By Patrick F. Cannon

Proving once again that we’re the most generous people on earth, charitable giving in the United States totaled an estimated $592.5 billion in 2024. Adjusted to inflation, this was a 3.3% increase over 2023.

            A strong economy and stock market no doubt contributed to an eight percent increase in individual giving, and a corporate increase of nine percent. Religious giving declined slightly, although that category remains the largest at about 25% of the total. For example, Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Chicago raised $42 million last year.

            Of course, the total doesn’t include the dollar bills we hand to folks at street corners, or (for me at least) at the entry to the local Jewel food store. I keep loose dollar bills in my car’s center console for this purpose. Some people think these folks just use the money to buy booze or drugs. Maybe some do, but I  don’t worry about it.

            In most years, I give about 10% of my income to various causes and organizations. I suppose it’s a variation on the religious practice of tithing. Most people probably do much the same, or even more. On the other hand, many of our new tech billionaires (and some of our old real estate developers) seem loathe to give much away. If they did, that $592.5 billion figure would easily reach a trillion dollars.

            Bill Gates is a good example of an older techie who is now giving back. The legendary Warren Buffet intends to give most of his fortune away. There are plenty of historical precedents. Those of us originally from the Pittsburgh area will know the name Carnegie very well indeed. Before he sold them all to J.P. Morgan, almost all the steel mills in the Pittsburg area were part of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation (as were the mills in Gary, Indiana, and Chicago). But even before he sold out, he began to endow the creation of public libraries. The first one was in his home country of Scotland. The first of nearly 1,700 in this country was in my birthplace, Braddock, Pennsylvania. It’s still there, although not much of the rest of the town is.

            The Carnegie name is also on many Pittsburgh’s museums – Art, Natural History, Science, and even the Andy Warhol. Then, of course, there’s the world-famous Carnegie-Mellon University, which brings up the Mellon family of Mellon Bank fame. Among their may contributions is the National Gallery in Washington. Heinz gave the world its best ketchup, but to Pittsburgh they also gave Heinz Hall and  the Heinz History Center.

            Let’s not forget the Rockefellers, Fords, Fields, Guggenheims, Rosenwalds, and many, many more. Some are now characterized as “robber barons.” In our “enlightened” times, we see them as greedy exploiters of their workers. Let’s face it, they weren’t unique in this, just more successful. And unbelievably, they tended to be highly religious. Carnegie was a stern and pious Presbyterian; and Rockefeller a Baptist who help found the University of Chicago and paid for its Rockefeller Chapel; and for the Riverside Church in Manhattan.

            In the Chicago area, I’m a member of and minor donor to many cultural organizations, but their very founding and continued existence has and continues to depend on the financial support of  people with serious wealth. For example, my fellow Northwestern University alum Pat Ryan is funding its new Stadium, but he and his wife Shirley have done so much more. For example, their Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago is the world’s leading rehabilitation facility.

            So, who knows? Maybe the current iterations of the “robber barons,” including the current occupant, who is determined to make he and his pals even richer, will decide to give some of it away. I’m not holding my breath though.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

Warning: This article includes references to naked fellows and other distasteful stuff. Read at your own peril!

When I was a young lad, bathrooms were not considered a fit subject for discussion. No longer. Indeed, the courts and legislatures seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy deciding who can enter them. Let’s put all that aside for the moment, so I can share my own experiences with this room we all must enter regularly (unless we live in the woods).

            First, why is it called the bathroom when we visit it more often to use the toilet? Some people are more inclined to use the word “facilities,” which seems more inclusive. The Brits often call it the “loo.” This comes for the French phrase “gardez l’eau,” which was shouted (hopefully) before the contents of the  chamber pot were tossed out the window into the street below. A rough translation would be “look out!”

            The term WC is also used. It’s short for water closet, which makes no sense to me at all. When I was born in 1938, many folks in rural America still had to brave the weather to use the outhouse. Being urban folk, we always had a bathroom. Just one, shared by five people. You may not believe this, but I don’t recall that sharing it was ever a problem. In fact, the  first time I lived in a house with two was in the late 1960s, when I moved into a new home in Albert Lea, Minnesota.

