Who would not concede medical science has done amazing things: antibiotics, polio vaccines, prenatal surgery, separating conjoined twins, the list goes on. But when people talk about evidence-based medicine do they know what that even means?

Evidence-based medicine, in theory, starts with research in some area, establishing an experiment with all known biases removed, all collected data analyzed, and the right conclusions drawn, e.g., a new drug did better or worse against a placebo in a study to test its efficacy against a certain disease. Then the results are shared with the community including governing bodies that make sound judgements for the benefit of society. To truly qualify as science, the same results should be obtained by anyone wishing to duplicate the experiment.

Now let’s see how evidence-based medicine works in practice: a study is conducted by a research group with a funding source that likely has stake in their conclusion, a paper is composed to describe the results, after which the paper is submitted for publication in a prestigious journal such as Nature, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine. Then — and here’s the critical part— for the paper to get published and the results shared with the community it is subject to and must pass peer review. And this is where science takes a dirt-nap.

The peer group consists of experts and gatekeepers that compare the results to the current ruling paradigm which they guard ferociously. If the conclusions don’t line up with that paradigm, it gets declined. Even if the research is sound, the paper and its conclusions are summarily rejected. Worse yet, if the proponents of the new conclusions don’t get in line with the ruling paradigm, they are vilified mercilessly: Ignaz Semmelweis was hounded to suicide in the 19^th century after he asserted that his fellow surgeons wash their hands and follow antiseptic protocols between operations to reduce mortality rates. Another surgeon in the late 20^th century, Judah Folkman, was stripped of his license to practice medicine when he asserted that malignant tumors required a significant blood supply, an idea called angiogenesis which is now universally accepted. And not too long ago, the idea that bacteria could exist in the stomach would have been ridiculed: even though the evidence stared researchers in the face for over a century, the discovery of H. pylori—the cause of ulcers among other things—was only recently declared in the 1980’s and bestowed Nobel Prizes on its discoverers. In essence, the evidence-based medicine we practice is based not on science, but on whether a select group likes the conclusions. It is structured to reject new ideas.

This is one of the points of a new book, The Cancer Code by Dr. Jason Fung, in which the author gives an account of the malady, its nature, history, treatment, and ongoing medical research. I read the book with great and personal interest since I was diagnosed with NHL in 1980 when I was fourteen. Back then, the ruling paradigm (which Fung labels as Cancer Paradigm 1.0) explained cancer as “excessive growth”, an abnormality combated with the dreadful treatment triad: cut (surgery), burn (radiation), poison (chemotherapy). In a twist of irony, many of these treatments are themselves carcinogenic. Cyclophosphamides and methotrexate are extremely toxic with side effects to include infertility, leukemia, and death. Ionizing radiation is the stuff of comic book superpowers, if only the effects weren’t deadly too.  No wonder I, with countless others, have longed for a cancer cure from the advances of modern science, a cure free of short- and long-term side effects, a cure that renders any news of a cancer diagnosis another day at the beach.

Fifty years before President Biden issued his politically motivated proclamation, President Nixon declared War on Cancer in 1971, promising to find a cure as once we promised to land a man on the moon. The age of genomics dawned a short while later when Francis Collins and Craig Venter shared an award for mapping the human genome in 2000.  Enter Cancer Paradigm 2.0 in which the ancient pathology is viewed as a single genetic mutation—an approach known as Somatic Mutation Theory. Find the mutation, isolate the errant gene, rectify the flaw, and Bob’s your uncle.  But after decades of research, billions of dollars in funding, numerous papers, and peer reviews propping up this second paradigm, we have very little to show than a few treatments for just a handful of rare hereditary cancers while the most common forms continue to claim lives as before.

Why? Because the paradigm is predominantly wrong; and despite all our so-called science and evidence-based medicine with thousands of studies that did nothing but provide continued employment, elevated careers, and tens of thousands of published papers steered toward a faulty result the peerage expected and insisted on—and not at all what the data was saying—we have nothing close to a cure despite presidential proclamations and everyone having proximity to the problem.

I will applaud that a few high-ranking scientists in the field finally got the courage to say what everyone knew: the Somatic Mutation Theory utterly failed to explain the attributes of cancer which include constant and numerous genetic mutations, glycolytic energy pathway, metastasis, and several other hallmark behaviors. In a fit of frustration, the problem was handed off to an industry that had a long and illustrious history of following science wherever it may lead….  

In 2009, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in an uncharacteristic move, reached out beyond the expected cadre of researchers to ask other scientists for help in the war on cancer. The call went out not to cancer biologists or cancer researchers, but to theoretical physicist Paul Davies and astrobiologist Charley Lineweaver. With no prior knowledge of cancer and, most important, no preconceived notions, these two would usher in the next chapter in our understanding of cancer.

As anyone knows who took college physics, there is no ignoring what the data says if the deterministic math doesn’t align. When classical physics failed to explain the behavior of particles at atomic and subatomic levels, it was clear that something else was needed. Blackbox radiation’s frequency dependent behavior did not comport with the usual Newtonian functions. With a new mathematical model to better describe the Blackbox phenomenon, the world of quantum physics was born thanks to Max Planck who went where many physicists refused to go.

Shedding the prejudice of evidence-based medicine with no preconceived notions, the NCI appointed physicists arrived at a startling explanation and here it is in a cogent nutshell: cancer is cellular atavism.  

