Padre Pio is in the news again, in case you haven’t heard. His decomposed body, which was disinterred last month, has been fitted with a wax face and put on display at San Giovanni Rotondo, for reasons that some of the faithful might comprehend but that baffle the infidel. Really, who is in charge of this stuff? Who placed the order with Madame Tussaud’s? What bishop or cardinal made the crucial decision of how to clothe the cadaver? Puglia is apparently hoping for an influx of tourists to rival the throngs at Lourdes. I’ve always wanted to see i trulli, the beehive-shaped white domiciles of southern Italy, but I think I can put off the pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo to eyeball Padre Pio’s remains until . . . well, pretty much forever.
My red Padre Pio Topolino T-shirt, in the meantime, has been reduced to a fourth-classic relic: not a bone, not something the saint touched, just something that came in contact with something the saint purportedly sat in, in this case a Mercedes-Benz, which had probably been detailed and sanitized by the dealer, with no regard for conserving the molecular sanctity of the upholstery. Also, my fourth-class relic is now doubly diluted, because the last time I did the laundry I thoughtlessly tossed it into the washing machine with the dark load. I hate washing things by hand. I was, however, careful not to put it in the drier, segregating it, along with my bras, to hang dry or lie flat. Some flakes of detergent had stuck to it, but, miraculously, I was able to brush them off.
I guess I’ll wear the shirt today, as long as it’s in the news. Here are links to the Times story that ran yesterday and a YouTube video, if you can stand it.
Showing posts with label Catholicism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholicism. Show all posts
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
St. Otto of Bamberg
It will come as no surprise to readers to learn that the creators of the St. Otto, Patron Saint of Parking, Air Freshener (Pure Citrus Scent) are not doctors of the church but novelty-manufacturing brothers who work out of an old piano factory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. (See for yourself, at www.blueq.com.) When you take a closer look at St. Otto as pictured below (and as suggested in the comments), it’s plain to see that the iconography is glaringly in error. That’s not St. Otto! That’s Jesus, in his Suffer the Little Children pose: Suffer the Mini-Coopers to Come Unto Me. If they were going to cut and paste holy cards and Buicks, the Sacred Heart might have been a better choice, with Our Lord taking to heart the Eternal Combustion Engine.
How do I know that’s not St. Otto? I received a sign. St. Otto of Bamberg was a Swabian (1062-1139), the patron saint of Bamberg, Germany, and also of mad dogs, rabies, and hydrophobia. A priest and the chancellor to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, Otto tried to reconcile church and state, and he must have had his work cut out for him, because Henry IV set up an antipope. Still, somehow Otto "kept out of all political turmoil,” and by all accounts led a model life. He founded twenty monasteries (for which he is known as the Father of the Monks) and converted twenty thousand Pomeranians—not the dogs but the people of Pomerania, in Poland. In fact, he converted them twice, because the first time it didn’t take.
St. Otto’s feast day is July 2nd, according to Butler’s Lives of the Saints (Concise Edition), and also according to my complimentary calendar from Tecno Meccanica Bedin, an Italian hubcap maker. (In Italy, he is Sant’Ottone di Bamberga.) The Catholic Encyclopedia, however, gives his feast day variously as June 30th, September 30th, and October 1st. This plethora of feast days would certainly make Otto of Bamberg a welcome addition to the Alternate Side Parking Calendar—the very thought of it is enough to make me drool. I pursued him onto an Italian Web site devoted to saints (click here for a more historically accurate image of St. Otto of Bamberg), but it wasn't until I Googled Otto in German that I found the mad-dog connection, in a catalogue of miracles: "Ein Kind, das einen Nagel verschlungen, ein Blinder, ein Stummer, ein Gichtbrüchiger und EIN VOM TOLLWUTIGEN HUNDE GEBISSENERE erhalten durch die Fürbitte des hl. Otto Hilfe und Genesung." Rough translation: A child who swallowed a nail, a blind guy, a mute, a gout-sufferer, and ONE BITTEN BY A RABID DOG go into a bar. No no no, they go to the grave of St. Otto and through his intercession obtain relief. Whew!
It doesn't say what kind of dog.
