Saturday, November 22, 2003

Happy St. Cecilia Day, everyone!

This time of year, fully 4/5 of the visitors to this site are people in search of info on St. Cecilia. I thank all of you for the "hits", and apologize for the lack of info on my favorite saint.

When I started tracking visits last year, I was mortified as my initial 14-16 visitors a day dropped to 6-8 per day. What the heck was I doing wrong? Well, duh - the drop came after November. The count started to rise again gradually around July or so - but it took me until last month before I finally got it.

Watch this space over the coming year - there will be some new St. Cecilia articles, and a St. Cecilia sidebar with links and pics. Thanks again to all of you who love her as I do. Think of her as you sing at mass tomorrow.

Monday, November 17, 2003

Quote of the day

You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the Germans don't want to go to war. - anon.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

An Ethical Spotlight on Unauthorized Copying if Liturgical Music within the Catholic Church. M. Hettinger 2000

Found my pal Maggie's paper on the net while looking for something else. It's a retelling and ethical analysis of the famous FEL vs. Archdiocese of Chicago case, where it was ruled that churches may not photocopy liturgical pieces without authorization.

Great paper, interesting read. Highly recommended.

Monday, November 10, 2003

Here We Go, Here We Go

I have a new church music home - St. Elizabeth's, on Detroit's near east side. More burned out houses than intact ones, and it seems a bit of a seeker parish, if you will - many of the familiar parts of the mass aren't so familiar, and there are a lot of extra spots where we add some gospel music. But it is vibrant, heartfelt worship. And some seriously soulful gospel singing.

I got to sit in this past Sunday. No rehearsals, no charts, only two songs I knew - Burleigh's "Order My Steps", and Malotte's Lord's Prayer. I was on organ, a Hammond A-100 with TWO Leslies. I mostly just followed the pianist. There was a drummer, too, and a bassist/guitarist. When he wasn't playing bass, I kicked bass on the A-100.

Really loose, but some serious worshiping going on. We had satarted out talking about having me come in as the principal accompanist, but the pianist and I jelled real well, so I'm going to ask if I can be her backup - she's better on piano anyhow, and has a voice like an angel. Plus she knows the repertoire. I need some money, due to a big day-job shakeup, but I can get by without the full salary for now. Their biggest (stated) fear was that the current accompanist would up and leave (for stardom - she's THAT good!), and they'd be left with no one. But having me in the wings may actually be better for them than having me take over. Especially cos I got a lot to learn about gospel yet...

Friday, November 07, 2003

Changes in mass are coming for Catholics

Should be interesting! I expect a lot of resistance to the stand-until-everyone-is-served mandate. I expect there will even be priests who never even inform their parishes.

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Yahoo! News - Bush Signs Anti-Abortion Bill, to Fight in Court

Here we go, here we go...

The Dems need to come off this fast as their defining issue. Future generations will be horrified at the brand of infanticide that passed as a "choice".

Great bumper sticker, I've just seen lately:

A person's a person, no matter how small. - Dr. Seuss

What liberal could argue with that? I couldn't. Maybe I'm just too liberal???