A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

Cruel, but composed and bland,/Dumb, inscrutable and grand,/So Tiberius might have sat,/Had Tiberius been a cat.

Arnold

As though on cat's paws, the June MHT Newsletter arrived almost undetected a few scant days before Midsummer Eve, the night-watch for the apparitions of the soon dead. An awkwardly set photo at the bottom of the last page says far more than the rector's underwhelming prose. There, under a skewed lamppost, squatting on flabby haunches, the pesthouse's sulphur-yellow, feral moggie broods over the desolate, ill-maintained courtyard of Bubastis in Brooksville. The beast's bushy tail, a wizard's wand, points menacingly hellward as though to warn the viewer against disturbing the spirit that its flaccid body hosts.

The pesthouse is dying. The rich, fat offerings, the sacrifices of hard-won family treasure, have vanished. The interior decorators and landscape designers have fled for want of cash. The buildings seem almost to welcome the swift, oncoming decay that attends the loss of luxury. Yet for the second consecutive month, there's not been a single purr about the promised $30K proposal. That silence bodes evil for the bank accounts of the SGG chapels as well as for "One-Hand" Dan's own spa-loving felines. It spells even more danger for Our Lady of the Sun in Arizona: who knows if its lay board can resist the importunate demands?

The rector will not suffer the pesthouse to go quietly to its natural death: You may be assured of that. Pistrina will soon have a report from a family with a vacation home on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They have promised to bring home a tell-tale souvenir from Fraser. In the meantime, the few decent people left in the cult should stand vigilant, for the silent newsletters loudly declare that something fearful their way comes. Demand to see the accounts books. Parse the bulletins carefully. If the priest can speak English clearly, listen attentively to the announcements. Ask point blank whether there is a plan to give the pesthouse the annual $30K infusion it needs to continue malforming seminarians.

Remember: your pocketbook doesn't have nine lives, so if you don't want to throw away your family's money in these hard economic times...

STARVE THE BEAST!