Goofy commented on Mickey’s photo

Hi Hazel

Here’s some activity you may have missed on Facebook. 

Goofy commented on Mickey’s photo. 

Popeye commented on Olive’s status. 

See notifications?

Dear Facebook. 

Thanks for the heads up.  I know my life isn’t the most fascinating in the world, but it hasn’t yet sunk to the point where I could describe viewing someone else’s snapshots as an “activity”, so I don’t consider that I have “missed” anything for not being there.  And as for the notifications, if the photo-commenting “activity” that I have “missed” is the highlight of everything that has happened since I last went in, then thanks but I’ll skip trawling through the rest. 

Love and kisses

I really really don’t get Facebook.  And I find the fact that I don’t get it kind of frustrating, but at the same time I’m not sure I want to get it in case I turn into the sort of person who could define commenting on other people’s pictures  as an activity.  And the more I see about cyber bullying, and trolling, and all the other nasty stuff that people do to each other on Facebook, and the more I read about how Facebook hides behind the language of “free speech” in order to justify doing as little as possible about even the illegal abuse and obscenity that goes on in its back yard, the more it causes me to recall that Facebook was originally called “Facemash” and its original purpose was to objectify and denigrate.  The human condition is able to find plenty of ways of twisting even good stuff for evil, so when something was intended for evil in the first place then maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at how difficult it is to reclaim it for anything else.  But maybe that’s just me doing sour grapes about stuff I don’t understand.

So what’s news out in the rest of the world?  Well the big news here is that the Priest in charge at the Catholic institution where I’m working has resigned from the priesthood in order to get married.  If you want to read about it in English, then this is the only non-Spanish link I have found.  It has caused quite a stir locally, with a lot of negative publicity, but not because the poor guy has done anything illegal, or even immoral.  They didn’t even elope; he went through the proper channels and hung up his hassock, but it is seen as a betrayal to the church and to his “vocation”.   No-one’s asking my opinion funnily enough, but for what it’s worth I think it’s time the Catholic church in general had a rethink on the commitments they require of their ministers, and in this instance I am personally very much going to miss having the guy around.  He has a humility which I find sadly uncommon amongst the not-Catholic clergy in Argentina.  Walk into the school looking for the priest in charge, and when you eventually spot him, he will probably be disguised in a check shirt and jeans pushing a wheelbarrow, or with his feet sticking out from beneath the undercarriage of the Renault that he’s fixing (yet again).  So I thought I’d try and track him down and give him my blessing to go in peace to love and serve the Lord in his new life.  Only tracking him down is proving a bit tricky since he is predictably keeping a low profile, and I’m struggling to imagine who might both be able to furnish me with his contact details, but not lynch me if they knew why I wanted them.  Which is why I was on Facebook trying to find him, only he appears not to have a page.  He probably has more sense. 

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