[Magdalen] Happy New Year 2015

[Joseph Cirou]

I watched the New Year come in for about 10 minutes with simulcast of the
Peach Drop in Atlanta and the Times Square celebration.

For the rest of the evening I was playing with my new toy--a fairly decent
smart phone that accesses all the youtube one could desire.

So I've watched 20 minutes segments of the Feast of the Holy Family from
Notre Dame; midnight Mass and third Mass of Christmas from Cologne;
Midnight Mass from Rome.. I was surprised how lovely the Roman observance
was; no screeching tenors, beautiful chant of the Martyrology, and a brass
surprise at the Alleluia, the wonderful touch of placing an open Gospel
book behind the Christ Child in a shrine (the full scene is outside in the
square) Francis has toned down the beautiful vestments that Benedict used,
but he has shown some of the marvelous treasures of the Vatican all
pointing to Christ and not to individuals.  Benedict was an artist but of
the baroque variety. Francis may be an artist also; but he seems to have
good people in charge at least for Midnight Mass.

The Cologne Cathedral has massive processions with servers looking like
canons of the Cathedral and very good music.
Notre Dame also has excellent music and sufficiently lovely processions but
they are understated and everything is  perfectly timed with the organ
rarely completely silent but not bombastic.

I need to find out how to keep these programs continuing after 20 minutes.
I don't have problems on a computer.

Joe


On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:

> We had thought about going to Harrisonburg First Night, but the combination
> of a paucity of performing groups of interest and the weather being colder
> than we preferred led to a decision to stay in. Therefore we celebrated
> with a bottle of (excellent) Peaks of Otter apple-pomegranate wine and
> watched the New Year in with CNN. And so to bed.
>
> On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 11:35 AM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com>
> wrote:
>
> > From: Kate Conant
> >
> >  I just watched the ball drop at Times Square (from my recliner on the
> Blue
> >> Ridge).  The guns and firecrackers or whatever are going off now.
> >>
> >
> > We stayed up as well, toasted the year with some sparkling wine and soon
> > went to bed when the fireworks were done. It was interesting to turn out
> > the lights and see the rocket bursts through the skylight over the
> kitchen.
> >
> > One of our traditions I missed was spending most of New Years Eve
> watching
> > old Honeymooners reruns. We'd watch them until midnight, change the
> channel
> > to see the ball drop, then change back until we polished off the bottle
> (or
> > two when my mother was still alive <g>). Of course, now, I'm supposed to
> > avoid alcohol with the chemo, but thankfully my doctor said to not worry
> > about it on special occasions.
> >
> > Of course, when I was working for Newsday, the Ball Drop was central to
> my
> > job -- which was running the Zipper headlines circling the 1 Times Square
> > building -- News Headlines in 1600 bulbs. It's not likely you know anyone
> > whose work has been read by more people (hundreds of thousands daily!)
> but
> > certainly no one who has been read by nearly a half-million people
> > simultaneously <g>.
> >
> > The classic was in 1993, when I posted a one-revolution headline that
> read
> > "Police say more than half-million freezing asses off in TSQ" about a
> > minute before midnight. The crows roared so loudly that Dick Clark looked
> > around and checked his wristwatch (we had a TV monitor on the
> second=floor
> > of 1 Times Square where I ran the sign on New Years Eves.
> >
> > Happy New Year to ALL!
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Jim
> >
> >
> >
>