Posts by Jonah

St. Dymphna – the mentally ill (Her father went mad with grief when her mother died, and his advisors told him to marry his daughter. When she refused, he sliced off her head with his sword.)

St. Joseph of Cupertino – pilots (His levitational ability caused enmity with his fellow monks.)

St. Agatha – bellmakers (No one knows why.)

St. Ambrose – beekeepers

St. Januarius – bloodbanks (A vial of abrout 30 ml the martyred saint’s clotted blood is kept in a locked vault in the Cathedral of Naples. When the vial is handled during a ceremony honoring the saint, the blood liquifies and appears to boil and froth. The Catholic Church has never officially declared this a miracle, leaving scientists to explain the phenomenon.)

St. Fiacre – cab drivers (French cabs are called fiacres because the first establishment to let coaches on hire was near the hotel Saint-Fiacre in Paris)

St. Venantius – falling

St. Bona – flight attendants

St. Martin de Porres – hairdressers (He was the barber in his friary.)

St. Rita of Cascia – lost causes (Though she wanted to become a nun, her parents insisted that she married at age 12. After her husband and both sons died, she tried unsuccessfully to enter the Augustinians. They required all sisters to be virgins. Finally, the order gave her entry.)

St. Sebastian – archers

St. Teresa of Jesus Jornet Ibars – senior citizens (She was canonized in 1974. I don’t know what seniors did before that.)

St. Cassian of Imola – shorthand writers (A teacher arrested for being a Christian, his students were invited to hack him to death. His martyrdom was lengthy, since his students could not wield mortal blows.)

St. Bernard of Montjoux – skiers

St. Stephen – stone masons (Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death)

St. Apollonia – toothaches (She had her teeth knocked out by a persecutor.)

St. Dismas – undertakers (Crucified with Jesus, he was the thief who believed.)

St. Philip of Agirone – US Special Forces

This is one of my favorite pictures of Berck.

I was in Turin the week AFTER they ended the 1998 viewing.

Here’s an excellent site concerning the Shroud of Turin.

Here’s an article explaining why the 1988 carbon-14 dating test was flawed and how it’s actually much older. The first link goes into greater detail.

Nobody still knows how the image came to be, though a very interesting theory has emerged, explaining how a dead body in contact with linen woven using first century methods could leave such an impression. No one has been able to replicate it. It’s not painted–the image is a thin film of melanoidins, thick as the wall of a soap bubble. A forger would have to have scientific knowledge beyond what society has today to create an image like that. He’d also have to be able to accomplish this whole list.

Still, there are problems with the shroud. It doesn’t seem to jive with the Gospel of John, which says Jesus was buried with a separate cloth for the face and was bound in a cloth, which would surely produce wrinkles and distortion in the image. John also says Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus included a hundred pounds of spices, but there doesn’t seem to be much sign of them. And there are proportional problems with the image…the body seems elongated, one arm is longer than the other, the fingers are too thin and long, the head is too small, the lower part of the face is too big. Or maybe there aren’t enough distortions, if the cloth should have wrapped around the body.

Wikipedia also has a good overview.

Actual Fact: King Charles VI of France ordered the removal of the shroud, which was being displayed in Lirey, France, citing impropriety (the image consists of the front and back of a naked man). But the shroud was too popular, and the sheriffs were unable to carry out his order.

Things I would be if I celebrated the pagan holiday form of All Hallows’ Eve by dressing in costume:

Zoe (you can apparently buy a vest like this girl did)

Peppermint Patty (a green top–what is that, a referee shirt?–black shorts, flip flops, and freckles)

Martha Stewart (stylish pant suit and ankle monitor)

It’s been snowing all day.

I woke Berck up last night when I went to bed (he was fast asleep by the time I finished putting the potato soup away) and told him that the rain had turned to snow. He instantly jumped up and peeped through the blinds. He kept waking up all night and checking the accumulation.

So it snowed all night and has been keeping it up all day, but it’s warm enough that the snow on the ground doesn’t any higher. We’ve only got an inch or so. It hasn’t stuck to the roads at all.

Today is Columbus Day, so Berck gets the day off. I get the day off too because I set my own hours. We’ve been eating a lot of antelope summer sausage and watching a bunch of Firefly so we can watch the movie Serenity.

Also this weekend I made cider (“apple juice” according to Berck) on Saturday from the apples we picked on Brown’s place, using a juicer Michele lent me. Then I packed it all in Mason jars and put it in a steam bath which Michele also lent me. It’s very, very tart. I heated some up with some sugar and cinnamon, and Berck declared it was like drinking an apple pie.