Sunday, June 19, 2011

Much Happening

What better time to squeeze in a blog post than right before the weekend closes. Reading Roadielocks on a regular basis, I get to see my lovely wife share with the world with her verve and lively prose, so I will use her as an my inspiration for today's post (been a while).

Just a quick word of warning, this initial post will not contain photos -- so I'll be violating my own sacred code of blogging (thou shalt always have photos in thou post). Let's get on to it.

Yesterday was sports-theme day, as RL and I went to the Bruins parade in the morning/afternoon, and I also went to the Revs game by night. First, let's talk the parade. While I was hesitate about waking up early(ish) on Saturday, it seemed like a good idea to experience parade. Winning in Boston is big, so I really couldn't pass this up (one million people felt the same way). RL and I took the commuter train in, and I was hit by the fact it seemed like the entire student body of Dedham High was at the station. I never knew so many 14-year-old's were into NHL hockey. It could have been a lot of worse (basically got some bad jokes and fashion), we made it to South Station okay.

We plunked our buts over at Government Center as we waited for the Bruin's brigade show up with with Lord Stanley's cup. We got to see the Cup (held by Tim Thomas), and the whole Bruins team strut their stuff. It was nice that the pace of the parade was actually a lot slower than previous parades have been up here, so you actually got some time to process what was going on. I remember at a Patriot's parade everybody passed in what I thought was 15 seconds.

After the parade, RL & I got to walk around the city, hit the North End, culminating with a visit to the Common. Along the way we did to see one pretty funny event. After we left the North End, we snaked through the Bank North Center, and low and behold their was still major Bruins activity left to be had. We saw the Duck boats returning (now empty), but I also got to see this very TALL guy on this bike. I got to see Chara on his bike zoom by the Duck boats giving the some folks a pretty hardy cheer. Pretty cool! As RL mentions in her blog, this kind of got me motivated to get the bike rack on the ASAP.

Later on, we headed back to Dedham to see our friends, Curt and Marieke. I saw the Revs tie with Chicago with Curt (excellent company, frustrating game) and Rosanne got to see Bride Wars (I think) with Marieke -- a good ol' gender divide, boys do the sports, girls do the chic flick. Definitely a good time!

Today, we were able to resume our tour of religion by going to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Dedham. Here were my takeaways in brief:
  • Nice people
  • Very white (however, most places around here do)
  • LONG mass (75 minutes long)
  • Seemed very similar to a Catholic mass with all the overhead and singing
  • Cool sermon on the holy trinity -- use of 3 musketeers to help explain concept
  • Too much book juggling, one second it was the Book of Common Prayer, then it was the hymnal
  • Everyone took the wafer (Eucharist) together at the alter -- seemed very communal, none of this one at a time business
  • Didn't like the alter was behind this ornamental gate, seemed symbol of some kind of hierarchy
  • Got to see an old co-worker unexpectedly, very nice!
We are already have visited a Unitarian church (written about in an unpublished blog post), so we need to figure out where we go next. I'm thinking the Shakers -- what do you think?




Af

2 comments:

girl chris said...

Yay for a blog post, Cotton!! May I recommend a Quaker meeting? Everyone sits in silence -- it's really lovely once you get used to it (at first it can feel awkward, I think).

Rosanne said...

You know, right in Enfield, New Hampshire, there's a Shaker village... no real Shakers (none left - could we revive the fervor?), but maybe we should take a tour. We could bike there (from Uncle Jimmy's house, not Dedham...)!