Monday 23 June 2003
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It's been a busy, busy week.
Monday morning the news was focused on Bishop O'Brien's fatal hit and run of a local construction worker. By Tuesday morning he had resigned and Archbishop Sheehan had become our temporary Apostilic Administrator for the Diocese of Phoenix. I'll never know if he was under so much stress already with the molestation cover-up allegations by County Attourney Romley that he truely never registered the fact that he killed a man. Regardless, I am relieved that he is no longer in charge. He may have done many possitive things in his life, but he is more politician than holy man. I lost my respect for him when he supported the illegal revocation of our rights guaranteed by the Arizona constitution and county charter. Should he ever appologise he'd regain my respect, perhaps even gain more than he lost. I won't hold my breath.
Monday afternoon was Linda's wake. The guest book signing was held at Camelback Sunset Chapel. The dinner was held at her youngest son's house. I kept hearing that I've lost weight. I guess being broke will do that for you. Our old D&D group that used to meet at her house made plans to play on Thursday. But I had to leave early due to my third Monday commitments.
So after that I rushed over to the CopperCon XXIII Program Team meeting. We have less than three months to go, but I'm encouraged. I've got a lot of support.
Thursday Dai ran a D&D one-shot. We had to roll randomly for our race, class, and alignment. I ended up with a lawful good human wizard. Jay had a dwarvn sorcerer, Sam a dwarven druid, and Bill an elven rouge. We were all prisoners in Irontown, working the mines and smelters. Hense the random alignments working together. The scenario was simple: breakout. Only the neutral evil dwarven druid and lawful good human wizard escaped alive. I doubt they'll remain teammates, but as a one-shot it probably won't ever come up. I guess in two weeks Jay will be running a random-character generation one-shot as well. This could prove interesting.
Friday and Saturday I had some important database training from Kitty, who has been a Program Director for several local conventions. I think I'll be able to crunch all the data that scheduling the convention program will require.
Sunday I saw Hulk with Jim. An excellent movie to be sure. Afterwards he treated to 5 & Diner before we stopped by Costco to pick up HPY5.
I returned my Mother's phone call afterwards, and we talked until it was time for me to head off to mass. Father Milt had a good homily for the solemnity. At the end of the mass, Father read our first letter from Archbishop Sheehan. I think we'll see a lot of healing go on within the diocese, now.
We planned our in-person Hogwats Live Action meeting during our online conference this evening.
Then I watched SG-1 and X-Files while I typed this up until I was too tired to continue and went to bed. Night!
Comments (2)
What revocation of rights did former Bishop O'Brien support? Seems very odd to me! The D&D one-shot adventure you took part in "sounds" cool! We never tried that back in the day of role-playing "live" (around a table and some pizza). Maybe that idea would work as a one-shot adventure in a play-by-post setting. Hm. (Wheel in head turning. NO, not the gerbil wheel.) Well good luck with the Con prep. One day when I'm old enough that the kids are out of the house (say, in 21 years!!!!) I think I'd like to hop around to various cons. By then, though, a lot of the actors from Star Trek / Star Wars that I'd love to see will be dead. Hm, maybe I'll have to squeeze in those cons before then! Cheers!
Well, for non-Phoenicians, the story of Bank One Ballpark is probably unheard. I'll fill you in on the dirty little deed.
The state's constitution requires that all counties include in their charter the provision that all new taxes levied be OKed by a popular vote of the people. When local politicians tried to set up a baseball park in order to lure an expansion team, they sent the issue to the voters. First the county initiative was voted down. Then the city initiative was voted down. Then the second county initiative was voted down. Fearing that if the funding wasn't approved before the deadline that we would miss out on the chance to obtain one of two new MLB expansion teams, the County Board of Supervisors chose to break state and county law and reverse the will of the people. They passed the tax to fund a baseball park even though they lacked the authority to do so.
How does this tie in to Bishop O'Brien? After the resulting uproar, O'Brien held a press conference where he publicly supported the Board of Supervisors' actions. Roman Catholicism is the largest religious demographic for the Phoenix Metropolitan area. After that this issue seemed settled by the media, and the only harm that came out of the whole mess were:
1)O'Brien lost his credibility in my eyes (and possibly others' eyes as well).
2)4 of 5 county supervisors failed to be re-elected.
3)The county supervisor who was re-elected was only re-elected because she was shot in the leg by a disgruntled voter. I think he was trying to kill her, but luckily the security guard deflected the blast. The shooter claimed that he was trying to right the wrong done when the ballpark tax was passed illegally.
4)The sales tax in Maricopa County was increased.
5)More of our freedom was reduced and taken away. Once the erosion of freedom has begun, it is a slippery slope to travel. Of course, this was long before 11.09.01, the aftermath of which saw many more rights lost. Yet, much like Jean de Baptiste prepared the way of our Lord, the small erosions of freedom prepared the way for more and larger freedoms being limited or lost.
We deserve an appology at the very least. Work to reverse what he started at the most.
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