How do I know that’s not St. Otto? I received a sign. St. Otto of Bamberg was a Swabian (1062-1139), the patron saint of Bamberg, Germany, and also of mad dogs, rabies, and hydrophobia. A priest and the chancellor to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, Otto tried to reconcile church and state, and he must have had his work cut out for him, because Henry IV set up an antipope. Still, somehow Otto "kept out of all political turmoil,” and by all accounts led a model life. He founded twenty monasteries (for which he is known as the Father of the Monks) and converted twenty thousand Pomeranians—not the dogs but the people of Pomerania, in Poland. In fact, he converted them twice, because the first time it didn’t take.
St. Otto’s feast day is July 2nd, according to Butler’s Lives of the Saints (Concise Edition), and also according to my complimentary calendar from Tecno Meccanica Bedin, an Italian hubcap maker. (In Italy, he is Sant’Ottone di Bamberga.) The Catholic Encyclopedia, however, gives his feast day variously as June 30th, September 30th, and October 1st. This plethora of feast days would certainly make Otto of Bamberg a welcome addition to the Alternate Side Parking Calendar—the very thought of it is enough to make me drool. I pursued him onto an Italian Web site devoted to saints (click here for a more historically accurate image of St. Otto of Bamberg), but it wasn't until I Googled Otto in German that I found the mad-dog connection, in a catalogue of miracles: "Ein Kind, das einen Nagel verschlungen, ein Blinder, ein Stummer, ein Gichtbrüchiger und EIN VOM TOLLWUTIGEN HUNDE GEBISSENERE erhalten durch die Fürbitte des hl. Otto Hilfe und Genesung." Rough translation: A child who swallowed a nail, a blind guy, a mute, a gout-sufferer, and ONE BITTEN BY A RABID DOG go into a bar. No no no, they go to the grave of St. Otto and through his intercession obtain relief. Whew!
It doesn't say what kind of dog.
Monday, January 21, 2008
It’s (Un)Official!
Perhaps the first surprising thing about Don’t Worry Be Happy Day, which coincides this year with Martin Luther King Day, is that it comes out of Wales. Well, that’s not quite accurate. DWBH Day is an invention of the Catholic Enquiry Office, a branch of an agency of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. See for yourself, at the bishops’ Web site, here (“Mondays in late January are very often reported to be the worst days in the year; the days most likely to provoke depression. The reasons for this are many, not least because the party season is over and many of us are feeling bloated, strapped for cash and suffering from broken relationships”). The bishops are running a contest, the prize being a one-on-one with a priest or a nun. Not just any old priest or nun, but a priest and a nun who appear on the BBC. But be forewarned: it is an evangelical Web site, and if you turn out to be truly depressed, guess who’s ready to help.
Padre Pio is the unofficial patron saint of Don’t Worry Be Happy Day. He is featured on the site of a spinoff called life4seekers, a popular blend of New Age spirituality and old-fashioned Catholicism, here (“Don’t miss our next Seekers’ event at the Franciscan Friary in North Wales”). The seekers, too, are running a contest, and because I knew the answer to their contest question (Where was Padre Pio born? Pietrelcina), I was tempted to enter to win a CD of music to meditate by. But to tell the truth I find that kind of music depressing. When I am cleaning house on the most depressing day of the year, I’d rather put on tango music, or the new CD by Baby Dee, or even “Rigoletto,” which is lots of fun if you don’t know what they’re singing about.
The Vatican has not officially recognized the feast or Padre Pio's role in it, but in St. Peter’s Square yesterday, on the eve of Don't Worry Be Happy Day, a huge crowd gathered to make the Pope feel better about having had to cancel his speaking engagement at La Sapienza University. The size of the crowd at St. Peter’s, estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 (which shows you something about the science of crowd estimation), compared overwhelmingly with the mere “dozens of professors and students” who protested the Pope’s appearance. The Pope had to have taken comfort from those numbers. La Sapienza, incidentally, was founded by a Pope—Boniface VIII—in 1303, well before anyone knew how dangerous a little knowledge was going to get. (The university is now public.) The protest was spearheaded by one Marcello Cini, a professor emeritus of physics, who said, according to the Times, that “to have the pope preside over the start of a new academic year would be an ‘incredible violation’ of the school’s autonomy.”
I think the Pope should have gone anyway. He could have taken the opportunity to clear up that misunderstanding with the physicists about Galileo.
