Luciani - Luciano. Albino - and I am a paleface indeed! Not much more was required here for me to honor the memory of the Pope Who Barely Was...

AUGUST 26TH, 1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected the 263rd pope and chose the name John Paul I. His papacy was to last only 33 days.
Thirty-three... the Age of Christ.

On a personal note, of course, as referenced on The Luminous Blog, as it should be, September 28th 2006 marked six months to the day that my own "saintly papa" passed on - a saintly man I will always regard as far saintlier than any pope, than any man of the cloth, than anyone... With obvious exceptions (Jesus, several saints and martyrs, John The Baptist and the like...) - that may or may not include the saintly man in the spotlight today...

Born Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I was the first pope to choose a double name; he did so to honor his two immediate predecessors, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Refusing to have the millennium-old traditional Papal Coronation, he instead opted for a simplified ceremony. His 33-day papacy was one of the shortest reigns in papal history, resulting in the "Year of Three Popes."

His death, on this day, was most suspect and several conspiracy theories arose about it - most notably these: the Pope's body was embalmed within one day of his death. Wild rumours spread. One rumour claimed that a visiting prelate had recently died from drinking "poisoned coffee" prepared for the pope. A visiting prelate actually had died some days earlier, but there was no evidence of poison. Another unsubstantiated rumour described the Pope's plans to dismiss senior Vatican officials over allegations of corruption. The suddenness of his embalming raised suspicions that it had been done to prevent a post-mortem examination. However the Vatican insisted that a papal post-mortem was prohibited under Vatican law. However a source (Augostino Chigi in his diary) reports a post-mortem was carried out on the remains of Pope Pius VIII in 1830.

David Yallop's controversial book In God's Name proposed the theory that the pope was in "potential danger" because of alleged corruption in the Istituto per le Opere Religiose (IOR, Institute of Religious Works, the Vatican's most powerful financial institution, commonly known as the Vatican Bank), which owned many shares in Banco Ambrosiano. This corruption supposedly involved the bank's head, Paul Marcinkus, along with Roberto Calvi of the Banco Ambrosiano (who would be later murdered) as well as P2, an Italian freemasonry lodge, and the mafia. This would be known as one of the most important scandal in Italy in the 1980s. Yallop also offers as suspects Archbishop John Patrick Cody of Chicago, whom he believes Luciani was about to force into retirement, and Cardinal Villot, because of his theological differences with the new pope.

Yallop's book exposed many of the "inaccurate" statements issued by the Vatican in the days after John Paul's death and received international attention, including demands from some senior churchmen for an inquiry into the death itself. Its theories, however, have not been widely accepted and were severely undermined in the eyes of some by John Cornwell's subsequent book (see below), which proposes a 'benign' conspiracy to account for the discrepancies in the official version of the Pope's death. After decades of ongoing controversy, it has recently been reported that the investigation about the death of John Paul I would be reopened.

Following on from Yallop's book, Robert Hutchison's Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei appeared in 1997. Hutchison believes that several individuals within the church who were opposed to Opus Dei who ostensibly died from heart attacks may in fact have been poisoned, and, drawing on Yallop's thesis, he suggests that this fate may also have befallen John Paul I.

More on this: here or go directly to Sandra Miesel's article: here
Who needs Dan Brown, eh?

A tale of two funerals...

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Today, in the Montreal area, inside a Polish Church (at the request of her Polish grand-mother - the whole family bears the name of Anastasia's Portuguese grand-father so the wife had to have the last word, as wives usually do...) the gone-too-fast Anastasia De Sousa had her funeral ceremony - "a missa do corpo presente" as her ancestors on her grand-daddy's side would have said.

Six months ago, almost to the day, I personally arranged for the exact same thing - uma missa do corpo presente - for my saintly father. There were less people present for a variety of reasons, which are: I did not invite everyone. Some of those that I did invite lived too far away and could not make the trip, for HEALTH reasons too... I did not want certain people there - even though they were locals and could have been there in a heartbeat. (I didn't want them there in spirit, so... Forget about the heartbeat! The one I cared about had stopped on March 28th...)

Also, and chiefly, the reason why there were less people there than there were at the Polish Church was the sensationalism of the event, though a sad and tragic event. Anastasia was too young to die - she wasn't even ill. By all means, she would still be very much alive and thriving, if it had not been for the nine bullets she took from a mentally-disturbed misfit named Kimveer Gill. Anastasia's life was cut short for all the wrong reasons (or even worse - no reason at all) and in a most horrific and violent way. She was the only one from the wounded at Dawson College to die from her bullet wounds, so far and as far as I know anyway (at least one injured person remains in a coma, in some intensive care unit, in a Montreal hospital... That person is listed as being in critical condition...)

