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                         Another Foggy Moment

      These are the continuing adventures of a typical resident
      of the self-proclaimed center of the Pugetopolis universe -
      Seattle. Most are true stories but some are made of whole-
      cloth. I ain't the Mayor, the Governor or a Big Shot. Just
      another Working Stiff with a Bad Attitude.

                     THIS AIN'T NO STINK'N BLOG
                 
         ------------------------------------------------
         WARNING: This is not a Child-Proof Neighborhood.
         If you're a kid - scram!, beat it! you little
         punk before your Old Lady catches you and calls
         the cops. They'll throw you in the Big House in
         Walla Walla and won't let you out until you're
         89 years old. There. Don't say I didn't warn you.
         -------------------------------------------------

                             - 172 -

 Oh Lordy! Somebody left the door to the Psych Department's Abnormal
 Musicology Lab unlocked again. All the Looneys and Wackos spilled 
 out into the streets of the U District on Friday night, with their
 instrumentation still attached, raising unholy acoustic hell. With 
 car alarms screaming and the squirrels lined up on the tree branches 
 like bushy-tailed marimba chorus lines, the crazies ruled the streets. 
 The cops showed up but were helpless to stop the madness. Once again,
 the Husky Marching Band was on the prowl.
 
 Led by a demonically-possessed young man whose trumpet had been set
 ablaze by the very Fires of Hell and fronted by a seemingly impenetrable 
 wall of tubas - well, okay, there were six of them anyways but they were 
 REAL BIG and remarkably nimble for all that - the natives luridly
 squrimed and leaped about with a sexual explicitness that had "All
 Models Over 18 - Written Proof On File" - splattered all over it. It 
 was at once disgusting and yet highly intriguing. Intriguing only in 
 a scientific sense of course. I ain't no pervert.

 Could these really be the future corporate executives, doctors and
 trial lawyers of the Evergreen State? I was struck by the insanely
 optomistic thought that there may be hope for us afterall. 

 The Dawgettes didn't engage in any ballistic launches this week 
 which was fine with me. I'd much rather watch them shake their 
 precious Boo-tays any day. It would be certain death for any male 
 over 25 to fool around with a woman like that.  She'd effortlessly 
 break every freak'n bone in his body and reduce him to an amorphous
 amoeboid blob. The boys from the Coroner's Office would have to 
 mooch an empty beer can off a nearby Frat House to have something 
 to pour him into so they could haul him away to the morgue. I don't 
 even want to think of how embarassing the funeral would be with the 
 Dearly Departed little more than a Protoplasmic Slurpee sloshing 
 around in a container. How could there be emotional closure under 
 circumstances like those?
 
 Happily the SUV Terrorist Front was thwarted from any repeat of 
 last week's attack by a formidable defensive line that looked
 determined to patriotically defend their Turf. Just as well. The
 Seattle Police Department chaperones had buggered off early once
 again to find a quiet, dark parking lot in which to Pleasure 
 themselves while the memories of all those Hot, Young Bodies 
 were still fresh in their pot-bellied, bald, middle-aged minds. 
 
 After a quick glance, the Explorerers and Land Rovers gunned it
 down 45th in search of helpless pedestrians to run over to work
 off their anti-social angst.

 The salmon are still circling their pond and the ravens once again
 came flooding across Union Bay by the thousands in a raucous 
 delirium of jagging, jogging cacaphonous anarchy. Husky Stadium 
 was their destination. But they didn't bother checking for food 
 this Saturday morning. I guess that 4-week absence threw them off 
 eh. They're back on track now and will be strapping on their bibs 
 for the post-game festivities. The morning fly-by was just to 
 check out the best dining spots and the early tail-gaters.

 VETERANS DAY 2002...