For those unfamiliar with the term, atavism is the expression of a once dominant trait. When a person is born with a hairy face, webbed hands, gills, or a tail, these are examples of atavism. It is the return of a characteristic that once defined a species, but centuries of evolution have driven it out.  Animals and plants, of multicellular composition, rely on the boundaries established by God and nature so that brain cells are brain cells, heart cells are heart cells, and liver cells are liver cells. But when one of these cells reverts to the unicellular form it evolved from (usually by application of a continuous stressor), this is what the physicists conclude is cancer.  And what are these unicellular traits? Mutate, spread, glycolytic energy, survival at all costs—sound familiar? This is cancer paradigm 3.0 which perfectly explains all of cancer’s attributes and why a real cure has been so far away. It should strike a chilling chord that every one of us, with every cell in our body, is staving off cellular atavism at every moment.

I was tickled at this revelation, but also disappointed that decades of “science” was wasted by an army of lab-coat wearing fundamentalist. But why would this surprise me when nearly three quarters of published research findings are false (“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” John Ioannidis, 2005 PLOS Medicine), including and especially, NCI. Perhaps the new paradigm will usher in the cure people have hoped for, but as of now, the cure for cancer, even after forty years of technological advancement, is still the same dreaded triad: cut, burn, and poison.

Evidence based medicine is what Churchill said of America: it will do the right thing but only after it has tried everything else first. Medical research will eventually get to the right conclusion at a prejudicial pace, but only after propping up numerous failed paradigms in the face of overwhelming evidence, and only if someone is willing to risk their career and life for the sake of the truth. Remember that when you go stampeding to Ozempic, mRNA vaccines, Hybrid immunity, or what’s being pushed by the CDC and FDA.

When people say “scientists agree” they are not talking about science. Science is always provisional and never consensus. And sadly, when science is coerced as it is done in the “evidence based” model we practice—it’s three fourths bullshit.  

Dear Honorable Senator Mark Warner,

Thank you for your service to Virginia and the nation.

Nearly twenty years ago I wrote you, then Governor of Virginia, a letter about education, one that you disregarded. I subsequently turned that letter into an essay the Washington Post featured in their Sunday Outlook section (July 11, 2004).  It was only after that essay was published that I finally got a response from your office. Please do not disregard this letter which I send along with my diplomas to get your attention and make a statement about their current worth due to the recent student loan debt forgiveness that the president unilaterally executed this month.

Once upon a time, diplomas such as these meant something—a symbol of competency, seriousness, training in a field of study representing years of hard work. Now, through a culture created by government and the academy, a diploma demarks four years of folly punctuated with a delusional expectation of high paying jobs ex nihilo. Even in the field of high technology and engineering, the diploma has become so meaningless I do better to hire someone without one—at least there is no pretense, and candidates tend to work harder.

First, whatever you may think of the issue, this singular financial decision made by the Executive Branch is strictly a matter that you and your congressional colleagues should have decided—that irksome checks and balances and separation of powers once taught to us in public school. But if you are fine with this breach of authority, then do not feel compelled to call it out when a different President of a different party does a similar thing to benefit their base—handing out public money as a reward for loyalty. Should a similar action be exhibited in a publicly traded company, the SEC would be out for blood.

Second, the outright cancellation of student debt to the tune of $1,000,000,000,000 without recompense, work, armed service, or anything in exchange, is irresponsible in the extreme. I mean, even a zero percent interest rate would return the principle—but no. The debt doesn’t just vanish off the books but becomes the burden of every taxpayer. And to think that men and women who were disfigured, dismembered, and psychologically marred fighting in wars you authorized are left to rot in despair, while a couple making $250,000/year who take vacations in Tuscany are having their debt reduced by our byzantine government. Seriously?  

Third, the debt reassignment does nothing but perpetuate the problem of skyrocketing college costs propelled by unstipulated borrowing. In Virginia the administrators of our public institutions make a cool $1 Million/year salary which pales compared to that commanded by their football coaches. Let us not even speak of the $1 Billion endowments such colleges enjoy. If the holders of these loans were given such a raw deal by such organizations with depthless pockets, what is our government doing to get it refunded? And, looking forward, how will the student loan program be changed or is this some sort of bad habit scheduled to recur every 3-4 years? If the result of the guaranteed student loan program is excessive debt, skyrocketing costs, low intellectual standards, and joblessness, why would you continue to keep it?

Fourth, and on a personal note, the cavalier dismissal of student loan debt is a slap in the face of everyone who worked extremely hard to acquire a real education and pay for it at their own cost, including loans and interest. That one would pay for their own education including the cost of owning a dilapidated car to attend classes is alien to today’s youth. But that is exactly what I (and seven older siblings) did and without borrowing a cent from anyone. Indeed, on two occasions I loaned money to my older siblings to tide them over on tuition; and in my senior year I donated $1000 to a charity which was an insane amount of money. I marvel that I was able to do this given my circumstance. But if you will allow me to explain what it took to get the sacred diplomas that you now possess, perhaps it will inform what to do with them and, more importantly, what to do about this ludicrous student debt forgiveness you tacitly support…

Long ago, before the fall of Rome, I would drive about an hour from Silver Spring to College Park several days a week in an early model Corolla totaled by a drunk driver with the passenger door crushed shut. It was so bad, the mechanics refused to fix it again. It’s no wonder that the next vehicle I purchased had low mileage and a great price; the AMC Gremlin was so hideously ugly, no self-respecting young man would be seen cruising campus in it. But college was expensive, annually increasing, and I was footing the bill along with parking, insurance, gas, and, occasionally, lunch. 

