Matthew Monday: Baltimore Orioles Game, 2019

On Tuesday, July 16^th, I took Matthew down to Baltimore to watch an Orioles game.  Usually when I take him or the family to a game down to Baltimore it’s on a Sunday, since they play afternoon games on Sunday.  That allows me to leave the game roughly by five PM and get home at a reasonable hour.  If there’s no traffic it’s a three hour drive.

But that Tuesday was Brooks Robinson bobble head doll night, and every adult would get a Brooks Robinson bobble head doll.  Now Brooks Robinson has long been retired, some forty-two years, but he’s a historic Oriole who is still living, and actually my baseball idol growing up.  He was the player I emulated and wanted to be.  So it was a must for me to go.  But that required a night game, which means I would probably head out by ten and make it back one or two in the morning.

So we made a day of it.  I took the entire day off from work and headed down in the morning.  Not only did I get tickets to the game but also for the stadium tour.  The stadium tour is an hour and a half tour of the ballpark where they take you to parts you would not normally see and they provide a great history lesson of the park, the local area, and the ball club.  It’s well worth it.

After the stadium tour, we had the afternoon to ourselves.  Less than a mile from the park is the Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum.  So we went there and spent a good hour.  We still had time, so I convinced Matthew to go to the Edgar Allen Poe Museum.  It was another mile away.  We found it but it was closed.  I don’t think Matthew really cared anyway.

The ball game was fun, but the Orioles lost to their local rivals, the Washington Nationals.  Here are some pictures from the day.

Matthew standing next to Brooks Robinson retired number 5.

And next to the statue of a young adolescent Babe Ruth, who by the way was born in Baltimore and actually played for what the time was a minor league team called the Baltimore Orioles.

There were lots of great pictures from the stadium tour.  Perhaps I should do a post of pictures from various angles of the park.  But for now, here are three.  Matthew looking out from the $1000/game, air conditioned luxury suits, the trophy room showing two of the Orioles World Series trophies, and Matthew sitting in the dugout.

And a few pictures from the Babe Ruth Museum.  The first is Matthew in front of a case showing items when Babe was a kid at St. Mary’s Home for Boys.  Apparently Babe was a delinquent as a child, so his parents put him in a nearby Jesuit home for such boys.  It was there Babe matured (if he ever really matured), learned a trade and to play baseball, and where he was scouted and signed.  Babe was sent there as a seven year old boy, which makes me wonder.  How much of a delinquent could a seven year old be?  Perhaps his parents just didn’t want to raise him and shuffled him off.  What I learned at the museum was that Babe’s parents were Protestants, and it was at the home that Babe converted to a Catholic.  I didn’t know that.  The second picture is self-explanatory.

The last picture is me and Matthew at the park.

There are two stories of the trip home that night I need to recite.  But I will only do one here and then have a post dedicated to the second story perhaps tomorrow.

We left the game as the ninth inning was underway and got out of the park shortly after 10 PM.   Driving up I95 I was stopped by a Maryland state trooper around a quarter after eleven for going 78 mph in a 65. I was shocked they would be pulling people over at that hour for a few mph over the sort of unofficial allowed 75. I was very courteous, followed all his direction, and meekly said I was just trying to get home. He looked at me and my nine year old son in the booster seat in the back, took my license and registration, and went to his vehicle to do what he had to do. It was the first time Matthew (who is nine years old) was ever in a car that got pulled over. He didn't know what was happening and why it took so long for the trooper to write the ticket while we waited in the car. When he came back, to my shock he let me off with just a warning. I was so grateful. I found out the next day they were on the lookout for MS-13 gang members who had just killed a couple of people. I suspect that’s why they were out there that night looking for a reason to stop people.

Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing

July 20^th, 1969.  I do remember that day. I was seven years old and the family was all gathered in front of our black and white TV set with the rabbit ears. It was awesome and made a lasting impression on me. I attribute that to me wanting to be and ultimately becoming a mechanical engineer. Ever see the mission control pictures of the engineers in the white shirts and ties? I wanted to be those guys. Well, first I wanted to be an astronaut, who by the way we’re mostly engineers too, but second those guys.  When I realized I get motion sickness, any dream of being an astronaut vanished.  And while I didn’t work in the space industry, I’ve loved my career as an engineer. 

Here is a nice little documentary, perhaps the best of the various documentaries put out today.

