A few things

Since deciding to leave Oakland and move back to Champaign-Urbana, I've been reflecting a lot on what I came here to the Bay for. Like, what did I receive here? How has this place changed me? What have I done here that's changed me? How have I been changed by what I've given?

I keep not writing about it because I keep getting stuck at wanting to be comphrensive or have some conclusion to make. Today, the women at the nail salon in my neighborhood told me they'd miss seeing me. A few of them have kids in Oakland high schools, so we often chat about district politics when I'm there. One woman put her hand on my hand and kept it there when I told her my mom is dying. I keep having moments like this where I'm overwhelmingly grateful for my community here. 

I decided then to just write in the dribbles that it comes to me. Maybe later I'll see some grand unifying theory.

So here's a list of some stuff I love that I learned about in the Bay:

-- gel manicures and pedicures (and their restorative value)

-- shiatsu massage (and how it's most effective for me if I can do an appointment a week for three weeks)

-- açaí berries

-- hiking

-- deeper knowledge of the history of the Black Panther Party

-- Bikram yoga (noted: the man is rapey and steals other people's work)

-- smoking weed

-- steak fries

-- Ethiopian food

-- I don't love the wedding dress industry but I did learn about it and got trying beautiful wedding dresses on all out of my system without having to actually get married.

-- "Tell Me When to Go," "Blow the Whistle," and "Thizz Dance"

-- burritos al pastor

-- pork buns

-- going on strike

-- emergent strategy

-- prison abolition

-- Marshawn Lynch 

-- pomegranates, persimmons, dinosaur kale, and loquats

-- LED lights

-- outsider art

-- donut shops

-- the color of Redwood bark

-- pupusas

All this stuff makes my life better. 

Delighting in the Jarlath Diaspora

A few years ago, I thought it was odd when a co-worker asked me about the St. Jarlath's t-shirt I was wearing -- Jarlath being a rarely-used Irish name, and me being related to four people who have it. Come to find out, there's a St. Jarlath's Catholic church and school in Oakland. 

This week I decided to find out why.

So I went to mass Sunday morning to see what I could see. I learned nothing about the reason for the Jarlath, but it was Palm Sunday, which I happen to love*. I left during the homily because I was bored and then to my utter delight, there was a vendor making bacon-wrapped hotdogs in the church parking lot. Not a total loss.

Later, I had a fruitless google of it while I texted with my cousin Jarlath about the failed mission -- "They are missing a trick there - the jarlaths of the world would buy some," he replied ruefully when I answered that no, they did not have any merch available. 

Undeterred (and since I'm on leave from work), I made myself an appointment at Oakland Public Library's Oakland History Center for the next afternoon. A research adventure!

--

Lately I'm more inclined than ever to follow threads that lead back to Ireland like this one. My mom is dying of colon cancer. She's receiving hospice care at home in Chicagoland, and I'm across the country in Oakland, making monthly trips back to spend time with her and processing the ocean of terror I feel about life on this planet without her. One wave that has come up is that in losing Mom, I'm somehow losing my connection to Ireland, my status as an Irish Irish-American (because American Irish-Americans are deeply embarrassing a lot of times). My little brother and I even sent in for our Irish passports; I think he senses this aspect of our loss, too.

Anticipatory grief is fun because you get this frantic and futile guilty urge to capture every bit of the utterly uncapturable. I'm on this quest to find out why a church in Oakland is called St. Jarlath's as if knowing why will save me losing Mom.

--

God smiles on librarians.

When I got to the spacious room on the second floor of the downtown branch, someone had already pulled a file of newspaper clippings related to the Catholic church in Oakland, including a photocopy of the article below which solves the mystery:

.  

 

St. Jarlath's parish opened as an offshoot of St. Anthony's, pastored by Father Peter C Yorke, proud alum of St. Jarlath's College in Tuam.

My granddad went to St. Jarlath's in Tuam, too. Father Yorke was "a labor activist and an Irish patriot," and though I don't know the family history back that far, I do know that our family home in Dunmore, just outside Tuam, had enough IRA pamphlets on guerrilla warfare in it for me to suspect that Yorke could have been a comrade of one of my great-great-greats. Mom was delighted by my findings. Me too.

---

So anyway, that's the answer: He said "it was the delight of the Catholic church to remember her glorious dead."





* On account of the props (sword-shaped palms) and a dramatic reading (with parts!) of Jesus' arrest, conviction, and execution. Palm Sunday mass is kinda like Catholic Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had dinner with friends that night, and when I told them about my providentially-timed visit, the other one who was raised Catholic gleefully raised his fist in the air and shouted "Barabas! Free Barabas!" which is from the crowd part that we get to play lolllll. Palm Sunday mass was my second favorite behind Good Friday mass because when I was a kid that's when the priest would lay face down sprawled out on the ground in the same shape as Jesus on the cross for three minutes of silent prayer at 3 pm, the scriptural hour of Jesus' death. The drama!