Padre Pio is the unofficial patron saint of Don’t Worry Be Happy Day. He is featured on the site of a spinoff called life4seekers, a popular blend of New Age spirituality and old-fashioned Catholicism, here (“Don’t miss our next Seekers’ event at the Franciscan Friary in North Wales”). The seekers, too, are running a contest, and because I knew the answer to their contest question (Where was Padre Pio born? Pietrelcina), I was tempted to enter to win a CD of music to meditate by. But to tell the truth I find that kind of music depressing. When I am cleaning house on the most depressing day of the year, I’d rather put on tango music, or the new CD by Baby Dee, or even “Rigoletto,” which is lots of fun if you don’t know what they’re singing about.
The Vatican has not officially recognized the feast or Padre Pio's role in it, but in St. Peter’s Square yesterday, on the eve of Don't Worry Be Happy Day, a huge crowd gathered to make the Pope feel better about having had to cancel his speaking engagement at La Sapienza University. The size of the crowd at St. Peter’s, estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 (which shows you something about the science of crowd estimation), compared overwhelmingly with the mere “dozens of professors and students” who protested the Pope’s appearance. The Pope had to have taken comfort from those numbers. La Sapienza, incidentally, was founded by a Pope—Boniface VIII—in 1303, well before anyone knew how dangerous a little knowledge was going to get. (The university is now public.) The protest was spearheaded by one Marcello Cini, a professor emeritus of physics, who said, according to the Times, that “to have the pope preside over the start of a new academic year would be an ‘incredible violation’ of the school’s autonomy.”
I think the Pope should have gone anyway. He could have taken the opportunity to clear up that misunderstanding with the physicists about Galileo.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Spot from God
I could not have had an easier time parking yesterday if God himself had granted me a spot. It would have been a perfect day to take out a student parker. I could have explained the benefits of the spot I was leaving (Mon. & Thurs. 9:30-11), which I had taken last Sunday night for the obvious reason: it was the first spot I found. If I had already been in an 8:30-10 spot, I’d have had to move at 8:30, and there’d be that tension over the double-parking pecking order and the jostling for curb space after the street sweeper passed. But, as things were, I didn’t have to be at the car till nine, in order to arrive on an 8:30-10 block just after the sweeper had passed but before all the spots were taken, shaving at least twenty minutes off my wait.
I stopped for coffee in the independent coffee shop (not a Starbucks) on the 9:30-10 block, then buzzed the Sanctuary (Mon. & Thurs. 8:30-9), just in case, but the only spot there was too close to the fire hydrant. Then I got stuck behind a truck delivering dry wall and inched my way toward the first eligible block, where I was alarmed to see that all the spots on the left were taken. Fortunately, it was only a spasm of global dyslexia: I was looking on the wrong side of the street. The Mon./Thurs. spot I had just vacated was on the left-hand side of the street, but this was a one-way street in the opposite direction, so all the action was on the right. At the far end of the block there were no fewer than three wide-open spaces. And so it came to pass that at 9:04 I was comfortably ensconced in my spot, with a generous car length in front of me, having suffered a minimum of anxiety. It was too good to be true. I kept thinking there must be a fire hydrant concealed among the recyclables on the sidewalk.
Judging from this experience, a novice would get the impression that alternate-side parking was a breeze. Up ahead, a shadow of staggered rooflines falls on a high modern shed of a building that looks like it’s clad in aluminum. A FedEx guy pushes his high-piled cart from building to building, making deliveries. A guy with an ear of Indian corn stands on the sidewalk feeding the pigeons a few kernels at a time. This is a more residential block than the one I usually end up on, with its Chinese laundry and its barbershop and copy shop and parking lot and Greek diner. The only businesses on this block are a pub, a psychic, and a dog-grooming parlor. It’s like parking in a parallel universe.
At 9:17, a Hyundai Sonata finds a spot in front of the car in front of me. A Chevy Express, a big blocky van with vertical doors in the rear, pauses at the space in front of me, but the driver apparently can't see well enough to back that monster into it and moves on. Finally, at 9:26, a silver-gray Honda from Rhode Island claims the spot. This is about as late as you can expect to find a parking spot that will be good at ten.
I would, of course, point out to my student that our spot is good for a week. Yesterday I received an e-mail from the DOT (Department of Transportation) reminding me (as if I needed reminding) that alternate-side parking will be suspended on Monday, January 21st, for Martin Luther King Day. I don’t know if a bulletin will arrive before every holiday . . . This one had an ulterior motive: “PLEASE NOTE,” it said. “The 2008 calendar as originally posted erroneously included February 21 as a holiday. That was incorrect. February 21, 2008 is NOT a holiday and all parking rules will be in effect. The Web site has been corrected.”