            The bathroom as a communal phenomenon didn’t enter my life until I started playing high school football. Those of you who have experienced the agony of football practice will recall the locker room shower. Dripping with sweat, and covered in muck and mire, you welcomed a post practice shower with your fellow sufferers. No privacy of course, just a large room with multiple shower heads. It was a real education in the variety of human shapes, colors and – dare I say – capabilities?

            The typical men’s public bathroom does have a bit of privacy. There are stalls with doors for defecation, and usually a row of urinals (the word itself is descriptive of its use), sometimes with a small partition between for a modicum of privacy. Although I haven’t been there for some years, Chicago’s Wrigley Field had (or still has) a men’s room with a long sheet metal trough instead of urinals. Using this legendary space between innings is a unique experience. The ladies, alas, have no such facilities – they must use stalls and thus wait in endless lines.

            My next experience with communal bathing was courtesy of the United States Army. I did my basic training at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Our barracks had been slapped together during World War II and had minimal creature comforts. The bathroom had rows of sinks, and a communal  shower room. As I recall, there were eight toilets, four on each side, with no partitions. Imagine, if you can, four lads facing four other lads, all doing their business while pretending they were somewhere else.

            Speaking of the Army, when I was stationed in France in 1961-62, I found their methods of elimination interesting. More than once, I came upon a bus stopped by the side of the road with the passengers pretending a farmer’s field was a bathroom. Public WCs were usually meant for both sexes and were often serviced by ancient women who expected to be tipped. More than once, I used a bathroom – usually in a café – with no actual toilet, just a hole in the floor with a place for your feet.

            To France, we also owe a debt of gratitude for one of their native son’s turning a plumbing fixture into a work of art. I speak of Marcel Duchamp,  who displayed a urinal in an art gallery, called it “Fountain,” and signed it R. Mutt. You could replicate Marcel’s bold statement for about $200. If you do so, I suggest you put a sign near it saying “This is a work of art. Do not use!” If you’d rather not spend so much, I have a Campbell’s soup I can let you have for $25, including shipping in the United States.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

The good folks at Word Press, who host this blog, keep excellent statistical records. In checking them recently, I found that this piece is the 500^th “Cannonnade.” The first one was published on November 10, 2015. Strangely, it appeared on a Wednesday; every one since has been posted on Thursday. You may not have noticed, but I have never missed a week, although I did cheat a few times by reprinting special favorites.

            Early on, a few readers pointed out that the title  “Cannonnade” had one too many Ns. As it the happened, “Cannonade” had already been taken. Later, I was informed that it was now available, but I didn’t want to change it and confuse my readers who by then were used to the quirky title.

            The first few posts tended to be a bit longish, but I eventually came to my senses. The average length is now about 600 words. That translates to a total of 300,000 words. I’m sure it has been more, but it’s a nice round number. If I had a talent for fiction, I could have written three novels with the same number of words, but I don’t. I have managed to publish four books on Chicago architects and architecture with my partner Jim Caulfield during the same period, so you can add about 70,000 more words to the total.

            When Ernest Hemingway published his collected stories in the late 1930s, he said he thought there were some good ones and some bum ones, although he wouldn’t have published them if he hadn’t liked them at the time. Looking back at  mine, I feel the same way. But I can’t take them back, so I leave it up to the reader to pass judgement.

            My blog has been contemporaneous with the rise, fall and rise again of Donald Trump. Not for the last time, I was proved fallible when I demonstrated with mathematical precision that he couldn’t win the Republican nomination in 2016. I still despise him with all my heart and soul, but you must give the devil his due. Anyway, I’m tired of writing about him.

            I get the greatest satisfaction from making fun of my own and others foibles, of which there is no lack. More than once, I have deplored the modern tendency to deface the body with tattoos. I find them unsightly, but I happen to know several people who have them. If you like someone, you must accept their sartorial choices. I’ve never gotten used to men who wear earrings and never cut their hair, either.

