Episode One - The Ghost Outside
…with work by Rachel Kennedy, Elisabeth Kramp, and Maria Illich, and featuring the music of the Cimarron Kings. Also available on Apple Podcasts and Bandcamp.
To support Lydwine, please consider purchasing a digital or CD copy of Mighty Deeds, the debut album of the Cimarron Kings, available exclusively on Bandcamp.
“So let us begin anew…” quoted from the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, delivered in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1961 - Fiddle tune is “To God Be the Glory” by William Howard Doane, first published in 1875, fiddled here by Andrew Hunt of the Cimarron Kings - Oklahoma’s own N. Scott Momoday quoted from his novel House Made of Dawn (Harper & Row, 1968) - Norman Mailer’s essay “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” was first published in Esquire in November 1963 (as “Superman Comes to the Supermart”) and is anthologized in the remarkably entertaining Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties (Esquire Press, 1987) - Alexis de Tocqueville’s eyewitness account of the Choctaw enduring their forced removal to Indian Territory is in Book One, Part Two, Chapter Ten of Democracy in America, in the section translated by George Lawrence (Harper & Row, 1966) as “The Present State and the Probable Future of the Indian Tribes Inhabiting the Territory of the Union” - Saint Paul wrote of “the breadth and length and height and depth” in Ephesians 3:18 - T.S. Eliot quoted from “The Hollow Men”, first published in his Poems: 1909-1925 (Faber & Dwyer, 1925) - Gerard Manley Hopkins quoted from “God’s Grandeur”, a poem written in 1877 but not published until 1918, thirty years after the poet’s death - William Shakespeare quoted from Richard II, Act II, Scene IV - Elisabeth Kramp's chapbook Quickening was published by Franciscan University Press, and her poems have appeared in First Things, Literary Matters, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at John Paul the Great Catholic University - Details regarding the strange fate of our neighbor’s garage are in the filings of the District Court in and for Logan County, Oklahoma - “We must serve the poor,” Saint Vincent de Paul wrote, as included in the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours for his feast day each September 27th, “especially outcasts and beggars. They have been given to us as our masters and patrons.” - Words of Power are from John 5:8, John 8:11, and Psalm 35:27 - Regarding Pops' tattooed knuckles, an astute observer points out that DOA and MDC (Millions of Dead Cops) were both well-known hardcore bands of the era, which Pops probably knew if he was the type to play at CBGB. Though Pops did specify that MDC was meant to indicate the Missouri Dept. of Corrections, it just goes to show that meaning is ofttimes stacked upon meaning in this well-wrought world of ours - Davis Grubb’s novel The Night of the Hunter and its justly acclaimed 1955 film adaptation were discussed in depth in an earlier issue of this journal, in a conversation called “The Hanging Man” - Quote regarding the savagery and civilization of the frontier is from Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” - “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier…” is from John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention, in Los Angeles, California, the phrase coined by Kennedy advisor Walt Whitman Rostow - “Rosie” performed by the Cimarron Kings, from their album Mighty Deeds - Maria Illich is an award-winning author and educator who lives in Houston. Her children's book, The Legend of the Ladybug, which recounts the Marian miracle, received awards from the Press Women of Texas and from the National Federation of Press Women. Her short stories and poems have appeared in various publications. A member of Catholic Literary Arts, she promotes writing among young people. Learn more about her at Mariaillich.com - Paul Elie quoted from The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2004) - That the thirteenth generation since the American founding (called 13ers, or Generation X) is the most aborted generation in American history is taken from Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which bears quoting in full: “Through the birth years of the last-wave 13ers, would be mothers aborted one fetus in three.” - Observation that Gladys Presley kept chickens on the front lawn of Graceland is from our friend Stanley Booth’s reportage “A Hound Dog to the Manor Born” published in the February 1968 issue of Esquire - In case you can’t make it to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s monkey was photographed for posterity by William Egglestone in 1983 - George Orwell quoted from his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” - The Catechism of the Catholic Church (United States Catholic Conference, 2000) offers the Eucharist as “source and summit of the Christian life” in paragraph 1324, drawing directly from Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church promulgated by Pope Paul VI in November 1963. Paragraph 11 of LG in its original Latin reads “…totius vitae christianae fontem et culmen…”, sometimes translated as “source and summit” and sometimes as “fount and apex”, both of which mix metaphor, though the former shows clearly the mysterious power of alliteration to cloud men’s minds, at least in English - That only half of American Catholics understand (and only one-third believe) the Church’s teachings regarding the transubstantiation of the Eucharist is from a report by the Pew Research Center, July 23, 2019, “What Americans Know About Religion” - John’s antipodes are in Revelation 22:13 - The exorcism of the Gerasene (or Gadarene) demoniac is recounted in Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39 - "For every one person joining our church today, 6.45 are leaving" was a sobering statistic offered by Bishop Robert Barron in an address to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2019 - Charles Taylor paraphrased from A Secular Age (Belknap Press, 2018) - Saint Paul wrote of “childish things” in 1 Corinthians 13:11, and discussed apostasy and Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 9 - Revelation 22:20 pretty much sums it up - “Lords of the Sky” performed by the Cimarron Kings, from their album Mighty Deeds - Lydwine is produced and directed by Brian Kennedy, produced and engineered by Jonathan Hunt, with additional voicework by Rachel Kennedy and Keila Dawson, and featuring the music of the Cimarron Kings.