The School of Procrastination

I think how your family approaches life in your childhood can set the tone for your adulthood later on. While some parents demand excellence in all endeavors, others may let things slide. My mother and father came from humble backgrounds and even though they never ventured too far from being average people, they always tried to nurture my creativity and instill strong moral values. One weak spot that I've been thinking about this past year has been my parents' tendency to procrastinate.

Sometime in the spring, my mother thought about transcribing all of her illegible hand-written recipes so my brother and I would have them. Since she's not tech savvy, she wanted me to get the old electric typewriter out of storage. The machine hadn't been used in a couple of decades so by now the ribbons were bone dry. Did anyone sell replacements in this day and age? I made a trip to a nearby office supply store only to discover that yes, they still sold ribbons but they were out of stock. Now my mother obsessed about getting her typewriter working again. Every few days, she'd nag me to check out different stores and when I did, they either didn't sell them or they were out of stock. We finally had to order them online.

After installing the replacement ribbons, I got some paper and tried to test the typewriter out. Nothing happened when I pressed the keys so then I had to search the internet to identify the problem. Thankfully, there were some typewriter enthusiasts out there on Youtube who suspected a broken drive belt. I opened up the bottom to find the dried rubber drive belt crumbled into small pieces. These Youtube experts recommended using o-rings as a substitute so after doing my best to take some measurements, I headed to the local hardware store. They had a nice stock of Culligan o-rings for water filters that were packaged in plastic bags which made it difficult to tell if it would be an exact fit. Thankfully, the o-ring I purchased fit nicely on the typewriter and it started working once again after a long slumber.

So after being badgered for months to get the typewriter working again, what happens? It continues to sit on the kitchen table unused as of this writing. I think my mother's chronic pain partly explains her inability to type out those recipes but looking back at our family history, I think it's more than that. What about on her “good days” when the pain isn't as bad?

Procrastination always seemed to be part of our family and I wonder if some people have a genetic predisposition toward it. I recall her buying a Juice Man blender years ago in an attempt to embrace a healthier lifestyle. The machine was only used once and then it sat in the cabinet collecting dust along with a whole host of other pristine kitchen gadgets that were going to change our lives. 

My dad, having grown up during The Great Depression, would never throw anything away and a result, he'd hold onto broken or useless items that he pledged to fix later...but it was a “later” that never came. Even worse is when he'd see something in someone else's trash and take it home with him. He passed away over ten years ago and I still haven't cleaned out all his junk from the attic and basement yet.

I see a vein of procrastination running through my life too and try to do my best to overcome it with mixed results. During my school years, I was envious of the kids who always started projects and homework right away but I could never muster up enough ambition to follow their lead. In high school, I once joked to a friend, “I could do that assignment now but I get such a rush finishing it at the last minute.” Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I had one of those “Tiger Moms” for a parent.

When I was unemployed several years ago, I actually made great strides in cleaning and organizing the house but having a 3rd shift job has all but killed my free time. I sleep away most of the daylight hours and when I wake up, I'm exhausted. In the few hours before work, I don't have the energy to do much of anything. Then on my days off, I might tackle one of the many projects around the house but more often than not, I can't transition back to being a day person and wind up tossing and turning all night. For many years, my father worked the night shift and I have a new-found respect for him.

Thankfully, there are some things I refuse to let fall by the wayside. All of my financial documents are organized with hanging files which is a far cry from my mother's system of throwing her bills and statements into a brown grocery bag. The thousands of photos I've taken over the years are neatly organized by subject and I've been making some progress trying to get rid of the unwanted clutter in my room. Unfortunately, doing nothing is always easier and fighting that urge to put something off for later is so very difficult.

Putting in that extra effort at the beginning of a process saves a lot of time and energy in the long run but what's most important is that you follow through and see things to the end. It's a lesson I wish my parents embraced a long time ago. Meanwhile, an unused typewriter continues to sit on the kitchen table...

Her Bad Day Is Mine Too

One long and drawn out caregiver folly that comes to mind was when my mother lost her handmade needlepoint eyeglass case that featured a butterfly design against a blue background.  It was something she made a long time ago and it held a lot of sentimental value.

On a random weekend a few years ago, she couldn't find the eyeglass case so she asked me to look around her bedroom for her.  She usually put the case at the foot of the bed so perhaps it fell off and landed on the floor.  I got out the flashlight, got on my hands and knees and searched in vain.  After we spent some more time looking around the house and in the car, she wondered if the case had accidentally fallen into the small trash barrel that was by her bed.  Now her anxiety turned into frustration because I had just taken out the trash the day before and if her theory was correct, the case was now long gone.  However, I didn't recall seeing it among the trash when I emptied the barrel.  Surely even in my zoned-out state of mind, the eyeglass case would have caught my attention.  But where was it?

She was convinced it had been thrown out in the trash and now she was having a bad day.  As a caregiver, when the person you care for has a bad day, you have a bad day.  This is partly due to the sympathy you have for their awful predicament but sometimes it's because they are in such a foul mood, it rubs off on you.

Soon, I found myself searching online for what happens if something of value is thrown out in the trash.  Turns out, the trash company can look for an item at the transfer station if you call them and narrow the search by giving them the truck's route and time of pickup BUT such a search needs to be done within 24 hours.  Unfortunately, it was too late for my mother's eyeglass case if it had indeed been lost in the trash.  Still, part of me felt it hadn't.  

