Month: December 2018

Pax Vobiscum

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Schola of St. Francis of Assisi, Staunton,VA

Christmas. It is both the beginning and the end. The Alpha and Omega. The fulfillment and the promise.  It is what we let it be.

We are blessed, The Redhead and I. We have our health, our family of heart and blood, a new beginning and hopeful expectation. We have one another. And we have our Faith. None of it has come easily and for that we are all the more grateful for having what we do.

For us, this Christmas is a new beginning in many ways. Our move from Florida to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia has opened up possibilities and opportunities. We have no idea of where we will call home or what we will be doing in the future but we are filled with a sense of peace. We are, we are sure, where we are supposed to be at this time. There is an expression that I have used over the past number of years, “Before you can know what you have, you first have to lose everything”. We know what we now have.

Our parish church here in Staunton, St. Francis of Assisi, has been a source of comfort, strength and inspiration to us. We decided to attend Mass at the Christmas vigil this year. Before Mass there was a “concert” presented by the Schola of classical musicians and singers. It was a mix of both traditional and religious songs and hymns. No, “Santa Baby”, was not one of them! One of the traditional songs was a Charles Floyd/Yo-Y o Ma arrangement of “The Wexford Carol”. Here it is performed together by Alison Krause and Yo-Yo Ma (click here.)  The rendition sung in church was very close to what was sung by Krause, thanks to soprano, Nancy Hanna. The video’s bagpipe drone section of the music was substituted by the church organ. It was very stirring and served as an excellent example of how contemporary music can be sacred. This Vigil Mass was one of the most reverent we have attended in many years and Father Wamala’s Christmas message was simple: Love God, love one another and find your way to serve.

 

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Christmas Vigil altar St. Francis of Assisi, Staunton

Christmas Day was something different for us: a little baby will do that! Baby Jonah kept his parents hopping, yet Grammy (The Redhead) found a way to lull him to peaceful sleep.

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Sleepy Baby

Some Christmas music was played during the morning.  The organic farm just up the road provided us with a fresh turkey for a special Christmas dinner (I’ll write more about that farm at some later point).  It was truly a peace-filled day.

And now, New Year is upon us. No silly resolutions…at least for me. Yes, I’d like to take advantage of the more temperate (for me) weather and get outdoors more. But, dreams of six-pack abs have been diminished by the reality of a half-keg belly! Our goals are more straightforward: 1) Find a new home (are ya’ listenin’, Becky!), 2) Find a place to resume my furniture restoration interests, 3) Learn how to use my new Nikon 5300 camera that was a gift from the Redhead and 4) Develop a social circle of friends in our new hometown while keeping our family of the heart ever close to us. Doable? Yes, I believe it is.

In closing, here are some more pics from our continuing explorations of the Shenandoah Valley.

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old hamlet of Brownsburg, north of Lexington,VA
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Valley farm, near Lexington,VA
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Blue Ridge Mountain farm, Edinburg, VA
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Edinburg Mill. Detail showing charred timbers resulting from Union General Sheridan’s raid and burning of the mill and town, 1864

 Peace be with you. Thank you for reading. Happy New Year to all! 

Bill

Da’ Fade

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Sometimes, it’s the little, everyday things that just make you shake your head and say, “what the heck”!

This morning started out with promise. Early rising, good cup of coffee and plans to zip on over to downtown Staunton to enjoy a second cup and one of the special donuts at Paradise Donuts before exploring the outlying neighborhoods.

Before long the Redhead says that she’d really like me to order a new camera for Christmas using my long accumulated credit card points. Hmmm. That might be nice, especially since it won’t “cost” me anything and I’ve actually had my eye on a particular model. But, true to form, I feel the need to do more research on the camera I’ve read reviews about many times.

So, off I go into “Billy Land”, as the Redhead calls my moments of pondering, and I’m caught up in on-line comparison shopping for an hour. And, it wasn’t a waste of time either. It turns out a somewhat better camera went on sale. Nice! So, into the cart it went. Whoa! Wait a minute. No points available??? An hour later everything is back on track, the camera is ordered and I’m chomping on the bit to chomp on a donut!

But, noooo. The Redhead comes over with a letter from our former DMV stating that my license and registration will be cancelled… forthwith! What happened to the 30 day rule? Bye, bye, donuts, I’m figuring. Into the car we go, stuffed with all our documents (we thought) and over to the Virginia DMV to take care of business. An hour later I have a paper copy of a new Virginia drivers license. It will take a second trip to register the car, but, progress is made. So, what next?