My father was in an intensive care unit too, last March - because of a sudden turn for the worse in his health condition. I see some of the medical staff with the same eyes that many of Anastasia's friends and family might look at Kimveer Gill; yes, I see them as assassins too, only different types of assassins - for it is all legally done. They kill not with bullets but with pellets (they call them pills) either over or underadministered, sometimes given to the patient too early or too late, when they can no longer prevent the worst-case scenario from occurring... Different types, hence - same results. A doctor will kill far more than any Kimveer Gills ever will. And then, there are others I could blame for father's health taking such a turn for the worse - but I cannot prove it, so...

That would be the pits though - to seek out the same medical establishment I loathe in order to find evidence that father's health deteriorated because of outside factors... Other than their own poorly rendered medical treatments that is! Trading one scapegoat for another, especially via a temporary alliance with the one I can readily incriminate or, at least, blame already, is simply not my idea of "justice"... I will, therefore, leave it ALL in the hands of GOD.

Which is what the local De Sousa family is doing too. Their daughter's murderer is dead already -the only other fatality, for now, in the shooting spree- and so, being such people of faith as they are, they will do likewise, I am sure. It may hurt them more because she was only starting her life - at 18 years of age, Anastasia had just entered Dawson College. She would be shot dead within days there. That was not what she had envisioned for her future, or she would have never enrolled there. Maybe she should have taken a sabbatical (so to speak), like I did between college and university. Still, I was present, a mere few feet away even, from the site where the previous such tragedy occurred - the Polytechnique massacre, in the 1990s. The misfit miscreant there had shot dead more than one victim before HE was stopped. Who knows - maybe I could have caught a stray bullet myself? One is never safer, no matter what we do - we are only safe if God decides that we will be. And, if our hour has come, that is it - forget about safety then. You will be safe soon enough - in God's Domain!

The funerals then - both had, despite all the differences enumerated here, one striking thing in common: the rain. Anastasia's had many people coming who did not even know her -the media was there, her school's director (did the doctor come to my dad's funeral? No! The hospital's director? Ha! I would have not wanted them there either..)- and all who came, brought their umbrellas. Rain in a funeral seems appropriate - like the heavens are crying with us. But that is not it, at all.

The rain is nothing less than blessings - encouragement from the Most High for those who stay... And blessings for the soul that has departed too! Maybe even blessings from that soul as well, which is now in The Light and can, therefore, dispense these to his or her loved ones left behind. The rainbow that follows, as the sunshine, are reflective of God telling us that all is as He Planned - and everything will be all right. Reflective, too, that those who left us are with Him - in The Light! Both funerals saw the exact same thing happen - rain, more rain, heavy rain even, at the moment of the laying of the coffin into that six-foot deep hole in the ground... And then, as soon as the crowd has dispersed and it is all over and done with, the rain ceases, the skies clear and the sun shines in!

Anastasia is in a good place now (more than I can say for other people, also in Canada, somewhere, who bear her last name but have no relation at all to her - when THEY die...)
My father is in a good place too (likewise, I cannot vouch for all who bear his last name either - but I am hopeful he will put in a good word for me - please dad!)

And we, who remain, have to carry on now...
Keep their memory alive as we keep on working on our own gem in the rough, perfecting it... Those gems being OUR SOULS...
...

Bertha Atkins - remembered all throughout the TLB Network!

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Two years ago a couple of Wayne County Circuit Court juries found Larqueta Collier, 16, and Sharon Patterson, 17, guilty in the Sept. 17, 2003 death of Bertha Atkins, the defendant Collier's actual grandmother. Collier, incidentally, was also convicted of arson for setting fire to her 64-year-old grandmother's house, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office had declared back in 2004...

Collier had said that after the killing, Patterson (pictured) convinced her to go see the movie "Jeepers Creepers" in order to "take their mind off of what had happened", reported a TV station that covered the lurid trial...

When old style morals and values clash with newfound liberal lifestyles, these sort of things can and will happen, nowadays...

Bertha Atkins - you are remembered.
While your grand-daughter and her lover have gotten what they wanted, in this recognized bastion of sapphism known as women's correctional facilities...

I must be selective though, unconsciously, in my lugubrious remembrances here, on this decidedly morbid and downbeat blog of mine...

I omitted to post something about the 5th anniversary of Aaliyah's untimely demise (her tiny overloaded personal plane had crashed just before the 9/11 planes started crashing all over the place...)

I omitted to remember the anniversary of the passing of Princess Diana too - while I posted twice about Princess Grace...

I forgot all about commemorating the same amount of time that has passed since the plane crash (another one - another tiny pleasence plane as well) death of one Marie-Soleil Tougas - a local celebrity that could have easily been my classmate as well... And, who knows... more? After all, a local buddy of mine once dated the eventual daring thespian Pascale Bussières... Then again, just like the recently murdered Anastasia De Sousa, it is not because they have perished in dramatic and tragic circumstances that they are automatically saintly souls overnight... Marie-Soleil was not one of the most heartless ones though, that is for sure - and the foundation that bears her name nowadays does some good - concretely.


