Sort Quench, & Dump

In case you have forgotten what I wrote here a few years ago, today is the feast of St Mamas of Cyprus, the patron saint of tax evaders. It is also the feast of Claire of Montelfalco (no, not the Clare of Assisi who is the patron saint of television) who was so tough on herself that if she broke her vow of silence she insisted on standing barefoot in the snow while saying Lord’s Prayer 100 times. I used to find this sort of story horrific and not a little creepy. But as I get older I appreciate the value of repetition as a mantra; and just last week I heard about a sixty year old women who, in order to prepare herself for a swim across the English Channel, sat in extremely cold water for a longer and longer period each day.
After Claire died – and was presumably autopsied – it was discovered there was an image of the cross formed upon her heart. I have not seen a picture, so I cannot verify this. Also, vials of her collected blood are said to liquefy each year on her feast day, which is today. I cannot verify this either, but I cannot deny that I would like – just once – to see one of these miracles of liquefied blood.

Today is also the feast of St Hyacinth, a Polish Dominican monk who traveled a great deal; but otherwise nothing you hear about him is likely to be true, at least “of little historical value”.
Here he is getting the word from the BVM that he should carry away her statue, weighing several hundred pounds, to save it from the Vandals or Goths or perhaps the Mongols. And he did.



On the Home Front, the boiler exploded last night. There is about 3 inches of water in the boiler room. I am currently ignoring it. Later I thought I would stand in the puddle and dry my hair.

Then the oven started leaking this dark sticky stuff; I think it is tomato slime since I had about 300 grape tomatoes drying in there all night long. It is amazing how tomatoes shrink overnight.

We are trying to figure out if chickens like peaches. Our peach tree has dropped a bunch of bruised peaches and I thought I would give them to the chickens; I knew they would like the bugs inside even if they scorned the fruit. But they seem to be enjoying the fruit as well.