Christmas Concert and Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Happy feast day, residents of the Americas!

Yesterday, I sang in the UST Christmas Concerts, which I'd say were a success.  We were at Orchestra Hall from about 8:15am to 9:15pm, but there were enough breaks that it was a doable day (though I hear that it gets longer each year...).

Being onstage at Orchestra Hall was such a different feeling!  Here's us entering for rehearsal (just like members of the MN Orchestra!):

Here's the view from the back row of Lit Choir:

Why I'm in the back row remains a mystery -- understand that I'm holding my phone up to get this picture!  Seeing the director was a challenge. :P

Concert Choir kicked us out of our original room, a stuffy little place downstairs. We complained all the way up the stairs, where we were given this room:

Amazing how the complaints stop as soon as we entered it. ;)

The concerts went smoothly -- actually, from what I've heard, this was one of the most uneventful (in a good way!) concerts in recent memory.  I played quite a few hands of 500 and, at the end of the final game, stole Mr. Vance's bid (7 no trump; I had two aces, and the rest is history)!  He's super competitive and stomped us every other round, so that and our "world premiere" of "The Light of Christmas Morn" were probably the most satisfying parts of the day. :)

(Wow, that makes me sound like a kind of awful person... If it makes it any better, he had just won at least two games prior to this, and some justice was in order.)

And it's been a singing couple of days, because I made my cantor debut today at 12:10 Mass!  That also went smoothly and uneventfully (not counting that part when Jesus came down and we all got to receive Him -- doesn't get much more eventful than that!).

To end on a terribly sad note, please keep Erik Nielsen and his family in your prayers.  He is a Catholic Studies student here at UST who was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm today and brought to the ICU; they have just decided to take him off life support.  We're all shaken and appreciating our families and friends -- put in perspective, life really isn't that bad.  Again, please pray for him, his family and friends.  Immaculate Mary, pray for us!

Love you all!

Feast of St. Nicholas

Happy Feast of St. Nick!

I began the morning with Mass, then went to a brunch with the Handmaids in the Heart of Jesus -- they're the best!  After that, I worked for most of the rest of the day on my Music History paper, though I don't have nearly as much to show for it as I'd like (I was on a kind-of-successful search for a thesis).  However, I did manage to finish the pink candle for the Advent wreath, so it is now complete:

(Do you like the plate of rose petals in the middle?  They were just too pretty to throw away... :))

Also, at the beginning of the year, Amanda (et al.?) expressed a desire to know if the banners on each side of the sanctuary in the chapel are different colors during the different seasons of the liturgical year, and the answer is "yes":

(They were green before. :))

This evening, Hannah and I made banana bread and talked poetry.  Did you know that she is a poet?  Neither did I, but it turns out that she has some amazing poems (well, at least one amazing one, and I'm willing to bet that the others are good as well)!  She introduced me to Chesterton's poems, too.

Tomorrow is the Christmas concert!  My cold is on its last legs and, I think, should be gone by tomorrow.  It will be a long day, though, with a ton of people to put together on stage, so please keep the whole operation in your prayers.

St. Nicholas, pray for us!

Cor Jesu/Katie W's Birthday

Happy birthday, Katie!  This evening, we had a little surprise gathering (with cake!) to celebrate.  Later, I went to Cor Jesu (I had hoped to go to Dr. Boyle's in between there, but no one was quite sure of their plans yet and, since I couldn't miss Cor Jesu and didn't want to walk a mile in dark St. Paul by myself, I skipped that...).  This was for the best, though, as I got to work a little more on Music History and to practice the litany.  This went pretty smoothly; I had a new part, but I think I did all right -- being the only person on your part is just a whole different experience!  I feel a little bad in that all my music performance opportunities are a result of knowing the right people rather than being a phenomenal musician...but I think that's just how the music world is, and anyway, it's hard to feel too bad about that for very long. ;)

Today's quote of the day -- Michaela on why a cope is better than a chasuble:  "It's a cape, not a tablecloth with a hole cut in the middle of it!" :D

Finally, today's "picture" is a headline from the Catholic Studies Newsletter worthy of Best of the Web, or at least a Catholic fail blog, though the following paragraph does redeem it:

Thursday...

Hi everyone; welcome to the almost-end-of-the-week!  Christmas concert, finals, and final Music History paper are coming up way too quickly....it's that time of night where I'm not sure how I'm going to fit it all in, so I should probably just go to bed.

