Blog Archives
The Blessing
One time, when a winter storm closed the roads, we spent Christmas night sleeping* in the basement of the Methodist church in Post, Texas. It was not nearly the spiritual experience one might anticipate, even with the heavy symbolism of taking refuge and etc.
And, then last Christmas Eve, I explored the Catholic church in Marathon, Texas, where I suppose a Mass was held later that night. This time it was just me and the little Pope there on the windowsill. Neither of us snored.
St. Mary Catholic Church
Marathon, Texas
photographed 12.24.2018
*Sort-of sleeping, I guess. Many, many people snore, as it turns out. And church basement floors are very cold.
4 fleurs de lis
From the looks of things, there was a problem with people climbing over the fence, so those fleurs de lis were added. But – were the people trying to get in, or get out?
Sacred Heart Catholic Mission Church
Shafter, Texas
photographed 12.22.2018
Priest’s Door
I’m just guessing, of course, that this door on the side of the church is the way the priest gets in. What I’d like to know, though, is what the deal is with those flowers on the windowsill…
Sacred Heart Catholic Mission Church
Shafter, Texas
photographed 11.4.2017
Mirror
While I am not necessarily admitting to anything, the reason there are no people in the picture (other than the fact that it’s a photo that I took) is that they were all attending conference sessions, like obedient little convention attendees.
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
New Orleans, Louisiana
photographed 4.22.2018
Great-grandmother
A small cemetery on the windy plains of eastern Colorado has family significance. There’s a Robert Green, who died in 1920, when he was only three and a half years old, was my dad’s older brother. Only my dad was born in 1923, so he never met this brother.
My dad’s family lived in the nearby town of Branson; my grandmother taught school and my grandfather ran the local bank. The one-two punch of the Depression and the Dust Bowl led my grandparents away from Colorado to the northern part of the Texas Panhandle, where my grandmother still taught school and my grandfather cobbled together a living doing anything he could fine. But they left their little son in that Colorado cemetery.
Then in 1944, my grandmother’s mother, who’d come out from Pennsylvania to be near her daughter, passed away and was buried in that same windy place.
And so it was that we we to see the dead ancestors, to revisit my hazy memories of tales often told.
at the cemetery
Branson, Colorado
photographed 9.5.2016