        
I tried to calm my mother down by saying there really wasn't anything that could be done right now.  If the eyeglass case had been accidentally thrown out, it was gone for good and no amount of complaining could bring it back.  If it was lost somewhere inside the house, it would eventually turn up somehow.  Well, that wasn't good enough and she continued to be miserable.  She got on my nerves and I found myself repeating the words she used to tell me as a child: "If you have something nice, you have to take better care of it."  I thought it was foolish of her to place the eyeglass case so close to a trash barrel.

 
After a few days, she resigned herself to the notion that it was gone forever and visited the needlepoint store to look for a new canvas.  Unfortunately, they didn't have any good patters in stock for making another eyeglass case so she left empty-handed and feeling dejected. 

A couple of weeks passed and then one night I heard her give out a yell from downstairs.  While in the bathroom, she had grabbed a towel from the linen closet and out fell the needlepoint eyeglass case.  Apparently, she had been folding the laundry on her bed at the beginning of the month and unbeknownst to her, the case was accidentally folded into one of the bathroom towels.  My overjoyed mother said,  "My prayers to St. Anthony were answered.  He has never let me down.  He may take his time, but he has always come through for me."  Now every time I take out the trash, I make sure to check her barrel a little more carefully to make sure only trash is being thrown away.

I'm glad things worked out for my mother this time around but the story of her eyeglass case shows how quickly a caregiver can go from having a nice day to dealing with sudden catastrophes.  I find myself always on guard for the latest crisis and that's a mindset that doesn't offer much peace of mind.

Caregiver Follies

I posted this subject to the Catholic Match forums last year and it was very well-received. While caring for my elderly mother, I noticed in the sea of typical struggles, certain difficulties that most people probably wouldn't even think of unless they walked a mile in my shoes. The following is a list of some of those funny and not so funny observations: 

* One pleasure in my down time that's become rare is listening to music with headphones on because if I'm upstairs in my room, I need to be able to hear my mother's cries for help if she needs something. I swear the record companies add the sound of her voice or the noise of a ringing telephone to the background of their songs because there have been many times when I think I hear those things but it turns out to be a false alarm.

* I have become a bathroom guard for those single occupancy ladies rooms since my mother doesn't want to lock door behind her just in case she falls and needs help. If that doesn't make me look like a creeper sometimes...

* My mother needs glasses to read but she will often forget to bring them along when we go out to eat and I have to read the full menu to her...loudly at times because of her hearing trouble.

* Lately, I have been finding plates or silverware that my mother washed still with bits of dried food attached because she somehow "missed a spot." 

* I will check to see what she is wearing for the day so I don't pick out an outfit with the same color palette hoping to avoid looking like those couples who dress alike.

* Sometimes she hides her medical issues because she doesn't want to worry me but I get really worried when after three days of suffering, she blurts out, “Take me to the ER. I can't it anymore.” 

* She talks to the TV during Family Feud and when I'm upstairs I will sometimes hear her yell things like, “That's an ugly suit!” or “No, you idiot!” She will sometimes answer the survey questions but I can't hear the questions: “Cows!” “Beach ball!” “Your oven!” “Mexico!”

* When I come home from my third shift job, I walk by her bedroom and listen to hear if she is still breathing.

* She no longer drives but she is an expert backseat driver.

* When I hear my mother yell, "Something's wrong with the television" I always have to fix the problem which is something usually minor like she accidentally pressed the aspect ratio button or the closed captioning button which is right next to the on/off switch.  Technology baffles her.  

* When I'm sleeping after a hard night at work, she'll often ask me from downstairs “Are you asleep?” so loudly that it wakes me up. “Not anymore!” is my typical response.

* When I am sick and just want to sleep, she keeps asking me questions about every twenty minutes: "Is your throat still sore?"  "Do you want to go to the Minute Clinic?"

* To prevent hypoglycemia, she always puts Lifesavers mints in her pockets but it's amazing how these things tend to show up around all around the house: in drawers, in cabinets, under furniture.

* Before doing the laundry, I always have to check the pockets of my mother's clothes for the previously mentioned Lifesavers mints and the large amount of tissues she likes to carry with her. 

* She craves attention so whenever a repairman comes to the house, she likes to talk his ear off. What's worse is when she touches on a hot topic like Trump or immigration.

* She asks the doctor who emigrated from Russia, "What do you think of Mr. Putin?"

* My mother will get frustrated with other old people and she's at that stage in life where she will tell them off. Before one Palm Sunday Mass, an elderly woman was talking her time to pick through the palms and my mother actually said, “Are you going to be there all day?!”

* Despite the fact that my mother is almost 86 years old, she doesn't want to use a walker because according to her, those are for old people.

* In fact, she doesn't want to associate with people her own age because in her words "they are a bunch of old farts who complain about pain all the time."

* When I do get into an argument with her, my mother has no trouble pulling out the old age card and simply says, “Why don't I just drop dead?”

* My mother always uses the speaker phone function so the sound of dialing brings me a feeling of dread because she calls so many doctors due to her failing health. Also, one of the doctors' offices plays bad smooth jazz music when they put her on hold...often for a very long time.

* While dining out, she sometimes comments on the poor fashion choices of the other patrons: “Is she for real?!” “They're not leaving anything to the imagination, are they?”

* My mother has the uncanny ability to yell a question to me from downstairs during the most dramatic part of a TV show or movie.