 They may not have much in the way of balls, but you gotta hand 
 it to our military types - they sure gotta lot of nerve. To have
 those gutless, traitorous assholes participating in this year's
 Veterans Day after they sat on their fat pooch-screwing asses 
 and allowed an enemy to hit us right here at home without so 
 much as raising a finger in our defense, sure takes the cake. 
 Cowards like that got no business in a military cemetary. Cowards 
 like that got no business wearing an American military uniform. 
 Same goes for their Draft Dodging Commander in Chief.

 And to have at the graveside of these many thousands of brave
 American men and women who gave their lives to preserve our
 freedoms and liberties, the very same pretty little Political 
 Whores who so casually trashed the Constitution and Bill of 
 Rights that embody those freedoms and liberties, is an obscene
 insult to the memory of those dead. 

 What a sad time to be an American. A time when when we've got 
 reality so ass-backwards that a patriot who stands up for our
 Constitution and Bill of Rights is called an unpatriotic extremist 
 and fanatic. So be it. You can put me down on that list. Right
 after the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Tom 
 Paine. 

 Now we all get a taste of what it must have felt like to be a
 German veteran after the Nazis took over their military - it
 was German but not any German they recognized. The fact that 
 it was a popular government made little difference - it was
 still an evil monster and the only Right Thing to do, for the
 sake of all humanity, was to stop it. 

 PEASANT REVOLT...

 It was a dark and stormy night down at the Hooterville Yacht Club.
 Woe is us! The End is near! We're all Doomed! Not only did the
 goddam pesants ignore the HYC's push for R-51, they actually went
 and passed I-776. Worse, the insubordinate bastards had the nerve 
 to pass that Monorail thing yet once more. HYC is surrounded by 
 a population of traitors and back-stabbers. What in the hell do
 these people think we're running here? A democracy or something?

 That was about as resounding a vote of non-confidence in Olympia
 as you're ever likely to see. A real Gubnatorial Dwarf Toss. Not
 much more than a bunch of brainless, clueless dumbasses obsessed
 only with the menu at their gourmet restaurant and the challenge
 of seeing how many more expensive perks they can award themselves 
 with at the taxpayer's expense, no one has any faith in Frank 
 Chopp or any of the rest of those jerks any more. 

 The Little Stinker, our gubnatorial dwarf, and his buddies will
 now likely use their highly cooperative judiciary in a campaign
 of revenge against the voters. Last time KingCo Inferior Court
 helpfully 86ed the impertinant initative and "Cadillac" Sims 
 deliberately trashed Metro Transit without even bothering to try
 and find a way to make it work. What will it be this time? Will
 they sell Washington State Ferries to Mosquito Fleet for a Buck? 
 Will they move the state capital to the Cayman Islands and shift 
 the state treasury into an obfuscated web of offshore accounts?
 Surely they have some sort of well-thought-out plan that won't
 require voter approval.

 Oh well. ex-Mayor Chuckie Royer was last seen crawling back into
 his dumpster behind the Rainier Club for a little rest. He sure
 earned that 'ex' in front of his name. And any fantasies he may
 have had about a political come-back have evaporated once and for
 all. I hear they're looking for a new washroom attendant over at
 the Washington Athletic Club Chuck. You might give that a try.
 Lots of fat, pink butts to kiss.

 UNCLE AL...

 A number of friends working for the State mentioned having their
 e-mail box 'bombed' with a flood of emails from the Little Stinker, 
 our gubnatorial midget, on Election Day urging them to support 
 his R-51. There was a not so subtle hint that their jobs and/or
 career prospects may hinge on their success in that endevour. They 
 found it highly irritating. Having to sort out Stinky's junk mail 
 from real messages became a headache. All day long it was DELETE,
 DELETE, DELETE. 

 But the old-timers are used to it. 

