John Zdrojewski, our JFZ, wrote to point out some possible romantic kerfuffle, which he construed from the photographic evidence.
Julie,
It does not look as if Gene was with Clara at this event. The first panel top shows that they were not sitting next to each other. The first panel middle left seems to show him dancing with someone else. No wonder he looks so contemplative: "I'm with the wrong girl!". And, "worst of all, she's with another guy!"
Hi John, how's sunny California today?
True enough, Clara is sitting on Gene Norman's right! Maybe she went to the ball with Gene Norman. But then, the seating is not in a strict lady-gent formation, is it? Maybe some of the attendees came stag or as a group; maybe things blurred a bit when they combined those two long tables. And whose idea was that, anyway?
I love your ideas for what Gene is thinking. Luckily, our veteran guerilla fighter never did sit around and say "Oh, well." He's sitting across the table from her; lots of opportunity there.
(Mom told me, just a few months before she died, about her Senior Prom. She and Gene arranged to meet inside, on the dance floor at the school. Why? - because nonstudents were not allowed at the Kensington Prom; the front doors were locked and people were checked. So like I said, they met inside.)
Look at the expression on her face in the photo at table. She does not look unhappy. I would say her mind is pretty busy!
Now I shall reveal the existence of A Letter. Some girl sent Clara a two-page, handwritten screed, in the style of your worst nightmare of high-school romantic politics. The gist was "Gene's taking me to the Winter Crystal Ball ha ha ha don't show this to anyone." Was this harridan's claim true, or a bluff, a vain, hopeful boast? Was this harridan the same person as Gene's Tango partner in the set piece? Why did Clara bother to keep the letter?
Well, all that high-school stuff was soon dropped like a sloughed shell. Gene and Clara went on the same retreat one weekend and walked around the garden of the retreat house, talking a little. Deal done.
Gene Norman was our baby-doc.
Did you know that Father Tomiak had been a Rhodes Scholar? And that he baptized me? He died about two years ago. Such a mind and he never made Monsignor! I bet he was a threat to the chancery. I wonder if he deplored, as your father and I did, the loss of reverence in the Novus Ordo mass. And perhaps dared to express his views publicly or face to face to a bishop who, on a political basis, owed his crozier and mitre to a participant at Vatican II ?
John
To see the aforementioned baptism post, go to Gene and Clara's and look down along the right sidebar. A section called "Labels" is an alphabetic list of all the labels I have ever slapped on any post. Click on "Tomiak." All posts bearing that label show up in your browser.
The post titled "Father Tomiak" has the photo we are looking for:
Thank you for that reminder that he was a Rhodes Scholar. His official bio does not mention it.
It seems very probable that Fr. Tomiak deplored the "loss of reverence in the Novus Ordo." The traditional Latin liturgy, centered on the Tridentine Mass, was not only reverent; it was beautiful. A person of faith who also has education in history sufficient to understand the significance of the Church's historical, linguistic, artistic, and musical heritage, and who has also any sort of aesthetic perception, or understanding of politics and culture-war, is going to be appalled at the desecrations of something like "Vatican II." And a man of courage is going to speak up, when he sees inherited treasures being swept into trash cans.
And in a war, such a man must be stopped.
He will be stopped, either by a man who is full-on a soldier for the Left; or by some Daniel Berrigan wannabe looking to get his picture in the paper like his hero did; or by some second-rater whose only means of getting ahead is over the backs of his competitors, once he has kicked the legs out from under them.
Such is human nature, and such is the nature of politics and of war, cultural or otherwise. We lost that man. We can look around other pasts, and the present, and see similar travesties play out. Can't we?
Julie
