Happy Big Birthday, Rich and the Adoration Chapel!

 

Today I worked on campus, but it's always quieter on Thursdays because less people are around. It was beautiful out, and I thought about praying a rosary on my lunchtime walk, but I emailed Hardingfele to see if she wanted to walk, figuring she would blow me off. To my surprise, she did want to walk. Then my aunt in Colorado sent this gorgeous picture of a friend's garden.

This must be from the summer. I figured we could all use some flowers right about now. Travalon was excited to see open water around here.

After work I took the bus to our old church, where Richard Bonomo and Hockey Girl had organized a Latin Mass to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Adoration Chapel. About half the people were Anglos and half were Latinos. I ran into two regulars from Night Prayer on the way in, so the three of us sat together. Before Mass someone started a rosary, so I did get one in today. There was a quartet that sang, but it wasn't my OTHER choir director's quartet, which Kathbert is part of, and I don't know why. Were they unavailable? Had a better-paying gig? 

Today was also an auspicious day because Rich turned seventy. Wow, that sounds old, but I swear he looks almost exactly like he did in the documentary he appeared in during his late twenties. Of course, Mamastep told me I have looked the same to her in all the years I've known her, and I KNOW I've gained a crap-ton of weight during that time. 

Speaking of gaining weight, there was a reception after the Mass tonight, and at first I hung around outside the church hall, figuring there wasn't enough food for all the people gathered inside. Travalon came to pick me up, and then we checked it out. In fact, there was plenty of food, so I tried a little of everything: a skewer with cherry tomatoes (ew!) and mozzarella, a skewer with two meatballs on it, a skewer with a bacon-wrapped chestnut (okay, so I had two of those), a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a chocolate-covered strawberry, a lemon bar, and a homemade chocolate truffle that was so good that I had to go back and make sure by having another one. After all that, I had no appetite for dinner. So that was quite a party for the birthdays of both Rich and the Adoration Chapel. I got a special invitation, being a regular adorer, and I saw some of my fellow adorers there, but it was really open to anyone.

The funniest moment of the night might have been when Rich made an announcement after Mass in Bonoman, as he often does, so I turned to the Latino couple behind me and asked, "¿Que dijó?" and they shrugged... and then it occurred to me that if they didn't know English, how would they have known what he said? Someone else said, "He said to keep your program," so I did, and it came in handy during Night Prayer when the host asked me to sing the closing hymn from the Mass. I said I didn't have the words in front of me, and he said, "You took the program home, didn't you?" Indeed I did!

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Fabulous Bird Day at Stricker's Pond

 

Today we went to Mass in the gym, and we were a little late so we had to sit way up front. The choir director chanted the sequence for Corpus Christi in Latin, and lately he also has the cantor chanting the first half of the psalm verse (they used to chant the whole verse), then the second half the choir does fauxbourdon like we used to do at the Lutheran church, and then we the congregation sing the antiphon between verses. I was a little bummed because during the Offertory the choir sang a piece, then the congregation was supposed to sing "The One-Eyed Angel Song," i.e., "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence," which my regular readers no doubt remember is one of my very favorite hymns, but the choir director decided there wasn't enough time so he doodled around on the organ long enough that we could have sung at least two verses. That was disappointing, but then after Communion the choir sang a setting of "Anima Christi" (which I always pray after receiving communion) written by the composer Gerald Near, who I'd like to note once babysat me when I was a little kid.

It was a lovely day, so we went to Cherokee Marsh and took a walk. We saw swamp irises and water lilies.

Then we went to Stricker's Pond and had a great birdwatching day there. There was a great blue heron not far from us.

Across the pond, we could see an egret and a heron in the trees.

It looks like the egret is trying to tell the heron something.

In another tree, there was a bald eagle.

Here is the heron close to us again.

Here is a better view of the egret in the tree.

Then the egret came down and joined the heron close to us.

Look at this proud mallard dad with his ducklings!

The egret seems to be pondering its reflection.

This is a super weird view of the heron in the water.

Here are a couple more shots of the bald eagle, and some turtles.

As we walked around the pond, we got a closer view of the heron in a tree.

And a really close view of the bald eagle.

Then we saw a mama wood duck and her babies.

Here is the heron in the tree again.

Then the bald eagle flew down and joined the heron in the water. It appears to have captured a goldfish. I think people let them go all the time in this pond when they are sick of them. You can see a red-winged blackbird harassing them.

The eagle flew off, chased by blackbirds.

Then we went to Dunn's Marsh and saw two egrets.

In the evening we went to Rich's house to bid adieu to Mr. Icon, who is heading back to Alaska tomorrow. Rich made brownies, and El Vegetariano, Luxuli, and Kathbert were there too. Then Luxuli left and Hockey Girl came. Rich gave me a tiny piece of brownie, per my instructions. Hey, this diet seems to be working - I lost four pounds last week.

It was such an active day! Travalon is totally worn out.

This photo makes me laugh because the perspective is so funny - Niko looks huge! He looks like he's the size of Travalon's head, when really he could fit in the palm of my hand. Also, notice all our sailboat art even though neither of us actually knows how to sail, although I can fake it if someone else is in the boat with me to give me instructions.

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Holy Thursday Mass

 

Today was sort of frustrating because I got back from lunch and couldn't get back into my work computer. I got on my phone and asked coworkers if there was a power outage on campus, but finally it dawned on me, when I saw my computer wasn't charging, that the power outage was here at home. In the daylight it's not so obvious that the power is out. Fortunately the power did come back on within a couple of hours. Of course I had to reset my clock, which is no big deal, but the real pain was resetting the timer on Plant World. I didn't realize it was out of whack until it was well after nine and the light was still on, so I set it back an hour. We'll see how it does tomorrow...

It was really, really windy today, so much so that they shut down the Merrimac Ferry. I'm sure that's why our power went out, and then I was too afraid to do the laundry because the wind was still bad, and what a pain if the power went out in the middle of doing the laundry! I had been thinking of going to Holy Thursday Mass with the Bishop at 7:30 this evening, but with the wind I didn't want to drive so far in my little car - who wants to get blown off the road? I went to St. Peter's by our house at 6:30, and then it was a bit of a letdown because the music was just okay, and they didn't even do the foot washing. I'll bet the Bishop's Mass was really majestic. Still, as I get older, I regret my previous snotty attitude that only beautiful Masses are worthwhile, because some of the least charitable people I've encountered are very into the proper liturgy. Beauty in liturgy is a wonderful thing, but not at the expense of charity. Not every church musician can be my OTHER choir director, and no need to run people down when they're just doing the best they can. Chasing people off because they aren't deemed sufficiently reverent isn't really what Jesus would do. At my age I'd rather be with people singing lame music off-key but full of love than people who go through all the motions properly but look down on everyone else. What mystifies me is why this happens. Why can't we have reverence AND charity? Is that too much to ask?

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You Seder Mater, I Seder Matter

Today's Lenten reflection is on the Eucharist and its connection to Passover. Last night I went to a Christian seder at a neighborhood Catholic church, and the connection between the Passover Seder and the Christian Mass couldn't have been clearer. In the seder, we commemorate the blood of a lamb saving the nation of Israel; in the Mass, we commemorate the blood of the Lamb saving the whole world. At the seder, the father of the family holds up the matzo and breaks it; at the Mass, the priest holds up the host (which is made of unleavened bread) and breaks it.

This is the second Christian seder I've been to, and both times I had an unfortunate fit of "the giggles," which has (thankfully!) never plagued me during the Mass. The first time we were reading from a book typed up by a woman whose fiance was in medical school. He dictated the word "period" wherever he wanted her to put one, but in one case she accidentally typed the word "period," which would not have been SO bad, except it was at the end of the line of a psalm that said: "And death is not the end." Period. Last night I had trouble keeping a straight face as we were dropping wine onto our plates for each plague, and as the "father" recited each one, we intoned it like a bunch of zombies after him. When we got to "frogs," I had to fight not to burst into laughter. Partly it's just the sound of the word (imagine a bunch of zombies droning "frogs") and partly it's the concept. I mean, no wonder Pharoah wouldn't let Moses's people go free! What the heck would a "plague of frogs" entail? "Gosh, Joseph, there sure are a lot of frogs around lately." AND....? Most of the other plagues sound awful, but FROGS? They don't bite, they don't eat crops, and they're frankly kind of cute.

The other moment when I almost burst into helpless laughter last night was when they told us about the dessert; they said, "This cake is thousands of years old. It symbolizes the bricks the Israeli slaves used to build in Egypt." Anna Banana II and I just exchanged a glance. If the cake was that old, it wasn't just a SYMBOL of a brick anymore! Of course what they meant was that the TYPE of cake was thousands of years old, but that's not what they said... I said to Anna Banana II, "I wonder if we could get a more recent piece of cake... like one baked within the last couple of days!" But I will say that the cake was delicious, a dense honey cake.

Friday night Cecil Markovitch declared it was "Lutherans' Night Out," but Kathbert wouldn't come with us to the fish fry, so it was "Lutheran's Night Out" since my OTHER choir director was the only Lutheran there. Cecil said his favorite Lutheran joke was: "What do you call Lutherans from Duluth? Dulutherans!" and I wondered what the jokes were like that didn't make the cut! Then we got in this crazy conversation about the Lutheran's nice nursing nurse niece. Rich Bonomo, Anna Banana II, A-Fooze, and the B-Boys were among the others at Lutheran's Night Out. (We have to miss Frog's Night Out - no joke - because it is inconveniently scheduled for Maundy Thursday.)

Saturday morning my acoustic band had a gig at a nature center to celebrate maple sugar. Afterwards we went to the little zoo they have there, of native animals, and on the way back some brain trust was walking backwards up the path, and as I swerved to avoid him, I tripped and twisted my right ankle (the one I've sprained twice) and then landed on my left knee (the one that was still bruised from skiing last weekend). And that is why I did not do any training for the triathlon this weekend!

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