I had to leave home early enough to arrive at my organic chemistry course at 8AM which was murderously dull. Assuming the class ended on time (solipsistic, tenured professor rarely did), I would hustle to the next class clear across campus. This was often necessary since I configured my schedule with back-to-back classes 8AM to 6PM MW giving me 2-3 days to work so I could pay for it all. I secured part time work at various jobs while attending college as a full-time student. This often meant 18 credit hours equating to 54+ additional hours a week. That’s because electrical engineers needed more credits to graduate. I wanted to major in English but that was vetoed by my father supplying room and board at home. Dad grew up poor and fatherless during the Great Depression and non-sense had a way of perishing all around him. College was his ticket out of poverty and my ticket to prosperity and that was that.

Summers were a chance to stockpile money for the upcoming school year which always meant an increase in tuition because no one knows why. During that time, I worked full-time making sure that many hours were on Sunday so I could get 1 ½ pay. I was also a sucker to appease co-workers, especially pretty ones, that needed someone to cover their hours because they needed to go to a party, and I needed the money.

I was employee of the month at Shopper’s Food Warehouse when a new manager that had it in for me (I was a college-boy) wrote up the schedule. It was around Christmas time, very busy, and the time for final exams. I agreed to work extra hours one week with the stipulation he would reduce my hours during finals. In some spiteful exercise of power, the manager loaded me up with excessive hours that week and refused to budge. So, I was forced to quit because I believed graduating college with good marks was an important thing. Nevertheless, for me, not having a paying job was a bad situation with books and bills demanding payment.

Many of my friends and peers attended the college of their choice complements of parents, grandparents, and a very large bank account. Football games, parties, fraternities, rioting, drinking, building Apartheid shanties on the mall in the dark of night—these were the care-free activities of UM student life for the well-heeled. I, on the other hand, never saw Boomer Esiason throw a football, nor Len Bias shoot a hoop. My student life consisted entirely of working, commuting, studying, and sprinting to class hoping for the day my own children would go to college, not have to work, live on campus, and get more out the experience than I was ever afforded. That is, to say, if I ever had children: with routine injections of methotrexate, cyclophosphamides, vincristine, and ionizing radiation in my mid-teens, it was immensely doubtful especially since my pediatric oncologist predicted leukemia in my thirties should I survive to such a ripe old age. Let me assure you that to such people with such experiences, life can seem a sham, and college was looking like the biggest sham of all.

Nevertheless, I took college seriously and got to work because I was paying for it. I graduated with BSEE, 3.72 GPA cum laude, debt free, and a full-time job waiting where I had been working my senior year. Without the burden of student debt, I began prospering on the spot. I later went to grad school and got a MSEE, all while working full time and starting a family (see diploma B). Then, of course, my wife and I saved assiduously for our daughters’ college, again without loans and without student debt.

College was Dad’s ticket out of poverty, my ticket to prosperity, and this nation’s ticket into ruin. It has gotten so expensive it’s impossible for someone to repeat what I was able to do in a previous century. Why has the cost exploded way past the cost of inflation, and politicians have not seen fit to address this incongruity? Does it take longer for students to graduate? Has knowledge become more expensive to obtain? Has Newton’s Law of Gravitation changed in these intervening years? Shame on the lot of you for letting this happen if you were not the outright cause altogether.

Now here we are patching up one cock-up with another; making college free will indeed cheapen it, particularly for graduates who sacrificed for their education. Canceling student debt devalues education further and hyperinflated diplomas will be as precious as Zimbabwean currency, suitable for burning. Society doesn’t need more people with a luxurious “college experience”; it needs more people with a valuable, difficult, college education worth busting their ass. And if a student loan was involved, it needs to be paid back in full by the adult who signed for it—not the public, not the taxpayer, not me.

After 14 months, it arrived. I was expecting a set of big boxes but what arrived was a single box about 1’x1’x2’ dimension. The contents were immensely simple, perhaps too much, but clearly for the current generation who cannot be bothered with written language. There was the rectangular dish, a mount, PoE cable, a power cable, the router-modem, and a ginormous thick card with the setup instructions so simple making IKEA’s Poang chair assembly look like a Newton’s Principia. The components were white minimalistic and void of knobs, buttons, or perturbances like alien slabs from 2001 Space Odyssey.

I deployed the dish on the picnic table outside the sunroom on a day that was unusually wintery with slush, snow, rain, and clouds. The router-modem has no on/off switch (sad face) but I used a surge protector to supply one. The dish came to life, arching back to look straight up into the sky. The Starlink app installed on my android phone did not see the Wi-Fi access point which was a big hiccough. Fortunately, Kolleen had an iPhone which seem to see it without issue and were able to set the WIFI name and passphrase; then data started streaming in thereafter. Postscript: the Starlink app is a turd but maybe SpaceX will improve it over time.

We tested download speeds and latency with some test calls. The phone app has speed tests which I will redo but it indicated download speeds near 30Mbps and upload speeds around 5Gbps from device to satellite.  Speeds measured from router to satellite are an order of magnitude higher for each; not sure what end-to-end test is nominative. Will be experimenting with different days, times of day, locations around the house. Latencies were extremely short for satellite and sometime within terrestrial broadband levels.

The new generation of receiver does not have an ethernet port to install wired devices (double sad face); one must purchase this accessory, $25. The router has very few features: split the dual bands (not sure why), bypass Wi-Fi (which I will probably do effectively making it a modem) and not much more. No hiding SSID, no ACL, no IP assignment, no subnet defining, no default address for the router, no firmware updates that I can see and very Spartan in features one is accustomed to configuring. Certain changes require a clumsy factory reset by repeatedly injecting the power cable within 2-3 second intervals. I would have settled for a reset pin hole and a bent paper clip.

