Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
“Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous: The Prince of life, who died, reigns immortal. Speak, Mary, declaring What you saw, wayfaring. ‘The tomb of Christ, who is living, The glory of Jesus’ resurrection; Bright angels attesting …'”
I seem to do very little apart from putting up good wishes for various holidays. Must. Do. Better. Anyway, in the meantime: Happy Easter and Happy Passover. Orthodox Easter next Sunday but let me wish everyone happiness for that as well.
So it was interesting in a slow down and get a good look at the media wreck by the side of the highway kind of way – watching the Malia-Obama-Goes-to-Mexico story getting scrubbed off newspaper sites the other day. My daughter was actually surfing the intertubules that afternoon, noticed how the story was there and gone again, in the blink of an eye: ‘Hey, there’s another Obama vay-cay, how many weeks since the last one? Whoops!’ Quite honestly, we had never seen the like; a news story appearing and disappearing like that, and I thought at first that maybe a couple of newspapers had fallen for a fake story and then withdrawn it almost at once. But no … it was was a genuine story, and massively-withdrawn almost as soon as it was posted here, there and almost everywhere.
The stillness of the dead world’s winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groaned, ‘The King is gone.’
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
‘From the great deep to the great deep he goes.’
***
Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.
Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Even to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.
The Passing of the King, from Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The strifes and sadnesses and laughter and joy and work and play and songs and silences of another year are now sealed up and put aside and stored away in the attic of memory. And now the new year with its prospects and menaces, its and tediums and discoveries, its old friends and new ones, comes faintly into view.
2012 will be a contentious and eventful year. Be good to each other. Keep your sense of humor. Don’t personalize the political, and correct or avoid those who do. The personal is too valuable to be debased in that way. Be hopeful. Have gratitude. Fear God and dread nought.
As another poet said, “luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.” And so they are.
I wish all our ChicagoBoyz contributors, readers, friends, families, and all people of good will, a heaping portion of good luck in 2012 and a mere dash of trouble, just enough to flavor the dish.
(Nativity scene at St. Peters in the Loop, Chicago.)
(For Catholics, the Christmas season starts on December 25, and goes until January 9, this year.)