Apollo 11 is probably the greatest engineering achievement in human history. 

Comments to Dante’s Paradiso, Cantos XXXI thru XXXIII, Part 2

St. Bernard’s prayer to Mary in the last canto is of such beauty it should be quoted in its entirety and have its own post. 

'Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son,

more humble and exalted than any other creature,

fixed goal of the eternal plan,

'you are the one who so ennobled human nature

that He, who made it first, did not disdain

to make Himself of its own making.

'Your womb relit the flame of love --

its heat has made this blossom seed

and flower in eternal peace.

'To us you are a noonday torch of charity,

while down below, among those still in flesh,

you are the living fountainhead of hope.

'Lady, you are so great and so prevail above,

should he who longs for grace not turn to you,

his longing would be doomed to wingless flight.

'Your loving kindness does not only aid

whoever seeks it, but many times

gives freely what has yet to be implored.

'In you clemency, in you compassion,

in you munificence, in you are joined

all virtues found in any creature.

'This man who, from within the deepest pit

the universe contains up to these heights

has seen the disembodied spirits, one by one,

'now begs you, by your grace, to grant such power

that, by lifting up his eyes,

he may rise higher toward his ultimate salvation.

'And I, who never burned for my own seeing

more than now I burn for his, offer all my prayers,

and pray that they may not fall short,

'so that your prayers disperse on his behalf

all clouds of his mortality and let

the highest beauty be displayed to him.

'This too, my Queen, I ask of you, who can achieve

            whatever you desire, that you help him preserve,

after such vision, the purity of his affections.

'Let your protection rule his mortal passions.

See Beatrice, with so many of the blessed,

palms pressed together, joining me in prayer.'  (XXXIII. 1-39)

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Two points can be made about St. Bernard’s prayer. 

(1) He captures the paradoxical mysteries on which Christianity rests:  Virgin/Mother, daughter/of your son, humble/exalted, fixed/eternal.  These paradoxes all lead to most paradoxical mystery of them all, of three yet one.

(2) The prayer follows the Salve Regina. 

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears! Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.

That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Bernard’s prayer is an appeal to her as “most gracious advocate” for her Son, just as we ask for advocacy in the Salve Regina.  Bernard in his prayer appeals for her to turn her eyes on this poor sinner (Dante), just as we appeal in the Salve, and, as we appeal in the prayer to be made worthy, Bernard appeals for her to pray to make Dante worthy of the blessed vision.

Comments to Dante’s Paradiso, Cantos XXXI thru XXXIII, Part 1

It’s been really hard to pick a starting point for commentary on these last three cantos.  One could start with the centrality of the Blessed Virgin in the conclusion.  One could start with the climatic mystical vision of the Trinity—the theophany—and back the steps to there.  One could start with the surprise transition to a new guide for just a mere three cantos.  But I’ll start as Dante (the author) with the beauty and strange imagery the mystical Rose, referred to as the Empyrean, which constitutes the City of God.

As Dante’s (the character) vision clears after immersing his eyes into the river of light, he finds himself in a remarkable place, almost like a sudden transition from one scene to another in a movie.  He uses three sparkling similes in Canto XXXI as an attempt to approximate the wonder.  These are the pilgrim similes.  Here’s the first.

 If the barbarians, coming from that region

which Helice covers every day,

wheeling with her son, in whom she takes delight,

were dumbstruck at the sight of Rome

and her majestic monuments,

when the Lateran surpassed all other works of man,

I, who had come to things divine from man's estate,

to eternity from time,

from Florence to a people just and sane,

with what amazement must I have been filled!

Indeed, between the wonder and my joy, I was content

neither to hear nor speak a word. (XXXI. 31-42)

Just like barbarians, who have probably lived in thatched huts all their lives, are filled with wonder when they first enter Rome and see the immense architecture and vast city, so Dante is taken aback with the wonder of Empyrean.  The second (lines 43-48) describe that same pilgrim wondering in such a spectacular city planning to tell his tale to those back home when he returns. And finally the third pilgrim simile foreshadows the climax:

As the man who, perhaps from Croatia, has come

to set his gaze on our Veronica,

his ancient craving still not satisfied,

            and who thinks to himself while it is shown:

'My Lord Jesus Christ, God Himself,

was this then how You really looked?',

just so was I, gazing on the living love

of him who, still within the confines of this world,

in contemplation tasted of that peace.  (XXXI. 103-111)

Just like a man from Croatia—that is a country bumpkin—comes to Rome to see Veronica’s relic, the face of Christ on a towel and wonders if this is how Christ truly looked, so too Dante -feels like a country bumpkin, and remember Dante is a pretty sophisticated guy.  Notice, that face is what Dante will actually see at the theophany in a few moments.