The speeds are better than what I am seeing now with my LTE based ISP with lower monthly cost that I hope will amortize the cost of the receiver. Speeds purport to get better as more satellites are launched. Still experimenting and optimizing.

It’s rather cool that one’s internet access is not bound to fibers/cables to the home or proximity to cell towers. If I wanted broadband internet on a boat in the ocean or camping in the woods, I could just bring it along I suppose.

Having been an early champion of homeschooling and having homeschooled our daughters from pre-school to college admission, I will respond therapeutically to the paper recently revised and touted: “Homeschooling: Parents Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights To Education & Protection” by Harvard scholar Elizabeth Bartholet. I have written pieces objecting to these tired arguments before, e.g., Vetoing a Parent’s Prerogative Washington Post July 11, 2004, when homeschooling was not yet as mainstream. Bartholet writes in the same academic tradition as Robin West’s The Harms of Homeschooling in Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3-4. Both create premises out of progressive thin air, citing their own work or gut feelings to substantiate their unscientific finding in the usual intellectual inbreeding that has become higher education. If they wonder why so many parents have opted into homeschooling, they need go no further than their own scholarship.

My first objection is a premise commonly touted as true, prima facie, even among the freedom loving homeschool community: education is a right.

Education is not a right. Public education is a privilege afforded by the taxpayers who have an interest in the education of the community for numerous reasons–but it is not a right. To shape it as a right, such as the right to vote or the right to assemble, prescribes an obligation by society to provide it and something that can be cherished or disdained by the rightsholder. But as a privilege, children (and their families) are the ones obligated, and those that neglect or abuse their education should be told to take a hike. In this way it is like the privilege of driving a car. Abuse the rules of the road and that privilege will be taken away and you may face severe punishment depending on the offense. Same with education—or it should be. But because people like Bartholet patently assume that it is a right uncontested, we have the broken, dysfunctional, expensive, bureaucratic, worthless institution that is public and higher education. And even as a right, education as it is provided by the government is a total violation. As Sir Ken Robinson discovered, the educational system, if it is anything, is ultimately geared to produce one kind of person: a college professor. This is perhaps why Bartholet and West think so highly of government schools, but for the rest of us sentient human beings, public education is beyond reform.

My second objection is the bigoted tone and pejorative language she uses to caricature the so-called “homeschooling regime” educating a “whopping” 3-4% of all school age children. Bartholet, like her pseudo-intellectual forebears, props up the most prejudicial stereotype of homeschooling parents being a mass of uneducated, inbred, child molesting morons clinging to their guns and Fundamentalist Protestant religion, citing extreme cases of deranged people (who, yes, used homeschooling) to spray paint everyone the same color. The language suggests that abuse is rampant within the movement citing “many” and “a significant subset” without providing so much as a count or ratio to substantiate the language. She cites “chilling” cases of neglect, abuse, and isolation, without citing the numerous benefits that homeschooling has provided despite the academy, not just to the homeschooled children, but to our society and its future. In any case, her repeated ad nauseam argument is a straw man since what the author really objects to is not homeschooling, but parenting.

Third, her premises and arguments are false. Practically every sentence, at least those that try to make a point, is biased if not outright wrong. Let us examine just a few.

“Homeschooling parents can, under current law, deny their children any meaningful education and subject them to abuse and neglect free from the scrutiny that helps protect children in regular schools”

In Northern Virginia where we homeschooled, the state required we apply every year and that at least one us have a college education. We also had to use standardized tests and meet minimum scores to continue homeschooling or be put on probation. Should the problem continue another testing cycle we would be fired. Of course, our daughters demolished the standardized scores and we were not fired from administering (not necessarily teaching) their education. Is this criterion used for public school systems? Imagine if that were so.

“[Homeschool] parents are committed to homeschooling largely because they reject mainstream, democratic culture and values and want to ensure that their children adopt their own particular religious and social views…that exposing their children to ideas such as secularism, atheism, feminism, and value relativism is inconsistent with the values they espouse and undermines their ability to inculcate in their children their beliefs in the sacred, absolute truth of the Bible.”

Homeschooling families reject mainstream culture for the very fact that it has become, not only toxic and the antithesis of an educated society, but that it is an undemocratic institution intolerant of dissent. It is not secularism, feminism, etc, that disturbs the homeschooling families—it’s the lack of discourse. In the government schools, ideas contrary to this ruling paradigm, starting with homeschooling itself, are given absolutely no quarter. This tradition carries on to higher education where people are not allowed to speak out or critically think for fear of academic reprisal or even physical abuse. That includes Harvard . Try walking on campus with MAGA hat and see what happens or just disagree with the professor on any sociological topic and be summarily dismissed and targeted for abuse.

“Unregulated homeschooling, therefore, badly compromises the development of capacities for autonomy in the children subjected to it . . . . [T]he children in some of these homes are being schooled quite intentionally for lives of submission to authority, not for autonomy . . . . They are discouraged from developing either the will or the skills to break those bonds”

Am I the only one that sees the irony here? Submitting to authority would mean sacrificing one’s children to the public-school Moloch and that’s precisely why homeschooling families rebel, including the students who quickly see the difference. The thing the really galls Bartholet and West is not that the children are slavishly obedient to Authority, but that they are not slavishly obedient to their pseudo-educational regime and the shit they sell as autonomy and knowledge.

And when it comes to creating autonomy, who are they kidding? The public institutions they speak of create intellectual dependence whereby students graduate without the most fundamental of life skills other than, maybe, birth control. By college they are told to work in groups where all eyes look to someone to take responsibility (usually a homeschool graduate) because they won’t, can’t or don’t really care to. They claim graduates of public institutions are prepared for the workforce, but they end up jobless, in debt, and dependent on mom-and-dad well into their thirties. Then they end up being dependent on the state where they cry for loan forgiveness, minimum wage increases, free birth control, free healthcare, and free education whereby it will be worth every penny.

