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Sunday Gratitude – 5.IV.2026
To those celebrating today – Christ is Risen! – Happy Easter!
And then there are the “weird” ones here who are still waiting another week, among which I count myself. There have been a lot of services already – yesterday, I think I was in church for nearly four hours. I’ve really struggled this Lent; from the beginning, I felt less ready for it than most years and this year… wow. For the greater part of Lent, I believed that the Orthodox were also going to be celebrating Pascha today, and it was only looking at the calendar more carefully a couple of weeks ago when I realized that no, there’s a one-week difference. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting to spend so much time in church this weekend, but I was at vigil last night, and I certainly had the feeling of moving from the darkness into the light, and by the time the service was over, there was an air of hopefulness and joy there. For that I am grateful. (My brain did fight against this on the way home, though. *sigh*)
I am grateful for the more spring-like weather, and the opportunity to be outside. I’m also grateful for my neighbor who invites me to come walking with her.
I am grateful for friends who take the time to talk even in the rain.
I am grateful for making it home in a storm the other day; I wasn’t expecting it, then all of a sudden, I was driving down this country highway with lightning flashes all around. I don’t think that they were very close, as there was only a tiny bit of thunder, but what a show! The next day, driving down those same roads, I could actually see how high the water is, and I’m grateful that there were no issues with low-lying stretches of road or the bridges.
Time to take the Christmas wreath down! I am thankful to have had a little bit of time to be outside with my kids, and I’m thankful that they have places around that they can enjoy riding their bikes through, and that they’ve been fine with this “exploring”.
I am thankful for the joy of singing.
I am thankful for the things that are showing signs of life (and even blooming) even after a very cold winter and long periods of neglect.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have been in contact with a number of people on this day, in the joy of Easter.
I am grateful for yet another sign that I’m not alone through the hard stuff.
Thank you so much for being here! Christ is Risen!
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Sunday Gratitude – 29.III.2026
I really hate it when it seems like I blink and yet another week has passed. Somehow so much of this time ends up feeling like a blur, and it seems like all that is left is a growing list of things that should have been done long ago, but haven’t been done yet.
In the meantime, though, I’ve been trying not to lose a sense of gratitude, and to also try to make the most of the days at hand. We’ve had a couple of days that have hit 70F, which has been amazing, and especially as the days are getting longer, it would be terrible if we didn’t do something to take advantage of the warmer weather. My younger son had a day off of school a couple of weeks back, and the two of us went out on our bikes and rode ten miles together, and it was amazing. He also started taking pictures with my camera that afternoon, so I’ll be sharing a few of those in this post.
A couple of weeks after the real birthday, my youngest, in kindergarten, had her first real birthday party. It was a bowling alley affair, and, per the terms of the contract, was less than two hours long, but for a group of 5 and 6 year olds, it was fine. I was completely stressed out over this for at least a week for a number of reasons, but it turned out really, really good. Even the weather held out, kind of… It started raining about the time that the party started, and it was still raining as people left. Had we started a couple of hours later, everybody would have been going home in sleet, because we had a blizzard come through the next day. The kids were thrilled to get the day off of school, and despite the crazy wind, we never lost power. The next day, our dear neighbor made a path for our car using a snowblower.
I’m grateful that even though I managed to break a spoke on the one bike (a different one than before), this happened in a place where I could ride to a place where I could leave the bike for a couple of days, and which was very close to the bike shop. On the night that this happened, I was also able to get a ride back home with one of the ladies from church. I’d never talked to her before, and she’s incredibly sweet, and lives just a couple of streets over from where I live.
I’m grateful for the amazing time I had at St. Haralambos in Niles a couple of weeks back. Not only were some very dear “real life” friends there, I finally got to meet Fr. Andrew Damick in person. We have been online acquaintances (friends) for over 20 years, and it seemed like high time to meet him in person. He actually recognized me by sight as well, which is crazy because it’s been a looong time since I posted any photos of myself that he might come across. 🙂 That was a lot of fun, though.
Breezy days and kites! I am grateful, as well, for the opportunity to visit an old friend and just enjoy sitting on the front step, having a conversation in the sunshine.
In many ways, I feel pulled very, very, very thin. There have been a lot of good things, to be sure, but there have been a number of very, very frustrating things as well. I don’t know; at this point, I’m not sure that I’ll ever have things “figured out”, but there’s a path to go forward on, and that’s the way through this all. Forgive me again for the blog silence – I truly am grateful for you.
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Songs of the Season – Mariah Carey – Joy to the World
Yes, I make jokes about Mariah Carey at Christmas, especially after she tried to trademark “Queen of Christmas”. I don’t like the style of a lot of her music, especially the “warbling” at the high notes. Also, her music was incredibly overplayed in the 1990s.
That being said, the woman has an incredible voice, and an almost unbelievable range. While she is known for being able to sing very, very high, she considers herself an alto, and when she actually sings in that range, all of a sudden I find her much more tolerable to listen to.
I like this arrangement of “Joy to the World”. It’s definitely more “gospel” than a lot of what Mariah Carey sings, which reminds me of big, inner-city churches of my childhood, and I find it amusing that the arrangement pulls in a bit of Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World”, which really has nothing to do with Christmas (and from what I understand was nonsense on purpose).