I never saw the erroneous listing, but I suspect we have not heard the last of it. Although I do not like having a holiday taken away, it helps if I never knew it existed. And I have to say that I admire the DOT’s willingness to admit error. It’s so refreshing, so different from, say, the insistence on infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church. Just this week, there was an item in the Times about the Pope cancelling a speech at Sapienza University, in Rome, because students and faculty were protesting his hostility to science, specifically in a speech about Galileo that he gave in 1990, when he was just fallible old Cardinal Ratzinger and the church had not yet forgiven Galileo for his heresy in observing, back in the early 1600s, that the earth moved around the sun. “Cardinal Ratzinger did not argue against the validity of science generally or take the church’s position from Galileo’s time that heliocentrism was heretical,” the Times correspondent Ian Fisher wrote. Well, that’s a blessing. Cardinal Ratzinger did, however, quote an Austrian philosopher, Paul Feyerabend, as saying that the church’s “verdict against Galileo was rational and just.” (The church finally forgave Galileo in 1992.)
Now there’s a guy who deserves a holiday: Galileo. We could celebrate his release from Hell after four hundred years. Meanwhile, the effect of having a roomy spot on a pleasant street is waxing paradisiacal. Surely this is the loveliest block in the city. Notice the birds, the gingko trees, the pansies still blooming in flower boxes. Fire escapes zigzag down the fronts of the buildings: brown, beige, brick red. There are bas-reliefs in the sandstone above the first-floor windows of the building to my right: men’s heads with sort of colonial-looking wigs. Across the street are bas-reliefs in brownstone: evil-looking men with big mustaches, their foreheads sprouting acanthus leaves. I feel blessed. O.K., my feet are a little cold, but after all it is January in the Northern Hemisphere.
I stopped for coffee in the independent coffee shop (not a Starbucks) on the 9:30-10 block, then buzzed the Sanctuary (Mon. & Thurs. 8:30-9), just in case, but the only spot there was too close to the fire hydrant. Then I got stuck behind a truck delivering dry wall and inched my way toward the first eligible block, where I was alarmed to see that all the spots on the left were taken. Fortunately, it was only a spasm of global dyslexia: I was looking on the wrong side of the street. The Mon./Thurs. spot I had just vacated was on the left-hand side of the street, but this was a one-way street in the opposite direction, so all the action was on the right. At the far end of the block there were no fewer than three wide-open spaces. And so it came to pass that at 9:04 I was comfortably ensconced in my spot, with a generous car length in front of me, having suffered a minimum of anxiety. It was too good to be true. I kept thinking there must be a fire hydrant concealed among the recyclables on the sidewalk.
Judging from this experience, a novice would get the impression that alternate-side parking was a breeze. Up ahead, a shadow of staggered rooflines falls on a high modern shed of a building that looks like it’s clad in aluminum. A FedEx guy pushes his high-piled cart from building to building, making deliveries. A guy with an ear of Indian corn stands on the sidewalk feeding the pigeons a few kernels at a time. This is a more residential block than the one I usually end up on, with its Chinese laundry and its barbershop and copy shop and parking lot and Greek diner. The only businesses on this block are a pub, a psychic, and a dog-grooming parlor. It’s like parking in a parallel universe.
At 9:17, a Hyundai Sonata finds a spot in front of the car in front of me. A Chevy Express, a big blocky van with vertical doors in the rear, pauses at the space in front of me, but the driver apparently can't see well enough to back that monster into it and moves on. Finally, at 9:26, a silver-gray Honda from Rhode Island claims the spot. This is about as late as you can expect to find a parking spot that will be good at ten.
I would, of course, point out to my student that our spot is good for a week. Yesterday I received an e-mail from the DOT (Department of Transportation) reminding me (as if I needed reminding) that alternate-side parking will be suspended on Monday, January 21st, for Martin Luther King Day. I don’t know if a bulletin will arrive before every holiday . . . This one had an ulterior motive: “PLEASE NOTE,” it said. “The 2008 calendar as originally posted erroneously included February 21 as a holiday. That was incorrect. February 21, 2008 is NOT a holiday and all parking rules will be in effect. The Web site has been corrected.”
