Monday 27 September 2010

My notes on possibly helpful Saints…



·      St. Lucy – “Lucia” luce = light. Invoked against eye trouble. Often depicted holding her eyes on a plate. RC legend that her eyes were put out by a tyrant. Dante made her the symbol of illuminating grace.
·      St. Zita – Patron of Servants – A servant herself – who used to give her own food (and later her master’s) to the poor … who was lent her master’s fur coat one Xmas Eve to go to Church in, on a freeing night – only to give it to a freezing, coatless beggar outside the church (“the Angel Door”). But later that night a mysterious stranger returned it to her master.
·      St. Joseph – Saint of Silence, Patron of Patience; father of Jesus; Patron of Refugees; also of ill people (Notre Dame); model of faith—humility, prudence.
·      St. Christopher – Patron of Travellers.
·      St. Jude – The Saint of Last Resort; Saint of the Impossible; Saint of Desperate Cases. So close to Christ—cousin of Christ, says one book; one of the Apostles.
·      St. Frances of Rome – “It is most laudable in a married woman to be devout but she must never forget that she is a housewife. And sometimes she must leave God at the later to find him in her housekeeping.”
·      St. Monica – mother of St. Augustine, one of the father’s of the Western Church.
·      St. John of God – Patron of the sick and of all who take care of the sick. Portuguese. Kidnapped as a child – later a shepherd. Joined an army, abandoned his faith, forgot moral law. Got really sick – reformed and took to taking care of the sick.
·      St. John the Apostle – Beloved of Christ – 4th book New Testament. “Woman, behold thy Son” and “Behold thy mother.”
·      St. Agnes – helps all those who want to remain pure.
·      St. Anthony of Padua – Patron for lost articles and small requests.
·      St. Bede – Writer saint. Talents only loaned.
·      St. Bernard – Patron of Skiers and mountain climbers.
·      St. Blaise – The blessing of throats.
·      St. Fracre – Patron of gardeners. Shrines in backyard gardens. Cures. Louis XIV; Louis XIII.
·      St. Francis of Assisi – Poverty, no fear.
·      St. Francis de Sales – “God and I wil help you. All I require of you is not to despair.”
·      St. Jean Vianney – Ptaron of parish priests and of parishes. Confessions.
·      St. Luke – Patron of doctors.
·      St. Maurice – Patron of infantry soldiers.
·      St. Mechiades – Second of 3 black popes. c. 331.
·      St. Noel Chabanel – Canada – Algonquin first nations. Total resignation to the divine will.
·      St. Pambo – Discipline of the tongue and sanctity of silence.

Married Saints:

·      St. Jutta – patroness of Prussia – saw all her children join religious groups before setting off herself. Widowed young. painful illness/self-poverty/exile foreign country. Three ways lead a person closer to God.
·      St. Elizabeth of Hungary – Queen of Hungary (and her aunt, St. Hedwig, ditto) – Married Louis of Bavaria – happy marriage 6 yrs., had children – then he died. She gave away castle funds to the poor. Provided for her 3 children, then renounced the world completely. Died 3 years later, still in her 20s.
·      St. Bridget of Sweden – Had 8 children with Ulf. Her daughter, Catherine, also later became a Saint.

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How the plebes shop



People talk to each other at the St. Vincent de Paul. An English lady customer  gives advice on what “will do” for what when it is:
·      hemmed
·      done over
·      polished
·      brought up
and she tells a dark young guy how the Belgian tablecloth he is holding would “do” for  doorway curtain, a wall hanging, a throw for a sofa, a throw rug.

            Poor people don’t have the luxury of getting things that they like or things that match, but things that will “do.” Do for this, do for that. Curtains that “do” as bedspreads, bedspreads that “do” as curtains. Throws that “do” for making a horrendous old couch less grotesque. Old mismatched ghastly things that will “do,” rather than having nothing at all…….

The lady rooting through the immense pile of curtain remnants next to me is, by her accent, Irish. She’s the first to guess that the woven “velour-y” swatch of material the guy is holding is a tablecloth. “Me mother,” she says, “used to have one on the parlour table.”

The lady at the front desk, Nicki, later tells us that it is Belgian, is a tablecloth indeed, and that the Belgians and the Dutch (“we”) use them as window hangings, rugs, etc.