 Chatting with a veteran of the days of "Uncle Al" (Rosellini),
 our ex-Guv after whom the 520 floating bridge is named, made for
 a fine unofficial history lesson. Uncle Al epitomized that brief
 era during the 60's, of Hooterville's Italian Renaissance during 
 which restaurant owners and bar-keeps pretty much ran everything 
 around here. Son of a bootlegger, Al knew how to 'deliver the 
 goods' probably better than any other Governor in our history, 
 but he wasn't a self-obsessed, self-serving jerk like the recent 
 crop. He took the Little People along with him. They, afterall, 
 were paying for the party and deserved a few souvenirs. Uncle Al 
 caused no small amount of indigestion around the Hooterville 
 Yacht Club HQ in his time. They insisted he use the Servents 
 Entrance and he insisted they kiss his pretty pink Italian ass.

 In them days, department heads at State agencies were expected to 
 get out there and ring doorbells if they wanted to either hang
 onto their job or move up the ladder. It was made clear to them 
 that their success in life hinged entirely on Uncle Al's success.
 The Republicans had no shortage of in-laws just as qualified and
 eager to assume their jobs. Whatever objections may be raised about
 political-interference were more than offset by having one of the
 High Holy Mandarins of Washington State Ferries knocking on your
 front door in an effort to urge you to vote for his uncle. If you
 chose to give him an earful about his ferries there wasn't a helluva
 lot he could do about it. Guys like that rarely emerge from their 
 Inner Sanctums and Hoitee Toitee executive clubs these days. Mixing 
 with the peasants is not a duty they would willingly stoop to 
 perform. They find Little People offensive.

 The Seattle P-I sunk Uncle Al's boat during an attempted 3-Peet
 for Guv with a last-second front-page accusation about alleged
 Mafia connections. It was pure bullshit but the race was close and
 the P-I's Hack Job worked its magic. The HYC got its way eventually. 
 And there's never been another Governor of the People here since. 
 Al's still got his shingle hanging outside his law office downtown.
 Now in his 90's, it's understandable if he doesn't chase quite as 
 many ambulances as in the Good Old Days. And no doubt he wishes 
 they had named a mountain after him instead of that damn bridge.

...........................................................................

                           USED BOOKS

 A while back while working at this joint, I'm waiting for a FedEx
 and nervously jogging back to the shipping dock to see if it
 arrived yet. Sitting there all by himself was a security guard.
 A Mexican guy. It was quiet so he was reading. "FedEx guy come
 by yet?", I ask. "Nah.", he says. "Whatta ya reading?", I ask
 for lack of anything else to say. Come on. He's a security guard,
 he's a Mexican, whatever else it might be, it was too small to be
 a p0rn mag. "Tin Drum by Gunter Grass", he says without bothering 
 to look up. Whoa! We get to talking and it turns out him and the 
 other Mexicans on their crew got this little 'book club' in which 
 they read and talk over the stuff they read. It's all high-class 
 lit. No harlequin or mystery novel crap. The American guys on the
 crew aren't interested. They stick with football games on TV. 
 Anyways, the Mexicans all get their books cheap at used-book stores. 
 The job don't pay much and they couldn't afford books otherwise.
 Besides, they carry the high-class stuff they like.

 One of the reasons I like the U District is that it has lots and
 lots of used book stores. I'd venture to say it not only has more 
 than any other neighborhood in Seattle, but that it also has the 
 best. You want sophisticated tastes? The Magus is the classiest book
 joint in town. You want sheer bulk of numbers? Half-Price Books has
 a huge heap-o-books. Second Time Around and Beauty & the Books kind
 of fill in the cracks. Too bad Recollected Books moved over to
 Greenwood. They specialized in the flakey political stuff and had
 the only Book Dog (Bucky) around. The rest favor hair-ball hacking
 cats. 

 When it comes to literature, I buy nothing but used books. As far as
 I'm concerned, American literature died shortly after World War II. 
 We haven't had a single half-decent writer since. They have almost
 uniformly been a pack of self-obsessed, head-up-the-ass jerk-off
 artists with the sensitivity, taste and eloquence of garbagemen. 
 Even when they write about other people, they're really writing about
 themselves. Little more than third-rate literary hacks. Disagree if
 you like, but my mind is made up and I will not be moved. See! I
 got my fingers in my ears. Nyah nyah nyah nyah! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! 
 Save your literary pretences for somebody who gives a shit.