I never saw the erroneous listing, but I suspect we have not heard the last of it. Although I do not like having a holiday taken away, it helps if I never knew it existed. And I have to say that I admire the DOT’s willingness to admit error. It’s so refreshing, so different from, say, the insistence on infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church. Just this week, there was an item in the Times about the Pope cancelling a speech at Sapienza University, in Rome, because students and faculty were protesting his hostility to science, specifically in a speech about Galileo that he gave in 1990, when he was just fallible old Cardinal Ratzinger and the church had not yet forgiven Galileo for his heresy in observing, back in the early 1600s, that the earth moved around the sun. “Cardinal Ratzinger did not argue against the validity of science generally or take the church’s position from Galileo’s time that heliocentrism was heretical,” the Times correspondent Ian Fisher wrote. Well, that’s a blessing. Cardinal Ratzinger did, however, quote an Austrian philosopher, Paul Feyerabend, as saying that the church’s “verdict against Galileo was rational and just.” (The church finally forgave Galileo in 1992.)
Now there’s a guy who deserves a holiday: Galileo. We could celebrate his release from Hell after four hundred years. Meanwhile, the effect of having a roomy spot on a pleasant street is waxing paradisiacal. Surely this is the loveliest block in the city. Notice the birds, the gingko trees, the pansies still blooming in flower boxes. Fire escapes zigzag down the fronts of the buildings: brown, beige, brick red. There are bas-reliefs in the sandstone above the first-floor windows of the building to my right: men’s heads with sort of colonial-looking wigs. Across the street are bas-reliefs in brownstone: evil-looking men with big mustaches, their foreheads sprouting acanthus leaves. I feel blessed. O.K., my feet are a little cold, but after all it is January in the Northern Hemisphere.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Unholy
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first vehicular confession.
I have to admit that I thought Click and Clack were kidding last Saturday when they said that the Vatican had issued a set of Ten Commandments for the motorist. I did a little Web surfing and almost drowned. It turns out that for the past decade the Church has been studying the subject of “people on the move” with the intensity that they might have brought to bear on, say, original sin at the Council of Trent. Just seeing the Vatican Web site on my computer screen was enough to make me gasp for air. The full document, “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road,” issued in English on June 19, 2007, runs to thirty-two single-spaced pages in four parts, with numbered paragraphs. The Drivers’ Ten Commandments can be found in Part I, Chapter 5, Verse 61. (I will spare you the link—better you should be shopping for Amazing Norbert products.) I had to scan the whole thing in order to find out what I really wanted to know, which was whether or not it had been written in Latin. It had not.
Driving in Rockaway combines the worst features of New York City driving and beach driving. It tends to be both aggressive and lax, executed under the influence of sun and languorousness but with habitual impatience. Last Sunday, on a trip of some seventeen city-beach blocks, I managed to violate at least three traffic laws, and annoy one fellow-motorist, without even thinking about it.
First, instead of turning right at the end of my street, and having to sit at a really long light to make a left, and then make another left, when what I really wanted to do was turn left in the first place, I just shot through the intersection under the El—after looking both ways, of course, to make sure no cars were coming, especially no police cars—easily fitting between the signs marked “Right Turn Only.” Everybody does it, including the police. And though the city annually erects a fourth pole so that a car can’t fit through, someone on the block—which is rich in union men, building supers, engineers, and contractors—makes it his business annually to saw the pole off close to the ground.
At the next corner, I made a perfectly legal left turn, onto Rockaway Beach Boulevard, and two blocks later another legal left turn at the laundromat, where I did a shockingly bad job of parallel parking (the spot was extremely spacious and did not offer enough of a challenge to engage my parking skills; besides, I was only going to be there for a minute). This is a dead-end street, and when I went to pull out, there was a moving van ahead, and no place to make a three-point turn. So I put the car in reverse, intending to back into the near lane of the Boulevard, and then straighten out and proceed, essentially making a right turn. But, seeing that there was no traffic and that I really wanted to go in the other direction, I backed all the way through the intersection to the other side of the Boulevard and made a right (essentially a left).
So far, so good. Now I realized that to get where I was going, I really should have been under the El, on the Rockaway Freeway, where I knew I could make a left-hand turn—a legal left-hand turn—at Beach 84th Street. From the Boulevard, I didn’t know the best place to turn. Suddenly I was inspired by the realization that the good beverage store was just ahead on my left, and I could kill yet another bird on this one-stone trajectory by stopping to buy a case of seltzer. So I slowed down, there in the left-hand lane, and just as the “Closed” sign came into focus (damn—well, it was past seven on a Sunday evening), I became aware of a motorist behind me, who honked and passed on the right. I didn't notice any gesture.
