"Vance in Rome trying to meet the Pope? What a theatrical performance. Hypocrite. Viper."

That's the 3rd most highly rated comment at the WaPo article "Vance meets with pope as Francis’s Easter message decries ‘logic of fear’/The visit at the Vatican brought together the ailing head of the Catholic church and a high-profile convert who has criticized the pope’s social teachings."

Second most highly rated comment: "I’m surprised Vance didn’t burst into flames."

Most highly rated: "Vance is just one of many fake religious politicians. They run around boasting of their faith, but practice none of the Christian values Jesus and the bible preached."

And here's the "logic of fear" statement in the Pope's Easter message: "How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death."

"But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

Said Jesus Christ, quoted in Matthew 5:44-45.

Recalled on reading Trump's Truth Social Easter message:

Easter cold open.

Meade's comment, on watching that with me: "You can tell from the audience's reaction that even though they want to be thought of as hating Trump, underneath they really... love Trump."

5 minutes later:

Me: "From the standpoint of not liking fruit."

Meade: "You forgot the raccoons."

"Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation.... they help America thrive. They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms..."

"... as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves. But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families.... These bills attack our most basic American values: the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to make your own health care decisions, and even the right to raise your own child.... Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans: You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong. You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back."

So reads the announcement from the White House — over the name of Joseph R. Biden — proclaiming March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility.

March 31st had already been established as Transgender Day of Visibility, but in some years, including this one, that means Transgender Day of Visibility falls on Easter. 

And what's more Easter-y than increasing transgender visibility on Easter? I'll answer: maximizing your complaints about transgender people on Easter. But that's what's going on.

You could have just looked away — turned the other cheek, as it were. But the Easter morning sun rises on headlines like this, at ABC News: "The Trump camp assails Biden for declaring March 31, Easter Sunday, as Transgender Day of Visibility." And this, at Fox News: "Trump demands Biden to issue apology over 'blasphemous' Trans Visibility Day on Easter Sunday: 'Appalling'/The Trump campaign said that this is part of the Biden administration's 'years-long assault on the Christian faith.'"

Happy Easter.

"AITA for participating in my neighborhood’s easter egg hunt that was meant for children?"

A hilarious "Am I the Asshole" posting gets cross-posted at "Am I the Devil" (a subreddit for cross-posting when it's obvious the answer is yes).

Easter sunrise with voices.

 

Christians — heard but not seen — are gathered around a fire and begin their ritual with a familiar hymn, one I've played many times for myself, through headphones, right at this spot, at other sunrises. Birds accompany.

ADDED: From the Wikipedia article "Bunessan":

"What happened next is that, once I figured out I was a male, I also realized I had always had a certain idea of what masculinity is."

"I thought that to be a man is to be a certain way. Now what I think about is different. What I ask myself all the time is, 'What is a man?'"

Said Edoardo Beniamin, quoted in "In Venice, a Young Boatman Steers a Course of His Own/'What I ask myself all the time is, "What is a man?"' says Edoardo Beniamin, a trans man training to join his father’s profession as a gondolier" (NYT). 

Singing and talking a lot is a job requirement. Beniamin's  speech therapist Eleonora Magnelli said he was "bothered" by his "very metallic" voice. You can't just rely on testosterone to lower the voice, she explained, because "pitch is not the only parameter." She notes that this speech therapy is different from other speech therapy, because they are dealing with speech that is "not affected by any pathology." They are changing a client's voice to help with "affirming their identity."

Beniamin says: “What brings me euphoria is feeling people see me as I see me.” 

And here's a quote from Dr. Giulia Lo Russo, "an aesthetic surgeon with a subspecialty in performing chest masculinization": "The point is not just to remove the breasts and reduce a female torso... You have to make a male torso.... My psychologist asked me why I do these surgeries... Why me? I’m not L.G.B.T.Q. But I am deeply anti-conformist. I have had three children with three different men."

Here's the highest rated comment at the NYT: "What a beautiful story to read this Easter morning. It's a kind of resurrection of identity that inspires me greatly."

Easter sunrise service.

I didn't plan for yesterday to be so momentous.

It certainly wasn't an Easter idea. Who am I to step on Easter? 

I had a post — put up before sunrise — about a column by a bishop who spoke of "recovering the strangeness of Easter," but he wasn't saying make your Easter Sunday strange — do something strange in your life. He wanted you to engage with the strangeness of the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus. That was no call to perform strangeness in the drama of my own little life.

