On the Feast of St. Benedict, Saturday July 11, Celebrate Young Catholic Artists
Possibly of interest to our readers—a ZOOM event sponsored by the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. Saturday July 11 5:30 p.m. Pacific, 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Register here. The evening includes:
- A virtual staged reading of “Friend Request,” the winner of the Merry Beggars’ 10-minute Quarantine Radio playwriting contest. The play by El Salvadoran-American playwright Christine Sloan Stoddard will be performed by Leah Libresco Sargeant and her husband Alexi Sargeant.
- A chance to talk with the playwright, with the actors, and with Peter Atkinson, founder of the Merry Beggars.
- A reading by James Matthew Wilson, of a 6th century poem (in English translation)—which was written to celebrate the great St. Benedict by Marcus of Monte Cassio, one of the saint’s companions.
- An opportunity to chant the Litany to St. Benedict newly set to music by noted chant composer Fr. Samuel Weber, O.S.B.
Writer can’t give her book away
The above linked post in the Minneapolis/Star Tribune blog, “On Books,” by Laurie Hertzel is what? Ironic? Outrage provoking? Typical of how libraries are run these days? Katherine A. Powers, eldest daughter of J. F. Powers, and author of Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942-1963, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, cannot get the Cambridge, MA, library near her home to accept a free copy. Powers is irate about the very idea “that a local author’s book, published by a reputable publisher, which has been widely reviewed, should not be in her local library—and is, in fact, refused a place in it.”
Now and then some statues need replacing
Former Minnesota writer and radio show host Garrison Kiellor has a skewed humorist’s take on the tearing down of statues. He suggests, “As replacements for generals that nobody much remembers, I’d propose . . . Miss Flannery O’Connor who said, ‘Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.’ She said, ‘Conviction without experience makes for harshness.’ She said, ‘Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.’ Any one of the three would make a terrific inscription on a statue and I say there are enough statues of men on horses, there need to be more statues of slight women in plain dresses wearing glasses and looking intently down at their visitors.”
Not quite a full figure statue, this odd piece of Flannery O’Connor memorabilia is for sale here.
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