Ash Wednesday, 2020
Ash Wednesday is the day after Mardi Gras. Ash Wednesday begins
the 40 days of fasting and contrition leading up to the Easter
Sunday holiday. Ash Wednesday begins the Christian season of self
remorse similar to the Muslim season of Ramadan.
On Ash Wednesday Christians go to Church and the priest puts a
cross of ashes on the believer’s forehead.
Today I was watching the FOX and CNN networks in anticipation of
Trump’s news conference about the Corona Virus. Of course Trump
just spoke in nice generalities and told us how great our
government was and how it was protecting us from harm.
Total bullshit of course. But what I noticed were the news anchors,
both male, on FOX and CNN with their crosses of ashes on their
foreheads! Of course no women had those ash crosses on their
foreheads. Vanity prevails.
But it reminded me of my time at Saint Leo’s Catholic School in
Parma, Ohio ( a suburb of Cleveland) when I was 7 years old back in
1959.
It was Ash Wednesday and all of us Polish and Irish kids (well, most
kids were Polish and I had a few altercations with them). The nuns
punished me accordingly.
I had just turned 7 and was in the back of the church and I saw
everyone going up to the front of the church to have that cross of
ashes put on their foreheads.
“No way!” I said to myself and I slipped out of the back of the
church and hid in the boy’s lavatory.
When the Mass was over and everyone went back to their classroom
I went back to my 1st grade room.
The nun asked me, “Timmy, where are your ashes on your
forehead?”
Me, “I had to go to the lavatory and I washed them off. Sorry Sister.”
The nun harrumphed, but let it go.
I’ve always considered that lying to authoritarian figures is a
courageous and honorable act.
I think being a Libertarian is genetic. I just instinctively hate and
distrust people telling me what to do.
TJM
Timmy Tae's Thoughts 
I remember neighbor kids having the ashes on their foreheads. I thought it to be some sort of punishment? What did I know, I was Lutheran soon to become Presbyterian (I was baptized Catholic). It seemed to me that these Catholic kids had a hard role to play in the church and in life. But… I thought the fish thing on Fridays was so cool, I envied them to no end
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Fish on Friday. Many Fridays our family would go to Lee’s Restaurant for the jumbo shrimp. Oh, it was delicious. And a woman on the piano would take song requests. That was fun.
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