Busy Finish To August

The final week of August was busy one, so this will be a Catch-All Grandstander, covering several topics.

The highlight of the weekend was the Saturday marriage of my great-niece Bridget Pike and Eric Cooper.  It was lovely affair, and Bridget was a most beautiful bride, as were her sisters Monica and Frances as co-maids of honor.  Mother of the Bride Karen Pike, my niece and godchild looked pretty stunning herself, I might add.  As is my custom, it is not my place to post photos of the bride and groom in this forum.  I will leave it up to Bridget and Eric if they choose to do so.  If you see me in person. I'll be glad to show you, though.

One picture I will share is one of Linda and me all gussied up for the wedding.  We clean up well if I say so myself.

The wedding took place at St. Paul's Cathedral, or as Catholic Pittsburghers simply put it, "the Cathedral", and it was beautiful.  It had been many years since I was at a Mass at the Cathedral, and you just can't get used to the beauty of the place.

The reception followed at the Renaissance Hotel in dahntahn Pittsburgh, and while it was a wonderful party in a beautiful place, events taking place simultaneously in the Burgh made for some challenges.  A noon football game between Pitt and Duquesne at Acrisure Stadium (50,000 plus attendance), the annual weekend long Ribfest, also at Acrisure, some sort of festival in town that shut down Liberty Avenue and Stanwix Streets by Gateway Center, and, most of all, a sold out PNC Park hosting the traveling Savannah Bananas baseball game (38,000+), all made for a gridlocked city as we made our way from the church to the reception.  It's a long story, and I will spare you the details, except to say that the Renaissance, where Linda and I stayed that night, knocked seventy-five bucks off of our bill for the valet parking that they were unable to provide to us, even though we paid for it.

It was frustrating, but all frustrations disappeared as we finally got to the reception and had a great time celebrating Bridget and Eric.  And just for shits and giggles, I took this photo from the second floor ballroom where the reception took place.  It shows the mass of humanity leaving PNC Park and headed back into town to their cars that took up all of the parking spaces in the lower part of the City that night.

*********

This past Friday night I did something that I had not done since I was in high school: I went to a high school football game.  Linda and I took ourselves out to Gesling Stadium on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Oakland (yep, two straight days in Oakland for us) to see the Central Catholic Vikings, my alma mater and a small (enrollment of about 800) private school, play the massive public school, the Pine-Richland Rams.  The reason we went to the game was to see our niece Cameron perform as a Flag Girl as a part of the Pine-Richland Marching Band.

Somewhere among those thirty or so girls wielding 

the yellow flags is Cameron.  She was terrific!

The difference in the relative size of the two schools is evident when you see the bands.  Pine-Richland's band is massive, probably as large as many collegiate marching bands, whereas Central's band consisted of 28 kids, some of whom were girls  from the neighboring all girls school, Oakland Catholic.  The band was never that small when I was a student there, but then again, enrollment then was about twice as much as it is now.  God bless those kids in the band, but I wonder what they think when they have to share a field with competing bands from the big public schools.

As for the game, it started out in a fashion that I had never before seen. A Central player returned the opening kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown.  On the subsequent kickoff, the Pine-Richland player returned it 96 yards for a TD.  The game was twenty-seconds old and it was 7-7.  Have you ever seen something like that?

Central ended up winning the game 34-20.  The tiny private school will, as they usually are, be one of the best teams in Western PA this season.  Central says that they do not "recruit" their football players.  This alumnus is not so sure about that.

We ended up leaving at halftime after the bands performed so as to avoid what would have been an enormous traffic nightmare leaving the CMU parking garage.

********

And on Thursday night, the night before the football game, we took in this movie on Netflix:

This, of course, is based on the best selling novel by Richard Osman, which begat three - and counting - subsequent novels about four colorful crime solving retirees living in the upscale retirement community of Coopers Chase.  This movie is perfectly cast with Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie as the amateur sleuths, and throw in Jonathan Pryce and Mirren's husband to add to the mix.  Having read all of the books and gotten to know all of the characters, I really enjoyed this one.  Trust me though, even if you haven't read the books, but enjoy this type of entertainment, I think that you will like this movie.  

Oh, and there is a great little "easter egg" in this one where Pryce comments on Mirren "looking like the Queen".  It's perfect.

The movie won't win any awards or appear on any top Ten Lists, but it's worth seeing.  The Grandstander gives it Three Stars.

********

So, I've gone on this long, and I haven't even mentioned the delightful trip that we took to Centre County two weeks ago to visit Marilyn's brother George and his wife Ann.  That one deserves its own write up so watch for it later this week.

High School Musical Edition: "Les Miserables"

 

Due to COVID restrictions and other life events,  it had been several years since I had taken part in one of my favorite activities: attending a high school musical.  That was remedied this past Saturday night when Linda and I attended the production of one of my favorite shows, Les Miserables, at my alma mater, Central Catholic.  This was joint production of Central, an all boys school, and Oakland Catholic, an all girls school two blocks up the street.   

