14,000 Feet

Hello everyone! We just returned from Holy Thursday mass. This is the liturgical feast where we commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus. It is also the mass where church goers wash each other's feet as a symbolic gesture of servitude. This is, by far, my favorite mass of the year. Everyone has either their right or their left foot on display for the entire congregation's viewing pleasure, and there is podiatric pathology galore! There are hairy feet and smooth feet, pink feet and marble white feet, fungal toenail feet and missing toenail feet, high-arched feet and flat feet, stinky feet and perfumed feet, warty feet and callused feet, hobbit feet and hammer-toed feet, crooked feet and straight feet. And everyone has lint stuck between their toes.

The foot-washing ritual exemplifies a beautiful tenet of the faith, namely, you may need Odor Eaters, but you are loved by others and by God nonetheless. This love is unearned. And in that I take great comfort.

So, speaking of the Last Supper, Lydia and I were up till one a.m. last night trying to make reservations to see da Vinci's iconic The Last Supper in Milan this Summer. Between our landline and our two cell phones we called the 15 digit number hundreds of times. We utilized the redial functions. Finally we got through, and a woman's recorded voice gave instructions in Italian. Her voice was breathy and lilting like the 1-800-Dentist Lady's voice. It gave me goose bumps, Italian goose bumps. I just sat there with the phone pressed against my ear, smiling and doodling with a pen. I had no idea what the woman was saying, but I recognized some words, like Cenacolo (the name of the museum), and Italia (Italy) and "wooh-wooh-wooh" for the "w.w.w." of the museum website. We failed to get the tickets, but we'll try again tonight. I've been practicing Italian all day.

I'm really looking forward to viewing the painting (see below). Remarkably, if you trace a line over the heads and shoulders of Jesus and His disciples, it matches perfectly with the Sierra's 14,000 foot Palisade crest:

As you can see, the the "triangle" between the right shoulder of Jesus and the disciple to His right corresponds to the notch in the middle of the crest (between the summits of North Palisade and Thunderbolt Peak). Farther to Jesus' right you can see the space between Bartholomew and Thomas. This corresponds to the famous "V" notch seen in the left-hand portion of the crest. And the tablecloth (the biggest tablecloth in Jewish history) corresponds to the the great Palisade Glacier (the largest glacier in the Continental U.S.).

And the toes and feet of the Apostles you can see under the table? Well, they're just fun to look at.