Second Sunday of Advent: John the Baptist, Juan Diego and My Family

Our 16 year old son readily agreed to help me prepare our meal for the second Sunday of Advent.  Right now, a "Majestic and Moist Honey Cake" is baking in the oven and soon I will call him downstairs to work on the lime-cilantro pork tacos. The boys actually are beginning to look forward to our Sunday dinners, which I began planning in earnest starting with the Feast of Christ the King.

I was worried our family was too old to try to catch the liturgical rhythm of Advent, that too many years of too many Sundays had passed without a sense of stopping and relaxing instead of shopping and catching up on homework. But I was wrong; we all are enjoying spending our Sundays after Mass napping, watching football, cooking and then having a family meal together. So...what's with the honey cake this Sunday?

The Why of the Wow of the New York Encounter

As I rode the train home from the New York Encounter last night (yes, that is our son's upright bass in the foreground; I agreed to carry the behemoth home so G. could enjoy dinner in New York with friends unencumbered) I thought about why it had been such a good experience.

I was delighted the chamber music orchestra our son plays in had the chance to perform Friday night in the Hammerstein Ballroom.  I found the talk on the Hubble Telescope interesting. I thought it was incredibly cool that Polish film director Krzysztof  Zanussi spoke and then was walking around wearing those fashion-forward glasses. But in the end, what awes me most about the New York Encounter are not the performances or presentations. After all, I have had two decades of interesting experiences as a journalist. What moves me most and stays with me now are the people who attend the New York Encounter.

Dealing with So-Called Durable Goods in our Civilization of Consumption

I waited at home for four hours today for the  Sears' repairman to visit to tell us how much it would cost to fix our 10-year-old oven's door. His answer? More than $400. "That's what the parts cost," he told me. (We're talking a couple of bolts, maybe a new handle. )And by the way, he said, a new Sears oven would cost a little over $500. He showed me a few models in the catalog he carried.

I don't blame this man for the consumer economy. Appliances, he told me, are designed to last a decade. This is why our household currently has a broken dishwasher, washing machine, microwave and oven. And no, we don't have hundreds of dollars sitting around to replace these machines. We haven't relied on credit cards in more than 15 years. So we've been washing dishes by hand, cooking on the stove top and on an electric grill, and trekking weekly to the laundromat in town.