I went out for my usual sunrise run. It wasn't a big showy sunrise, but there was a gentle softness on the lake that translated into luscious strips of color in the photographs. I ended up posting 8 of the photographs, lined up chronologically. I don't think I've ever presented the sunrise photographs like that.

And those 2 posts together, with nothing more, could have made a solid Easter Sunday on the blog, a change from the usual day on the blog, with more seriousness and beauty than the usual style. There's much more to the day than what shows up on the blog, and it's good to have some days when the blog side of life is minimal.

But the blog side of life turned maximal, because I put up one more post. I'd come back from my sunrise run, and running gets me thinking and putting my thoughts in new order. As soon as I got back home, I put up the post, "I'm considering changing the approach to comments on this blog." I spelled out a few options and started a conversation. The results of the poll were very clear:

"Keep it the way it is" — that is, let comments flow into new posts unmoderated and deal with problems as they come up by deleting the trolls and the spam and so forth. I like the free flow too, but unlike the rest of you, I have to continually tend to the problems, and whenever I step away from the blog to go about my life in the material world, I have background static: I wonder what's happening in the comments. Do I need to get in there and deal with a troll infestation? There was an open door to anyone in the world to make a mess of a place that I had bound myself to protect and that I had protected for 17 years.

I didn't try to skew the poll by telling you about the burden it has become for me. I just wanted to see what you thought, and it's nice to know that the majority of poll-takers were happy with the experience I had worked so hard to create. The behind-the-scenes work for me isn't something that should concern you. Quite the opposite. The backstage labor isn't part of the show. 

I was interested to see what people would say in the comments. That's the up side of comments for me. I like to read what people have to say. I'm used to the sense of seeing the readers and feeling the camaraderie. But somewhere along the way in that thread that is now up over 600 comments — many of which are from me, responding to people — I could see that there is only one answer that gives me what I'm afraid I must take for myself. And that is the end of comments. 

I've chosen the least popular option — if you don't count the "Something else," which wasn't any specific option at all. You can email me by clicking here. If you email me, you need to say if you don't want to be quoted on the blog, because I may select quotes from the email to use in updates to the blog. But the freewheeling chattiness of the comments section is gone. I'm sad to lose it. 

In that long thread yesterday, a lot of people told me that they come to my blog not for me but for the comments. They seemed to think that argued in favor of my continuing to carry the burden of moderating the comments. It cut the other way. I didn't plan for yesterday to be so momentous, but it was that argument — augmented with the threat that I would lose traffic, the all-important, precious traffic — that pushed me toward decisive action.

So now, here I am, blogging on alone, without the hefty support of a comments section under this post. I'm writing this paragraph, and that's it. It's not a kick-off to a conversation. It stands on its own. You've read it — now, you're free. There's nothing more to do. No remarks to make. You'll see — if you continue on as a reader — what difference it makes in me as a writer. That's something I want to see too.

"There were a number of prominent theologians during the years that I was going through the seminary who watered down the Resurrection, arguing that it was a symbol..."

"... for the conviction that the cause of Jesus goes on, or a metaphor for the fact that his followers, even after his horrific death, felt forgiven by their Lord. But this is utterly incommensurate with the sheer excitement on display in the Resurrection narratives and in the preaching of the first Christians. Can one really imagine St. Paul tearing into Corinth and breathlessly proclaiming that the righteous cause of a crucified criminal endures? Can one credibly hold that the apostles of Jesus went careering around the Mediterranean and to their deaths with the message that they felt forgiven? Another strategy of domestication, employed by thinkers from the 19th century to today, is to reduce the Resurrection of Jesus to a myth or an archetype. There are numberless stories of dying and rising gods in the mythologies of the world, and the narrative of Jesus' death and resurrection can look like just one more iteration of the pattern. Like those of Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis and Persephone, the 'resurrection' of Jesus is, on this reading, a symbolic evocation of the cycle of nature. In a Jungian psychological framework, the story of Jesus dying and coming back to life is an instance of the classic hero's journey from order through chaos to greater order.... Declaring a man's sins forgiven, referring to himself as greater than the Temple, claiming lordship over the Sabbath and authority over the Torah, insisting that his followers love him more than their mothers and fathers, more than their very lives, Jesus assumed a divine prerogative. And it was precisely this apparently blasphemous pretension that led so many of his contemporaries to oppose him. After his awful death on an instrument of torture, even his closest followers became convinced that he must have been delusional and misguided. But when his band of Apostles saw him alive again after his death, they came to believe that he is who he said he was...."

