random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon

• Please stop naming and posting photos of your parish or chapel with chirpy remarks that the Mass is conducted normally. You are just making it easy for busybodies to go there and make a complaint to law enforcement if they see someone without a mask. Protect your priest.
  
  
  
  
•  Rocky and I went to Richmond yesterday. It was incredibly depressing. Monument Avenue is hideously deformed with graffiti. The residents almost all have BLM signs in their windows in an attempt to protect themselves. The streets downtown are quiet. We could not enter our favorite Richmond restaurant but had to place our order over the phone and wait for them to bring it out to us. We ate at Belle Island park and watched college kids and birds.
  
  Later we went to Shockhoe Slip and that was just stunningly sad. Normally that area of Richmond is bustling with people but in the time of the Great Sickness we only saw a handful of folks walking with purpose and more homeless people than I've ever seen in Richmond before. On top of that, these homeless didn't have that drug addict look, nor did they look like con artists. They all looked seriously mentally ill. We only saw two men who were actively begging. The rest of the homeless were just sitting or walking seemingly unaware of the world around them. 
  
   At the end of the trip we went  through the drive through at Lees Chicken for dinner and it was such a relief to see lots of happy almost normal people in their cars. I thought about going to the FSSP church in Richmond but the last time we visited the people weren't friendly at all and since most folks are extra jittery right now I decided not to. 
  
  
  
  
• In order to comply with Virginia's rules my parish is requiring people to RSVP for Christmas Mass. I imagine that there will be some angry people who end up being turned away because the church won't be allowed to take walk-ins. Pray for everyone who will be involved. 
  
  
• This product is going to get somebody killed.  People are so freaked out and  many have lost their minds. One example of this  happened  last week when Rocky and I were going to get on an elevator but the woman who was on it panicked and backed up against the wall and yelled at us. 
  
  
  
• While you're donating to some lay apologist or instead of  doing that, why not help traditional nuns, monks and priests? Fr. Maximilian Mary of Jesus Crucified is a hermit in Pennsylvania. You can read his booklets and donate to him here.  
  
  
  
  
  
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• I listened to this podcast twice.