What if scenarios are, though, always tantalizing... And so, one can wonder... Maybe if Tougas had taken to the things I like to do instead, she wouldn't have died that day, behind newbie pilot and film director Jean-Claude Lauzon, himself quite the lugubrious mind... This took place the same year - same summer even - as Lady Di's death... I remember mentioning then that, even in death, the "Quebec star-system" was upstaged by true celebrities...

That same year, of course, Mother Teresa passed away as well...
And I forgot to remember even her...!

Yet I remember Bertha Atkins here, today...
I dare to think that GOD Will do as I am mirroring His modus operandi here...
GOD Will remember and exalt those that the world knew not and never would, in a million years, beatify... However, GOD Knows better... :)

And, through Him and thanks to His Guidance - so do I! ;)
...

The First Dream Cast And The First Dream Princess

There will never be another one like Princess Grace of Monaco...
On this date, she suffered a stroke and drove over a cliff, subsequently dying from the injuries sustained when her car plunged down a 45-foot (13.7-metre) embankment. That was on September 14, 1982.
The spot where she fatally lost control is said to be the same spot where the picnic scene in To Catch a Thief was filmed in 1954.
The inscription at her burial site in Monaco's cathedral does not refer to her as a princess. It uses the title "uxor principis" (prince's wife), which is traditional in the House of Grimaldi.

She is interred at the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, Monte Carlo, Monaco.

Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#5). [1995]

Ranked #51 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]

Grace Kelly had hoped "to return to acting in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), but the people of Monaco didn't want their princess playing a thief and romancing Sean Connery." Instead, she stayed in Monaco - and would, of course, never return to the dream life of films and the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

September 14th is known for less somber things too:
In 1920, the first live radio dance music was broadcast, carried by a Detroit station and featuring Paul Specht and his orchestra. The idea caught on fast... From Paul Specht to Phil Spector, music would never look back!

Sort of like Grace who, once she set foot into her princess glass slipper and onto Monaco, never looked twice at Tinseltown...

