Ghostly musings

Bishop Grosz said our Mass yesterday at St. Anthony's! Above is a picture I took from my usual bird's-eye view from the choir loft.

It was Pentecost Sunday and so he wore red. That is a big Sunday celebrating the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost as I like to put it. I like that Olde English parlance. The Holy Ghost.

We had the Holy Ghost and the Holy Grosz, both in the same church!

Ahem.

You must pardon me. I am still a little punchy from the plague I caught in New York. Sunday morning, driving to church, I realized it was the first time in over a week I was in my car. The Sunday before, I could not get out of bed.

An artist visited my house that Sunday and painted this picture.

The picture is titled, "The Convalescent."

Anyway.

What with getting to church yesterday, Bishop Grosz in his bright red vestments and Howard fixing the kitchen sink, yesterday was a pretty good day. Another thing, the other day I was able to score a new picture of Leonard Pennario, a very rare photo I had no idea existed. With other famous people in it.

That was one good thing at least about spending a week as a convalescent.

I got a lot of work done!

'As we lay stone on stone'

Howard has the greatest book lying around the house and today, lying around the house myself in convalescent mode, I took a peek at it. Above is a picture of the first page. When you open the book that is what you see! This beautiful quote.

"See! This our father did for us."

Then it gets better! You turn the page ...

And you see ...

Too great.

This book is copyright 1923. Howard says it has chapters in which it complains about how current houses are made shoddily next to houses of the past. I love that.

Most of all I love the high-minded quote. I love books that begin with high-minded quotes. It is like "The Joy of Cooking," which begins with a great one:

"That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee
Earn it anew, if thou wouldst possess it."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There was this book I read on the art of soap making that began with a quote from St. Paul. I loved that! Unfortunately it had to go back to the library so I cannot quote it.

I will have to find a splendidly high-minded quote with which to begin my book on Leonard Pennario.

Suggestions are welcome!

Steinway Hall Welcomes Pennario Biographer

Another thing I did in New York before my bug descended was go to Steinway Hall and meet with Steinway and Sons about Leonard Pennario who was an esteemed Steinway artist. I went there after going to Mass and confession at Leonard's church, St. Paul the Apostle.

Steinway rolled out the red carpet for the Leonard Pennario biographer!

I was there for something like two hours! Plus they let me and my friend Lizzie tour the basement and everything. That is where the great concert artists such as Pennario go to select their concert grands.

But yikes, my hair was so frizzy. I am looking at the picture above and wringing my hands. When I was in New York I was out in the rain something like three days in a row, zut alors. One reason I came down with the plague. There I am in this picture, unaware that this cold was mutating inside my body, thinking of nothing but Leonard Pennario and his history with Steinway, la la la la la la la.

To the right of me is the one, the only, the great Irene Wlodarski, the National Coordinator of the Concerts and Artists Department. She remembered Pennario personally and she recognizes his greatness, a most excellent and erudite thing in a person.

Ms. Wlodarski was nice and even allowed me to bitch when I walked into the main atrium of Steinway Hall and sniffed at the big portrait of Billy Joel.

"Leonard should be there instead," I informed her.

She showed me through the Leonard Pennario file which was fat and not skinny as I had expected. There were a lot of papers! And we talked about how we might collaborate in the future.

It is good to be the Leonard Pennario biographer.

Doors open for you!

Confession, New York style

It is high time I weighed in again!

I went to New York City to see the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra play at Carnegie Hall and while I was there, yikes, I caught this bug. For the past two and a half days I have been sleeping! But now I am up. It is almost midnight so I still have time to write in the Web log on today's date and make my hiatus one day shorter.

One thing I did in NYC before the bug descended was, I went to Mass and Confession at the Paulist Church. That is the church where Leonard Pennario used to go when he was in New York.

It was cool to go to that church and I found out why he went to Mass there: It is just a couple of blocks from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. I felt a little emotional walking in the doors.

It is a beautiful old church. There was also this very cool statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary which I photographed up above. Beautiful and simple. And here is a stunning crucifix.

There was a guy with an instrument case at Mass. Very New York. And here is what was also very New York: There was a person texting in the confession line!

A slim, stylish Asian girl, two people ahead of me. And she looked like the people you see texting at stoplights, glancing up at regular intervals to make sure the light has not changed. She would glance up to make sure the confessional had not opened.

When it did, the phone went into her pocket and she went into the booth.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York, as that New York columnist would put it.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged. We shall give the confession texter the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps she was using the Confession App!

May Day

My mom and I were out walking and we were talking about what a beautiful day it was.

Honest, it felt like a Hollywood set. The robins and the mourning doves were singing. It was early evening and there was the aroma of people grilling things. The yard was a carpet of violets. Beautiful and perfect for the first day of May. We spoke of that.

Then my mother said, "I think it's terrible how it's been taken over by the Russians."

She meant International Workers Day. I said, "Mom, me too!"

My mother said: "It used to be a day for the Blessed Mother." Well, all of May was but May 1 signaled the start of it and there used to be May Day celebrations.

Why do we need International Workers Day? We have Labor Day. My mother made that argument a long time ago. This has bugged her for years.

International Workers Day has bugged other people too. It bugged Pope Pius XII enough so that he instituted the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker in 1955, so the Communists would not "own" that day. I always wondered where that feast day came from. I just looked it up and that was how.

Anyway, we can defiantly celebrate May Day anyway on the Leonard Pennario Web log, with the great Irish tenor Frank Patterson.