From "Recovering the Strangeness of Easter/For Christians, the holiday is about recapturing the surprise and excitement that the Resurrection brought to Jesus' first followers" by Bishop Robert Barron (Wall Street Journal).

"As European countries gingerly move to ease their lockdowns, Denmark’s first phase — beginning on Wednesday, when schools and day care centers reopen — will be measured in tape."

"Headmasters are scrambling to follow detailed government instructions on hygiene and social distancing to avoid setting off a surge in new cases. They will use tape measure and barriers in playgrounds to partition groups, as up to five children will be allowed to play together without mixing with other groups. An animated film released by the Danish Health Authority cautioned children that while they’ve all been 'really cool' in avoiding the virus, some things will be different when school reopens after four weeks. They may have math class in the playground, the video says, and there won’t be 'too many high fives' for now. A full reopening in Denmark is still months away, but getting children out of their parents’ way will ease the burden on those working from home."

From "In Easter Mass, Pope Speaks of ‘a Contagion of Hope’ Amid Coronavirus: Live Coverage/Japan’s leader posted a video of himself petting a dog as he urged residents to stay home. Russia reported its largest daily increase in new cases since the start of the outbreak" — the NYT collection of coronavirus updates.

I'm interested to see how that distancing at school works for Denmark. Who can figure out in advance what risks and potential benefits there are? Who can even assign a weight to the problem of children getting in the way of parents who are forced into working at home? How can you decide that 5 children make an acceptable play group — but no more than 5? It's an experiment, and I hope it goes well.

I wondered how to say "really cool" in Danish (and I don't think I've ever given a thought to the question of how to say anything in Danish).



It's Easter — so catch the contagion of hope and keep being virkelig cool.

You can't close Easter!

I don't think Trump has been talking anymore about letting people gather together in churches this coming Sunday, Easter Sunday.

Here's how he spoke of Easter in yesterday's Task Force press briefing:

In closing, I also want to note today is Palm Sunday and at the beginning of Holy Week for Christians in America and all around the world. While we may be apart from one another, as you can see from our great churches, our great pastors and ministers are out there working very hard, but we may be apart we can use this time to turn to reflection and prayer and our own personal relationship with God. I would ask that all Americans pray for the heroic doctors and nurses, for the truck drivers and grocery store workers, and for everyone fighting this battle.... But most of all, I’d like to ask for your prayers for the families who have lost loved ones, ask God to comfort them in their hour of grief. It’s a great hour of grief for our nation, for the world.... With the faith of our families and the spirit of our people and the grace of our God, we will endure, we will overcome, we will prevail. 

But in Wisconsin, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Assembly Republicans are calling on Gov. Tony Evers to allow in-person services for Easter and Passover amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

"It is more important than ever that we allow Wisconsinites to observe their individual faiths," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and the other members of the Assembly GOP caucus wrote in a Friday letter to Evers. "To that end, we ask that you work with Wisconsin churches and temples to allow them to hold Easter or Passover services, even if it's outside."

Evers declined the request....

The Republicans' request came one day before Republicans in the Assembly and Senate stalled Evers' move to push back Tuesday's election due to the coronavirus pandemic ravaging countries around the world....

I don't think the Republicans were at any risk that they'd get what they were asking for, so I consider this political posturing. Political religion theater...

"We Can Safely Restart the Economy in June... Get tough now. Test widely to isolate those infected, and slowly revive businesses with workers and customers who have developed immunity."

Writes Ezekiel J. Emanuel in the NYT. Excerpt:

President Trump’s wish to open up the country by Easter and avoid a nationwide shelter-at-home policy is understandable. After all, a Covid-19-induced recession will cause its own serious health problems — depression; suicides; the damage stress will cause to those with heart disease, diabetes and other conditions, not to mention the effects of growing poverty....

A nationwide shelter-in-place or quarantine should take place for the next eight to 10 weeks.... During the eight weeks of shelter-in-place, the federal government needs to produce and distribute enough tests so state and local health officials can check as many people as possible.... State and local health department[s] then need to deploy thousands of teams to trace contacts of all new Covid-19 cases... The national quarantine would give hospitals time to stock up on supplies and equipment.... States should use blood tests to certify people who have had Covid-19, are immune and are no longer contagious....

Slowly open the economy and social activities.... Lifting restrictions could start with children and young adults...  Parents should be allowed to assess the risk that their children could become infected with the coronavirus and bring it home.... If the initial opening works, we should allow people in offices to go back to work in places where Covid-19 infections have died down. Businesses need to require workers to follow rules on physical distancing with fellow workers and customers.... We would then open museums and other venues to small numbers of people...