            My model for this blog – one that I’ll never live up to – is the great American essayist, E.B. White. Best known now for this children’s book, Charlotte’s Web, he was for many years a staff writer for the New Yorker. His little book on writing, The Elements of Style, is still in print. I still refer to my copy. Speaking of White, here’s what he had to say about writing in a 1942 interview with the New York Times upon publication of One Man’s Meat, his series of essays about his life on a coastal farm in Maine (which should be available through most libraries):

            “The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can…I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he’s going to the trouble of  reading what I’ve written…why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I’m trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.”

            That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last 500 weeks.

 Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

To follow on from my piece last week about the actor Michael Lonsdale, I would encourage you to look up the films of perhaps the greatest English actor of his generation, Paul Scofield (1922-2008). He preferred the stage but managed to appear in several memorable films, including a stark version of Shakespeare’s King Lear in 1971.

            That one may not be easy to find, but others will. Perhaps his best-known film is A Man For all Seasons, the 1966 film version of Robert Bolt’s play about Sir Thomas More. He won both a Tony award for the Broadway stage version and the Academy Award for Best Actor in the film version. As a devout Roman Catholic, More cannot sign a document that acknowledges King Henry VIII as head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, which would enable him to marry Anne Boleyn. It would eventually cost him his own head (and Anne’s too!). His nemesis is Thomas Cromwell, played by Leo McKern. Robert Shaw is wonderful as Henry, and we even have a crimson-berobed and porcine Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey.

            Interestingly, if you saw the recent PBS series covering the same characters, Wolf Hall, Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, was the main character. More is portrayed as a more nuanced character, even something of a religious fanatic, but he still loses his head, as does Cromwell in the end. In those days, it was better to be king!

            In 1964, he appeared as the Nazi Colonel Franz von Waldheim opposite Burt Lancaster as the  Franch railroad worker Paul Labiche in John Frankenheimer’s The Train. In it, Scofield attempts to steal French Impressionists masterpieces from a Paris museum and ship them to Germany ahead of the Allies arrival in Paris in 1944. The plot is simple – Lancaster tries to stop him. To their credit, neither Scofield nor Lancaster attempts an accent. The rest of the cast is French, so their accents are legit! Scofield is wonderfully arrogant. At one point he tells Lancaster that great art belongs only to those (like him of course) who can appreciate it. Great stuff.

            In 1994s Quiz Show, he plays the American poet, critic and Columbia University professor Mark Van Doren, whose son Charles admitted cheating on the popular late 1950s quiz show, Twenty-One. Those of you old enough will remember the raft of big-money quiz shows of that period. In addition to Twenty-One, there was The $64,000 Question and  the  $100,000 Big Surprise. Most featured the “sound-proof” booth, where the contestant sweated it out as he or  she tried to remember the answer to the question that he had been given beforehand! Although profoundly disappointed in his son’s moral lapse, Scofield as the father stands by him through his ordeal.

            Finally, he played Judge Thomas Danforth in the 1996 film version of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, whose cast included another great British actor, Daniel Day Lewis. Apparently, Miller took liberties with history as Danforth didn’t preside over the witchcraft trials in 17th Century Salem, Massachusetts upon which the play was based. Miller wrote his play as a response to the witch hunts for Communists and their fellow travelers by Senator Joe McCarthy  and others during the 1950s. Scofield is perfect as the stern and even frightening voice of doom.  

            As with most actors, You Tube will provide samples of Scofield’s work. But for the full effect, you should at least search out A Man for All Seasons.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

One of the great advantages of streaming services like Amazon Prime is the ready availability of great movies from the past. With few exceptions, if you want to see a fondly remembered film, you can find it somewhere in the ether, often at no additional cost, or for a nominal fee. Of course, the streaming services themselves aren’t free, and the monthly costs can get out of control if you’re not careful.

            An actor who appeared in several of my favorite films was Michael Lonsdale (1931-2020), who was equally comfortable in both English- and French-language films. He was born in Paris, the son of an English military officer and French Irish mother. He had an eventful childhood. When living in French Morocco, his father was jailed by the Vichy authorities, charged with treason. The Allies freed him when they liberated Morocco in late 1942.