 There is no one of the stature of Henry Mencken around any more,
 either as a social commentator or as a Godfather to up and coming
 young writers. Hank not only called our political and social shots
 with the sort of brutal frankness and honesty that would be impossible
 in these times, he also gave us the likes of Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, 
 Jim Tully, John Fante and many, many others. From their 25-cent-a-day
 slum hovels, they shipped their manuscripts to him for publication. 
 This crufty, cigar-chomping old lion whose roar often made the rich 
 and powerful cringe with fear, gently and honestly encouraged his 
 grubby gang of flop-house proteges along like a nursemaid, slipping 
 them a few bucks whenever he felt they needed and deserved it. As 
 often as not, he gave them their first Big Break. No other editor or
 publisher did more to shape our contemporary literature than Hank. 
 He gave us our legends. 

 I invest in books in the same way that other men invest in cars,
 houses and stocks. One of my favorite forms of recreation is to
 graze slowly and patiently along the aisles of used-book stores.
 I search them out even on my travels, bypassing whatever local
 monuments the local Chamber of Commerce is pushing. I didn't get
 around to looking at the Space Needle while passing through Seattle
 until a couple years after I had satiated myself on The Magus'
 predecessor - The Id - and other used-book stores around the City.
 Boston seems to have a by-law that requires every block of that
 city to have at least one bar and one bookstore. That's my kinda
 town. City Lights Bookstore in Frisco is a legend. 
 
 I am forever on the look-out for Robinson Jeffers or Al Purdy's 
 poetry; another of Paul Morand's deliciously decadent books or
 perhaps Barbusse's erotic existentialism or maybe a simple Swiss
 still-life by Ramuz; certainly one of Louis Celine's more obscure 
 works or another of Ernst Juenger's would count as a Major Find; 
 Jim Tully, Herman Spector and Damon Runyon would make my day; 
 Sherwood Anderson, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald and Nelson Algren really 
 turn my crank; finding Harold Frederic, Jaime de Angulo or a lesser 
 known Graham Greene novel would be a fine thing indeed.

 Aside from Hubert Selby and Chas Willeford, my only sop to Modern 
 Times is science fiction: Vernor Vinge's earlier science-fiction 
 stuff plus that of John Brunner, the Strugatski Brothers, Rudy Rucker 
 and Norman Spinrad are all favorites. Still, oldster Olaf Stapledon 
 who came before them all, had an unbeatable sense of poetry and 
 vision. I recently stumbled onto Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter's 
 "A Box of Rain" and couldn't believe my luck. On and on it goes. I 
 really get excited about books. There is always a new thread to 
 explore. A new adventure to pursue. It never ends. If things slow 
 down, learn another language. It'll open a whole new dimension to 
 your reading.

 I only dip into the vast horde of Internet used-bookstores on 
 a Need-To-Have basis. I'm too addicted to the serendipity and
 patient poking of the walking-around thing to do otherwise.
 Success while walking-around also happens to be an excellent
 indication that you're On A Roll and The Fates are smiling on 
 you at the moment viz a viz lottery tickets and horse-races. 
 The Net boookstores have been a good way finding the really, 
 really obscure stuff by writers for books you'd never find in 
 a million years of walking around. But it's generally TOO fast,
 immediate and efficent to use regualarly. It takes all the fun
 out of it.

 I only bought one book off of Amazon just to try it out. It took 
 2 weeks to deliver it from the warehouse over by Starbucks World 
 HQ. I could have easily have bought the same title off a local 
 bookstore in about 15 minutes tops. I never did the Amazon Thing 
 again. If they had retail outlets, they are just inefficent and 
 bumbling enough make it worth my while to pay a visit. Fortunately,
 they don't.

