaires and billionaires whose motive is to use that cult to further their enrichment and undermining democracy.   The fascist-right-wing Catholic movement here and in many other countries is building into being one of the most serious problems that the Catholic Church and democracies everywhere where there is a significant Catholic population will face   I will remind skeptics of the role that such "Catholics" have among prominent Republican-fascist politicians (especially those recent "converts" such as Vance, Gingrich and Brownback) and among sitting members of the Supreme Court.  

Of course I knew that Francis couldn't go on forever,  he was 88 and doing one of the more demanding jobs in the world.   It is remarkable how active he was up till the end, even from the hospital and even during Holy Week and Easter, though it was clear that he was not doing well on Sunday, the pictures that showed his one last day of pastoral activity show that it took a lot out of him.    

I think the first appearance of his successor my well tell us if he will be another Francis or if he will be a return to the unfortunate tradition of the "traditionalists."   Scarlet, gold and ermine and a gold cross instead of one made of more modest materials will be a bad sign.  A pope who takes the style of Francis as a much needed reform, in itself, will be a good one but it will be what the new Pope does and very fast which will tell us what we're getting.   I hope it is someone who upsets the "trads" for having the odd idea that the Catholic Church should follow the teachings of Jesus.  I hope they're not influenced by Hollywood as I'm convinced was the case with JPII.   If that damned Anthony Quinn movie hadn't been made, that wouldn't have ever happened.  

St. Francis Bergoglio, pray for us, all of us, even us Catholics. 

I've put the two posts I was writing off for now. 

St Francis Bergoglilo

WHEN AND NOT if Pope Francis is canonized as a saint, I hope that will be what he's called instead of the dreadful style of "St. Pope xxx whatever name and number."   Actually,  I hope they don't canonize him at all and The People of the Churches canonize him in the old-fashioned way, by popular acclamation.   "Pope" is an earthly title,  "Saint" is a higher title, the saint whose name Pope Francis chose had no such earthly title, unlike most recent Popes' choices.   And there has been no less popely Pope than Francis Bergoglio.   At least none who I'm aware of.   His refusal of the scarlet and gold at his first appearance of Pope in favor of the white cassock I mentioned here a few days ago was only the beginning of that, his choice to live in an apartment in an apartment building instead of the papal apartmet as well.   

Pope Francis joins John XXIII in the significance of their papacies in asserting the Gospel of Jesus above medieval traditions and feudalism.    I'd say that Francis was even far less attached to the medieval detritus attached to the papacy than Good Pope John was.  

I think Francis' encyclicals will become even more  continually cited classics of theology when much of the academic theology of the theologians, including that of his immediate predecessor, the lauded academic theologian Joseph Ratzinger is mostly of interest to academic theologians.   I think that is the case because Laudato Si, Fratelli tutti and Dilexit nos are about real life more than about theology.   Much as I find reading theology interesting,  when it becomes about theology instead of real life its importance sinks often quite rapidly. 

The world needs that his successor as Pope is good, though I wouldn't hold my breath on that,  it's unusual to have one great Pope followed by another.   Elector Cardinals seldom have the courage to do that, though one can hope.  Francis did disappoint my wishes such as opening up ordination to married People and Women, though modest in numbers and in power, his opening up of offices of actual power in the Vatican to some Women and others who were not ordained as priests was significant.   I say that even as I'm aware that no Pope is going to knowingly risk a major schism and knowing that the conservatives among the bishops and cardinals have proven to be among the most schismatic forces in the church - the most lunatic of current ones think Pius XII was too progressive - and I mean that literally.   They will know that millionaires and billionaires are a force even as medieval, baroque monarchs and emperors and even princes exercised power in the Church in the past.   We need a good if not great Pope now and perhaps the conclave will surprise the like of me and give us another one.   I certainly was't expecting a Francis a dozen years ago.   St. Francis Bergoglio,  help us.   

The Good News stayed dead until, fed by the power of Bread [with a capital "B"] broken

 The Women of Mark 16:8

"He is risen!  He is not here!"

we heard - and fled

from the empty tomb,

our lips sealed by fear,

to cower in the upper room.

The Good News stayed dead

until, fed by the power 

of Bread

broken, 

we arose from our dread

and the Good News was spoken. 

Sr. Irene Zimmermann OSF

One of the interesting things about the Resurrection narratives is the place that bread plays in it, the staple of the daily diet.  And the most interesting thing about that is that it is BROKEN bread, bread broken to share it.   I don't think that that is merely incidental,  I think that to hold a sacramental view of the breaking of the bread and sharing the cup of wine you can't leave out that it is food that is broken, shared from that view of it.  That the narratives  of the sacramental institution of the Eucharist has Jesus specifically stating that the broken and shared bread, the shared wine are his body and his blood, which I think more than just implies that the action of sharing and eating and drinking is as central to the sacramentalism of the act as the so-called elements of it. 

Mark's ambiguous ending which has the Women at the tomb told by a mysterious young man dressed in white that Jesus is risen and that they are to tell his disciples that he has gone on before them and will see them in Galilee.   But, as the poem notes, they are presented as having been terrified and that the fled, not telling what they'd seen.  Which you have to ask, how did Mark know about it, in that case.   The several extensions of that ending which scholars don't believe was the original ending of it provides accounts of post-Resurrection appearance.   Some think Mark ended at 16:8 with the Women not telling anyone, some theorize that the original ending was lost early in the manuscript tradition of Mark, though there isn't any way to know which is the case.   It's clear that Mark did teach the Resurrection of Jesus, though he may not have chosen to go into much detail about it.   It's clear from even earlier in the canonical texts, especially in Paul that the earliest known tradition is that Jesus died, was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead into a state of glory.  

I generally prefer the Luke tradition with Matthew's coming in second.   I don't know to what extent those might be elaborations of the account in Mark - truncated or extended - or how much variation there was in the manuscript tradition.   I do think that all of the New Testament is a product of the early followers of Jesus and the earliest converts expressing their experience of the Living Jesus after his death and Resurrection.   I don't think it was just spinning tales.  I know that some evangelicals like to use Mark's "bare bones" account of the suffering, execution, burial and Resurrection of Jesus in their line of evidence to "prove" the factual historicity of all of that, which seems to me to be alien to the tradition I was raised in.   It is in that large category of mystery for which historicity in a valid sense is not possible.  I think real belief in it requires that it be on the basis of experience and choice to believe.  Just as every single thing in human life which is believed or taken to be known is a matter of choice based on experience.  If you don't like that, it's just the way that human life is, in everything up to and including valid science and rigorous mathematics as well as things without that kind of evidentiary basis.   Bread broken seems to me to be as good a basis of belief as the general cargo-cult or ideological belief in science.  And it's a lot more nourishing than mathematical proof.