            I first saw Lonsdale in one of the greatest suspense films ever made, the 1972 Fred Zinneman-directed classic, The Day of the Jackel. If you didn’t see it, it was about a plot to assassinate Charles De Gaulle. While you were fully aware that the plot must have failed, since De Gaulle died of natural causes in 1970, you were convinced it might succeed right up to the end. Lonsdale played French assistant police superintendent Lebel, who doggedly pursued the Jackel, played by Edward Fox. His assistant was a young Derek Jacobi.

            Although he appeared in far more French-language films, he made his English-language roles count. In 1979, he joined the distinguished list of James Bond villains when he played Hugo Dax in Moonraker. Roger Moore was Bond in that one, but in 1986, he appeared with an earlier Bond, Sean Connery, as the abbot in the creepy medieval mystery set in an Italian monastery, The Name of the Rose

            Although he had only a minor role in 1993s The Remains of the Day as a world-weary French diplomat attending a “peace” meeting of Nazi sympathizers at the country house of a hapless Lord Darlington (played by the other Fox brother, James), he had a wonderful scene with star Anthony Hopkins, who brings him a pan of hot water for his aching feet. Hopkins played Lord Darlington’s faithful butler, who is oblivious to his masters Naziism and antisemitism, and the attentions of the housekeeper, played by Emma Thompson. Hugh Grant plays Darlington’s nephew in an early role. It’s a wonderful movie on many levels.

            He appeared in a supporting role again in Ronin, a John Frankenheimer directed heist movie set in France and starring Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno. Lonsdale plays a friend and former associate of Reno’s, who offers him advice while making miniature furniture. As Lonsdale was a bear of a man, the contrast between him and his hobby was amusing. The plot of the film is too complicated to explain, but involved spies, ex spies, and the Irish Republican Army. It’s well worth seeing.

            He had a more substantial role in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film, Munich, whose plot involves an Israeli team organized to find and kill those responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Lonsdale plays “Papa,” the patriarch of a group of information brokers, who operate a secretive intelligence service, which sells information to the highest bidder. Eric Bana, who plays the leader of the Israeli team, visits Papa at his compound in rural France. The sequence is a highlight of the film.  

            In this long life, Lonsdale appeared in nearly 200 films, mostly French. But while the films I’ve highlighted here are worth seeing in their own right, each was better for Lonsdale having been in them. He had an actor’s voice, perfect English diction, with just the right touch of a French accent. If you haven’t seen it, The Day of the Jackel would be a good place to discover this great actor.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

I have 42 framed pictures on the walls of my two-bedroom condominium: one original oil; seven original water colors; seven signed and numbered etchings; four signed and numbered lithographs; one pencil sketch; 12 photographs; and 10 reproductions. I also have numerous framed photos on tables and in bookcases. All have some personal meaning, or they wouldn’t be there.

            That’s nice, you’re thinking, but what’s he getting at? Well, as it happens, my partner Jim Caulfield and I are working on a new book on Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Robie House in Chicago. It is one of eight Wright buildings that have been designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.  We have already published a book on the other one in the Chicago area, Oak Park’s Unity Temple. If you don’t mind a bit of self-promotion, our most recent book, Louis Sullivan: An American Architect, just won the 2025 Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, our fourth such award.

            I love Robie House. It is one of the landmarks of  modern architecture, admired throughout the world. But if I bought it, I’d have to get rid of most of those 42 pictures. Aside from a couple of bedrooms, and the first-floor reception area, the main spaces defy the comfortable accommodation of most paintings. If you look at Jim Caulfield’s photo of the living room, what you mostly see is beautiful art glass. What little wall space available would demand only the smallest frames and even they would look clumsy.

            There are other Wright houses that confound the picture hanger. He would have claimed, with some justice, that the house itself was work of art enough. To be fair, sideboards and other built-ins at Robie do provide adequate surfaces for pottery, statues, and plants. Studying period photographs from the family that lived longest in the house show only two small, framed pictures in the living and dining rooms. The original owner, Frederick Robie, was an engineer and apparently put more emphasis on light and air than framed works of art. For him, and for many others, the house works just fine. But, as much as I admire it, it’s not for me.