 Used-book store owners are a strange lot. Having had to deal with
 them both professionally and as a casual book-lover, the closest
 I can come with a nutshell description is: dedicated book-lovers
 and highly reluctant businessfolk. They stand proudly and firmly 
 on the Lunatic Fringe of the business world making demented funny 
 faces at their accountants and various tax collectors. Few of them
 could be accurately described as practical or pragmatic. Even as
 their store is financially coming down upon their ears, they will
 assume a haughty "I Got It, You Need It" arrogance that seems
 entirely inappropriate and out of place under the circumstances. 
 I've often wondered what moved people to enter this line of 
 business. But the effort always gave me a headache and I quickly
 moved on to less obscure lines of inquiry like Quantum Physics.
 You've got to be a little crazy to run a bookstore. There's an
 unwritten law about the matter.

 Books are like music and food - tastes tend to be irrational 
 and highly personal. I hate it when somebody says: "You outta
 read this." Whatta I look stupid? I KNOW what I like. And if I
 haven't read YOUR fav it's likely because: (1) I know it sucks
 or (2) It isn't worth reading. So there. Of course if you just
 happen to leave something interesting laying around and I just
 happen to leaf through it absent-mindedly while doing nothing
 else...that's a different matter. Which isn't to suggest I'm a
 thief. I've lost too many hard-to-find books to friendly theives
 who never returned them. I would never engage in that sort of 
 perversion. Hanging is too good for jerks like that. They ought 
 to chop their hands off and force them to hold their books with 
 their feet. Then they wouldn't be able to steal stuff off my
 bookshelves.
 
...........................................................................

                        'OL YELLER'S TWAT
                 (aka The War Against Terrorism)

 Year Two of the Great American Fascist Revolution topped off another 
 milestone last week. It was the first election since Weasel Fight
 2000 which produced the disaster known as President Yellowbelly.
 The vast majority of voters took a pass and rented a video instead.
 With over 2/3rds of the canidates on my ballot running unopposed, 
 exactly what was the point? The only things left to actually cast
 a vote on were the initatives and referenda. Perhaps next Election
 Day the Great Fascist Revolution will have reached it's culmination
 and ALL canidates will be running unopposed.

 How sad that at this crucial moment in our national history, we
 had two empty, souless, raving mediocrities like Gephardt and
 Daschle for a Loyal Opposition. Even a simple-minded fruitcake 
 like President Yellowbelly effortlessly wrapped them around his 
 little finger just by acting crazier than they are. He has a
 reason to fight for his cause; they, on the other hand, lacked
 even a cause to fight for let alone reason to do so. Lacking any
 other response, they simply rolled over and went to sleep. And
 in so doing, once again failed the nation the relied on them. 
 With the Senate numbers balanced on a knife-edge, Yeller only 
 needed a small edge and he got it. His flunkies now control the 
 whole Shebang from Supreme Court to Congress. We no longer have 
 a 3-tier system of government with checks and balances. We now
 have an unchecked and unbalaced Imperial Presidency with Monkey
 Boy swinging around on the top bar.

 Our syncophant News Nazis ensured that the electoral ambiance 
 was not disturbed by distasteful mention of the thousands of 
 American citizens presently in FBI concentration camps without 
 charges or access to legal defense for no other reason than their
 ethnicity and religious faith. Nor was there any mention of our 
 secret Military Tribunals that are up to god only knows what. Nor 
 mention of Camp X and its thousands of foreign nationals being 
 used as Guinea Pigs in various Pentagon human experimentation 
 schemes. There was little mention of Our Boys occupying Afghanistan 
 or any of the other unpronounceable impoverished little nations 
 our military summarily moved into. And of course no one was crude 
 enough to bring up the ever elusive Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's 
 Mullah Umar who both remain footloose and fancy-free thanks to a 
 failed $10 Billion Buck campaign to catch them. Anthrax attack? 
 What anthrax attack? We were too preoccupied with that sniper with 
 the magic rifle. The one he bought a full year before Federal 
 records said it was even shipped out to the gun shop he bought it 
 from. Oopps! Close enough for Government Work eh. Shades of Lee 
 Harvey Oswald's Mauser that magically turned into a Mannlicher-
 Carcano. Sammy's too arrogantly lazy to even change his MO.

