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.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY

My parents held their St. Patrick's Day party early this year. It was this past Saturday. Mary Anne came in on the bus on Friday night. Steve & the kids couldn't come. They were too busy. The relatives from West Wyoming showed up, as always. Fran, because she has so far to travel, stayed with Uncle Frankie overnight. I made sure I put some Irish whiskey & whipped cream into my coffee so I could have it Irish style. The parade from Scranton was on. I've never been to that one but I went to the one in Manhattan quite a few times when I was young. I even met Robert F. Kennedy at the last one he attended right before he was assassinated. As always we watched a few movies on cable TV while they were here. Yesterday I saw a DVD of Woody Allen's first movie, "What's Up, Tiger Lily?". A couple of weeks ago I saw a DVD of his "Hannah & Her Sisters". He's always been quite a favorite of mine. I've been playing my guitar quite regularly lately & I read every day too. I'm almost finished with Sir Thomas Mallory's "Le Morte D'Arthur". When I first added Mr. Di Noto, my tenth grade theology teacher, to my friend list on Facebook, he asked if I had any pictures of me from my school days that I could show him. Yesterday I made sure I dug up one of him & me from my last day at school. I asked him if he'd be willing to let me take a picture of him & he nudged me into getting one of both of us. I asked Mary Anne if she'd be willing to scan it onto her computer so I could show it to him. Looking through the old albums gave me all the inevitable nostalgic flashbacks to my days as a young hep cat. To my chagrin my violent cough persists. Although all the other symptoms of my recent bouts with the flu are gone my throat continues to drive me crazy. Linnae asked me to switch with her this weekend. We lectored at each other's Masses. It's especially aggravating when I start coughing in front of a lot of people. Daylight savings time began this Saturday night. It's my favorite time of the year. The weather though is still too cold & it's even been snowing for the past two days. The temperatures are somewhat warmer than recently though.