Chúc mừng năm mới!

Kung Hei Fat Choy

恭喜發財

The Year of the Dragon

Happy Lunar New Year to all my Asian friends

I have great pictures of Tet, Vietnamese Lunar New Year, celebration 2010 at: https://cometosea.us/albums/albums/LunarNewYearVietnam2010.pdf

 Sunday January 22nd:

I walked up to the “St. Therese de Lisieux” for 8.30 mass. The roads are bare now but there is still lots of snow on the sidewalks and lawns. Broken off branches everywhere. Wonderful sermon about Jonah at Nineveh. A rapture avoided.

I have made friends in the least expected places or under the strangest circumstances. I just have to tell you how I reconnected in this church this morning with good friends from the late seventies that I had become separated from through too much work and a marriage that was not always compatible with my then friends. A handsome tall man came in and sat next to me and was greeted by someone behind him with: “Bon Giorno”. You know me, I had to show off my “poche parole italiano”. After mass we talked some more. He made a comment about my voice, which happens when a church is not full and I am the one eyed king in the land of the blind and then he told me about his cousin Luigi Roni, who sings bass in the Scala, Met, etc., with names like Margaret Price, Placido Domingo and Pavaroti. He is particularly known for his role in Don Carlos. Guiseppi (or Joe) Roni’s family, like Luigi, are all from Lucca. Next I talked with the couple that sat behind Joe, Peggi and Dennis. When I was on my way out the door Joe and I talked once more and he brought up the last name of Peggi and Dennis and then I realized that I had been talking to old friends. So I had to head back once more. So we are going to get together and surprise his brother and sister in law at the same time, with whom I also was friends in that same period.

The moral of this story is: Go to church! you might make new and resurrect old friends…..