            Another Chicago-area house that defies framed art is Ludvig mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano (although at 57 miles distant, “Chicago area” is stretching it a bit). It’s essentially a glass house, with a few interior walls. I have seen a couple of photos that show a framed picture on the main fireplace wall, but I imagine purists would frown upon desecrating it this way! But again, there are people who would love to live in what they consider a minimalist masterpiece.

            Some architects have always believed they know best where and  how people should live. Most people stubbornly resist these diktats. And they should, even if their taste runs to the now ubiquitous “McMansion.” There is nothing wrong with period styles, although I would prefer that the detailing be accurate, whether Tudor, Georgian, or even Prairie. And if you want a glass house, so be it; just don’t start throwing stones.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

An email I received recently reminded me that the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei once exhibited a triptych of photographs showing him holding, then dropping and shattering, a 2,000-year-old Han Dynasty urn. When asked about it, he said: “Chairman Mao used to tell us that we can only build a new world if we destroy the old one.” I should mention that his father, a famous poet, suffered during Mao’s so-called Cultural Revolution.

            I should also point out that Weiwei (pronounced “way” “way” in case you wondered) owned the vase. The Mao comment was meant to be ironic, but his actual point was to suggest that works like the urn are only valuable because we or someone else says they are. Anyone who keeps track of the contemporary art market knows that the strangest things – Jeff Koon’s metal balloon animals and the duct-taped banana are often cited as examples – sell for inconceivable amounts.

            Assuming I had the tens of millions of dollars that a Koon’s balloon now costs, would I be within my rights to blow it up? Even if I believed, as I do, that it’s more a joke than a work of art? Let me get back to the urn.

            During the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) great advances were made in pottery design and production. The urn was almost certainly thrown by hand on a potter’s wheel, just as today. The man who made it took great care in shaping and finishing it. Did he think he was creating a work of art? Probably not. And he probably would be astonished to find out that it survived 2,000 years until it was destroyed to make a statement about the absurdities of the art market.

            But I think he would also have been saddened. He had created a pot that he hoped would be used with care, and would last a long time, or at least until some clumsy oaf dropped it. He would have thought it inconceivable that a fellow creator would break it on purpose. He might well have wondered why Weiwei didn’t destroy one of his own works.

            So, no matter the intent, I don’t think Weiwei had the right to destroy someone else’s work, even though it was probably only worth a few thousand dollars at most. Of course, much worse has happened to works of art throughout history. In 2001, for example, the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan’s famous Bamiyan Buddhas in their fervor to rid the country of idolatrous images. And in case you’ve forgotten, countless works of religious art were destroyed for the same reason during the Reformation by fervent Protestants.

            War is another destroyer of art. It’s impossible to  know how many great works have fallen victim to it. Thousands were destroyed or lost during World War II, including major works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Holbein, Van Gogh, Raphael, Courbet, Degas, Van Dyck, Durer, Canaletto, and Bellini. Coventry Cathedral is only one of the great buildings destroyed by bombing or shelling. And the famous monastery at Monte Cassino was another victim of “military necessity.”

            A more recent phenomenon is the defacement or destruction of works of art for political reasons. Christopher Columbus wasn’t sufficiently progressive, so let’s take his statues down, deface or even destroy them. We don’t like so and so’s ideas, so let’s shout him down or remove his books from our libraries. Wagner? Wasn’t he a Nazi? And on and on.

            As I have said many times, Jeff Koons is a minor artist, if an artist at all. But I would never think of destroying one of his beflowered puppy dogs, even if I owned it, and it was in my back yard.

The Nan Dynasty potter isn’t around to defend his work, but we are.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

Let me tell you — life is no walk in the park; nor bowl of cherries; or all sunshine and rainbows; and definitely no picnic. When you get up in the morning, you better beware! Dark forces are lurking in the shadows, ready to leap out and smite you on the kisser!