* Even though I am half a century old, she still worries when I leave the house. I will hear her say, “Drive carefully” and she will sometimes insist that I call her when I am ready to head back home.

* During one trip to the bank, I decided to make a long side trip down a country road just to clear my mind for a while. I came back home to see her in tears because she thought my unexpected delay might have been caused by a car accident.

* My mother doesn't understand that when I yell out of frustration at other drivers or at other people or about my life in general, I am not yelling at her.

* Hearing the sound of her pain pills rattling around in the plastic bottle brings anxiety because that means she's in pain and needs to take another dose.

* When my mother yells for help from downstairs and it sounds like a huge medical emergency...only to find out it's something not as serious like when she dropped a box of toothpicks and they landed all over the floor.

* Having to raise my voice because she has trouble hearing but then she thinks I am yelling at her in anger.

* Giving me cheap career advice that is so out of left field when I tell her how unhappy I am with my current employer. “Why don't you call channel 5 and ask for a job working in TV?”

* My mother telling me that if I ever got serious with a girl, she'd be happy to sell the house and move into a small apartment by herself. Once I start dating, however, she somehow forgets that statement and begins to worry that I will abandon her.

My post generated many responses from other caregivers on CatholicMatch who shared their own interesting observations about their elderly parents. Feel free to share any of your own caregiver follies in the comments section below.

9-11's Other Memorial

NBC's Ann Curry before the attacks

So traumatic were the events of 9-11 that 17 years passed before I could bring myself to search Youtube and rewatch the footage of the attacks unfolding live on morning television shows.  What struck me about these videos was how calm and normal that terrible day began.

It was a perfectly sunny late summer morning and some newscasters commented on this fact.  CBS's Mark McEwen noted the “miles and miles” of sunshine on the weather map and said it was as nice as it could be across the northeast.  However, in a bit of eerie foreshadowing, he closed the segment by remarking, “It's kind of quiet around the country.  We like quiet.  Unless it's quiet.  It's too quiet.”  Standing with the adoring crowd of people outside Rockefeller Center, NBC's Katie Couric said, “It is such a pretty morning isn't it?”  Al Roker replied, “It is a perfect fall morning...although it's not fall yet so it's still a perfect summer morning.”

The news reported a U.S. drone shot down by Iraq.  The Miss America Pageant was now going to quiz contestants on history and current events with some participants not knowing what happened on Dec. 7, 1941 during a trial run of the questions.  Ads for Nightline had Ted Kopel pitching a week-long report on the ongoing conflict in the Congo commenting that it was a story we should have brought you long ago.  

Just before the attacks, The Early Show host Bryant Gumbel was doing a cooking segment with the executive food editor of Gourmet Magazine in celebration of the publication's 60th anniversary.  Fox News was interviewing singer Babyface and asked about his new hair style.  Katie Couric had just wrapped up an interview with Harry Belafonte and Matt Lauer began speaking with Richard Hack about his new book on Howard Hughes.  The author was enjoying a brief moment in the sun when the segment had to be cut short because of a “breaking story” at the World Trade Center.  Live footage of the buildings wouldn't load so Matt Lauer broke for a commercial as did many other stations at that time.

When the major networks came back, they aired special reports with the now too familiar footage of black smoke billowing out of the North Tower.  Hindsight allows us to dismiss any naive speculation that it might have been an accident.  When Flight 175 hit the South Tower on live TV, Bryant Gumbel couldn't see the footage but a witness he was talking to over the phone was shocked and described the crash as deliberate.  The Early Show host seemed to be in denial and asked this caller and another caller why they thought so.  By contrast, Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson quickly concluded that a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center was underway.

Confusion was caused by where the camera had been placed with some broadcasts showing the North Tower at an angle that completely obscured the South Tower and the approaching Flight 175.  The same was true for the collapse of the South Tower.  One station initially reported the loss of the structure as just falling debris.  A few news anchors were completely caught off guard because they were in the middle of interviews or trying to report the attack on the Pentagon and a possible car bomb outside the State Department.

After 22 years, seeing the 9-11 terrorist attacks unfold minute by excruciating minute still hits me like a punch to the gut.  As ABC's Diane Sawyer put it so eloquently back then, “To watch powerless, is a horror.”  There's some footage from that terrible day I still haven't seen and I'm not sure if or when I ever will but I am glad all of it exists on Youtube and other websites because it captures so well the confusion, shock, heartbreak and fear we experienced in 2001.

During a 2021 interview with 60 Minutes, New York firefighter Regina Wilson said, “So many of us sacrificed so much that this story can't get lost.  Because the world is changing fast.  And I don't want this to be something that's in a history book that a page is turned, and we're forgotten.”  She's right to have this concern because so often, still photographs, commemorative markers and stone monuments fail to capture the essence of a tragedy.  In 2016, my hometown unveiled its own 9-11 memorial complete with a large steel beam from the World Trade Center.  The archival footage of the attacks as they happened is 9-11's other memorial however, one that shows us a way of life and a sense of innocence that was lost forever on a sunny Tuesday morning so long ago.

The Good and Bad of Catholic Schools

Photo credit: James Bartlett / Lynn Daily Item

 

 

Chronicle is a local public interest television show that's been on the air at Boston's WCVB since 1982.  They recently devoted an entire broadcast to the subject of Catholic schools and it was surprisingly positive.

