July 23, 2007
NEWS, PHEWS, Points of VIEW, the burning FUSE & a bit of a HEW & a sincere THANK YOU!
Greetings, folks and I hope all of you are doing well during these "dogs days of summer." I must first apologize for being an absent blogger for so long. There are many plans, ideas, and notions flickering along and the light has been too bright and too dark to focus. But, "that was then and this is now" ( ASIDE # 1: Props to S.E. Hinton for writing that great book, along with "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish" and while I'm at it, major props to The Police member, Stewart Copeland for creating the stellar soundtrack to "Rumble Fish." Now that's what I call music! ) and I am going to try my best to post here every day.... Again, sorry to have been away so long...
OK, here goes:
NEWS:
Our house is starting to look like a house, finally. You can see some images at http://www.returntogeneraldiaz.blogspot.com/ - I'm in regular contact with http://www.saintsforsinners.com/ saints Barbara the builder's saint, and saint Joseph the Worker and they seem to be answering our calls as the house looks better and better every day.
We are experimenting with advertising by joining forces with http://www.pewsitter.com/ and if you go there you will see our very first online advertisement. If you are a part of our group that are followers of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, I recommend a visit to Pewsitter as it offers a plethora of information for the truly devout. Please post a comment and let us know what you think of our ad!
Along the same line, we were happy to be included in a "saintcast" podcast on http://www.sqpn.com/, the "best in Catholic Podcasting." Dr. Paul Camarata mentioned us in his recent audio broadcast (the one about saint Anne) and he linked us there too. If you go to http://www.sqpn.com/, scroll down and you will see Paul's saintcast link. We are making future plans with Dr. Camarata but that news comes later in our BURNING FUSE section.
We read a very poignant article about former New York Met catcher and current Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball player Mike Piazza recently. He spoke of his faith and his family and how he felt guided and gifted with his faith. He was not preachy but he carefully presented his points of view that showed him to be extremely articulate and reasoned in his approach to life. So, all of the saints at http://www.saintsforsinners.com/ met and decided I will be sending him a hand-painted saint Michael medal package along with a Saint Joseph package since that's his middle name, according to http://www.espn.com/. It will be interesting to find out if we hear back from him. If you know of someone who should receive a free hand-painted saint medal package, please let me know and I'll ask the saints if I can send one out!
BACK TO PEWS:
If you are saying prayers, please do a "shout out" or 2 or 3 or 4 to saint Gertrude, patron of cats and saint Francis, patron of animal lovers and ask them to look after our cat Natasha who is 17 and starting to have some kidney failure problems. The saints have been looking after her already. We felt she was ready to leave us for the Pearly Gates and a visit with saint Peter, Heaven's Gatekeeper, but after a trip to see the New Orleans veterinarian, Dr. Chris Algero, she has rebounded quite well and is doing much better. Thank you, Dr. Algero, Thank you, saint Gertrude and many thanks to you, saint Francis!
HEWS:
OK, please let me know if I should keep this "HEWS" section going - "hew", according to the OED, basically means to "chop up into pieces".... So, here goes:
Mr. Jack Valenti, the famous chief of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) died recently and many, like Alan Horn of Warner Brothers, lamented his passing and had lots of kind things to say at his funeral/memorial service on July 19th, 2007.
And then his daughter, Alexandra, took the podium and gave quite a stirring eulogy about her dad. You might reasonably argue she took a page from the playbook of good ole' saint Theresa of Avila, who was well known for speaking her mind and even yelled at Jesus when he was bothering her.... Alexandra said she finally understood what it meant to "hunker down like a jackass in a hailstorm" which was a saying her Dad used. She went on to say her Dad had more energy than anyone but she was also very forthright and candid in her eulogy. She dropped a bomb about the actor Warren Beatty. She said Mr. Beatty once called her up after her Dad had suffered a stroke but Mr. Beatty might need some lessons in how to offer compassionate condolences. He told Alexandra that her father's stroke had been "really inconvenient for" him. Ouch. I'm not sure whether Alexandra apologized to Mr. Beatty for her father having a stroke. I hope she didn't. If Mr. Beatty keeps making insensitive remarks like that our guess is that his beautiful wife, Annette Bening, will be floating away from him like the plastic bag in "American Beauty." As Jodie Sweeten from "Full House" often said, "How Rude!"
BURNING FUSE:
Some upcoming things we are going to write about once their fuses burn down a bit more;
1. We will be writing about http://www.teamtootb.com/ , Lee Mortenson, Race Car Driver Bob Emery and saint Richard of Chichester (who uses the superior oil, Amsoil, when he races in Heaven);
2. We will be presenting a playlist from Wilco musician Jeff Tweedy;
3. We will have some news about http://www.sqpn.com/ and http://www.saintsforsinners.com/.
4. We will be following your advice on where to take the blog so please do comment and let us know what to keep, what to discard and what to add!
"THAT's SO RANDOM" CONGRATULATIONS DEPARTMENT:
This is a bit from the http://www.saintsforsinners.com/ "random acts of kindness" file. Sarah Bryant and Erik Cetrulo were married this past weekend in New England. Sarah graduated from Colgate University, one of the most beautiful campuses in the world, located in Hamilton, N.Y., and Erik graduated from Stanford, a school we have never been to ( but we love their baseball cap ). We wanted to offer our sincere congratulations to them, even though we have never met them before. BUT ... we have seen their photograph in the newspaper and these two folks are both g o r g e o u s. PHEW! It's getting hot in here.... May God Bless you both with a lovely and enduring union.
An Irishmen won the British Open - good ole Padraig Harrington beat Sergio Garcia. He is the first Irish guy to win the British Open in a million years (slight exaggeration).
FINAL THANK YOU & ADIEU:
Thanks to Los Angeles Stylist Extraordinaire Kenny Wujeck for taking a look at our hand-painted saint medal designs! And a message to all before we say 'goodbye' - never underestimate the kindness of strangers!
THAT's ALL FOLKS - post a comment if you can -
Peace.
rob clemenz @ www.saintsforsinners.com
No comments:
Post a Comment