The image of angels as bees interacting with the human souls, who are as flowers is stunning.  The bees gather the “pollen” of God’s love and pollinate the followers.  We are indeed in a new world charged with God’s grace.  As the Israelites crossed the desert to a land of milk and honey, Dante has arrived at his journey’s end.

This city of God is in the shape of a white rose.  In each petal of the rose resides a sanctified soul.  Is this rose a corresponding and contrasting image to the inner city of hell, Cocytus?   One would have to surmise so, and then a comparison could not be avoided.  Cocytus is a frozen lake with souls stuck in the frozen ice, cold, sterile, and bleak.  The rose, on the other hand, suggests beauty, life affirming, fertility, warmth.  In Canto XXXIII, an allusion is made that Mother Mary’s womb is a flower: “'Your womb relit the flame of love --/its heat has made this blossom seed/and flower in eternal peace” (7-9).  The rose is a womb which is a tabernacle.

Just as Dante (the character) was frozen from fear to find Virgil disappeared toward the end of Purgatorio, so he is frozen from fear to find Beatrice gone at the end of Paradisio.  And both times a new guide replaces the old.

Dante’s prayer to Beatrice (XXXI. 79-90) pays tribute to the woman who saved his soul and led him “from servitude to freedom.”  In that respect Beatrice is an analogue for Moses who in turn is an analogue for Christ. 

But why introduce a new guide here with only three cantos to the end?  At the end of Purgatorio it made sense a new guide would be needed since Virgil, a pagan, could not enter heaven.  There is nothing obstructing Beatrice from continuing into the heart of Empyrean.  In fact we see her seated in her place in the Rose.  Bernard seems unnecessary.

But by having Bernard complete Dante’s journey, Dante (the author) accomplishes two vital points.  First it highlights the centrality of the Blessed Virgin’s position in these latter cantos.  St. Bernard is one of history’s greatest devotees of the Blessed Mother, and so he is most fitting as a guide here.  More on that centrality in a bit.

Second, Dante (the author) creates a web of intercessors from which Dante’s (the character) salvation rests.  Recall that in the first two cantos of Inferno, when Dante was in a midlife crises and lost in the wood, it was the Blessed Mother’s compassion that dispatched St. Lucy to dispatch Beatrice who dispatched Virgil to guide Dante.  But why were all those links needed?  Why couldn’t the Blessed Mother come herself to Dante and lead him through?  Indeed, why couldn’t Christ Himself appear to Dante and guide him?  Perhaps a Protestant author would have done it that way.

But it would have been so much a lesser work.  Besides the rich narrative complexity that would have been lost, it would also have lacked showing the communion of saints that work for our intercession.  While we face God alone in our judgement, our journeys are not solitary.  We have many earthly and spiritual people who come to our aid.  The Blessed Mother, St. Lucy, Beatrice, Virgil form a web of spiritual intercessors.  We have such a web at our disposal too. 

With this understanding we see that the Virgin Mary’s quiet centrality has been throughout the Divine Comedy.  She’s the one who set in motion the means for Dante’s (the character’s) salvation.  Her centrality is evident within the Empyrean.  When Bernard points up to the top of the Rose, it is the Queen Mother who stands out brightest.

Once Mary is identified as the central locus in the Rose, Bernard then points out various saints relative to her position.  Notice the pattern that Bernard creates as he identifies blessed souls.  He follows a line down from Mary, and then to the left of her, and then to the right.  This forms the shape of a cross.  On the mirror opposite side from Mary, he forms another cross, this time with John the Baptist at the top.  Indeed, the divisions of the Empyrean can be seen as sectors formed by the lines of cross.  The left-right divide formed by the shaft (stipes) divides the worthy Hebrews from the Christian saved.  The top-bottom divide formed by the crossbar divides adult saved from the infants saved.

