The Fredösphere

The Catholic Church has a secret Cardinal.  This is so cool.  Does he come and go at the Vatican by way of an underground passageway?  Is he the only keeper of the fourth secret of Fatima? Can he fly?  Does he use a globelike viewing device to peer into the 13th century?  Was he born on a collection of private islands arranged to look like a map of the world as part of a program for breeding a race of superbeings?  I'm just asking.

You're wrong:  Francis Arinze would not be the first black pope.  Here's a fascinating page of black saints, including three popes who were probably black-skinned Africans.  "Saint" is defined broadly; there's a dazzling but jarring icon of Martin Luther King Jr., complete with gold leaf halo, and they didn't overlook St. John Coltrane.  (It turns out St. Coltrane was an American musician who played Jazz music.)  Hat tip to St. Jonah Goldberg.

Meanwhile:  Slate begins a nifty series on anti-poetry poetry by quoting that impressive oddball Marianne Moore.  The New Criterion had a nifty review of Moore's poems a year ago that is useful for those like me who need an introduction, or at least do not yet know that...

The Ford Motor Company asked her to help name a new car, then apologetically, and with great delicacy, rejected her bizarre suggestions: the Intelligent Whale, the Arcenciel, the Mongoose Civique, the Pastelogram, the Turcotingo, and, surely the weirdest and most delightful, the Utopian Turtletop. The company eventually decided to call this disaster of design the Edsel.

Aha!  Utopian Turtletop.  Aaaah!  Yes.  Aaaaaaaha!  Ah.

Finally:  The Guardian takes another look, more detailed look at the royal wedding music, in light of Prince Charles' famously conservative taste.