Proceeding on my merry way (as my mother would say), I watched on the left for a through street under the El, and I was so intent on peering down the cross streets that I was halfway into my turn before I noticed that a traffic light was dangling over the intersection and that it was red. Whoops. There was a truck behind me from the D.E.P. I don’t believe that the Department of Environmental Protection is empowered to issue traffic tickets, but I stopped, just in case. Now I was blocking traffic in three directions, or would have been if there had been any traffic to block. Since I was doing more harm than good in this position, I went ahead and completed the turn.
It was this third infraction that made me examine my conscience. I used to be a good driver, and now here I was breaking the law left and right, and straight ahead. Then again, I used to be a good Catholic.
I have to admit that I thought Click and Clack were kidding last Saturday when they said that the Vatican had issued a set of Ten Commandments for the motorist. I did a little Web surfing and almost drowned. It turns out that for the past decade the Church has been studying the subject of “people on the move” with the intensity that they might have brought to bear on, say, original sin at the Council of Trent. Just seeing the Vatican Web site on my computer screen was enough to make me gasp for air. The full document, “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road,” issued in English on June 19, 2007, runs to thirty-two single-spaced pages in four parts, with numbered paragraphs. The Drivers’ Ten Commandments can be found in Part I, Chapter 5, Verse 61. (I will spare you the link—better you should be shopping for Amazing Norbert products.) I had to scan the whole thing in order to find out what I really wanted to know, which was whether or not it had been written in Latin. It had not.
Driving in Rockaway combines the worst features of New York City driving and beach driving. It tends to be both aggressive and lax, executed under the influence of sun and languorousness but with habitual impatience. Last Sunday, on a trip of some seventeen city-beach blocks, I managed to violate at least three traffic laws, and annoy one fellow-motorist, without even thinking about it.
First, instead of turning right at the end of my street, and having to sit at a really long light to make a left, and then make another left, when what I really wanted to do was turn left in the first place, I just shot through the intersection under the El—after looking both ways, of course, to make sure no cars were coming, especially no police cars—easily fitting between the signs marked “Right Turn Only.” Everybody does it, including the police. And though the city annually erects a fourth pole so that a car can’t fit through, someone on the block—which is rich in union men, building supers, engineers, and contractors—makes it his business annually to saw the pole off close to the ground.
At the next corner, I made a perfectly legal left turn, onto Rockaway Beach Boulevard, and two blocks later another legal left turn at the laundromat, where I did a shockingly bad job of parallel parking (the spot was extremely spacious and did not offer enough of a challenge to engage my parking skills; besides, I was only going to be there for a minute). This is a dead-end street, and when I went to pull out, there was a moving van ahead, and no place to make a three-point turn. So I put the car in reverse, intending to back into the near lane of the Boulevard, and then straighten out and proceed, essentially making a right turn. But, seeing that there was no traffic and that I really wanted to go in the other direction, I backed all the way through the intersection to the other side of the Boulevard and made a right (essentially a left).
So far, so good. Now I realized that to get where I was going, I really should have been under the El, on the Rockaway Freeway, where I knew I could make a left-hand turn—a legal left-hand turn—at Beach 84th Street. From the Boulevard, I didn’t know the best place to turn. Suddenly I was inspired by the realization that the good beverage store was just ahead on my left, and I could kill yet another bird on this one-stone trajectory by stopping to buy a case of seltzer. So I slowed down, there in the left-hand lane, and just as the “Closed” sign came into focus (damn—well, it was past seven on a Sunday evening), I became aware of a motorist behind me, who honked and passed on the right. I didn't notice any gesture.
Proceeding on my merry way (as my mother would say), I watched on the left for a through street under the El, and I was so intent on peering down the cross streets that I was halfway into my turn before I noticed that a traffic light was dangling over the intersection and that it was red. Whoops. There was a truck behind me from the D.E.P. I don’t believe that the Department of Environmental Protection is empowered to issue traffic tickets, but I stopped, just in case. Now I was blocking traffic in three directions, or would have been if there had been any traffic to block. Since I was doing more harm than good in this position, I went ahead and completed the turn.
It was this third infraction that made me examine my conscience. I used to be a good driver, and now here I was breaking the law left and right, and straight ahead. Then again, I used to be a good Catholic.
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