This is very helpful. This is the kind of talk we need right now. By contrast, I've heard quite a few commentators interpret Trump's idea of opening things up by Easter to mean that he wants to crowd the pews of churches on Easter! That's not the idea. The reopening will be done slowly and carefully, and it will not be a sudden return to the old way of living.

Happy Easter!

(The image, from the collection at "Resurrection of Jesus in Christian art" (Wikipedia), is from 1558, by Lucas Cranach the Younger.

Boot-egg-eggs.

boot-egg-eggs 🐣🌞 @PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @firstdogsSB pic.twitter.com/qW1hSXrN0p

— kelsey👩🏻‍💻 (@kelsmerica) April 19, 2019

"HAPPY EASTER!... NO MORE DACA DEAL!... Mexico doing very little, if not NOTHING!... stop their cash cow NAFTA! NEED WALL!..."

A man with 50 million followers only has 6 "Moments"... just one of the many inexplicable things about Trump.

Did he go to church on Easter? I notice there's a 2 hour gap between "HAPPY EASTER!" and  NO MORE DACA DEAL!... Mexico doing very little, if not NOTHING!... stop their cash cow NAFTA! NEED WALL!..."

Is he eating too much candy?

HAPPY EASTER!...  NEED SALVATION!...

Resurrection.

The post title is the name of this 1483 painting by Piero della Francesca.

Writing in his Lectures on Fine Art on the portrayal of Jesus in the Christian visual tradition, Hegel is doubtful whether it lies within the capacity of painting to represent those awesome moments in which the specifically divine aspects of Christ are revealed in the resurrection, the transfiguration, or the ascension. Painting has no difficulty in showing Christ in his human or earthly aspects, as a teacher, a preacher, a leader, a man of anger and forgiveness, and of course as a man capable of terrible suffering. But where "his Divinity should break out from his human personality," Hegel writes, "painting comes up against new difficulties." It is easy enough to say, in words, that Christ was at once man and god, but to show this complex metaphysical nature in a way that is visually convincing tested the powers of a painterly tradition that defined its achievement in naturalistic terms....

Piero della Francesca's Resurrection... overcomes Hegel's difficulties.... Piero has shown us what it must have felt like to be the subject of a resurrection.... Christ recognizes that something undeniable has taken place, which nonetheless strains the limits of credibility. He is shown at an instant of stunned triumph. His is the expression of someone who accepts, and is even awed by, what he has no way of doubting but cannot altogether believe.... The guard at the extreme right seems to have awakened, even to have seen the miracle that he must have interpreted as a dream, for such is the torpor of his body that he seems to be sinking back into sleep, having raised himself on one arm. Only Christ is awake, but in a sense of "awake" that contrasts not so much with "asleep" as with "dead."....

"The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future/Second Life was supposed to be the future of the internet..."

"... but then Facebook came along. Yet many people still spend hours each day inhabiting this virtual realm. Their stories—and the world they’ve built—illuminate the promise and limitations of online life."

By Leslie Jamison at The Atlantic. It's well worth clicking through if only to see the illustration, which pans over somebody's imaginary life, on a shaded deck overlooking the ocean and a flowery meadow where unicorns lounge.

[Second Life is] a landscape full of goth cities and preciously tattered beach shanties, vampire castles and tropical islands and rainforest temples and dinosaur stomping grounds, disco-ball-glittering nightclubs and trippy giant chess games. In 2013, in honor of Second Life’s tenth birthday, Linden Lab—the company that created it—released an infographic charting its progress: 36 million accounts had been created, and their users had spent 217,266 cumulative years online, inhabiting an ever-expanding territory that comprised almost 700 square miles. Many are tempted to call Second Life a game, but two years after its launch, Linden Lab circulated a memo to employees insisting that no one refer to it as that. It was a platform. This was meant to suggest something more holistic, more immersive, and more encompassing....

Its vast landscape consists entirely of user-generated content, which means that everything you see has been built by someone else.... These avatars build and buy homes, form friendships, hook up, get married, and make money.... At their cathedral on Epiphany Island, the Anglicans of Second Life summon rolling thunder on Good Friday, or a sudden sunrise at the moment in the Easter service when the pastor pronounces, “He is risen.” As one Second Life handbook puts it: “From your point of view, SL works as if you were a god.”....