(no subject)

[joebanks]

Did you see my potatoes on IG? I think i got close to 20 lbs. some of them are very small, the size of a quarter but a potato is a potato. I'm trying to cure them in the basement, there is a lot of water in them. I could have left them in the ground another week or two but it started raining again Sunday and is supposed to keep raining, not a lot, on and off. I felt i needed to harvest. This is the best crop of anything i've grown in years.


With my coworker gone i had two short conversations last week, about five minuets each, with a couple of random people that i stumbled across at the agency. I'm not complaining, the only person i want to talk to is Kathleen, might at well not see anyone else. It's that bad.

You're still dry,. are there still fires in the area? I haven't heard wildfire in the news in months.

Comments

[rafqa]

Trappists are a branch of the Cistercians-- they were a reform movement. Noted for being austere. Never liked their name much-- it sounds sinister! In Connecticut they made jam.

[joebanks]

When i hear Trappist I think of Julie Andrews singing on the mountain, I know, your jaw is just hanging there.

I have an austere streak. I'd love part of my house to look like a Shaker farmhouse, another part would be a log cabin and then another would be Mission style.

Do they still make Jam?

[rafqa]

I looked online-- they still make jam! This was a big operation, not a little artisanal monastery shop-- they sold it on the regular jam shelf at grocery stores. I'd say the slot is filled for me now by Bonne Maman-- we don't have it out here.

Really, you're close to the target-- Maria was a postulant at an old Benedictine monastery in Salzburg. And by old I mean OLD. The Cistercians were essentially a Benedictine reform: after monasticism had been going for a few hundred years, some of it got a bit rich and comfortable. So the Cistercians wanted to return to a simpler, more authentic Benedictine way of life. It's a very beautiful tradition.

Thomas Merton, if you've heard of him, was a Trappist, though IMO an extremely bad one :) His memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain is a classic... in its way. You might enjoy reading it just because it's a very interesting story/memoir (though it leaves out some crucial things that were really going on in his life).He was a monk at Gethsemane in Kentucky, one of the flagship US Trappist monasteries I think.

I totally would love to be austere if I weren't the kind of person who saves the tabs off of milk cartons. Shaker aesthetics are the best thing going-- what clarity and beauty.

more maria on the mountain

[rafqa]

Here is a meeting of German abbesses which recently took place at the Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg-- that was Maria's abbey.

'Hope the abbess of the Nonnberg is not the one in jeans :)!

Re: more maria on the mountain

[joebanks]

The link isn't working.

Re: more maria on the mountain

[rafqa]

I guess I forgot to put it in.

https://www.abtei-st-walburg.de/news/meldung/news/jaehrliches-treffen-der-aebtissinnen-unserer-foederation/

Re: more maria on the mountain

[joebanks]

I haven't seen a nun in habit since, sometime in the 70's? I admire the commitment. I had a great aunt, a different great aunt than the drummer, who was a missionary and was smuggling bibles across the iron curtain back in the day. She visited my grandparents in the late 70's and she and i bonded a little bit, we only spoke a couple times but i really admired her and this was when i was a lost, greasy, long haired teen.

Do you know what it says in the linked page?

Re: more maria on the mountain

[rafqa]

There should be a little pop-up window at the top that lets you choose German or English, but it doesn't appear very reliably! It's not that interesting, just that the abbesses of the regional Benedictine federation had a meeting in Salzburg, I think. And that the prioress from St. Emma's in Pennsylvania was planning to be there, but couldn't in the end because of COVID.


Nuns in habits are still around, more than I thought twenty years ago, and they're having a sort of resurgence. Creepy or not? I haven't decided. I'm a romantic, I'm totally in favor of medieval dress or modified medieval dress wherever I find it. More active orders than I thought did retain some kind of habit, but the received wisdom right now is that congregations with habits, including a lot of more-recently founded ones, are experiencing the most growth. People are going to become nuns, they want to look like nuns. The more liberal orders seem to dispute this, but honestly, I don't think you can-- that's where more people seem to be going, and especially more young people. You see novices in these unhabited groups, they're often like fifty years old. Not that I'm against that! but it doesn't bode well for longevity.

I'm in awe of bravery and commitment like that. What a risk! I hope it did some good. My mother had friends who were missionaries in Bolivia, but it seemed like they were mainly teaching people to read. They were Methodists.

Re: more maria on the mountain

[joebanks]

Like before, I click on the flag but it stays in German, that's ok.

Yeah, if you're going to all the trouble why not dress the part?

I remember one story where she had a request for a large print bible and she packed that near the top of her suitcase and customs found that and they were all "Ah Ha, confiscate that! They were so happy they didn't search more and sent her through with several small bibles tucked in the bottom. She did her work in Czechoslovakia; she was one generation removed from these people, sometimes seeing family; she told me some family history stories too. But you know those officials were, i think, even more terrifying than the Soviets.