One interview featured Tom Nunan (pictured), the current president of Bishop Fenwick High School and he made the case that a parochial education is more relevant than ever.  He stated that in a world where many students face alienation and isolation Catholic schools can provide “an authentic community, a real sense of belonging and a place where you can feel at home.”

Also discussed during the half hour show was the pandemic's impact.  Eleven schools within the Boston Archdiocese closed for good as a result of the virus, but the program made the case that Catholic schools responded better to safety protocols that were put in place and resumed in-person learning much earlier than many pubic schools.  This created huge interest in enrollment from parents and students who were eager to get back into the classroom.  Unfortunately, with pre-pandemic numbers already dwindling, this surge did not do much to increase overall enrollment.

One interviewee stated that many parents don't just want their children to receive a good education, they want them to become better people and a Catholic school's faith-based learning can provide that.  A few now-thriving disadvantaged students were also profiled along with the Catholic Schools Foundation, an organization that helps provide financial assistance to those who can't cover tuition.  When a Catholic school education is at its best, it's a beautiful thing.  Unfortunately, there's another side to all of this that undermines the lofty goals so many spoke about on Chronicle.

From my own experiences at Bishop Fenwick, I found none of what Tom Nunan was talking about.  I sincerely hope things have changed for the better at that institution from where they were a few decades ago because all I found at the school was alienation and isolation.  Catholic schools can be very cliquey, hypocritical and elitist.  One student interviewed on Chronicle said the first time she was ever called the “n-word” was by a fellow student at Bishop Fenwick.  

Often, Catholic schools will place a huge emphasis on educational greatness or athletic greatness at the expense of moral greatness.  Sometimes this strategy works.  A good number of my fellow classmates in high school were only there to get an educational advantage over their public school counterparts.  Their parents really didn't care about the Church's morals and the students themselves absolutely loathed what the Church stood for but that diploma was an important key to unlock greater secular success.

It's odd that some Catholic schools seem to be more about prestige and sports than morality.  I'm reminded of how many locals simply refer to the all-boys St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers, MA as “the prep” even though there are other schools in the greater Boston area with the word “preparatory” in their names.  When someone close to me attended that institution many years ago, I could see how snobby he and his fellow classmates became and how engaging in reckless and / or self-destructive behavior was par for the course.   

Maybe this approach is the future for the Catholic schools that will survive into the next century or maybe forsaking the Church's values will only quicken the pace of their demise.

Sadly, Bishop Fenwick made the news recently...for all the wrong reasons.  The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association harshly punished the high school for alleged inconsistencies regarding one student's application to play baseball.  As a result, all sports have been suspended from state playoffs for 2023-2024.  In a case that many find confusing, the MIAA alleges Fenwick engaged in a pattern of deception while the school maintains these inconsistencies were a result of confusion and ignorance regarding the complicated application process.  School leaders were in the hot seat as they fielded questions from angry and bewildered parents during a discussion about the controversy in the auditorium. (See this blog entry's photo.)

Fenwick has vowed to appeal the decision with no guarantee the MIAA will even consider what the school has to say.  In the meantime, all student athletes are paying the price for something they had no part in.  I think we need to expect better from the Catholic educational system.

When Chickens Come Home To Roost

June of 2023 was a not a good month for Catholic schools in the greater Boston area.

In February, St. Joseph Preparatory High School announced their doors would close for good at the end of the school year.  The Brighton, MA institution had occupied the former Mount Saint Joseph Academy and was the result of a 2012 merger between that school and Trinity Catholic High School of Newton, MA which was founded in 1894.

In March, the all-girls Mount Alvernia High School (also in Newton) announced plans to close and merge with Fontbonne Academy, another all-girls Catholic school in Milton, MA.  The Missionary Franciscan Sisters who ran Mount Alvernia said operations had become unsustainable because they were no longer able to continue living on the property.  According to a National Catholic Register article, one board member who later became its chair said the possibility of closing the school "was never once discussed" during her tenure and she accused the sisters of making their decision in secret.

Students of the Cambridge Matignon School were also blindsided when the 76 year old Cambridge, MA institution announced their closure just one month before graduation.  In all of these cases, the story seems to be the same.  Insurmountable financial difficulties coupled with declining enrollment led to each school's demise.

Many years ago, my niece's Catholic school enjoyed huge crowds during their annual Christmas pageant.  After just a few years, the place announced its closure as well.  Apparently enrollment hadn't dipped...it collapsed and she graduated with only six other students in her class.  The principal tried to put a positive spin on things by saying for over a hundred years the institution's mission was to educate young minds and now that mission was complete.  We were told to be proud of what the school had accomplished over the past century but such words did little to abate the feeling that something great was being lost.

Sometimes when Catholic schools close, failure is painted as an exciting opportunity.  That's how Father Mark Mahoney portrayed the 2016 closure of Saint Mary's School in Beverly, MA.  Under his leadership, that institution merged with the nearby Saint John the Evangelist School and was renamed The Saints Academy.  There was talk of closing St. Mary's School as early as 1975 but when Father Richard Johnson became pastor a year later, he set up Beano games and took other steps that helped stabilize the school's finances and enrollment.  A lot of good people worked so hard over the years to keep that place going.  Today, the building continues to sit empty.

