Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [31]
As I grew physically and intellectually within the institutions of Church and State, I treated virtually everything these authoritarians told me, from the sum of two plus two to their definition of God, with the greatest skepticism. Like a theater-goer who sees the same play night after night, eventually I lost my ability to suspend disbelief, and I began to see the workings of this most deceptive art. I watched as political leaders in the secular world boisterously claimed that by virtue of their newfound religious devotions they too could assume a degree of infallibility. What a scam. The sum of two plus two I can figure out, but whenever I become smug or cozy in my own sanctimonious revelations regarding all things political or metaphysical, all I have to do is kneel down at that altar rail and gaze up.
To please my mother in the years before she died, I would attend Catholic Mass with her once a year on Easter Sundays.
It had been decades since I had last been there. When we sat down in our old church, the first thing I looked for was that crucifix. It was gone. After Mass I sought out a church volunteer, a man I remembered from those early days, now grown old, and asked where it had gone. He said that people had complained about it, and so it was taken down and stored in the basement.
I know that basement. It is where, as altar boys, we used to change clothes. It is a cramped, dry, sepulcher. Now, I think of the contemporary Catholic service, the priest facing the congregation instead of turning his back. English instead of Latin. The parishioners hold the Body of Christ in their hands, when to touch the host when we were kids could get you expelled from school. Being a Catholic is easier than it once was. I think of that crucifix in the basement. Little altar boys—and girls-are getting undressed and dressed in front of it. I would advise them to take a good long look.
I wish them well.
The International Aeronautical Sanitation Administration
(or what to do with our nuclear and toxic waste before it kills us all)
Free advice for the Mescalero Indians of New Mexico: Get some dogs, a shovel, and a really big freezer. Also, if your town starts to smell like dirty socks—move. I have begun this essay in response to the news that some Native Americans in the Southwestern United States are hoping to make big bucks by turning over their hard-won land to the federal government for the purpose of storing nuclear waste. Regardless of how the controversy is resolved, or how much money does or doesn’t change hands, there will remain a sense of desperation on all sides of this issue.
Listen.
Several years ago, while a member of the political satire musical duet, The Pheromones, I found myself playing a gig at Richland Community College in Richland, Washington. Until our trip to Richland, any thoughts I had about the state of Washington were of fog-draped cities, snow-covered volcanoes, and very big, very old trees. We saw some big mountains and trees but mostly what we found were smaller mountains covered with tree stumps, the barren high desert, and the stink of dirty socks. Richland, you see, is located in the southeast corner of the state, far from any mountains or trees, miles above sea level, and adjacent to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Reservation—for now, probably the biggest known nuclear waste dump in the world.
We were prepared not to like Richland. We brought our own water. The first thing we noticed as we rolled into town in the middle of the night was that the place smelled as if the whole town were involved in some sort of cultlike nocturnal aerobic ceremony which must have concluded minutes before our arrival. When I asked people the next day about the odor in the atmosphere, they looked puzzled. (Much the same way New Yorkers do when you mention the quality of their atmosphere. New Yorkers will tell you there is no smog in New York City, although they will concede that it has been overcast lately. “Haze,” I think