Finally Bernard tells Dante if he wants to be worthy of the ultimate vision, he must refocus on the Blessed Mother.  Notice how he phrases this:

'Look now on the face that most resembles Christ,

for nothing but its brightness

can make you fit to look on Christ.' (XXXII. 85-87)

“The face that most resembles Christ” is pregnant (pun intended!) with meaning.  The Blessed Mother most resembles Christ in that (1) she is sinless, (2) she has an equal heart of compassion, and (3) she was His physical mother.  Dante (the author) could not have known about genetics but certainly it was evident that children resembled their parents.  One should never minimize the importance of the corporeal nature of the incarnation.

Dante's Paradiso Cantos XXXI thru XXXIII, Summary

Canto XXXI

In the Empyrean, Dante (the character) surveys what is around him now that his eyes have been fully opened.  He sees the heavenly structure before him that is in the shape of a white rose.  This is the Empyrean and it is filled with all the blessed souls in paradise.  He sees angels flying around, going back and forth from the center point, which is God, to the flowers, who are the souls sitting inside the white rose.  He is so awestruck he feels like a barbarian who has lived in huts stepping into the glory of the city of Rome for the first time.  He stares into the rose and for the first time since coming to paradise can see clear faces, other than that of Beatrice.  He turns to ask Beatrice some questions but finds that she is gone and in her place is a kindly, old man who later we learn is St. Bernard of Clairvaux.  Bernard tells Dante to look at the third to last row of the rose and there he can see the beautiful face of Beatrice who has taken her assigned heavenly seat.  Though the distance may be hundreds of miles away, Dante can clearly see her face as if it were close by.  Realizing that his time with Beatrice is over, he says a prayer of homage and gratitude to her for saving his soul.  She smiles back in acknowledgement that she has heard his prayer.  Bernard instructs Dante to now focus on the Queen of heaven if he wishes to experience the complete divine vision.  Looking up Dante sees the brightest face of the Empyrean, the Blessed Virgin, shining like the sun and with a host of angels dancing about her, bringing pleasure to all the other souls.  Dante and Bernard stare at the Virgin Mother in fixed mystical gaze.

Canto XXXII

At the Empyrean, St. Bernard describes to Dante the structure of the rose and points out several of the inhabitants, using Mary as the frame of reference.  Sitting below the Blessed Mother is Eve, and below Eve is Rachel.  To Rachel's right across the dividing line that separates the pre-Christian and post-Christian souls is Beatrice.  Below Rachel in successive rows are Sarah, Rebecca, and Ruth.  These women form a wall that separates those that believed in the coming messiah (the Old Testament Jews) from those that believed in Christ that is the messiah.  Bernard points out that the Old Testament half is filled while the Christian half, which has the same number of seating, is unfilled and to be filled.  Directly across the Virgin Mother on the Christian side is St. John the Baptist.  In subsequent rows below him are Francis, Benedict, and Augustine.  This is the upper half of the rose.  In the lower half reside a multitude of saved babies, children that were too young to commit willful sins.  These children are divided into three categories:  the Jewish infants before circumcision was instituted, the Jewish infants who are circumcised, and the Christian infants that are baptized.  Unbaptized children who don't fit these categories are in Limbo.  Bernard redirects Dante's gaze back "to the face that most resembles Christ," Mary.  The angel Gabriel has come singing the Ave Maria to her.  Bernard continues to point out more of the blessed: Adam, St. Peter, St. John the Evangelist, Moses, St. Anne, and St. Lucy.  Finally Bernard tells Dante it is time to seek the complete vision of God and the only way to do it is to pray to Mary for such a grace.  Bernard will start the prayer but asks Dante to join his heart to it.

Canto XXXIII

Continuing from where the previous canto ended, St. Bernard offers a prayer to the Virgin Mother to grant Dante the complete vision of God.  He starts by paying homage to the Blessed Mother, a lady both humble and exalted who through her acceptance of God's will changed human history.  Bernard continues by citing her virtues, kindness, compassionate, munificent.  He appeals to her on Dante's behalf to grant him the most blessed theophany which no living person has ever seen.  He begs her to use her prayers for him, not only to see God but to preserve his purity after the vision and protect him from his mortal inclinations.  He further implores that Beatrice and other souls in the rose are joining him in this prayer.  Mary's eyes, which are fixed on Bernard, signal her appreciation, and then turn toward the center light.  Dante, staring upward, feels his sight grow purer and sharper, penetrating the exalted light of God.  What he sees he cannot now articulate, and stepping out of the narrative appeals to God to recall what he saw so that now he can express it.  He now recalls that his sight merged with the "goodness that is infinite" and felt the love that unifies the differed elements of the universe.  At that moment, in a flash, Dante understands "the universal form" that unites all disparate, knotted things.  What he sees are three overlaying circles of different colors, yet fused into one.  As if from the colors themselves and within the circles, the face of Christ suddenly appears, and in a moment as instant as lightning, the vision disappears.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, Part 2 (Photo Essay)