Even though this blog has been critical of my experiences at Bishop Fenwick High School, I still feel these institutions are far too important to lose.  The parochial educational system offers the Church one of the greatest opportunities to renew itself.  Not only are young minds exposed to important character-shaping values, they can also find an oasis from the moral relativism that plagues modern society.

While there are many reasons for these school closures, it certainly doesn't help when young people seeking to increase their faith discover their parishes offer them no place at the table.  It also doesn't help when singles who willingly embrace the Church's teachings are left to fend for themselves and never get the chance to marry and have the children who would attend Catholic schools in the first place.

The Cost of Failure / The Price of Success

Last month saw the passing of tabloid talk show host Jerry Springer at the age of 79 from pancreatic cancer. While most news stories on the subject covered (in great detail) the trashy talk show that made him a household name, only a few mentioned the program's humble beginnings.

When the Jerry Springer show debuted in the autumn of 1991, it actually featured serious topics on news, politics, and current events. That's not surprising given the host's background as a reporter and politician. In fact, the program's signature “Final Thought” ending segment allowed for thoughtful commentary on some of the most complex issues of the day. This is something I remember well from around that time.

With ratings tanking, a choice had to be made. Retool the Jerry Springer show into something that would grab audiences or face certain cancellation. The host and producers chose the former rather than the latter and the rest is history. For the next two decades the program remained on the airwaves making Jerry Springer one very rich and famous individual...but at what cost?

For a guy who loved talking politics, all meaningful discussions on his show quickly disappeared. Even the Final Thought segment became irrelevant. (Seriously, what real insight could Jerry give his viewers about that lesbian stripper threesome gone wrong?) As his program devolved into a moral garbage sideshow, Jerry Springer himself tended to stay on the sidelines during taping as not to get caught up in the fights among guests that would frequently break out. Despite Mr. Springer's tag line, “Take care of yourselves and each other” it seemed like he was profiting off of lots of people who did not take care of themselves or each other.

Mr. Springer's death had me thinking of a sermon I heard at St. Mary's in Beverly many years ago. Our priest asked what price we were willing to pay to live a moral life in keeping with the Church's values? Would we always strive to do the right thing or would we turn a blind eye to immortality in our pursuit of material wealth and status? He then used the example of a nameless Catholic man who worked as a scientist at a bioengineering lab and made a very comfortable living for himself and his family. One day he realizes that his company is using aborted fetal tissue in its experiments. Does the man take a moral stand and quit his job or does he simply do nothing? Taking the moral stand would certainly upend that comfortable life he enjoyed and it would also cause a heck of a lot of stress for both himself and his family. Our priest continued by saying there were times when standing up for your beliefs invited failure but “it's better to be a failure in this world and a success in the next one than the other way around.”

He then pointed to the crucifix and added, “In many ways, that's a symbol of failure.” The sermon was so moving, it stayed with me after all these years and I sometimes think about it during some of caregiving's most difficult moments. Living at home and working a dead-end job in order to care for my elderly mother certainly hasn't brought me wealth and fame (...or a girlfriend) but it's where I need to be right now because she has no one else in her life.

There's no shortage of Catholics who ignore this advice, however. Maybe it's the guy in the Catholic Match chat room who talks about stocks, 401Ks, and wealth management more than he does about giving to the poor. Maybe it's the woman who places moral character far below having a successful professional career in her prerequisites for a husband. Maybe it's the Catholic politician who betrays his beliefs to become well-liked. In the face of failure, we all must make decisions on how strong our moral compass really is.

Some say Jerry Springer sold out for ratings. In interviews, he didn't seem too proud of his show's legacy. Instead, he made light of it much like the Hollywood scream queen who is eternally embarrassed by her part in a cheesy slasher flick but won't say anything for fear of alienating her fanbase. Mocking his critics, he started introducing the program as “the worst television show of all time.” No doubt there were viewers who saw value in the Jerry Springer show, but speaking from personal experience, I knew a few die-hard fans who would have been much better off reading a book or going for a walk instead.

There were certainly winners from Mr. Springer's embrace of the lowest common denominator. Those producers who wanted higher ratings got what they wanted. Steve Wilkos, a security guard on the program, also gained fame and eventually became the host of his own talk show in 2007. Many others who worked behind the scenes earned a steady paycheck but at what price?

I think part of the Jerry Springer show's legacy is that it taught us to take pleasure in other people's misery like never before. Grievances guests aired weren't a big deal as long as the spectacle they provided was entertaining enough. Whether or not Jerry Springer himself becomes as well-remembered as other purveyors of schlock and shock like Joe Pyne (Who?) or Morton Downey Jr. (Who?) remains to be seen.

A Look And A Look Back

(From the files of Catholic Match...)

When I joined Catholic Match in 2018, I made sure to create a very thorough profile with good quality photos. Listed were many of my hobbies and tastes as well as a brief explanation of my ongoing faith journey. This included a few of the problems I had with the Church just to let prospective suitors know where I stood on some issues before they reached out to me. I thought my profile was long enough to give people an accurate snapshot of my life while being short enough to be interesting.

Since this was my first foray into the world of online dating, I didn't know how some of the features on Catholic Match worked. For instance, when you clicked on someone's profile, that person got a notification saying you had checked them out. This was the website's way of trying to encourage more interactions that could lead to dating and marriage but it caused its fair share of problems early on in my Catholic Match membership.

