• The Past Tense

    Sometimes museums are terribly annoying. I found myself getting all worked up about this thurible.

    image

    Well, It wasn’t exactly the thurible that got me worked up but the card next to it.

    image

    The caption uses the past tense. “Censors were used…”

    Censors are used. It somehow felt so frustrating to look at an object that I could pick up and use in my daily work and which seemed to me to be in as good a state as when it was first made and yet see the caption speaking about the use as being something in the past.

    As I looked around the same gallery, all the references to anything liturgical were expressed in the same way:

    “Music was important in the Christian liturgy…”

    There’s no was about it.

9 responses to “Jane Russell RIP”

  1. fr dougal Avatar
    fr dougal

    She had politics?

  2. Kelvin Holdsworth Avatar

    I believe she described herself as “a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot.”

    Any more questions, John?

    (Apart from where one might find flesh coloured swimming trunks?)

  3. fr dougal Avatar
    fr dougal

    Well, at least she was honest – and by now she knows she was wrong!

  4. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    Not just the flesh colour but the little dark band on them which is – quite distracting.

  5. kelvin Avatar

    I wondered whether the little dark band was sewn on in order to show, for the avoidance of doubt, that they were in fact wearing something.

  6. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    I think we have to admit the little band does rather more than draw attention to their being to some degree dressed.

  7. kelvin Avatar

    I think its a curious visual paradox. It makes them appear dressed on the one hand and quite undressed on the other.

  8. RevRuth Avatar

    Oh I see!This wasn’t really about Jane Rusell at all…

  9. Kelvin Avatar

    Pay attention, Mother. Pay attention.

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