 The U.N. has been as big a failure at containing the American fascist
 threat as its predecessor the League of Nations was at containing
 pre-WW2 Germany's threat. Like its predecessor, handed a military
 mugger with global ambitions, it's members are seeking 'a piece of 
 the action' believing themselves immune to the monster's ambitions.
 Like a bunch of bystanders watching a thug beat his victim mercilessly
 to death, instead of attempting to stop the thug or at least yelling
 at him, they want to negotiate their silence for, say, that nice
 watch the victim is wearing. Yellowbelly's ambitions include the 
 world. It hasn't yet dawned on the Euros, Rooskies and Chinese that
 that includes them. They'll have to learn the hard way. Hitler too
 started with a few little countries nobody really gave much of a shit
 about. The more he conquered, the more he wanted. Ambition is an
 unfillable, bottemless pit.

 As flowery the words and noble the sentiments expressed, what we
 are about to do in Iraq is nothing less than the theft of a nation
 and indiscriminate slaughter of its population. We're going to 
 steal their country. That the Euros, Russia, China and the rest
 are willing to silently stand by and watch only ensures that there
 will be many more victims of our theivery in the future. The 
 Wehrmacht's Panzers and Luffwaffe are rolling once again.
  
............................................................................

 I have this concept of the world being peopled with Christs. I see what
 is possible. I think that we are all capable of incredible love and
 compassion, because I believe that the kingdom of heaven is within us.
 All we have to do is realize that. I see this possibility, and then I
 see the reality. I can see what is in me and what I am capable of; and
 then I see what I do, the terribly destructive things that I do. I see
 the things that come through my head, the thoughts that come through my
 head, and that I am convinced come through everyone's head. And you
 wonder: where did they come from? I just can never reconcile these two
 things. It's like being the battlefield for the hounds of heaven and
 the hounds of hell.

                         Harold Selby, Jr.
                              author 
                     "Last Exit To Brooklyn"
                          1981 interview 
                  Review of Contemporary Fiction

...........................................................................

                       -  MONDO VATICANO -

 On Wednesday the 13th we remember the only saint who ever lived in the
 city of Seattle - St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Neither a native-born
 Seattlite nor even American, Frances' route here was circuitous.

 She was born in Italy's northern Lombardy to a poor farm family. While
 other little girls in her village dreamt of their wedding day, Frances
 dreamed of becoming a nun. The options for a poor farm girl in Italy
 were few. Becoming a nun was the only real ticket to an education and
 the opportunity to do Big Things. Her parents lacked the funds to give
 her the equivalent of a college education. Besides, in secular Italy,
 women had no place in the general scheme of things except as wives. 
 Only as a nun could she exercise her natural intelligence and be
 something more. 

 Becoming a nun was no simple matter for a poor and sickly young woman.
 Religious orders were very picky about whom they chose. If you didn't
 have family money to contribute then you had to be healthy and useful.
 Religious conviction was the least important consideration. The Orders
 were very hard-headed and pragmatic. Rejection was the norm. And so
 it proved to be for Frances. Order after Order rejected her. To make
 matters worse, her parents died in rapid succession about then as well,
 leaving her not only without any means of financial support but without
 the emotional support of a family. She must have felt no small amount
 of desperation. But she didn't give up. The Lombardese are notoriously
 pig-headed people. She supported herself as best she could and she
 regularly made the rounds so everyone would know she was available.