One of the first profiles I clicked on was a woman from the East Coast who I thought was reasonably attractive. A closer look at her profile revealed she was extremely devout and didn't have much in common with me. Plus, I thought some of her other photos weren't that flattering. It was a hard pass. Unfortunately, my simple look at her profile caused her to look back at mine. She quickly sent a message that came on way too strong. Not only did she think we were a great match, she stated that I was the answer to her prayers. Gulp...no pressure.

I thanked her for checking out my profile but said I didn't think we had too much in common when it came to some pretty important things. I also wondered if she had taken the time to read my profile all the way through. After a few more awkward messages, I wished her well in her search but firmly declined to take things further.  This experience rattled me and after a few more incidents like this, I put a lot of thought into whose profile I clicked on.

When scrolling through profiles on Catholic Match, all I had to look at was a single photograph with the person's first name, age and location.  This told me nothing about who they were as a human being so using the website tended to be based on physical attraction only.  There were times when I'd click on an attractive profile photo only to see a lot of red flags and deal-breakers listed in the text of their actual profiles.  Maybe she was too demanding or materialistic.  Perhaps she had unrealistic expectations for her future husband.  Whatever the case might have been, instead of just moving onto the next profile, Catholic Match implied some sort of interest on my part by telling this woman I had just looked at her profile.  On a few occasions, these notifications prompted women I had no interest in to reach out to me.  Ugh!

It was the ever-present fear of the “look back” that reduced the number of profiles I checked out. This was counterproductive when it came to online dating because my fellow men on Catholic Match always gave the advice to click on as many profiles as you could and send lots of messages because finding a spouse online was a “numbers game” in their words. Since the response rate was typically low, the more interactions you had on Catholic Match the better your chances of finding a wife...or so the theory went.

There were some profiles I wanted to click on because I was simply curious about the person's photo not because I wanted to date them. Maybe they were holding a cute dog or featured a background location that seemed interesting. Thanks to those notifications, a look might invite a conversation that I just didn't want to have so I usually opted to move on.

Given my circumstances as a caregiver, long distance relationships were problematic so I had to think very carefully about clicking on those profiles from foreign countries. Still, I could not believe the number of women from the Philippines who reached out to me on their own. Then there were those absolute train wreck profile photos that I would have loved clicking on just to see how bad their profiles really were but with the possibility of a look back looming, it just wasn't worth it.

Eventually, I discovered exceptions to these notifications. If you clicked on the profile of a member of the same sex, they would not be notified. On a few occasions, women who were much younger than me either sent me messages or “liked” my profile without triggering a notification that they had checked me out. I later learned from a discussion in the forums that members of the opposite sex outside your particular age range were also exempt. As one person on the forum explained, this was done to prevent young women from being creeped out by all the old men who were checking out their profiles. So good news all you creepers! You can check out the young women of Catholic Match and they will be none the wiser. Of course, I found it odd these rules and exceptions weren't clearly spelled out when you first joined the dating website. Maybe it was buried in the fine print?

Free members could not see who viewed their profiles but they still received a notification that someone had checked them out.  If they wanted to know who it was, they'd have to pay for full membership.  With no way to distinguish free members from paying members, I couldn't tell who saw what.  After a while, the number of look-backs dropped significantly and this had me wondering if the website was becoming a ghost town.

The profile notification system might have been created with only the best of intentions, but it was doing me more harm than good. In the end, it seemed pretty useless to begin with because as the years went by, I just didn't find very many interesting profiles to click on in the first place.

Iraq...Twenty Years Ago

This month marked 20 years since the start of the Iraq War and while the major newspapers all had articles on the subject, I noticed the nightly television news skipped coverage of this grim anniversary.

At the start of 2003, the American people were still living in the shadow of September 11th terrorist attacks.  Our sadness was unimaginable, our anger was raw and our fear of another attack was palatable.  We turned to our country's leaders for comfort and we were in no mood to hear duplicitous talk from the Middle East.  This climate of emotional vulnerability often gets overlooked when discussing Iraq, but in my humble opinion, it made the path to war much easier.

Iraqi dissident Ahmed Chalabi made the rounds in the media to say the United States would be welcomed as liberators but he along with the information he provided on a supposed link Saddam Hussein had to Al-Qaeda would later be discredited.

Then were were the faulty reports that United Nations sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.  This erroneous information was used by Osama Bin Laden to justify terrorism against America.  Liberals used it to criticize government policy and conservatives used it to stoke the fires of war.

To be clear, George W. Bush never blamed Iraq for the 9-11 attacks BUT he was no longer going to wait for potential threats to become real.  From the way the government described Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program in the months leading up to the invasion, the threat from Iraq was becoming all too real.  In February of 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who many saw as a voice of reason, justified a possible invasion in front of the United Nations Security Council by giving testimony on Iraq's WMD program.  (The year before, he had actually cautioned the President on an invasion saying, "If you break it, you own it.")

Many of us were fooled because we wanted to believe our leaders were honest and competent.  Even the late night comedians jumped on the WMD bandwagon with jokes about Iraq.  I won't soon forget a skit from Conan O'Brien that featured Saddam Hussein disguising three missiles as his children.

When French and German leaders announced their opposition to the war, The New York Post ran an infamous “Axis of Weasels” headline.  After France threatened to veto any resolution that mandated an invasion, a backlash against the French emerged with some restaurants renaming French Fries “Freedom Fries.”  The only place in my travels that I actually saw do this was The Clam Box of Ipswich, MA.

