I want to invite you to read The Catholic Bard’s Week in Review Exclusive

Every Week we take  a look at

The Last Week In Life

Here’s what you can possibly expect.

As we journey across the landscape of time, as well as the landscape of the internet, especially on FB or Twitter,
we often come across more information then we can possibly digest.

There are too many…

Giddy GIF’s,

Fun Fascinating Facts

Poetic Photos

Piffy Quality Quotes

  

SPECTACULAR STORIES OF WEEK

with

Fanatically Fun and Uplifting Articles

Jason Burt, of Clarksburg, Calif., knew his grandfather played the trumpet in World War II.

He had listened to stories about the 746th Far East Air Force Band boosting morale for servicemen on the front lines of the Philippines theater.

But, for decades, the family hadn’t seen his grandfather’s vinyl recordings of the ensemble until 2019, when they were clearing out their grandparents’ house.

“I knew they were around, and I was kind of hoping they would turn up at some point. And we found them in the attic,” Burt told NPR’s Morning Edition.

Last year, the pandemic gave him time to borrow a record player and finally listen to his late grandfather’s Army Air Force band.

“I put the music on and it was like my own private concert with my grandpa,” he said. “It was like he’d never left. I was back in 1946 and getting to hear my … grandpa and his young lungs playing the trumpet.”

Newest News and Informative Information

On federal death row, prisoners fling notes on a string under each other’s cell doors and converse through interconnected air ducts. A top issue these days: whether President Joe Biden will halt executions, several told The Associated Press.

“There’s not a day that goes by that we’re not scanning the news for hints of when or if the Biden administration will take meaningful action to implement his promises,” said 36-year-old Rejon Taylor, sentenced to death in 2008 for killing an Atlanta restaurant owner.

Everyone on federal death row was convicted of killing someone, their victims often suffering brutal, painful deaths. The dead included children, bank workers and prison guards. One inmate, white supremacist Dylann Roof, killed nine Black members of a South Carolina church during a Bible study in 2015. Many Americans believe death is the only salve for such crimes.

Views of capital punishment, though, are shifting. One recent report found people of color are overrepresented on death rows nationwide. Some 40% of federal death row inmates are Black, compared with about 13% of the U.S. population. With growing scrutiny of who gets sentenced to die and why, support for the death penalty has waned, and fewer executions are done overall. Virginia lawmakers recently voted to abolish it.
Michael Tarm, On federal death row, inmates talk about Biden, executions (March 22, 2021) AP News

Uplifting Spiritual Content

Our hope as Catholics — the hope inherited from our elder brothers in faith, the Jewish people; the hope proclaimed by Jesus in his debate with the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection of the dead; the hope inaugurated by our Lord on Easter Sunday — our hope is not merely the salvation of our souls, but the redemption of our bodies as well.

Not merely heaven, but new heavens and a new earth. Creation itself — earth and sky, sun and moon, planets, stars, galaxies — all of creation set free from death, decay, disorder, entropy, sharing forever in the glorious freedom of the children of God when all of humanity follows Jesus Lord in rising from the dead at the end of history.

This is the hope we confess in the Creed when we say “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” When Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he speaks not raising her brother later that day but of this future resurrection of all of humanity. Christ is the first-fruits; the rest of the harvest is still to come.

Deacon Steven D. Greydanus, Flesh and Spirit and the Atlanta Shootings (March 21, 2021) National Catholic Register

Best Blogs

March 25th. It is sacred to nerds because this happened on this date in the year 3019 in the Third Age of Middle Earth. Tolkien’s choice of this day out of the whole year for the destruction of the One Ring was no accident. As he himself made clear The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work deeply rooted in Tolkien’s own profoundly Catholic faith. His deeply and intensely medieval English Catholic piety choose today for the destruction of his subcreation’s realm of hell precisely because he saw today as the moment in which the grace of God broke into the world in the womb of Our Lady and also as Frodo’s ascent of Calvary. And indeed, in this, he shares a view that has very deep roots in Christian piety. For it is this day, not the popularly assumed pagan influence of Greco-Roman culture that really drove the early Church’s dating of Christmas (which, by the way, Tolkien also honors by having the Fellowship set out from Rivendell on December 25)
Mark Shea, Today is a Day Holy to Both Nerds and Christians, Who are Often the Same People (March 25, 2021) Stumbling Towards Heaven

 POPE FRANCIS’S FAMOUS LAST WEEK’S WORDS 

“Many people, often without saying so, implicitly would like to ‘see Jesus,’ to meet him, to know him. This is how we understand the great responsibility we Christians and our communities have. Sowing seeds of love, not with fleeting words but through concrete, simple and courageous examples, not with theoretical condemnations, but with gestures of love.The Lord, with his grace, makes us bear fruit, even when the soil is dry due to misunderstandings, difficulty or persecution, or claims of legalism or clerical moralism. This is barren soil. Precisely then, in trials and in solitude while the seed is dying, that is the moment in which life blossoms, to bear ripe fruit in due time. It is in this intertwining of death and life that we can experience the joy and true fruitfulness of love…”  –Pope Francis

Informative, Funny, Unique and Vibrant  Videos

Pondering Podcasts

Including the wonder of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

MYS107: In 1971, a shadowy group decided they needed to begin an investigation of the FBI, which they did with a burglary. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli ask who were these burglars, what FBI secrets did they discover, how did the FBI retaliate, and how did it shake up the FBI so that it’s never been the same. @ 52:36 Mark Jimmy mentions the Catholic Bard interview that he did with us.

Honoring Holidays and Feast Days

The whole liturgical year revolves around these three days, and the Church’s celebrations on these three days are the most solemn and sacred of the whole year.

Last year taught me that the solemnity of Good Friday and the joy of Easter are possible without the celebrations. I always knew this in theory, but I experienced it last year.

It’s a lesson I will be happy to learn only once in my life and never to need it again.-Steven D. Greydanus April 2, 2021 at 5:13 PM  

and so much more.

Including  The latest

Book Em, Dano on your reading list

WATCH IT! 

 on TV & The Big Screen

New Tunes In The Jukebox Baby

Greatest Enemy– Single by The Strumbellas (3:09) Alternative

This might be my last trip, my life’s an asterisk
I’m trying to break out of this feeling like I’m in a casket
I can’t get past it, all of this madness
I wanna set my past on fire, I’ll strike a match and

[Pre-Chorus] I don’t wanna feel this comedown (Down)
I don’t wanna feel this comedown (Down)

[Chorus] Feeling like I can be anything I wanna be
But I know I’ll always be my greatest enemy
I know how you want me
Nothing’s gonna stop me
And I know I’ve always been my greatest enemy

And Sad Passings

Literally Their Last Week in Life 

Lodewijk Frederik Ottens (June 21, 1926 – March 6, 2021) was a Dutch engineer and inventor, best known as the inventor of the cassette tape, and for his work in helping to develop the compact disc. 

We look to the future,

live in the present

and remember the past.

May 10

Saint Damien of Molokai Feast Day

1569 – Saint Doctor John of Ávila dies. (b. 1500-1569)

1773 – The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by reducing taxes on its tea and granting it the right to sell tea directly to North America. The legislation leads to the Boston Tea Party.

1838 – John Wilkes Booth, American actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln  is born (1838-1865). JWB is in my family tree.

1886 – Karl Barth, Swiss theologian and author  is born (1886-1968)

1869 – The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah with the golden spike.

Last Week in Life

Catholic Bard Week in Review Exclusive (CB WIRE)

 As I write this weekly column it continues to change and evolve. 

Here is Last Week in Life So Far in the