The dark guy says to me and the Irish woman that he’ll take it if we don’t want it. 

The prices depend on you. If she doesn’t know you already as she obviously does the English lady, Nicki fondles the object of your desire while furtively looking you up and down. The obviously-not-wealthy dark guy gets the rug/curtain/tablecloth for five dollars. The English lady gets a five dollar suit for three because she says, rationalizing it, she’s going to have to spend a lot of time repairing it. She’s a regular. She calls Nicki ‘Nicki;’ that’s how we know her name.

I’m trying on some shoes. Suede, an awful mustard colour that I can dye, a high heel, size 10B. They fit, but I can’t get the ankle strap to do up. I try. A man called Joe tries, and fails. Finally a young, handsome, but scruffy young guy sits down and does what Joe and I could not. He works with leather, he tells me. His social worker got him into it. He has some dye too—brilliant purple.

“Tell her you’ll give her three for them,” he whispers, handing me back the shoe.

I finally do get the buckles to do up. On the bottom of each shoe is written 8.50.

Nicki addresses me from behind the counter. “You can have them for five.”

The handsome scruffy guy whispers “three” again, almost but not quite pinching my arm. Then he leaves.

I look at my new shoes in the mirror. Even at five...suede; brand new, even the heel isn’t worn.

Handsome scruffy comes back in the shop and gets Nicki to get something out of the window for him. Looks it over. “I’ll give you two dollars for it that’s all I’ve got on me.” A companion out of Nicki’s sight smirks. He gets it for two. He probably doesn’t have more than another five on him.  

I pay five for my shoes and three for some other plastic Fifties junk I found there. After all, it’s for the St. Vincent de Paul charities. 

 Nicki has a pinkie and a ring finger on her left hand and an enormous round mound where her other two fingers might be which goes over the top of her hand—it looks like one of those yellow gourds, only no bumps—in between her fingers and the teeny but agile little stump that serves as her thumb. In repose she covers her left hand, demurely, with her right. Her rings are on her right hand.

There are two high school girls, both black-haired and quite, quite pretty, done up in New Wave outfits: tights worn under heavy Navy jackets, high heels. One of them holds up a horrendous bathing suit.  “Oh, I’ve got to get a really tacky bathing suit…” She wears gloves and contemplates an arcane instrument which Nicki demonstrates to her – a glove-puller-onner.

The St. Vincent de Paul seems quite expensive compared to the run-of-the-mill capitalist second hand stores in Vancouver, as does the pensioners’ store. Can’t be sure, but I suspect the written-on prices at the SVdP are to discourage the well-off vintage-hunters and that Nicki & Co. make drastic reductions on ticket prices according to the customer’s face value.

The Irish woman who spends half an hour methodically going through a pile of lace and doilies, muses aloud that her husband by this time is usually pestering or her to go. But he’s nowhere in evidence—he’s actually in the back, and later he comes forward to collect her holding a small tower of green plastic planters.

It’s Saturday and this is how the plebes shop.

Maybe the customers talk to each other at Holt Renfrew and New Look Interiors. And they may share a camaraderie too, though perhaps not while rummaging through mountains of used sweaters in a bin or massive heavy piles of old curtains.

The St. Vincent de Paul store always did, and still does, smell dank and mildewy. In some kinky, weird reincarnation—where someone has thought fit to mimic IKEA, a back room of furniture has been created called the As Is Room.  The furniture in there is every bit as creaky and worn out, saggy and uniformly ugly as the furniture in the regular rooms…the old rump-sprung mattresses and springs; horrible chrome and plastic Fifties chairs and occasionally two of them match, and rarer still there is a matching table.

These chrome chairs are priced at $15 each. Absolutely absurd. The right person will take them away for five or three or two. Mr. and Mrs. MiddleClass will pay fifteen, as it should be. But they probably wouldn’t be caught dead there anyway, unless they thought there were painted-over Chippendale chairs in the back.

Quite obviously, no mistaking it, this is where the English lady buys most of her clothing her knickknacks and likely most of her house linens, those she doesn’t have already from a lifetime of living.

This is really poverty.

And it smells.

As is.


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©Margo Lamont



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