ST. PATRICK & ST. JOSEPH

The lay Carmelite meeting, this past Saturday morning, went really well.   We meet every third Saturday at 9:00 a.m. at the Little Flower Manor in Wilkes~Barre.  Rosemary Lancellotti & Fr. Garth were there from Middletown, N.Y.   Our attendance was really good.  Sr. Mary Robert showed up early to help set things up for us.   We're supposed to get together to go to Middletown for a day of recollection this coming Sunday.  It will be the Feast of the Annunciation.    Last weekend's meeting was on St. Patrick's Day.   That's the big day each year when we Irishmen get to celebrate our cultural heritage.   The English, since even before the Protestant Reformation, have always been abusing the Irish so we truly deserve a good party every once in a while.   Uncle Frankie, Fran & Lisa visited my parents.  I hung around with them for a while before I went to O. L. Sorrows for their party.  While I was there I ended up sitting at a table with a woman who was the mother of one of the girls Fran grew up with.  She  said I must be related to Fran on her Irish side because I couldn't possibly pass for Italian in a million years.  I'm both.   Each year I always make sure I tell people about the time my father took Mary Anne, Earl & me to the parade in Manhattan where we met Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.   Unfortunately it was his last parade.  He was assassinated in June of that year.   Today is the first day of a long~anticipated spring.  Our weather this past winter was unusually mild but I'm glad it's over.  The weather lately has been nice but lately there's been a bit of rain.  I always get headaches when the weather changes.  The meetings on Thursday nights have stopped.  Now we go to St. Anthony of Padua Church, at St. Barbara's Parish, in Exeter, for a meeting each Wednesday night.    Oblate Fr. Phill Massetti is in charge.   Yesterday was the Feast of St. Joseph.  All went well.  I've been reading quite a lot of classic poetry lately.  Thngs get a bit weird when I get to the collected works of people like Walt Whitman & Allen Ginsberg.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY~

Jo Anne just recently sent me an e mail reminding me of St. Gabriel's big reunion next month over in East Elmhurst. It's on April 28. As far as I know it will be at Bruno's. It's in honor of Sr. Catherine's fiftieth anniversary of her profession, Sr. Bernadette's (a principal of ours) sixtieth anniversary of hers, & St. Gabriel's seventieth anniversary. Yesterday the weather, once the day got rolling, was very nice. I should hope this will portend the end of all the bitter cold rainy weather & that we can count on a nice spring from now on. Today is St. Patrick's Day. In spite of what people may think I'm technically only half Irish. Fran & Lisa came over for corned beef & cabbage on Sunday. The parade in Scranton worked out very nicely although I, unfortunately, didn't go. It's the third biggest St. Patrick's Day parade in the country, surpassed only by New York & Chicago. I even met Robert F. Kennedy at the Manhattan parade right before he died. The Oblates' novena for the Feast of St. Joseph continues. I've gotten there most nights so far. Of course, old faithful Cheryl called on Saturday to ask me to cover for her on Sunday morning last weekend.