            Just the other morning, for example, I did the laundry. Now in my building, the laundry room is just off the lobby. As I’m on the third floor, I have to take the elevator down (I could take the stairs, but what’s the elevator for?). When I got back to my apartment with the laundry basket, one of my socks was missing! Why does this happen? Obviously, either the washer or dryer didn’t think it got enough money, so it charged me a sock. Why socks? Why not underpants, or washcloths? We are not to know, for evil forces are at work.

            No big deal, you say. Have you ever had to go shopping for a new pair of socks while wearing only one? A bare foot in an old shoe is clammy and uncomfortable, I can assure you. Maybe I should buy an extra pair, but money doesn’t grow on trees you know!

            I have another outrage to impart! I have been a loyal customer of the Jewel food stores for 60 years – yes, 60 years! – and my local store is conspiring to make it impossible to find a place to park. Often, when you think you’ve found an empty spot, it’s another of those endless grocery-cart return spots! This time of year, they eliminate even more parking spaces to find space for a vast edifice dedicated to selling plants and flowers, thus taking business away from local lawn and garden centers.

            As if that wasn’t enough, now they have put eight spaces aside for people who are waiting for clerks to come with stuff they’ve ordered online. The last time I was at the store, all eight spaces were empty — mocking the poor schmoes like me who bravely venture forth in all weathers to pick out their own groceries  

            In case you didn’t know it, Jewel is now owned by Albertsons, a grocery company founded and still headquartered in Boise, Idaho. I’ve never been there, but my impression of that state is the odd mountain among endless dry and dusty plains. The state plant is the tumbleweed. Vast spaces for parking lots and cows are readily available. The executives have likely never been to the Chicago area, where you can’t just push the cows aside to add parking spaces!  

            Which brings me to my final complaint. Once again, the powers that be in remote Boise have decided my Jewel needs to be completely reorganized, just at the point I knew where everything was. One day I arrived to find armies of people taking stuff off shelves and moving products to places some expert in Boise had decided made more sense. While all this was going on – and it took what seemed like years – the old signs remained in place. So, where you expected to find toilet paper, instead you came upon cat food! And I don’t own a cat!

            Well, I can’t let all this defeat me. I guess I’ll just have to pull up my sock and get on with life!

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

I was amazed by the reception my recent effort to provide budding authors with the openings of possible stories received. To help even more struggling scribes, and as a service to the world of letters, I am providing a few more for consideration. I only ask some small measure of appreciation (a share of royalites would be nice).

• It was a dark and stormy night. Once again, Smithers had forgotten his umbrella. He considered: “What shall I do? What can I do?”
• The bear was somewhere in those woods; the dark and menacing woods; trunks looming and barring his way, as they had for generations of the Yokums; his people, indefatigable seekers, always hunting the bear; but for all those generations past, was the bear hunting them?; or was it even a bear (genus Ursus, family Ursidae), or some primordial hairy man; or indeed a female, or both; or the dreaded Sasquatch?
• It was winter, and that was the year the snow came rolling down the mountain. The air was crisp and cold, and the snow was always there. And the tenente had lost his gloves.
• He knew his age was held against him in certain quarters at the C.I.A. At 14, he was by far the youngest analyst. But there was no doubt about his doctorate from MIT. How could he prove to these older higher ups that the threat was real; that tiny Andorra was indeed trying to smuggle a nuclear device into the US in a tin of sardines.
• I often stood at the shore, looking through the morning mist at the flashing light across the rushing river and in the trees. What did those trees hide? Why was the light flashing? Would my modest dingy make it across or would I be swept out to the endless sea?
• Sir Dreadful had journeyed long. From Jerusalem he had ridden to Acra, then taken ship across the stormy Mediterranean to France. He and his faithful charger Argent then rode north, enjoying the hospitality of noble friends, until arriving in Calais. A short voyage in fine weather took them to England and home. As he approached his ancestral castle, he spied his faithful servant, William. Instead of rushing to meet his master, gone these two long years on the crusade, he ran back across the drawbridge, which was immediately raised. What can this mean, thought the puzzled knight.
• Flossie was taking the day off, so I was alone in my office. Business was slow, due to a declining divorce rate. As a private eye, I was used to these ups and downs. I knew my trusty key-hole camera would soon be needed again, but just now I was reduced to playing solitaire. Then, I heard to outer door open, and a silky voice say “hello, anyone here?” I opened my office door and there she was – long blonde hair, ruby red lips, and a royal blue silk dress that seemed to be all that was between me and curves that would put Mulholland Drive to shame. That’s how it all began.
• I had come to the remote kingdom of Diphtheria to walk among and enjoy the majestic forests and towering mountains for which it was so justly famous. After a particularly grueling trek, I was relaxing in my hotel room with a glass of warming local schnapps when there was a knock on my door. Opening it I was faced with a military officer dressed in the uniform of a hussar. Behind him were two common soldiers. “Mr. Smithers?” he inquired. I assented. “I must ask you to come with me. You have nothing to fear, but the matter is urgent.” With that, he escorted me to a waiting carriage, which sped us to the royal palace. I was brought to a splendid room and left alone. Then a door opened, and a dignified old gentleman came in. “I am the Grand Duke Dmitri, and I have a request to make.” Just then I noticed the large portrait on the wall of a man dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown. The face that stared back at me from the canvas was my own!  