Finally, Bartholet never compares her premises against the real regime with near-absolute intellectual hegemony: the public-school system. She talks, even screams, incessantly about children being abused everywhere in the “homeschool regime” without comparison to the rampant abuse that exists in the public school system, starting with the waste of human potential that is the 12+ years of mind-numbing indoctrination, nihilism, and suicidal boredom. Our children go into the system full of hope and anticipation, only to come out unable to write a complete sentence, not inclined to ever read another book, uninformed of their own and the world’s history, mathematically incompetent at every level, overly conscience of imagined rights, overly indulged, socially stratified, confused of identity, void of virtue, void of truth, void of future, void of hope.  They become the very model of ignorance and dependence.

Homeschooling is on the rise (which Bartholet recognizes but never adequately explains) because people like the thing it produces. The homeschool educated, now coming of age, show the public education system as the complete and utter failure it is. Wherever Bartholet uses the term “homeschool” one could substitute “public” and her premise would be a thousand times valid.

When I was an undergrad at University of Maryland, a visiting speaker named Rob Lamp gave a two-hour multimedia presentation called “Rock Music Close Up”. The speaker himself was a born-again Christian who had once been a drummer in a rock band. He subsequently researched the history, philosophy, lives, deaths, and lyrics of rock musicians and their craft. In all, it was an exposé that most college students would have discounted regardless of the facts.

I remember a quote from that presentation which I’ve since substantiated: “One quick way to destroy a society is through its music” – Vladimir Lenin.

As I walk through a day, it amazes me how I encounter music—usually Rock or Pop—unsolicited:

• Advertisements now pluck the strings of nostalgia using classic Rock hits to sell cars and technology to aging boomers.
• I stop at the gas station which now pumps rock music into me while I pump gasoline into my car.
• I walk around the mall where every store blares their music inside and out.
• I go shopping for groceries and hear rock music in every aisle.
• I drive to work and some turd blasts his gangster rap right through my Versa.

It’s everywhere, it’s loud, and it’s low quality. Once at a summer resort I went to the outdoor pool after a day at a conference. Since no guest had shown up, the four or so lifeguards waiting around were blaring some loud, obnoxious music where the eff bomb was rapped every other word. After I silently registered my disdain for the musical selection, the music was toned down. Who deigns to think such music is appropriate for a family swimming pool in an expensive resort in the country?

The generation of MTV has added visuals to the active listening of music. Now one no longer imagines the connotation of a song. The explicit sex, violence, nihilism, and decadence is in your face.

In the book “Save Me from Myself”, Brian “Head” Welch, guitarist for the band Korn, talks about the hit song A.D.I.D.A.S (All day I dream about sex). His pre-school daughter, who he was raising alone, was heard singing those lyrics out loud in the house despite Welch failed attempt to insulate her from his scene. That was where Welch turned a corner.

Music is a spiritual tool used in liturgy, praise, and worship in churches. It is also used at rock concerts to work fans up into a frenzy of devotion, adoration, worship, anger, lawlessness, violence, and destruction; sometimes it’s a descent into depression and suicide. Quite frankly it’s anything the artists wish to impart.

My daughters attended an R5 concert, a new band supposedly on the rise with an audience composed of teenage girls. At one point, a band member tossed his kerchief into the audience. It landed on my youngest who was immediately assaulted by a pack of blaspheming girls dedicated to obtaining the relic.

In high school there was always a few people so identified with a band and their music, it was practically idolatry. One girl could not seem to find any escape from her orbit around Judas Priest. All her shirts, leather, jewelry, ceramics, and creations would have their emblem. Had tattoos been vogue, I’m sure she’d have their moniker on her forehead. Another dude I worked with at a grocery store was offended if you did not like Motley Crue. Same thing with a kid in my history class who was devoted to Black Sabbath. It seemed they had no identity outside of a band and its philosophy.

Music is not neutral. Music defines life and culture. The sticky message of music spills out to children unavoidably—through home, friends, and school. Music sends a message and we absorb it. Over time it’s reradiate back into the culture. Romance, drugs, sex, abuse, violence, explicit language, objectification of women, suicide, the occult, and lawlessness constantly drip and percolate into American life and we wonder about all the social pathologies affecting us.

Listen to our music. We are what we eat—a diet of violence, anger, greed, brokenness, depression, and promiscuity. Some of us eat all day long.

You may be thinking I am reading too much into it, that music is just art, and so forth. But say I was playing music in my car or in my house all the time—do you mind? Perhaps you say it is just my business—it does not matter. What if I told you the music I listened to was White power music, Nazi black metal, and Aryan Pagan? Would it still not matter? If music is the medium hate groups use to send their message, what message is in your music? It matters.

If I were king for a day and could change one simple thing, I’d change the music we deliver to ourselves in the public sphere.  Fresh Markets always plays classical or baroque music in the store and it’s not hard to see what spirit is created by it’s use. The atmosphere is calming and salubrious.

Preferences can change with exposure. Great lengths are taken to insure our physical environment is clean and pure. The same should go for what we see and what we hear.

See introduction to Mass Tourism series here for the motivation behind these essays

The train to Regensburg was different—an old “cattle car” model with too many people. It was amazing we got a seat let alone two in the first-class cabin.

Disgorged at the Regensburg Hbf, we marched our way with the crowd of visitors to the town center in search of the entitlement City Pass that would provide free bus transportation. The swell of people explained why we could only get accommodations on the outskirts of town and the bus was our means there.

