Monday

Happy Monday, Happy First day of the Pentecost Octave, Happy Mary, Mother of the Church, Happy Birthday to my second son!

(In honor of the memorial, grab my Mary book for free til midnight.)

Let’s digest:

Cooking: With one son gone at the beach all week, not a lot of cooking around here. I did make a batch of this favorite – Mexican Braised Beef – both for the son remaining at home and the daughter-on-the-way-here. Changes to the recipe? I don’t have a slow cooker, so I just do it in the oven, and I use Rotel (two cans) instead of just plain can diced tomatoes.

And that’s it for cooking for me until July, folks…

Reading: With a trip on the horizon, I’m in – return-all-the-books-to-the-library mode and haven’t yet found a good travel read for the e-reader, so we’ll go with short reads for now:

Travel things. Reading up on Spain. Trying to figure out the second half of the trip, but only in the broadest terms. Who knows how we’ll feel by the end of ten days in Seville and what we’ll feel like doing?

Read about the Grifter Gambling Nuns of Torrance. I’d read about this when the case first broke. This has a touch more detail, but not a lot, since no one concerned is talking. But just read it is as a caution. Basically: demand transparency, and don’t give your money to any institution that doesn’t agree.

Also: it’s not just an ordained guy problem.

I don’t agree with every single thing published in Quilette, but it is one of the more consistently interesting online publications. This tale of wokeness in the – checks notes – online knitting community – is fascinating and depressing.

Finished up reading one of my son’s forthcoming novels. Not this one. Another one. He puts me to shame in his prolificness! (word? No, sorry.)

Watching: Nothing on my part. Youngest started on The X-Files while his brother was gone.

Listening: Youngest is starting to work on a Prokofiev piece, so I’m listening, and am becoming entranced by Prokofiev’s piano works. This is the collection I’ve been listening to.

I don’t think I blogged this earlier – although I surely meant to. In one of our YouTube wanderings, this popped up as a commercial – the wonderful Yuja Wang playing Schumann’s “The Smuggler” (I believe it was originally a song, and this is a transcription.)

It’s just a bouncy, fun piece.

We had jazz! Son played on a song in his jazz teacher’s gig. You can see/hear some of it at my Instagram – go to Stories (today) and then after Monday, to the “Keyboard” highlights.

And then…Pentecost!

As promised, the Cathedral of St. Paul here in Birmingham noted Pentecost with a shower of rose petals descending from the roof after Mass – as they do at the Pantheon in Rome.

I have some photos and video here.

For more, go to the Instagram account of Hashtag Catholic and the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Coming up? Mary, Mother of the Church. St. Barnabas. St. Anthony of Padua. Etc. Etc. Etc…and a few airplanes. Stay tuned here and Instagram!