Despite the drumbeat of war, many people weren't fooled and protests erupted throughout the country and the world.  From around this time, I vaguely remember hearing a liberal guest host filling in on the usually conservative WRKO talk radio and for one broadcast, she brought with her actress Janeane Garofalo.  They laid out good reasons why an invasion of Iraq would be disastrous and much of what they said turned out to be true but at the time, the audience wasn't having any of it.  A divisiveness erupted in society and the good will President Bush enjoyed after 9-11 seemed to quickly disappear.

Operation Iraqi Freedom began with “shock and awe” style decapitation airstrikes that sometimes claimed the lives of innocent people.  I am haunted by an image that appeared in the local newspaper just before the war began of a father enjoying pizza with his family at a restaurant in Baghdad called Pizza Hot.  Did they survive such bombings?
 
When the ground war started, it just felt wrong to me on a visceral level and despite all the rhetoric and bluster, I couldn't believe it was actually happening.  I recall how embedded reporter David Bloom gave some of the first reports from the battlefield but spending many hours in cramped armored vehicles with the hot sun caused a blood clot that claimed his life at the age of 39.

We soon heard heroic stories of Private First Class Jessica Lynch who had been captured when her convoy was ambushed but as with many aspects of the Iraq War, the tales of how she single-handedly fought off the enemy turned out to be grossly exaggerated.

In May of 2003, President Bush announced an end to major combat operations in Iraq while a banner hung in the background that said: Mission Accomplished.  This would come back to haunt him because an insurgency caused many more causalities and dragged the war on for another 8 years.  Things hit home for us when Swampscott native Jennifer Harris was killed when her helicopter crashed with all those on board lost.  The military tried blaming it on a mechanical failure until a video surfaced of her aircraft being shot down.  The American public saw a lot of gore in the news during those bloody years and some of the war's biggest supporters were starting to wonder if it was worth such a staggering toll.

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck would admit in 2014 that the liberals got it right when they opposed the war in Iraq...but apologies don't bring back the dead.  I lost all respect for President Bush years before that when he joked about not finding WMDs at a fancy press corps banquet.  Early support for the war likely cost Hillary Clinton the presidency because a weary public turned to the candidate who had opposed the invasion from the get go, Barack Obama.

The invasion of Iraq not only distracted from the war effort in Afghanistan, it made terrorists smarter and more effective as the lessons learned in one battlefield were brought over to another.  We eventually saw the emergence of ISIS and with it, more death and destruction on a scale we had never seen before.  In 2003, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had warned the invasion of Iraq would create 100 Bin Ladens.

To this day I still hear some people say the war was all about getting revenge on Saddam Hussein for the 1993 attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush.  Whatever the major goals for the Iraq War were, it's safe to say that few of them were met outside of "regime change." The United States also lost some of its credibility as a result of this conflict especially when trying to take the moral high ground regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It's unfortunate the nightly news networks punted on covering the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War because there are hard lessons to be learned from it....lessons that can't be properly explored in our current culture of soundbites.

Another Valentine's Day Come and Gone

Aside from weddings, baby showers or kids' birthday parties, no other occasion brings more unwanted attention to my singlehood than Valentine's Day.  With so many outward expressions of romantic love to be had, the holiday is made to stir up feelings of loneliness in those of us who are unattached.

When I had my own college radio show several years ago, I'd “celebrate” February 14th by playing songs about breakups and heartache.  It was a lot of fun and going against the grain like that made Valentine's Day bearable.  Without an outlet to mock the holiday and vent my frustrations, Valentine's Day has become as annoying as ever.

This February 14th, I found myself taking my mother to the eye doctor for her routine check up.  Despite Covid restrictions that limited the number of patients that could be seen at one time, the waiting room was packed...with old people.  It was clear to me that the doctors violated their own policies in order to squeeze everyone in.  So instead of maintaining social distancing, I was seated right next to a few old ladies.  One was an immigrant from Israel and she decided to strike up a conversation by asking about the origins of Valentine's Day.  When I told her about it, others joined in the discussion.  Just my luck there were never any women my age to talk to!  After waiting two hours in a cramped corner, the doctor finally saw my mother.  Since I had just come off a third-shift job, I was exhausted.  This was not how I wanted to spend the holiday.

When I started dating a woman from Catholic Match in late 2022, I thought that maybe...just maybe I would finally have a girlfriend by the time February 14th rolled around.  I even briefly imagined how we would spend the day.  A local thrift store had an attractive three pane picture frame for sale so I decided to buy it hoping to place three different photos of her inside of it.  Well, I suspected dating this woman was too good to be true and she dumped me before I could even take three photos of her.  Now the picture frame sits empty on my bedroom floor and with nothing to show, it's symbolic of my many years as a dateless wonder.

When discussing Valentine's Day with one of my married friends, he takes a more intellectual approach by saying that the date of February 14th really means nothing to him or his wife and they tend to focus more on their wedding anniversary as the big day to express romance.  By doing so, he avoids those special Valentine's Day menus at restaurants which tend to be overrated and not worth the extra money.  In fact, he has an acquaintance who celebrates Valentine's Day either the day before or after the 14th just to avoid being price-gouged.  He must have a very understanding wife because many spouses wouldn't appreciate that kind of frugality.

