POLITICS. We are refraining from political discussions because of the rules about schools which we have to understand before we go off on that topic. UPDATE: Charitable or public service organizations are not permitted to engage in politial activities as per the IRS. PROVISO: But as a famous lawyer once said (yesterday actually) you might not even be able to comprehend the statute sitting down, so God help you if you have a lumbar sprain and cannot sit at all. CALENDAR CLARIFICATION FOR PRIESTS AND LAITY...the reason the one week intro classes were scheduled for break weeks is not really because we don't like vacations...its because 1. we didnt get any, due to circumstances and we were trying to figure out a way to adapt the program. 2. is because most people take time off during Christmas, the late summer and/or sometime in the spring. Thus a common complaint --"we don't have time to avoid mental breakdowns"-- can be avoided without shelling out millions on years of therapy was the hope. However if you are a caretaker of certain sorts of illnesses you don't get these breaks, furthermore the only time you get to study at all is over break when somebody else might be able to talk to you a little bit because THEY are on break. So if you are lucky enough to get a few days to study a semester's worth of stuff and maybe actually pass, that's a good thing when you are a caretaker. Reference the tracy chapman song, "I quit school and thats what I did" except...sometimes taking care of people is downright dangerous.
EXEGESIS. However, the exegesis will be shifting to a regular schedule so twice per week for two hours, plus the studying --you're talking about 8 to 10 hours a week for a 16 week four credit class. If you want to do it all at one sitting during the break, sure, but it's easier to just space it out if you want. The most visitors we got was about 500 so that makes about 50 small group classes if we had an organized system which we are trying to get a handle on it. That is fine as long as people are kind to each other in general and also in particular meaning, on line and also in person and in our hearts as well.
BEATITUTDES. Today we actually have the beatitudes spelled out so it's worthwhile to pause and reflect upon them. They are truly a revolution of love which was planted like a seed in the ground of our hearts and its 2000 years later-- we are still tilling the soil. ONe of the takeaways is that that public opinion is not really a bellwether of anything, since the same people who Hosannahed Jesus on Palm Sunday killed him 5 days later. Or as Thomas Hardy would say we need to get "far from the madding crowd" to realize that "blessed are ye."
CANZONI. also, we have no song yet for week one but someone could riff off the fanciful idea that Don Omar while trying to boost the safe for the orfanato threw the safe one too many meters and wrenched his lumbars and came out of the whole thing with a Kul Doloroso. Now thats funny. while omar was recuperating at the cosmas and damiano free care hospital, someone floated a rumor that the safe might be requisitioned leading carmine to say sure, come get it any time you want and of course no one ever did.
CROSS CULTURAL COMEDY. Fortuitously however the man brainstormed a business plan and now is the CEO of Carmine's Iron Pipe Security Systems: "we install our pipes any time you want." He often lectures at the Stern School of Business with an interpreter who explains that "boombatz" is the sound a stove makes when it explodes, "BOOM" being the internal volcanic explosion and "BATZ" the resulting effusion of whatever you were cooking into the atmosphere or all over your face potentially as well. A bevvy of hopeful fotographers turned up at the place to catch the stromboli on camera, only to find out it was not in fact the place and nobody even knew what in heaven's name they were talking about.