Well, that’s enough for now. I can hardly wait to see how those stories end!

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

There are approximately 2.4 billion Christians in the world; of those 1.4 billion are Roman Catholics, by far the world’s largest organized religion (there are 1.7 billion Sunni Muslims, but they have no central organization). But as we’ll no doubt find out in the coming weeks – as a new Pope is chosen to succeed the late Pope Francis – it’s also one of the world’s most over organized.

            While Francis was widely loved by many Catholics for his tolerance (permitting the blessing of same sex marriages, for example), that very tolerance was anathema to traditional and conservative Catholics. There will be much drama behind the scenes as the liberal and conservative cardinals battle to keep or regain control of the massive bureaucracy that governs the church. When the new pope is chosen, they will pretend all is well. Among the laity, and below the surface, the battles will go on.

             Francis was, it seems to me, only acting on what he perceived as the actual message in the gospels – love God and your neighbor. Sins are inevitable but can be forgiven. Judge not, lest you be judged. Read the Sermon on the Mount, and act on it. This is no place for the history of the Church, but over the centuries it has taken these simple messages and created a vast edifice of rules and regulations and the structures to enforce them. For example, a standard version of the New Testament runs to about 180 pages. It includes the gospels, epistles, acts of the apostles and revelations. One edition of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church needs 925 pages to interpret them.

            Reporting to the pope are approximately 5,600 bishops, of whom 252 are currently also cardinals. Only 135 of them – those under 80 – are eligible to vote for the new pope. They will meet in the Sistine Chapel, beneath Michelangelo’s transcendent frescos. Their deliberations will be done in secret, with only the cardinals present. The current system dates to the 13^th Century, and was devised by man, not God.

            Nor did God, in the person of Jesus, have anything to do with most of that 934-page Catechism, much of which is ignored by many Roman Catholics. Surveys have shown, for example, that Catholic women widely ignore the Church’s ban on artificial birth control. To most, there’s no logical difference between the acceptable “rhythm” method and the pill (except the pill is more dependable). They also struggle to see in the words of Jesus any ban on priesthood for women.

            The church is capable of change. It was only in 1139 that priests were required to be celibate and unmarried.  The Mass, the basic ceremony of the church, has been changed in form and content and is now said in the local language. As an altar boy (no girls then), I was required to learn my lines in Latin. The priest didn’t face the congregation, who mostly had no idea what he was saying anyway.

            To Pope Francis, every human being was a child of God with a divine soul. He would have agreed to the fictional detective Harry Bosch’s credo: “everybody counts or nobody counts.”  His opposition to abortion was inherent in this, and I can’t see the Church changing its position on this fundamental issue. But almost everything else has changed over time and can change again. It will be interesting to see if the new pope will open the door a bit wider, or slam it shut. Finally, don’t we need someone like the pope to tell our leaders their decisions affect real people?

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon