Long Lost Poppies and Boarded-Up Businesses

I forgot to mention that for Pentecost, we had to go to the 5 pm Mass instead of the 9 am Mass. We weren't too excited about that, but on the plus side, at our Mass a seminarian who was serving chanted the sequence, while I heard that at the 9 am Mass a reader just read it. Since the Pentecost sequence is one of my favorite things ever, that did work out in my favor.

Another disappointment on Sunday was that I couldn't find the poppies in my old neighborhood. Seeing the seemingly wild orange poppies on River Road reminded me that there were seemingly wild pink poppies with purple centers in a neighborhood where I used to live, so Travalon and I went there after visiting Patrick Marsh, but we found no trace of them. Did they just die of old age? Did someone else take them, since they seemed to be growing wild? They were around a neglected park sign, so maybe someone had planted them years ago when the park sign was first installed. I thought maybe I could collect some seeds and plant them in Richard Bonomo's garden, but obviously that won't be happening, since the only plants growing around the neglected park sign were wild parsnips.

Last night Travalon drove me to my adoration hour, then he went down State Street and was sad to see all the windows in the shops covered with plywood. Some of them were broken by rioters, but others were covered to protect them from rioters. Some enterprising artists have painted murals on many of the pieces of plywood, but it doesn't cover up the bombed-out look of the place. My heart breaks for all the little shops that were just opening back up after being closed for the pandemic. How will they survive this new round of business losses?

Famous Hat