Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The National Church Seems Not To Have Anything To Say About This

DOJ white paper lays legal basis for drones targeting US citizens

A three-year seminary education was expensive in my day and not all of us had trusts or family money from which to draw to fund the tuition and fees, which came to equivalent of $27,000 a year in 2013 money.  In fact, some of us were impolite enough to actually be poor and yet still trouble the Episcopal Church with our pesky call to ordained ministry.  [Fortunately, I notice that the Church is taking care of that problem and mostly ordaining only those from the gentry these days; it's part of their drive to diversity, I'm told.  No, I don't know how only ordaining elites is diverse, but....]

So, some of us had to work at jobs outside fo the full-time, year-round schedule of classes and internships.  This was not permitted, so we had to do so surreptiously.  For example, I worked as a phlebotomist at a Manhattan hospital and also a dishwasher in a neighborhood restaurant.  Another classmate served with the Army Reserve during that time, again to supplement his income in order to afford to live in NYC and to attend the once-prestigious, now embarassingly diminished General Theological Seminary.  That meant, on weekends, he had to travel to the armory in lower Manhattan.  As he had to leave in uniform, he had to sneak out of the seminary so no one could see him.