Rest in Peace, Fr. Jim Miceli.

Yesterday, at the beginning of the noon Mass in celebration of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we learned that our former pastor, Fr. Jim Miceli had died.
Details were scarce. He had only just retired a few months back due to poor health.
Last night, the local newspaper published an article about Fr. Miceli on it's website. The article said that he had died of an apparent heart attack while at a clinic in Minnesota. I think many of us thought he was still in the Rome area. I had no idea that he was in a clinic (much less in Minnesota).
The photo on the left was taken four years ago when he baptized our son.
There will be a rosary for him Friday evening; his funeral Mass will be Saturday morning. Our Archbishop will celebrate the Mass and I'm sure it will be standing room only.

My Great-Grandfather.

The photo on the left is of the headstone for the graves of my grandmother's parents - Ludwik & Veronica Szymanski. They are buried in St. Stanislaus cemetery in Buffalo NY.

I have no idea when this particular headstone was placed there; I am reasonably certain that it was not put there in 1961 when my great-grandmother died. I don't believe there would have been money available at that time (I could be wrong, of course).
The words Ojciec and Matka are the Polish words for Father and Mother, so I'm assuming the headstone was placed there by one or more of their children and not their grandchildren.

The stone is impressive. I'm sure it cost a great deal of money. Unfortunately, there is an error in the date of Ludwik's birth. The year is given as 1873, but that's not correct. It's understandable why that date was put on the stone. After all, it's the date given as his birth year on his death certificate. This would not be the first time a death certificate had a mistake on it. It's more common than one might think.

My genealogical resource shows that the actual year of his birth is either 1866 or 1867.

In the 1910 Federal census, his age is given as 44. The 1915 New York State census lists his age as 48 and in 1920 he said he was 53 years old. You do the math.
I have a copy of his application for U.S. citizenship from August, 1894 where he gives his date of birth as August 21, 1866.

To further complicate the matter, when he arrived in New York aboard the SS Eider on March, 15, 1887, he gave his age as 23.

His death certificate gives his parents names as Michael Szymanski and Apollonia Grat......the marriage record for the couple gives their marriage date as 1860 (when Michael was 24 and Apollonia was 23). It's seems reasonable to me that it would be more likely that Ludwik was born when his mother was 29.

There are marriage, baptism and death records, for the Catholic parish in Poland where the family lived, available on microfilm from the LDS. One day, I'll order the microfilm and see for myself when he was baptized. I'm sure it'll be closer to 1867 than the 1873 date engraved on his tombstone.

One more thing. Veronika's death certificate gives her date of birth as January 27, 1877. The same census records that show Ludwik was born in 1867 and not 1873 show Veronika was born in 1880 and not 1877.

Arrrgh.

No, this is not a post about pirating.

I'll be working an especially long workday today, so no time for a proper post. It should resume Saturday........or not. Who knows? Could be Monday.



Arrgh.

Christmas Parade Crowd Video.

First, a confession. I did not watch the President's speech last night. I was at work. The truth be told, I probably wouldn't have watched it had I not been at work....I, more than likely, would have been with my wife and son at our town's annual Christmas parade.

Of course, I've seen video snippets from the speech and there's more than enough written about it on the Internet. I was going to give my thoughts on what he had to say, but I found something that interests me more.

I went to the Rome News Tribune website and found videos from last night's parade. The video I'm posting is one taken of the crowd. My wife, son, our friend Val and her daughter are seen at 5:58 on the video.

It's the Biology, Stupid.

In comes as no surprise to me that columnist Richard Cohen doesn't think too highly of the "Manhattan Declaration". In a piece published in today's Washington Post Cohen attacks the declaration's condemnation of, so-called, "same sex marriage".
To Cohen, the issue is a matter of civil rights. He compares laws that prohibit "same sex marriage" to the laws that once prohibited interracial marriage.

As most of my readers know, I am married to a Filipina. Prior to the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, she and I could not have married in the state of Georgia. Using Cohen's twisted logic, I should be empathetic towards gays wishing to marry.
He's wrong, of course.
Allow me to explain the difference.

The race-based restrictions on marriage were based on erroneous beliefs concerning the "racial superiority" of Caucasians over "non-whites". The ban on interracial marriages was based on the racist idea that children born of such a marriage would pollute the "white race".
Of course, we all know now that no race is superior or inferior to any other race. The children that come from interracial marriages are equal in every way to children coming from "same race" unions.

There never has been any legitimate reason to prohibit marriage between a man and woman of different races.

The same cannot be said about "marriages" between two men or two women. As much as some would wish it were otherwise, the ultimate biological and evolutionary purpose of sex is to reproduce the species. I know it isn't fashionable to say this, but sex is not about self expression. In this day of contraceptives and abortion-on-demand, people seem to have forgotten this basic biological fact.

Cohen and this writer believe that our objections to "same-sex marriage" are simply based on our misguided biblical interpretations.

Perhaps someone should explain the "birds and bees" to Mr. Cohen.
It's the biology, stupid.