Before schlepping to the hotel, we toured the Christmas markets and narrow cobblestone lanes of the medieval city—the only one in Germany not bombed to smithereens during WWII. The terrifying St. Peter’s Cathedral was one of those treasures preserved in all its antiquity, with stained glass windows some of the oldest in the world. Even older is the Domspatzen boys choir—the oldest choir in the world started in 965 AD—whom we came to hear at the 10 AM Mass the next morning. The logistics of arriving via bus route did not appeal to us but what other choice did we have?

We toured the Cathedral during the day and exited out the side door into a courtyard. Across the way was a hotel, one that Kimberly supposedly considered but was booked solid. As we walked by the front door, Kimberly wondered if they just happen to have a vacancy.

Now this is classic Kimberly’s faith at work. In my head, I’m thinking, “Stick with the original plan, don’t screw with it or we’ll be out on the street.” In her head, “God will provide” On her suggestion to go in and inquire I relented—I recognized the pattern and somehow knew what was about to happen. Oh surprise, they had a vacant room available: double occupancy, on the quiet side near the cathedral. Indeed, when we checked into our very large room with 12-foot ceilings our entire view outside the window was eclipsed by the cathedral so close you could almost reach out and touch it. Kimberly was giddy: “God is good!”

We went back out to the crowded Christmas markets to get the Knacker sandwich for which Regensburg was famous. Night settled, and we decided to wander back to our most convenient hotel passing the cathedral on the way.

A young man working the front Domplatz gave us each a votive candle and invited us in to what was some sort of youth oriented Eucharistic adoration called Night Fever. Inside: On the central altar was a monstrance surrounded by kneeling people and candles on the steps. Young vocalists and a keyboardist stood next to one of the massive pillars to provide a ethereal, contemporary,l yet reverent musical atmosphere. At some point we approached and placed our candles on the steps, kneeling and pausing for a moment to pray, reflect, give thanks. To think that moments ago we were gawking American tourist interlopers; then as Catholics rightfully worshiping with our German brothers and sisters in an ancient Cathedral—the patrimony of all Christians should they come to the fullness of faith in the holy Mother Church.

This sentiment continued the next morning where we got to Mass early – or at least we thought it was early. All seats in the nave not obstructed by a massive pillar were firmly occupied. Oddly, the seats on the transepts were mostly empty and so we took a couple with a clear view of the altar. Eventually it was standing room only and a moment of guilt perturbed my conscience as many had to stand the entire Mass while I sat comfortably in the heated pew of the transept. The guilt was short lived as I recalled how every week I stand for the entire and lengthier divine liturgy as is customary for the Eastern Catholics. It’ll build character.

I learned later why our seats were so available at first: we could only see a sliver of the choir which was positioned way behind the altar down the back-corridor part of the cathedral appropriately called “the choir”. Nevertheless, our hearing was not at all impaired and with the first singing of the Kyrie I felt a shudder upon the beauty of such sound.

Although it was Novus Ordo, the Credo was sung in Latin with the same neumes as at St. Catherine but alternating stanzas between choir and congregation. Sunlight beamed down from the pointed arch windows and the smoke of the incense during offertory could be seen to rise higher and higher into the limitless vault like prayers of the saints rising up to heaven. The smells, the bells, and Kapelle of the Mass made it altogether awe inspiring. I must say that this Mass Tourism experience is ranked one of the highest and I thank Kimberly for supernaturally setting it up.

See introduction to Mass Tourism series here for the motivation behind these essays

The plans were made in early summer with a sale on Icelandair from DC to Europe. Once again, we were going to visit divine and Catholic Garmisch-Partenkirchen but in December when the legendary Christmas markets abounded. Given the arduous events of the year, I wasn’t going to begrudge this time away—we needed it.

The only thought I gave to the date was how they squared with the work week. Only as the day approached did I realize our departure late on Saturday afternoon and flying across time zones all day Sunday would make it impossible to attend Mass on the day of obligation. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. It might be possible to attend Mass at wee St. Sebastian if they happen to have it Sunday evening. It was unlikely we’d be in Munich in the morning even if I knew of a place. Since Mom is a Byzantine, she doesn’t fret about such things.

And this is where God provided in a most peculiar way. While munching trail mix at gate A19 at Dulles with quite a lot of time to kill—arrived early, checked in fast, got through security which was completely empty and multiple security lanes to choose from—an announcement blared over the PA which I zoned out as per usual. Except my mind match-filtered on “Catholic mass” “chapel” within the usual gibberish of flight changes and people needing to get their late ass to the gate.

On the way to the chapel across from gate A31—a small hike—I imagined this mass attended by maybe 2 people—us—and their luggage.

We arrived at the chapel, a room for roughly two dozen people clearly adorned as generically hallowed. Some people showed up through the door the same time as we did: an Asian woman with the uniform of a domestic airline, a guy in a ski vest, and an older gentleman. A small altar stood at the back with goblet and opened book indicative of Mass preparation. On the left side were two men of Middle Eastern appearance prostrating on prayer rugs and rising again—clearing performing the daily prayers required of Islam. Not sure why they were there since the front door showed the regular vigil mass on Saturday at 5:45 PM which was nigh.

A few more showed up and sat in a chair or knelt on the carpeted floor – no kneelers in this chapel. The celebrant came out of a side room, an elderly priest with thinning white hair. Despite Muslims still doing their thing, Mass commenced on time. This was the first Sunday of Advent.