At one time, the holiday was actually called Saint Valentine's Day but as we have seen with Christmas and Easter, capitalism tends to downplay the religious roots of such days to make the pursuit of the almighty dollar easier and more acceptable.  At work, I stumbled across a memo from our regional manager and he described the holiday as an opportunity for record breaking sales adding, “Go Big! Win the day!  All profit here!”  This is the same person who routinely cancels employee raises that our store manager submits for approval.
 
I don't receive the Catholic television station EWTN at home but I recently had the chance to check it out in the waiting room of yet another doctor's office.  A talk show whose name escapes me was discussing how unrealistic people's expectations were for Valentine's Day.  The female host admitted a lot of women have fantastically high expectations for romance and love that few men can live up to.  She cautioned the audience against seeing love through the eyes of Hollywood movies because real relationships had their fair share of ebbs and flows.

I always thought Valentine's Day was a good barometer for a couple in love.  Are you comfortable enough with each other to get a little sappy on one particular day out of the year?  Would your significant other be too demanding of gifts and dinner or would they appreciate your romantic gestures even if they fell a little short?  Are you too jaded to express signs of affection?  The holiday's true meaning might be corrupted but that doesn't mean we have to buy into capitalism's exploitation of it.  Perhaps a quiet dinner at home or at a restaurant that doesn't make a big deal of the holiday.  Maybe get your partner a homemade gift or something nice that didn't break the bank?  Unfortunately, the chance to test these theories slipped by me once again since I spent my 49th year on this earth never knowing what it would be like to have someone to love on Valentine's Day.

"There's Always Catholic Match..."

That's what one reader jokingly wrote in the comments section of this blog in 2018.  Joining Catholic Match had been on my mind for quite some time back then, but I just didn't think my life was in a good enough place to start using that particular website.

I first heard about Catholic Match from a friend many years ago and decided to check it out shortly thereafter.  At the time, the website allowed people to preview a handful of profile photos if you checked a box that identified your gender.  If you wanted to see more photos beyond these or if you wanted to click on an individual profile, you needed to create an account.  I thought some of the women weren't bad looking and seeing these teaser profile photos only made me dwell on what possibilities were out there.

Every once in a great while, I'd see ads for Catholic Match in different church bulletins and that had me thinking about what I was missing by not joining.  The website seemed to take its mission of helping singles into the vocation of matrimony seriously and in a comparison of other dating websites, Catholic Match boasted their members were free to marry.  After a long stint of unemployment ended, I decided to finally purchase a six month membership.    

To say my expectations for this website were huge is an understatement but I would soon find out a lot of my preconceived notions about Catholic Match and online dating in general were inaccurate.  Where those free Catholic dating websites were filled with sloppy profiles and terrible photos, I thought the women of Catholic Match were in it to win it.  I expected to see tons of well thought out profiles with great photos.  This was not the case and those blurry, badly lit, sunglasses wearing images plagued this website too.  “How could people pay all that money and then not put in much of an effort?” I thought.  Only later did I realize Catholic Match offered free memberships in addition to paid subscriptions but users had no way of telling one from the other.

Before joining Catholic Match, I tried to imagine what kind of women would be on this website.  Maybe they were reasonably attractive and kindhearted but unsuccessful in love not because of some antisocial personality quirks but because they just couldn't find a guy to fall in love with.  Maybe some of them had gone to all-girls schools for many years and were a bit sheltered.  Maybe they held true to the Church's teachings on premarital sex and found themselves to be outcasts in a secular and sex-crazed world.

Well, despite the website saying its members were free to marry, I soon found out Catholic Match allowed divorced people to join the site...but they could only use it for fellowship and friendship, not dating.  That kind of defeats the purpose of a DATING WEBSITE, doesn't it?  So instead of finding lots of dateless wonders like me, I had to weed out a large number of women who couldn't even go on a date without it being a sin.
 
At the time, Catholic Match featured 7 faith questions about specific Church teachings and users had to answer whether or not they agreed with them.  A heck of a lot of people did not accept the Church's teaching on premarital sex so instead of finding that inexperienced woman of my dreams, I found plenty of ladies who had been around the block and were proud of it.
 
The website also had two useful features that were removed shortly after I joined.  One let people know when you logged in last and this helped to separate active profiles from inactive ones.  Unfortunately, some members were using this information to stalk other members so the feature was eliminated for safety reasons.  The other feature I liked allowed people to search profiles by interests and hobbies.  Catholic Match staff felt it limited members in their quest to find a spouse, however, so they got rid of it.  During my time using that specialized search feature, I found very few women who shared my passions.

Within a few hours of purchasing my subscription, I received a message from a 60+ year old woman from Mexico welcoming me to the website.  This was not a good sign.  Another curiosity about Catholic Match was the large number of women from foreign countries, particularity the Philippines.  Unfortunately, the amount of local women on the site left a lot to be desired.  With almost 2 million people in the Archdioceses of Boston alone, I wondered where the heck everyone was.
 
Still, I looked on the bright side of things and put my faith in God that “the right one” would eventually come long.  After all, there were so many Catholic Match success stories featured on the website with some accounts bordering on the miraculous. 

Well, the world's largest Catholic dating website may have worked out for some but it didn't work for me.  After 4 years and 6 months, I decided against renewing my paid subscription.  Being on the site was an interesting experience and one that I will probably blog about in the near future.  I certainly won't discourage anyone from joining Catholic Match because it really could be how you find your significant other.  Unfortunately for me, my time on the website seemed to be a big waste of time.