 Then a strange little miracle of sorts happened. A bishop was having
 problems with the highly neurotic Mother Superior of a convent in his
 diocese. She wouldn't listen to him and her lack of administrative
 skills had nearly driven the convent to bankrupcy. She was a headache.
 He plotted for a way to get rid of this annoyance. Through the 'grapevine'
 he heard about Frances and a plan suddenly formed in his mind. This
 intelligent, ambitious young woman so desperate to become a nun would 
 be his means of getting rid of the annoying Mother Superior and
 her silly convent once and for all. And so he set about hatching his
 plot.

 The bishop convinced the Mother Superior to take Frances into her
 convent. Not suspecting anything, she did so much to the delight of
 Frances, who didn't suspect anything either. Then shortly after she
 took her vows and officially became a nun, the bishop deposed the 
 Mother Superior citing her administrative ineptness and put Frances 
 in charge of the convent. It was a role Frances neither sought nor
 was prepared to handle. She had no education or experience to speak
 of. Despite her best effort, the convent soon failed and closed its
 doors, much to the bishop's delight. One less headache. The nuns
 were all put out on their ears and left to their own devices to find
 a new Order that would take them in. That wasn't the bishop's problem.
 He couldn't care less. He got what he wanted.
 
 So Frances went in search of a new Order. Predictably enough, she
 couldn't find any. But she was still a nun and she was determined
 to make something of this wonderful gift. She hit on the preposterous
 idea of starting her own Order. What made it so preposterous is that
 she envisioned an Order of missionary nuns. Such a thing did not
 exist at that time. Women were assumed to be too weak and frail for
 the rigors of missionary work. It was not a line Frances bought and
 she moved to Roma to pursue her dream. Systematically she made the
 rounds of the Curia seeking Papal approval for her new order. They
 laughed at her. "Whatta you nuts?", the Cardinals would say. Being
 a hard-headed Lombardese, she didn't let such disparagements phaze
 her in the least. She ploughed on. Soon all of Roma knew of her 
 dream.

 One magical day while standing along the route Pope Leo XIIIth took
 back to his Papal Apartments, one of his attending bishops noticed
 Frances and tugged on his ear. "That's the nun I told you about.
 The one who wants to start a missionary order for women.", he said.
 Leo immediately diverted straight to Frances and warmly greeted her.
 He told her she he had been praying for someone like her to come
 along and start a missionary Order for nuns. He assured her on the
 spot that she had his blessing. He thanked her profusely then moved 
 on leaving Frances standing there somewhat stunned no doubt. Her 
 Order now officially had Papal Blessing. It was real. The official
 paperwork arrived shortly afterward. Leo was a man of his word.

 Next trick: find a bishop who would invite her nuns to work in his
 diocese. Her big dream was China. She wanted to go to China real
 bad. But she knew she was in no position to be picky. It would be
 a major production getting invited to ANY mission. Virtually all
 the bishops were still convinced that a mission was no place for a
 woman. Her legendary Lombardese hard-headedness once more served 
 her well. It allowed her to persistantly bounce off the seemingly
 solid wall of opposition she met. Bishop after bishop laughed her
 off and dismissed her.
 
 About then another small miracle occurred. An Italian bishop was at
 the end of his wits. His former parishoners who had immigrated to
 America were begging him to send some help to serve their growing
 community in New York City. Nobody wanted to go. A rough, tough
 back-woods Cowboy Country like America was bad enough, but a little
 no-class Hicktown like New York City was even worse. Then he heard 
 about Frances and her Order of missionary nuns. He asked her if she 
 would take on the job. It only took her a New York Minute to answer
 "yes". 

 The journey to New York City was her first experience of being at
 sea. It absolutely terrified her. She became violently ill and 
 developed a deep fear of drowning at sea. All she could do was 
 hide down in the hold and pray for a rapid journey. She was to do
 this many, many times during her future life as she travelled 
 around the Americas. Never once did she let her fear and physical
 frailness stop her. She was a woman with a mission to serve others. 
 Her own comfort took second place.