At the risk of sounding corny and trite, this production fulfilled a long held dictum of mine:  If you want to feel good about today's youth and the future, attend a high school musical.   The talent, the energy, and the sheer enthusiasm of the kids on stage was positively amazing.   Usually, I attend the musicals staged by my home school district, North Allegheny.  The enrollment at NA is over 2,700 students, and it's budget for such things is, shall we say, generous (let me show you my school tax bill).  The combined enrollment at Central and Oakland Catholic is less than half of North Allegheny's, and my guess is that the budget for a musical at Central/Oakland would reflect that.  For those reasons, my expectations for this production were tempered, but I have to say that those expectations were far exceeded.  

The sheer talent of the kids, and there were probably at least fifty kids in total performing in the show, was off the charts, the sets were beautiful, and the costumes were amazing.   As for the show, well, as I said, it has long been one of my favorites (see HERE), and the emotional wallop of this show was not lost just because it was a group of teenagers presenting it.   One number that I was especially looking forward to seeing was "Master of the House."  If you know the show, you know that it is the one somewhat comic number in it, and that it has its share of, shall we say, bawdy elements.   How would this number be sanitized by the two Catholic schools presenting it, or would it be left out of the show entirely?  Well, I am happy to say that the number was presented and staged as it was written, so BRAVO to the administrations of CC and OC for this.  I cannot imagine that this would have been the case back in my late 1960's student days, and I am sure that schools in Florida won't be doing it anytime soon.

On a more personal note, it was very cool to go back to Central for this one night.  I have not revisited Central all that often in the fifty-four years since I graduated, and Linda had never been there, and seeing it through her eyes was revaluation to me.  The Auditorium where the play was presented was not a big deal to me, although the hard wooden seats have since been replaced by cushioned theater style seats. It was just a place where I went to some classes and attended school assemblies.  Linda, however, took in the amazing architecture of the place.  The brick walls and the wooden ceilings with the painted crests upon them, and saw something much different.  "This is a beautiful place" she said.  And indeed it is.  I even got to show her my Dad's picture as a part if the first graduating class, 1931, that hangs in the center stairwell.

In closing, go see a high school  musical!  The season for these is coming to a close, so if you can't get to one this year, put it on your Things To Do List for 2024.

To Absent Friends - Brother Gregorian, FSC

Today's mail brought the quarterly newsletter of the Christian Brothers, and in it I learned of the death this past March of Brother Gregorian McLaughlin, FSC. He was 89 years old.

I realize that many of you will have no idea who this is.  Brother Gregorian was my freshman English teacher at Central Catholic, and probably no teacher had a more positive impact on my progress through life.  Unlike other English teachers at Central, Brother Gregorian did not place a lot of emphasis on the "fun" part of English class, i.e., reading stories, or literature.  Rather, he emphasized grammar, parts of speech, and the oh so tedious exercise of diagramming sentences.  It was dull, it was boring, it was awful.

But guess what?  As I went through college, and more importantly, as I entered the business world, I found that my strong suit was communications - writing proposals, business plans, and writing business letters.  Job performance reviews over thirty-five years always, always indicated high praise for my "communications skills".  And I give the lion's share of the credit for those abilities to what I learned from Brother Gregorian.

About twenty years ago, a sermon at one Sunday's Mass urged people to think about a religious person who had an impact on your life, and to perhaps reach out to him or her.  Well, I contacted Central, found out Brother Gregorian's address, and did just that.  I received a very warm response from him.  In 2006, while Bro. Gregorian was visiting Central, I went to the Brothers' House there and we had a very nice visit with him that day.  I am glad that I had the chance to tell him the value his teachings had on my life.

He was a Christian Brother for sixty-eight years.  Heaven is a bit richer now that Brother Gregorian is there, but those souls up there had better be sure speak proper English when talking to him!

And be sure that I am double-checking everything I am writing in the blog entry, because I am sure that he will somehow be checking on it.

RIP Brother Gregorian.

The Seneca Valley Film Festival...and Other High School Thoughts

Last night Marilyn and I ventured north to the Strand Theater in the heart of beautiful downtown Zelionople, PA to take in the first Seneca Valley Film Festival.  For over two hours we watched about two dozen short films and videos that were written, directed, produced, and starred students from Seneca Valley High School. We had a horse in this race as our nephew, sophomore Zach Stoner, had a hand in several of these offerings, both in front of and behind the camera. 

I suppose that at this point we shouldn't be surprised by such things, but we were once again blown away by the talent displayed by these young kids.  That was some absolutely amazing stuff that was on display last night.  Congratulations to all of these kids for putting their wonderful abilities, and congratulations to the Seneca Valley School District for making it possible for these kids to have the opportunity to develop and  fulfill the talent within them.

And, of course, special congratulations to Zach!

When I thought about it last night, I realized that attending this film festival put the cap on a school year where we saw an awful lot of positive efforts by a lot of kids:

• Varsity soccer games at Central Catholic
• Freshman and JV basketball games at Central
• Orchestra and Strolling Strings performances at North Allegheny
• The North Allegheny Spring Musical
• The Percussion concert at Mt. Lebanon High School
• The Mt. Lebanon High School baseball team
• The young film makers at Seneca Valley

Congratulations to all of these terrific kids.  It was a joy watching all of it!