As it so happened, the very week I started reading Death Comes for the Archbishop, I had a business trip into central New Mexico.  Was that a coincidence or providential?  Whichever, I decided to take plenty of pictures, something I don’t usually have time to do on business trips.  I flew into Albuquerque and then traveled south about an hour to an hour and a half.  While the novel is mostly set in the Sante Fe area, which is an hour north of Albuquerque, Fr. Latour does travel south in the opening scenes.  I am told north of Albuquerque is even more mountainous than central New Mexico, but I picture the landscape to be very much as you see in these pictures.

Let’s start with some of the pictures I took from my plane seat, which luckily was a window seat.  I would say these pictures were taken a quarter of an hour from arriving at Albuquerque.  This photo shows the “horny backbones of mountains” (p. 64).

Also from the plane you can see the series of “fissures in the earth” (p. 7) that cut across the landscape.

The rest of the pictures are taken on the ground.  All about are “monotonous red sand-hills” (p. 17) and “petrified sand dunes” (p. 89).

From what I saw, they seemed more orange than red.  Of course there is the desert plain, a “country of dry ashes (p.88).

Above the desert, above the mountains is a “hard empty blue sky, very monotonous to the eyes” (p. 95).

The desert was naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees (p. 17-18).

Amazingly I came across that plant with “big white blossoms like Easter lilies” (p. 98).

This plant was not very common, so it was a special blessing to come across one.  There were many mesas, but here is one as described as “two great mesas…almost square in shape” (p. 96).

Here is a picture of a “great rock mesa…resembling a vast cathedral” (p. 94).

Finally, in just such a mesa, Fr. Latour and Jacinto find a cave formed by bulging rocks that resemble two lips.

Now I don’t think there is a cave opening in those rock formations, but I think you can imagine how one might be formed and concealed.

That’s my photo essay.  I hope it helps you envision the scenes and landscapes set in Cather’s novel.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, Part 1

I’m going to have a series of posts here dedicated to our reading of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.  The novel is a fictional account of the establishment of a dioceses in mid 19^th century New Mexico based on the life of two real life priests, Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the Archbishop, and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, his primary vicar.  In the novel, Lamy is known as Father Jean Marie Latour and Machebeuf is known as Father Joseph Vaillant.  Both are Jesuits and both originally come from France, though they have been working as priests in the American Midwest before being appointed to New Mexico. 

Here is the opening situation of the novel.  The United States has recently won their war with Mexico and absorbed a good portion of the western territories, including what is called New Mexico.  A new Catholic diocese needs to be formed and a new Bishop appointed.  In a break with the past several centuries, the Catholic hierarchy decides not to put a Spanish bishop to run the mostly Spanish clergy but a French Jesuit.  It becomes clear why the need for this change in direction.  The Spanish clergy have devolved into heresy and rapacious enrichment off the native population.  Fr. Latour needs to bring reform and, above all, order to the region, the clergy, and the faithful.

There are several major themes that govern the novel, but first among them is how the hard landscape shapes the lives of all those who live there, especially the indigenous population.  The landscape is distinct.  We see this in the very opening scene in the novel proper, not the prologue, where Latour traveling down into central New Mexico finds himself lost in the desert.

As far as he could see, on every side, the landscape was heaped up into monotonous red sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and very much the shape of haycocks. One could not have believed that in the number of square miles a man is able to sweep with the eye there could be so many uniform red hills. He had been riding among them since early morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he had stood still. He must have traveled through thirty miles of these conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them, and he had begun to think that he would never see anything else. They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some geometrical nightmare; flattened cones, they were, more the shape of Mexican ovens than haycocks — yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens, red as brick-dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees. And the junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican ovens. Every conical hill was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform yellowish green, as the hills were a uniform red. The hills thrust out of the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other, elbowing each other aside, tipping each other over.  (p. 17)