Though I'm rather overwhelmed right now, it hasn't always been so -- this is how my day began:

Beautiful, isn't it?  And then we talked about happiness in Philosophy, though not very satisfactorily.  I think we resolved it that you can be happy...maybe?  In Heaven, for sure, and on earth, possibly.  But it was a fun discussion. :)  And this afternoon we had the last Lit choir rehearsal before the concert, which is always nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time.  We're ready!

Please pray for my project of handing out the HLA fliers: there is no soliciting on campus, publications sent to student mailboxes must be advertising a particular club event, and the Student Center is a "paper-free facility."  So I think my last option is to take this off-campus (and maybe leave a few stray ones behind me in the library); I'm hoping that I get enough volunteers to make it doable and don't get the pro-life in trouble in the process!

To close, I must add that the ASC really isn't a paper-free facility -- this commercial came to mind:

P.S.  I forgot to mention today's great quote -- it takes a little background info, so stay with me here.  Dr. Coulter mentioned that upper-level philosophy courses are made mostly of men with a few women (one of his courses had only one girl: his daughter).  He then said how, if he was a student and the positions were reversed, he wouldn't have liked to be the only male in a class of thirty students, and he looked to the guys for agreement: you wouldn't want to be the only boy in a class of all girls, right?  And one of my classmates said, "Why not?  That's, like, 29 numbers!"  General outcry/uproar; it was pretty hilarious. :D

The Catholic Edge: Is There a Masculine Genius?

My day consisted mainly of going to class and playing piano, and this evening attending the Catholic Edge, a monthly event put on by the Catholic Studies Interns.  As you can see, tonight's topic was the "masculine genius" (the counterpart to the "feminine genius" promoted by Pope St. JPII).  Dr. Savage spoke; after years of research, she has developed this theory and will be publishing a paper in the next issue of Logos, if any of you are interested. :)  The main gist: while women are concerned with people, men are focused on things.  That is how society can function and survive -- the fact that men build things and fix problems is the reason that society can progress out of the Stone Age.  She argues that this idea is immensely important right now, when so much attention is given to women (not, of course, a bad thing in and of itself) that the men are falling by the wayside and don't know who they are supposed to be.

On a different note, today was the Christmas tree lighting.  While I'm the Chief of the Advent police and all that, I do have to admit that the lights look beautiful:

This is outside BEC, and there's a big tree in the ASC as well.  I don't know if all the trees have lights, or if it is just these two; I'll have to keep my eyes open. :)

Fourteenth Tommie Tuesday

I enjoy Tuesdays.  Philosophy was especially good -- Dr. Coulter talked about our attitude toward the marginalized in society; lots of food for thought.  In studio class, I played Brahms, smoothly and with hardly a memory slip. :)  (Which is good, because my jury is in less than two weeks...)  And in choir, we rehearsed with the Concert choir!  Dr. Broeker, their director, directed, and took most tempos at 1 1/2 to 2 x faster than we normally do, so that was exciting.  But we mostly kept up, and the basses sounded so great!!

Finally, I have discovered the secret to staying warm: layers.  So here I am, looking slightly sinister but very warm:

Unfortunately, some of my face is still exposed to wind, but I'm also learning how to get across campus with a minimum of actual outdoor walking -- not to scare you away from college, Amanda, but trying to find the fastest, yet most-indoor route is almost like my search for the "optimal train." ;)  (Thankfully, I personally enjoy that kind of thing!)

Less (or should it be fewer?) than two weeks of classes left before finals; please keep me and all the students in your prayers these last few weeks!  And stay warm. :)

First Monday of Advent

Back to ordinary school life!  I did all the Monday things: morning prayer, Mass, mocha, Theology, piano practice, last Piano Proficiency Exam lesson (we went over choral accompanying, since I passed the exam last week :D), Music History, Circle, MMC meeting.  So, brothers (and whoever else is bothered by the fact that I retire early): one, it's not really that early, and two, even if it was early, I have every excuse to be going to bed early tonight. :)

One of the benefits of being at UST is the amazing amount of purple that is all over campus.  Not only does that make me happy (peaceful? :)), but it also ensures that any Christmas trees that get put up during Advent are at least appropriately decorated:

So, while one probably shouldn't choose a school based entirely on their colors, it's not a bad thing to keep in mind during the college search.