A religious sister across the aisle from me said the responses very loud and clear and I felt I needed to compete with her. I think she was a “shill” to help the sheepish make-shift congregants realize this was a Mass even though it was at an airport. It worked—people began to speak up.

After the liturgy of the word, the priest asked for a show of hands of who would be taking communion. Because we wolfed down trail mix minutes before, we did not raise our hands. He counted out an equivalent number of host bread and started the liturgy of the Eucharist.

At the sign of peace, the priest joined the group changing hands. What struck me is the truly catholic complexion of this little group—people of Asian, African, European, Latin American origins. Many may claim diversity, but only the catholic church can claim unity at the same time: one bread, one cup, one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The original mega-church on which the sun does not set—accept no imitations.

Like many people who do their TV and movie watching intentionally, I got pulled into a series call Stranger Things via Netflix. Given that I grew up in the depicted era of the early 1980s—riding bikes with banana seats and playing Dungeons & Dragons—it had a ready appeal, but it took me a while to get into it. I would have abandoned watching more than the first episode but we really did not have another series on our viewing radar and many kept insisting it was worth the follow through. So, we watched the entire season.

In my viewing opinion, I thought it was good, not great. But what I find most interesting is my total lack of concern with the way the entertainment industry uses its children. I am not the only one to overlook this issue because it seems no one is concerned—at all. It simply does not register to the dulled public mind, who raves about Stranger Things and other viewing binges. But think about what must happen: child actors are instructed to do things by adult directors and handlers that the minor may later regret in adult life or may not understand fully in the present occupation. And this should be totally illegal.

Call me a prude but I don’t think it is OK to coerce a minor in the movie business to depict having sex—even if the other participants are minors. Why is that OK? It’s not a leap of policy to later suggest that the other person may be eighteen or nineteen and then (somehow) it’s not OK with anyone anymore; in fact, it’s illegal. But how the hell would we know? At this point we simply let the temperature rise a degree or two and, once acclimated, ready to accept the next tier of abuse without batting an eye. On the other end of the spectrum, at what age is it not OK to depict two minors having sex? Can they be twelve, six or sixteen? Is there a line? Is it the age of consent? Didn’t David Bowie have sex with a minor—but it was OK since she consented and supposedly knew what she was doing. If there is this sort of latitude for making the lines blurry, the frontier will advance into newer and newer territory. At no point do progressives become conservatives.

Call me puritan but I don’t think it is ok to coerce a minor to use foul language for the benefit of commerce. Yeah, I know kids have mouths like sailors—I was one of them and as young as first grade; even got sent home with a note to the parents to sign. The difference is, an adult or teacher did not make me do it for pay or part of a performance. Any regret I have with having such a prodigious potty mouth is my moral problem alone. But how would I feel if older kids, let alone adults, made me do it for the benefit of money, fame, or simply belonging?

How about the depiction of murderous violence done by children to others for the cause of entertainment? In Stranger Things, the central twelve-year-old girl disembowels and snaps necks with her mind. The much-vaunted movie Kick-Ass depicts a nine-year-old superheroine who total blood baths a gang of bad guys. But that’s OK. The young actress will grow up one day, may have a nine-year-old daughter of her own, and will have to explain her acting career to her offspring: “No honey, you can’t watch that movie yet—you’re not old enough” to what? Watch another nine-year-old murder the hell out of people, minors having sex, and a teenage boy jerk-off into a paper towel? But it’s quite OK for children depict what they shouldn’t watch as entertainment. As an aside, I watched the Kick-Ass movie on an international flight where presumably any kid of any age could have watched it regardless of what parents thought appropriate.

G.K. Chesterton characterized our return to paganism to a return to the abuse of and cruelty to children. When I read this in Everlasting Man, this was a bolt from nowhere but as I pondered it I found no basis of refutation. We forget that the special status we impart to children was a Christian directive from Christ himself which, admittedly, took long to fully evolve even in the Christian West—but it did, based on that germ of an idea divinely revealed. And how were the civilized Greek, Roman and other ancient cultures treating children? If it’s worth it to you, go found out, (you won’t like it) just spare me the usual ad hominem the Church institutionalizes child abuse and I have no leg to stand on. The Church no more institutionalizes the abuse of children then does the public-school system; indeed the Church because of the great (deserved) criticism and scrutiny is safer for kids than the public-school system and certainly more so than Hollywood.

The ultimate return to paganism and its ritual cruelty to children is abortion-on-demand. On our current moral course, it won’t even matter which side of the womb a child is on, the license has already been issued. And as usual, the soul-killing industry of Hollywood leads the way.

And we will gladly watch it.

See introduction to Mass Tourism series here for the motivation behind these essays.

The customary vacation to the OBX brings with it the lack of enthusiasm in going to Mass outside my own parish on a day of obligation. Why? Because going to Mass at either of the two parishes on this protracted island (Redeemer by the Sea in Kitty Hawk and Our Lady of the Seas in Buxton) is a lot like going to a Protestant church, by the sea or elsewhere, in many respects. Other than the recognition that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ—a deciding factor—-just about everything else co-opts the purest in bankrupt Protestant culture and form.