The desert is a “geometrical nightmare” where the hills “seemed to be pushing each other,” and if they are pushing each other then they could be an overwhelming threat to a mere human.  We also get an immense scale of the land.  It is common in the story to travel thousands of miles.  And the weather often shapes their travels across boundless region.  At another instance we see the two priests riding across vast territory

The priests were riding across high mountain meadows, which in a few weeks would be green, though just now they were slate-coloured.  On every side lay ridges covered with blue-green fir trees; above them rose the horny backbone of mountains.  The sky was low; purplish lead-coloured clouds let down curtains of mist into the valleys between the pine ridges.  There was not a glimmer of white light in the dark vapours working overhead—rather, they took on the cold green of the evergreens.  Even the white mules, their coats wet and matted into tufts, had turned a slaty hue, and the faces of the two priests were purple and spotted in the singular light.  (p.64)

Look at what the landscape and the natural elements have done to the mules and priests.  It shapes them, their activities and their lives.  There are many such scenes and descriptions throughout the novel.  The landscape is central to the novel, and perhaps even more than just as it impacts travel and lives.  The landscape has shaped the native people.  It has shaped their culture, their language, their child rearing, and their myths.  I’ll develop that theme another time, but I want to end with another quote on the landscape, this one showing how deep into history the landscape originates.  The description below is of the surrounding landscape of the town of Ácoma. 

The mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau.  The country was still waiting to be made into landscape. (p. 95)

The landscape here is connected to creation, not just creation by natural process, but back to the Creator’s initiating acts.  Cather provides a depth of history rooted in the landscape that is fathomless, mystifying, primeval.  And her point is that it’s incomplete.  The Creator didn’t finish, and so the culture isn’t finished either.  Just as the landscape are “waiting” to be completed, so are the people.

###

To do the landscape theme full justice, I should also point out how the seeds of the theme are planted even as the novel opens in the Prologue.  The Prologue does not open with Fr. Latour or even in New Mexico.  It opens with a dinner in Rome by three Cardinals and a different Bishop at a villa to discuss the appointment of a bishop to this just created New Mexican episcopate.

One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.  The villa was famous for the fine view from its terrace.  The hidden garden in which the four men sat at a table lay some twenty feet below the south end of this terrace, and was a mere shelf of a rock, overhanging a steep declivity planted with vineyards.  A flight of stone steps connected it with the promenade above.  The table stood in a sanded square, among potted orange and oleander trees, shaded by spreading ilex oaks that grew out of the rocks overhead.  Beyond the balustrade was the drop into thin air, and far below the landscape stretched soft and undulating; there was nothing to arrest the eye until it reached Rome itself.

If you parse carefully the language of this opening passage, the landscape in Rome is actually a microcosm of the landscape we will see in New Mexico.  The four dignitaries are sitting on a terrace, “a mere shelf of a rock, overhanging a steep declivity.”  That is exactly what the plateaus are that we see in New Mexico.  Several of the mesas had ad hoc steps as passageways up.  Surrounding the villa are hills—the Sabine hills—which correspond to the surrounding mountains in the New Mexican landscape.  The table at the villa stands on sand, echoing the desert sand of the “monotonous red sand-hills” of the American territory, and the various trees offer European versions of the American junipers and fir trees that we will come across later.  The landscape in Rome undulates, simulating that in New Mexico are fissures.  The drop from the villa is apparently very high, just as we see the drops from the mesas. 

But, if the landscape in Rome is a microcosm of the landscape we will see in New Mexico, it is but a tamed version, a landscape that has undergone a civilizing process.  The sand on which the table sits is a controlled square, not a vast desert.  The passage leading up to the villa are cut steps, not natural formed rock, and those steps lead to a “promenade,” not to indigenous cliff dwellings.  The trees about them are potted or forced to grow out of rocks instead of the random and uncontrolled sprouting.  The undulations are soft in the Roman landscape, not “oven-baked” cracks in the earth or even canyons.  While there are echoes of the New Mexican landscape in Rome, there is also contrast.  Indeed, the four dignitaries at dinner in Rome seem to echo and contrast with the four priests at dinner on the Ácoma mesa in the story of Fr. Baltazar with very different outcomes.  The Sabine hills recall a brutal pagan Roman past, echoing the Indian native dark pagan culture.  But the Roman landscape leads to the dome of St. Peter, not the “gothic cathedral” of a cave where Indian fire and snake ceremonies take place.

We have in Willa Cather a writer of immense skill, one who can simultaneously echo and contrast with imagery at will.