A haircut! Gabby Hayes has nothing on me lately. The lovely Miss Nancy of Vintage Barber Shop in Jacksonville would faint if she saw my noggin’ now. As we drive around Staunton looking for a barber shop, a plain barber shop, it dawns on me. We’ve moved. The Redhead yanks out her smartphone. “Oh, here’s one…’The Man Cave'”. No, I don’t think so. “Oh, oh, how about, “The Golden Comb”. She is now howling laughing. No. And ditto to , Family Salon, Nuthin’ Fancy and Uni-sex Cut an’ Curl. I just want a plain barber. “How about, ‘Bob the Barber”? “O.k. sounds good”, I say. Several blocks later we discover Bob has sold out to a Vape shop. “The girls at the beauty school would welcome the chance to work on your hair”, Red suggests. Now, anyone who knows me knows I’m an open minded kind of guy. But, sitting in the store front window of the Staunton School of Beauty is , well, not my thing. Sorry girls, no purple hair streaks for Gibby!

Let’s go home, I wimper. No, donuts, no haircut. As we drive along Route 250 Red spots, “Who’s Next Barbershop.” Hmmm. Let’s give it a try. We pull into the parking lot facing a non-descript shop with a few cars parked outside. Red heads toward a vintage resale shop and I open the door to the shop. It’s crowded. But, one of the two barbers says, “Don’t worry, there’s only one person ahead of you”. Okey, dokey, I think. A young mother is waiting for her son to be finished and then one more kid is ahead of me. How long can this take? At least something is going right today. Mom’s kid is finally finished 30 minutes later. The next kid hops into the chair while barber # 2 is still working on another youngster. Hmmm. Barber # 1 looks my way and says, “I have to leave by 5, so Uncle Billy will have to do you, if you don’t mind waiting”. It’s 4:10. I’m thinking, How long do haircuts take here? Hmm. I reply, “Where’s Uncle Billy”? “Right there”, he says, pointing to barber #2.  “We specialize in High and Tights, Fades and Etching”. Before I can mutter, Whaa? barber # 2 says, “That’s right, we’re real artists”! What the heck! I’m thinking. Well, I wait another 20 minutes or so. Both #1 and #2 are seemingly working on the same section of each customers head for over 25 minutes now. I guess real artists they are.

I gracefully glance at my watch and say, “Hey, I have to go, catch you in the morning”.  “No problem, sir. Come back, we’ll make you look real good”, says #1. “You bet”, I respond.

So, what do you think would look good on this noggin’? High and Tight? Maybe some fancy Etching?

dafade

Well, probably just a hat. Better luck tomorrow!

The Beauty of Now

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Like snow falling on a quiet Sunday afternoon, our life here in the Shenandoah Valley is building slowly, softly and surely.

Deserted Farmhouse – Verona, VA

Areas are being explored and re-explored. Acquaintances are being made. We recognize and are recognized by some folks at the grocery stores and the owners of at least two downtown Staunton shops.

Swoope,VA

Kathy, of Kathy’s Restaurant, is also getting used to seeing us. Travis and Shauna, husband and wife owners of Paradise Donuts (https://www.facebook.com/StauntonParadiseDonuts/) welcomed us as we tried them for the first time this past week. As somewhat of a donut aficionado, I can attest that the shop is aptly named: Paradise! As newcomers to the area, we were treated to a sampling of their cinnamon twists.The Redhead kept saying, “I can’t believe I ate two donuts in one sitting”. I was thinking, “I can’t believe I stopped at two”! It turns out that Shauna and Travis are fellow parishioners at St. Francis of Assisi Church –just across the street. How convenient!

As this is being written, snow continues to steadily fall outside our windows and today’s sermon at church keeps coming to mind: See God in everything before us. In the gifts, the challenges, the beauty and opportunities that are presented to us every day. Live in the Now, it will never come again.

Farmers, Armstrong’s , Verona,VA (Note: no one watches the tv!)

Turn off the noise and seeing beauty and goodness is much easier. We haven’t had tv since arriving here. We do have internet and can play movies, but the lack of broadcast noise and news – fake or otherwise – has allowed more information to come to us. Conversations with neighbors and people met on the street or in going about everyday routines are so much easier without labels. Red, Blue, Con, Lib, Anti, Pro…I don’t know what the labels mean anymore, nor does it matter. All of us are struggling with something. To quote George Elliot, “What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other”? To paraphrase Msgr. Cassin, “See God and Love in the Now”.

Snow continues to fall and with it comes the silence.