Losing My Footing Coming Down from the Mountaintop and Landing on....

After a week of liturgical splendor, the weekend Mass at a beautiful, almost randomly chosen church on our way from point a to point b, (it feels as if I have been away from home for months,) certainly helped bring me back to earth.
Indeed, I may have, if not fallen off Mount Tabor, at least slipped down a muddy hillside, landing in the mire squarely, (but not square-notedly,) on my ars celebrandi.
When I am feeling more charitable towards its perpetrators I may write of it.

Taking Naked Tourist Snaps of Oneself in a Place Which, Oh....Which the People Whose PLACE It Is Revere??!?!??

Yeah, sure, why not...
Why does this not surprise me?

Four Western tourists, including a Briton, have been arrested in Malaysia for allegedly taking naked pictures on a mountaintop considered sacred by tribes....
Disrobing at Machu Picchu, a 15th-Century Inca citadel in the Peruvian Andes, designated as a Unesco world heritage site, has resulted in several arrests. Two sisters from Arizona were arrested and fined in February for taking pictures of their buttocks inside the Angkor Wat temple, while three French men were deported for similar offences.
Many more have got away without police action, posting their pictures on Facebook. One page shows a nude man standing in front of Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue and mimicking its pose.
It's not the nudity, it's the disrespect, the contempt for others' beliefs and traditions.

I suppose when you think about it, it's possible the ignorant adolescents, (adolescence seems to last well into the fourth decade, no?) were not aware of the offense they were giving in Malayasia, and were just being silly and playful, but the statue in Rio de Janeiro? the holy place in Angkor Wat?
That's more akin to... well, just let me ask, if anyone gets thrown in the klink somewhere for this behavior, are we all going to have to declare, "Je Suis Imbecile Que Nu"?

Addled Adolescents and Profiling

There is nothing stupider or more heedless than a teenage boy, yet by chasing after the affection and esteem of these creatures,, teenage girls often manage to one-up even them.
What is to be done?
Pull a reverse A and F and allow no one under a certain age wearing a hajib to leave the country?

 Of course not.

But isn't a little bit of profiling called for?

When I was young I travelled in a country that was experiencing a wave of terrorism at the hands of people who shared my ethnicity, as indicated by my surname in my very recently acquired passport.
I was female, travelling alone,  and like many young who travel, carrying all my baggage with me at all times.
I was exactly the sort of person who, the authorities were finding, thought it romantic to carry something dangerous or valuable, either knowingly or unknowingly, for a brand spanking new foreign boyfriend.
I was often singled out for especially thorough searches at check-points, transportation hubs, museums.
 It never occurred to me that this was unfair.

I know it's Lent, and all....

... but St Patrick's Day is coming! and this just made me grin like an idiot!

I really want to get back to Ireland, (and I promise Himself, I won't make you follow me up too many hills. I mean, it's not Glastonbury :OD)

The "Church of the Chickens" and a Breeze That Sounds Like Gregorian Chant

I am a lazy slattern, but I am thinking about walking "The Way".

For a while now, I've been noticing things, stories about the Camino, pictures, movies, o-hand mentions -- that kind of synchronicity is how events in my life find their beginnings, it seems.

This article popped up on a search for something, can't remember what.... (chant, maybe?)

And actually, lazy or not, I'm a good walker.

Poor Himself, I dragged him to the cliffs of Moher, and in Glastonbury, up the Tor, and then to see the Thorn, along a path rightly called "Wearyall."

It's his code now for putting up with my suggestions.
"I'll follow you up the hill."

Don't think he could do this, though, (although the wine fountain might be a draw...)

Happen there's another pilgrimage the two of us could undertake.

Something to think about.
But maybe I'm just too old.