Also of note, on this date - September 14th, 1628, Salem, Massachusetts, was founded.
Mexico City was occupied by the U.S. Army, in 1847...
The Soviet probe Lunik-2 became the first Earth-launched space vehicle to land on the moon in 1959 while, in 1963 ("wish I could be - back in 1963" - who penned those words that I paraphrase here, quick? Oh... Alan Moore. Carry on as if nothing happened then - cause not much did...!) the first surviving U.S. quintuplets were born in Aberdeen, S.D., to Maryann and Andrew Fischer.
See - not all somber events.
Now for the more somber events on this date:
U.S. President William McKinley died of wounds inflicted by an assassin eight days earlier, in 1901. He was succeeded by his vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR DEATHS...
2003 - An estimated 124 people were reported dead or missing after South Korea was struck by the most powerful typhoon to hit the nation in a century.
DEATH OF THE EURO DREAM... PARTLY SO ANYWAY
2003 - Swedish voters turned thumbs down on a proposal to make the euro the national currency.
FOURTY-SEVEN DEATHS
2004 - A massive car bomb killed 47 people and injured more than 100 others in Baghdad, catching mostly conscripts seeking a job in the Iraqi police force. The many wounded were reported gravely injured.
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN DEAD
2005 - 12 suicide bombings in Baghdad, aimed at Shiites and believed to be carried out by Sunnis, killed 167 people and injured 600.
DEATH OF THE AIRLINES (THEY'D BE PHOENIX-LIKE ANYWAY, I THINK - AND IF NOT, THEY'RE JUST CORPORATE ENTITIES ANYWAY!)
2005 - Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, the third and fourth largest U.S. air carriers, filed for bankruptcy as the industry continued to reel under record high jet fuel costs.
AND, OF COURSE... THE PRINCESS, AGAIN, DEAD TOO YOUNG ON THIS DAY, 24 YEARS AGO... A lifetime for many, such as Anastasia De Sousa who died this week from nine bullets she took, and was not even that... She was 18.
...

~~~~ 9/11 ~~~~

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Also
In an odd twist of fate, Anna Nicole Smith lost her son unexpectedly just as she welcomed her newborn daughter into this world...
Daniel Wayne Smith, the son she had 20 years ago, died suddenly as he visited his mother at the hospital where she had just given birth to his sister.
The causes of death are still unknown. Smith died yesterday.

Hence, it is not just the 9/11 bereaved ones who are mourning today.
The widow of Steve Irwin is mourning.
The widow of João Jacinto Borges Pimentel is mourning.
So many widows, widowers and orphans are reminded of their loss on a day like this.
And, surely, Anna Nicole did not expect to be of their number on this day, which she envisioned even a happy one for herself and her close ones - but she is instead of the number of the sad ones.

Life is like that.

Full of surprises - and not all of them will be pleasant ones.
The families of the World Trade Center victims -as those of Flight 93 and Flight 77 - let they not be forgotten- will always remember that most unpleasant of all facts of life...


...

Anna Lindh

On the eve of the 9/11 commemoration, five years later, I would like today to mention another one worth honoring and remembering too.
Anna Lindh, a Swedish Politician, who was stabbed to death on this day, back in 2003.
Lindh was a Swedish Social Democrat and an important proponent of the European Union. She was Chairman of the Council of the European Union in 2001 and, at the time of her murder, a prime candidate to become the next President of the Social Democrats and Prime Minister of Sweden. She was attacked just prior to a Swedish referendum on the Euro, at the height of a public campaign she led for the approval of the currency.

Anna Lindh was the second prominent Swedish politician to be assassinated in recent decades. Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot and killed in 1986 by a still unidentified assailant.
Anna's murderer is serving a life imprisonment sentence, briefly commuted to a sojourn in a closed psychiatric ward when, on appeal, it was found that the murderer suffered from a mental illness at the time of the murder. Prosecutors, however, soon re-appealed into Supreme Court of Sweden which eventually on December 2 re-instated the life imprisonment.

More on Anne Lindh - here

Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin

...


A stingray did what countless crocodiles and other dangerous beasties might have wanted to do - playfully or not so playfully - but never succeeded in accomplishing, over the years... And that is "end the lucky streak" one Steve Irwin was on, the renowned Crocodile Hunter who put to shame fellow local hero from down under Paul Hogan, a.k.a. Crocodile Dundee, since relegated to becoming Flipper's patsy (in a failed attempt at a franchise to boot) while Irwin continued on to invade all manners of media, even the silver screen. This is, after all, the age of "reality TV" - and there were no more real dangers than those that Steve Irwin placed himself squarely into and this very routinely too! He captivated TV audiences that way - less so moviegoers - and was shooting another documentary in his own inimitable style (imitated though it may be; it was never really duplicated) when tragedy struck in the form of a devil ray.
(Though it may not be technically a "devil ray", I'll call it as such and even Terri Irwin, a renowned animal lover, will perhaps do likewise here...)

My most sincere condolences to his wife hence, Terri, to their two children and other family, all of whom held their collective breath each time he would take one outrageous chance after another... He seemed to thrive on doing that too - taking risks and pushing his luck to the limit. As my dear departed father used to say, "tantas vezas que vai a jarinha a fonte, que, um dia, ela fica là" - which means, in short, that one day, one's luck is bound to run out...

My Dad is one of the first genuine good guys who has passed away this year - the year that seems bent on seeing all the good ones take a hike from "mother earth" and ascend into heaven... So that we're left with not much else other than an overwhelming majority of rotten apples?!? Sure looks like the plan here...
2006 has been nothing short of a very, very bad year for the "good guy"...
At any level and in any field too.

The Crocodile Hunter was not the only good guy to perish prematurely on this day - far from it. 2006, as I stated, has been one lousy year in that regard with an overabundance of good guys biting the big one since January...

On this day alone, September 4th, 2006:
In Jordan, a British tourist was among the dead on the site of a terrorist attack.
In Irak, another American soldier was killed while
in Afghanistan, another Canadian soldier went on to meet his maker because of that most oxymoronic of all things called "friendly fire"... This time emanating from a NATO jet, no less! With friends like these...

Most revolting of all, in terms of good guys dying needlessly, left and right, is the following tale (which is our main link today, incidentally, courtesy of sf.indymedia.org) - a tragedy which actually did not take place on this day precisely but, as fate would have it, that I learned about today, just as I learned about Mr. Irwin's untimely passing too...

A puppy died - and it can be directly blamed on American Airlines and their denying the pup the appropriate medical care within a reasonable amount of time. A two-year-old English bulldog died after arrival from a cross-country flight. Terrence Ing, the owner of Willie, placed his dog under the care of American Airlines to safely transport his pet on a New York to San Francisco flight. Ing never expected Willie was not going to make the trip alive. According to Ing, an American Airlines baggage manager denied him access to Willie and had the dog relocated pending instructions from airline superiors. It was only after Ing contacted several area veterinarians that animal paramedics arrived five hours after the flight landed. By then, Willie had died. An animal paramedic who examined Willie’s body at the airport believes the dog may have survived had American Airlines provided adequate medical care. Now, Ing is taking American Airlines to court.
I just know that animal lovers such as the Irwins would be supporting Terrence Ing in his legal recourses here.

I'm at the point that I wonder "who's left" among the good guys... And who could be going next? Could it be... me?