Architecturally, Redeemer looks like a corporate or municipal facility. Other than a sign that indicates its function, there is nothing outside that signifies it is a sacred place of any make or model. In the strictest of terms it is stark and created for efficient function with frugal economic consideration to boot. It lacks all three of the essential element of classic Catholic Church architecture: 1) Permanence. It could be defended that anything on OBX will be swept into the ocean but still I have been in beach houses of higher quality. 2) Verticality. No doubt the Wright Brothers Memorial wins the loftiness prize hereabouts but it’s not too much to ask that the edifice face the rising sun in some awe-inspiring way especially when you have “by the sea” in your name (which is a misnomer since it is on the west side of the coastal highway “by the muffler shop” but that’s not as spiritual). 3) Iconography. A crude, unhewn wood cross draped with white linen was all that presented on the front; stations of the cross were seen high up on the back wall far out of sight. That’s it. No corpus, no crucifix, no tabernacle, no graven images, and absolutely artless in the extreme. Even the pews had a coarse functionality—thick wood benches made of scratched planking. This edifice was designed for one thing: a large throng of Tommy Bahamas to show up alongside regular parishioners during the on season.

Our Lady in Buxton is considerably better with a Rosary Garden, outdoor stations of the Cross, unique Italian woodcarving of Our Lady by the Sea, and an interior wooden architecture with small flying buttresses on the outside (a peculiar idea since the pointed arches of the interior are not about to collapse under tons of stone). Unlike Redeemer, this building is actually by a body of water, the sound, which shows nicely as a sharp line through the large clear windows behind the altar. Sadly, the altar—the most central element of the Mass and Catholic Church building—is the biggest piece of kitsch I’ve ever seen in a sacred space: a rectangular white slab atop a turquoise cresting wave carrying way too far the beachy-by-the-sea theme. There is a tabernacle nailed to the wall off to the side albeit one designed by IKEA and void of symbolism.

This vacation I visited Redeemer whcih, liturgically, was more like a non-denominational Bible Church than a Catholic Mass. The solemn, silent sentiment conducive of prayer and preparation as one knelled in the sanctuary after entering was replaced with social marketplace clamor bordering on mayhem. We opened by greeting one another and introducing ourselves under the priest’s directive. I went beyond the call of duty to ask the guy behind me where he was from, testing the idea that most people in attendance were from out of town like me. Alas, no, the poor man lived on the other side of the bridge and this was his parish church, week after insufferable week.

But there is always the Novus Ordo to rely on, right? I held the laminated card ready to respond in English the long pieces I know better in Latin. Interestingly, some of the printed responses had the Latin heading. But the laminated card was unnecessary. The Confiteor was replaced with a silent private reflection; the Gloria was sung in the kindergarten style that I dread; the Credo was replaced with a renewal of baptismal vows which I’d never heard was an option; we held hands during the Our Father; we remained standing throughout communion; we lifted our hands Pentacostal like toward all the mothers being blessed on this Mother’s Day; the Mass ended without the prayer to St. Michael. And the marketplace clamor that started the service resumed on the last note of the recessional.

This and similar experiences correlate with significant spiritual changes afoot in the household. Since the beginning of the year Kimberly has been attending services and adult education classes at Holy Transfiguration, Greek Catholic Melkite church in McLean. Through several intersections, we had had encounters with HT that sustained more than a mild interest over the years. Considering that Melkites total 1.5 million people worldwide in comparison to 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, these encounters may be more than fortuitous.

And during this time, on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday I awoke early in the morning in excruciating pain.  Before the day was over I was on pain killers, anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxers and prednisone. An MRI on Fat Tuesday showed disc deterioration and severe nerve impact to my left arm and hand which had lost function. I was unable to drive myself to work or Mass or anywhere. I had to cancel a much-anticipated trip with my daughter to Reykjavik. Navigating the medical options was bewildering but after some weeks and second opinions came to a hard decision. One month after the initial episode I was undergoing surgery for anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) followed by recovery. Along the way, a so-called blizzard in an otherwise tame winter delayed getting a second opinion; a Leyland cypress fell in the yard; my dog started bleeding from the anus; the clothes dryer died; the outlet receptacle was wrong; my car needed a new fuel pump even though I wasn’t driving Brother Jerome anywhere. For the entirety of Lent I was homebound and my only spiritual outlet was HT through Kimberly. Why my own parish would not or could not come to provide communion or moral support is both a mystery and another story.

In any case, I have been exposed more and more to Orthodox teaching (just finishing Timothy Ware’s Orthodox Church) which in many ways lumps the experience of Western Christianity be it Roman Catholic or Protestant into one pot of common history, never mind that there were once at each other’s throats. But the problem that I often see, and the Orthodox point out, is the taint of Protestantism in the Roman Catholic Church as is evident in many parishes like Redeemer by the Sea. It’s astounding how many Catholics I encounter who act Protestant in every manner, or, if they indeed ascribe to all magisterial teaching, have no idea what or why. And from my own Mass tourism, Catholic Parishes have less regard for the sacred, the tradition, or the patrimony of their own Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers seem to have made an indelible mark in modern Catholic architecture, theology, liturgy, art and thought.

Such things have not occurred in the vein of the Orthodox which developed their own history after schism in 1054. Their teaching highly coheres with Roman Catholicism with many of the differences favoring the Orthodox in my humble estimation. Whereas Roman Catholicism as evolved to be monarchical and juridical, the Orthodox have evolved to be collegial and liturgical.

I suppose I have been lucky to have been introduced to an orthodox form of Roman Catholicism which, as it turns out, is rare. It may be a fait accompli that I will cross the Mediterranean and become Melkite; Kimberly has already decided and will be chrismated next month and will be entering the Catholic Church through the eastern door. I could not be happier and I can’t help see that clearly God’s hand has been in this more than my own. During a radio interview with Peter Kreeft, a man like myself called in to ask about his wife who had not followed the caller into the catholic church from a Protestant tradition. Kreeft deftly responded: “You are introducing your wife to the true Church, she is introducing you to the true faith; be patient.”

I am not exactly sure what Kreeft meant but it I think it applies to me. Stay tuned.