 When she arrived in New York City, the bishop was absolutely aghast.
 What in the hell was she doing there with all those Italian nuns?
 He ordered her to immediately get back on that boat and go back to
 Italy. Undeterred, Frances calmly and sweetly explained to him in
 her broken English that she worked for Pope Leo, not him, and she 
 wasn't going anywhere. He would do well to learn to live with her
 presence. He should have known better than to mess with a girl from
 Lombardy. It's a losing propostion.

 Frances was to begin her American mission at a hospitial in New York.
 One problem: it was closed. The rich matron who had been its source
 of funds, recently threw a tantrum and withdrew her money. They had 
 to dump the patients out on the street and shut the doors. Frances
 immediately caught a cab for the rich matron's home and knocked on
 her front door. Heaven only knows what the rich lady thought when
 confronted with this sweet little Italian farm girl with her broken
 English, only recently arrived in America. But a few hours later 
 frances emerged victorious with the funding restored. The hospital
 was back in business and the rich lady had a new pal. This was to
 become a pattern wherever Frances went. She touched people in a way
 that went beyond language and fine manners. She touched their hearts 
 and made miracles both small and large happen.

 Her order thrived and expanded rapidly. There was enormous need for
 someone to care for America's huge Italian immigrant communities.
 Unsatisfied with just serving her fellow Italians, she opened her
 doors to immigrants of all nations creating hospitals, schools and
 orphanages to care for them. Through it all she maintained strict
 religious discipline within her Order insisting her nuns keep their
 perspective by spending a good part of their day in devotions to 
 the God who empowered their Good Works.

 America, being a uniquely diverse country both ethnically and racially,
 presented special challenges to a Italian farm girl. You can take the
 girl out of Italy, but you can't always take the Italy out of the girl.
 Frances had inherited a deep distrust of Protestants and no small
 amount of racial intolerance from her upbringing. At times she seriously
 embarassed herself and her community with her actions by refusing the
 orphans of Protestants or service to African-Americans. But she quickly
 recognized these personal deficiencies and humbly set about correcting
 them. She sought the grace to embrace all of God's Family and reform
 herself. An effort she largely succeeded at. She eventually broadened
 her work to include people of all races, nations and creeds. If they
 needed her help, she wouldn't refuse them. And that's the difference
 between a saint and the rest of us - they tap into God's unrestrained
 Love for all of us.

 Likely having heard of Mother Joseph's earlier work in Seattle, Frances
 stopped here as well. Unlike most of the places she passed through, she
 found something special here and decided to stay for a couple years.
 Maybe it was the mountains that reminded her of home. She was a regular
 at St. James Cathedral and Kaufer's Religious Books. She was familiar
 with the beautiful sights of Mt. Rainier, the Olympic Mountains and
 the Cascades. She knew the sights and sounds of Puget Sound as well.  
 It was also here that she decided to become an American citizen. One
 fine day in 1909 she trooped down to the Federal Building at 3rd and
 Union  (now the Main Post Office Building downtown) and joined the
 line-up to be sworn in as a naturalized citizen. The first and only
 genuine saint the Immigration & Naturalization Service has ever had 
 to deal with. She was now one of us.

 She died 18 years later of malaria at her Mother House in Chicago. 
 Her body was moved a few years later to Mother Cabrini High School
 in New York City where it remains to this day. For some reason, her
 head was chopped off and shipped back to Italy. Some claim her remains
 are incorruptable. It's more likely the undertaker just did a real
 good job. In 1946 Pope Pius XIIth canonized her as a saint and
 named her patroness of all emigrants and immigrants. 

 To me, she embodies the finest of all American virtues: persistence,
 determination, pragmatism, enormous initative, warm-heartedness, 
 personal candor and quiet self-confidence. She is the most truely
 American of all the saints.

----------------------------------------------------
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