ode to St. Barbara: masonry walls

"Saint Barbara Crushing Her Infidel Father" by Domenico Ghirlandaio ca. 1473 (detail)

Although she was edged out of first place (by St.-Denis) for the honors of Best Martyr in a highly influential and absolutely definitive study (read the full account of My Favorite Martyr here), St. Barbara (d. 306; see full image detailed above here) is associated with more tangible elements that ought to draw one’s attentive devotion to her on a regular basis.  Because of her imprisonment in a great tower, artistic renderings of which are normally included in her portraits, she is associated with masonry, and properly named the patron saint of masons (initially stone masons, but claimed by brick masons too).

By further association, she has been identified also as the patron saint of architects.  Doubtless, architects would have preferred a saint with more apropos accoutrements (they’re still hoping historical research–conducted by someone else, of course–will reveal a martyr stabbed to death by his own trendy glasses).  The list of possibilities was quite short, since the architects’ martyr faces the tall order of out-martyring architects themselves.

Although designers and builders honored St. Barbara with their craft for centuries following her martyrdom, St. Barbara has been rarely honored in the more recent era.  To help remedy this sad state of affairs in some small way, and in honor of St. Barbara’s feast day, December 4, MoT presents the following  collection of images that capture Significant Achievement in Masonry: Walls We Have Loved, presented here as a pictorial prayer.

Praise be to thee, St. Barbara, favored of the Lord and exalted by Him,

For your manifold graces on masons—and even architects, too. 

Your grace knows no bounds.

Hallowed be thy memory among men and women,

Especially those who make buildings of brick and stone.

Give us this day reverence for those who passed before us: intuitive minds and skilled hands

Who wrought timeless beauties from the brute geology of Creation.

We pray for your continued blessing on them: those who worked in brick,

those who worked in marble,

those who worked in granite,

and stone we can’t name,

and spiffy glazed masonry,

and sometimes all of them at once.

Bless the Romans, 

And the medieval masons,

And the nineteenth century architects and builders,

And even those few radical Modernists who dared to work in a traditional material.

Bless those who could organize bricks like they were sewing a quilt,

and those who could spread mortar like it was butter,

and those who recognized mortar as a design element.

We ask your special blessing on those devotees of yours who really knew how to build a wall:

Brunelleschi

Richardson

Lutyens

and Pope.

We beseech your grace and your intercession, through which may we be spared the glare of glassy curtain walls.  Forgive us our double-skin facades.  Deliver us from concrete panels and lead us back to ashlar.

May we ever be blessed by thermal mass, color and sculptural richness.

Amen.

the war on National Coffee Day

We'll give you our mug when you pry it from our cold, dead hands.

Another battle in the Culture Wars has begun.  Don’t think only Christmas is at  issue here–that’s what the far left wants you to think, to distract you from the real threat to the American way of life.  The real problem is their adamant stance against National Coffee Day.

At least at Christmastime, staff at Target, Wal-Mart and the rest will wish you Happy Holidays.  How many people dared to wish you a Happy National Coffee Day? We rest our case.  No, no we don’t: we’re just getting started here.

a patriotic, truly American coffee house in ye olde Colonial times

It’s more of the same, the never-ending assault from secular progressives on traditional American values, and most important thing in the country today (maybe a close second to the war on terror).  At stake: whether the USA, with its long tradition of National Coffee Day, so intimately tied to our set-in-stone Constitution, will turn into a mirror of pathetic National Coffee Day-free countries on which God has not bestowed His blessing, or maintain its  traditional coffee-loving values.  And the stakes could hardly be higher.

Just look at Western Europe and Canada, which don’t have National Coffee Days: there they are, swilling in secular progressive programs, the legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, naked beaches, failing banks, marriage between cats and dogs.  Just look at Holland, known for its legalized prostitution and streets paved with reefer, whose “coffeeshops” do not specialize in pumpkin spice lattes.  Be warned, citizens: lose National Coffee Day, and your beloved Panera might exchange its Napa Almond Chicken Salad Sandwich for a pile of doobies.

Conservative American coffee values are under siege.  America is a coffee nation, and statistics cherry-picked (or perhaps coffee-bean-picked) from varying sources prove it: 80% of Americans drink coffee (fact!) while only 78% planned to watch the Superbowl in 2011 (fact!), 39% of households own dogs (fact!), 70% go to college (fact!), 56.8% voted in the 2008 presidential election (fact!),  53.3% watched the “Who Shot J.R.” episode (fact!) and 74% believe in life after death (fact!).  That makes coffee-drinking Americans–245,605,240 strong!–the single most important majority in American life, and the liberal plot hatched by a progressive minority against them, played out in shopping malls, schools and public parks is patently offensive to Real America.

Coffee-drinking Americans, it’s time to take a stand.  Embrace your righteous rage and don’t sit by quietly while your cherished holiday is being denigrated and disrespected by hostile forces of the secular progressive non-National Coffee Day agenda.  Don’t support retailers who have knocked the word “coffee” out of Coffee Day.  Take your children out of schools that don’t have coffee-themed programming.  Picket your city government until they agree to Juan Valdez displays on public grounds.

The battle lines are drawn.  You’re with us or against us.  Which is it, punk?