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Last weekend was the Knights of Columbus State Convention. Brett had meetings, but there wasn’t anything for me to do most of the day Saturday, so I went to the Cincinnati Art Museum.

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Unfortunately, when I arrived at the Museum at 9am, I found out it didn’t open until 11, so I took a walk around Eden Park. I found a quiet place to sit and prayed the Office of Readings, then I walked around and looked and took pictures.

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The Museum was lovely. I took some pictures, but I wish I had taken the real camera instead of just my phone.

by Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, Cincinnati artist

by Marc Chagall. I recognized this artist from across the room!

By William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Part of the caption by the Bouguereau painting. Bouguereau was realist in the age of impressionism. I laughed out loud.

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Taking pictures of temporary exhibits is prohibited, so I couldn’t photograph my favorite part: the Henry Ossawa Tanner exhibit. Tanner was an African-American artist in the late 19th century. He had been a landscape painter, but after a life-changing trip to the Holy Land, he painted mostly religious scenes.

The Pilgrims of Emmaus. This was my favorite. I stood in front of it for ten minutes.

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I ate in the Museum Café. Here’s what I had:

Half and half plate with “Amish Country” salad, a BLT, and a fruit cup

It was delicious. Here’s what it looked like after:

I didn’t follow “Light Weigh” eating principles, but at least I  couldn’t eat it all!

The melon was a little “passed” so I just ate the pineapple out of the fruit cup. Then I just got full.

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Sunday we attended Mass at St. Peter in Chains Cathedral. Despite living in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for several years, I’d never been there. I loved the mosaic and the Stations of the Cross.

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Sunday afternoon, we were privileged to go to the cemetery where a friend’s parents are buried and place a flag on the grave of his father, who was a World War II vet. Brett texted our friend a photo of the flag there, but he didn’t hear back from him right off. Tuesday evening when we saw this friend, he tried to thank us, but he got choked up. On the second try he was able to tell us how much it meant to him. What a moving experience!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Happy Visitation Day! Today commemorates this Biblical event:

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechari’ah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.”

Luke 1:39-55 (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

Here is a beautiful painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, one of my new favorite artists. I saw it Saturday at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it, along with many other beautiful Tanner paintings, will be until September 9, 2012.

The Visitation by Henry Ossawa Tanner

I love Elizabeth’s look of astonishment and Mary’s warm smile. What a beautiful event this must have been in the life of these two holy cousins.

Mary’s speech at this event is called the Magnificat for its first word in Latin “magnifies,” as in “My soul magnifies the Lord.” We pray this prayer daily at Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours, though in its current translation it does not use the word magnify, but says “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” Who better than Mary to magnify or make more visible the Lord’s greatness?

Anyone who is so “progressive”as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.

2 John 9 (New American Bible)

I read this in the Office of Readings recently and I couldn’t help thinking of all the sinful things we Catholics can claim our faith compels us to do or to accept. Loving everyone doesn’t mean that we should no longer call a sin a sin. Care and concern are not the same as accepting all actions, right or wrong. Preserving the lives of innocent individuals is not partisan politics. Speaking out against a sin doesn’t mean that we hate the people who commit that sin. It means we love them too much to let them think it’s okay.

Jesus wasn’t just a nice man who taught us nice lessons about being nice. He is and was the second Person of the Holy Trinity.  He wants to bring us to live with him in Heaven for ever. He loves us so much that he can’t stand to see us choose sin over him.

Here’s hoping that having a special feature for a certain day of the week will get me back on the blogging track.

Seven Everyday Annoyances

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Forming the plural of a noun by adding “ ‘s” (apostrophe s). The apostrophe indicates possession. That means that if I write about car’s, I mean something that belongs to a car. It’s not that there are two car’s in my parents’ driveway- that is incorrect. There are two cars in my parents’ driveway. The car’s proper place is in the driveway, meaning the place that belongs to the car.

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Recipes that call for baking soda without aluminum. I see this most often on natural-health conscious blogs, and it drives me nuts. Why? The chemical formula for baking soda is NaHCO3. That means baking soda contains sodium, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, all in one molecule. It doesn’t contain aluminum, nor has it ever contained aluminum. Baking powder on the other hand, is a mixture composed of an alkaline component (usually baking soda), an acid salt (sometimes sodium aluminum phosphate or sodium aluminum sulfate, but often sodium acid pyrophosphate), and an inert starch (corn starch or potato starch). I understand why these bloggers believe that aluminum is to be avoided. It has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and breast cancer, among other adverse effects. However, you would be hard pressed to find baking soda with aluminum.

sodium bicarbonate – no aluminum

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People having meetings by the photocopier. I am an administrative assistant. That’s a fancy way of saying I do stuff for other folks in the office, and I’m on the lowest rung of the ladder. Therefore, I share a cubicle, while other higher-ups have their own offices, with doors that close, walls that are solid and go all the way up to the ceiling, and extra chairs. These features make offices ideal places to meet with a co-worker. The copier is right outside my cubicle. It is in a hallway, with no chairs and no privacy. I have to hear everything you say when you have a meeting there. It makes concentration a bit hard.

NOT a meeting room

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Generalizations. All Christians do… all atheists are… women like… secretaries want… We can’t really know the minds, intentions or actions of everyone in a particular category. I think it would be better to limit such sweeping statements to the features that define a group – Christians share a belief in Jesus. The way we apply and express that may be different. Christians are not all holier-than-thou types. We aren’t all hypocrites. True, we are all sinners, but even our sins are diverse.

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When someone says “be more open-minded” but they really mean “accept my view (because I think yours is wrong).” Quite often, I have noticed that people who urge open-mindedness actually want us to change our views, rather than just accepting that others have a different view. Sometimes people advocate diversity, when what they really mean is that they want the group that is discriminated against to be accepted, and the discriminators (or perceived discriminators) to be vilified or ridiculed. To me open-mindedness means understanding that there are different views, many people disagree with me, and although I may explain my reasoning, I can’t change their minds any more than they can change mine.

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Traffic. Those of you who live in a larger metro area and commute by passenger car, I don’t know how you do it. The traffic in Columbus has been frustrating lately, with construction and accidents clogging up the highways. I have been so tempted to start riding the bus. Tuesday, there was a big accident that shut down the freeway near downtown and traffic had to be diverted through the surface streets. Brett was delayed in picking me up from work, and it took about an hour to get out of the city. A co-worker who lives near me, about 10 miles away from the office, told me it took her an hour and 45 minutes to get home. The weather is beautiful these days; the pavement isn’t wet, icy, or slippery. So why are there so many collisions?

Thank goodness this isn’t Columbus.

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Not knowing what to write. I try to write seven quick takes… and this is what I get. No wonder I have so few blog entries over the last few weeks. I can’t even think of seven things that annoy me. Is it writer’s block or apathy? I’ll say it’s writer’s block. I do have a lot of things on my mind that I could write about, but it is not yet time to share many of them.

Here’s hoping that you have a wonderful and annoyance-free weekend!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

We had gone from this…

On our first date

To this…

Our Engagement Photo

 And we were finally…

MARRIED!

I love you, Brett!