In addition to the “Carol of the Bells” playlist, I’ve started a general playlist of Christmas songs that will include pieces mentioned here, for anyone interested.
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Sunday Gratitude – #12 (Monday Edition)
This week, I ended up contacting Teledoc because Oldest Daughter was sick to the point of probably needing prescription medicine, but scheduling with her pediatrician is not always easy and doing that or going to urgent care gets expensive. There’s a lot that Teledoc is not designed for, but it certainly is useful for “simple” things like the occasional sinus infection or what-have-you.
However, Oldest Daughter had never used this again, which meant that she needed to be registered and she’s a minor, so it had to be done under a guardian account, and while I used Teledoc before, the last time was when I was really feeling terrible, and I didn’t remember anything about my login or password. For this reason, I ended up calling.
I ended up on the line with a woman named Jessica from Louisiana. Not only did she need a lot of information, but their system was being slow and not working properly, but she was friendly and patient and extraordinarily helpful all the way through. We started chatting during the pauses, and by the time everything was done – probably close to an hour later – it was like talking to an old friend, and I was sad to have to hang up. I am grateful to be reminded that there are really wonderful people out there even in the most “mundane” of places. (And here, I shouldn’t forget a woman named Kimberly from T-Mobile a few weeks ago either!)
I’m grateful to my attorney, and to the “random strangers” who helped me find her.
I am grateful to have had some time alone this weekend, to do “nothing” and get some things done.
Writing about the carol yesterday, it certainly reminded me how I am grateful to have known John Sutko.
And I am certainly always grateful to God, who loves us and doesn’t abandon us.
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Wordle #546
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Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: The “O” in the middle is nice – not something I would have expected, and the “R” is the cherry on top.
Line 2: So, there is only one “O” here, and the “R” isn’t at the end.
Line 3: An “OR” word? Yes, yes, indeed. Some other letters would be helpful, though.
Line 4: Finally! This is kind of tough. I suspect that the “C” does not end the word, so it probably begins it. “H” is still out there, so is there anything that starts “CHOR”? Yes, yes there is!
Line 5: “Chord”!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
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Songs of the Season – Radost’ Sja Nam/ Joy to Us Has Been Revealed
This is another in the series of “kolady”, though it’s a recording that’s a little bit closer to home, as this is a choir that I have sung in, and the director here – John Sutko – besides being an incredibly talented choral director with the patience of Job, was an amazing singer, hitting those basso profundo notes like very few can, but more than that, he was an amazing person full of warmth and love for everyone he met. Whenever he’d see me, his face would light up and he’d exclaim “Krasivaya [beautful] Katerina!” like it just made his day that I was around.
John died in 2020, and truly one of the cruelest parts of the whole Covid saga is that the old and the sick and the dying were forcibly separated from those who loved them. John’s funeral should have had a thousand people at it – he was choir director at his church (St. Peter & St. Paul Orthodox Church, now in Burr Ridge, Illinois) for 65 years, and a teacher for his entire career, and he had a knack of making everyone feel special – but I don’t think even his entire family was allowed to go.
John was born here in the US, but he was proud of his Carpatho-Rusyn heritage; he loved their music. In the 1970s, he spent nearly a decade working on making good translations and musical settings for the Orthodox Church in America – I have no doubt that many of the “kolady” were also translated and set by him.
The songs didn’t change much from year to year, but I sure had a lot of fun singing them in John Sutko’s choir. He’d usually do at least one concert a year, generally a Christmas or Pascha (Easter) themed. He was very good about getting these recorded, and he’d make copies of the recordings to send to friends and parishioners who were too ill or frail to have been to church recently. His grandson, Fr. Alexander Koranda, has posted a few recordings up on Youtube, but I do hope that more show up.
In addition to the “Carol of the Bells” playlist, I’ve started a general playlist of Christmas songs that will include pieces mentioned here, for anyone interested.
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Songs of the Season – Peter, Paul, and Mary – Light One Candle
“Light One Candle” was written by Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame) and first performed in the early 1980s. While it is generally considered a Hanukkah song, with its references to the “Maccabee Children” and “light one candle” (as on a menorah), I don’t know that it’s inappropriate amongst Christmas songs either.
First of all, as far as the “Maccabee Children”, the exclusion of the books of Maccabees (as well as the rest of the “Apocrypha”) in Bible canon is not just a Protestant thing, but generally an American Protestant thing, and something that really started taking hold in the late 1800s. Even the original King James Version of the Bible contained these books. I learned this from living in Germany, where Christians are split pretty evenly between Protestants and Catholics, and where amongst people who actually read the Bible, it’s generally the Bible that many here consider the “Catholic version”. One night, I was watching the German version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” with Günther Jauch (who is such an amazing host the show is still running there), and I nearly fell out of my seat when one of the questions referenced the book of Judith. I also came across a story concerning Magdalena Scholl (mother of Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose) and the story of the mother and her seven sons from 2 Maccabees 7, and she was a former Lutheran deaconess.
Icon of the “Maccabee Children” with their mother and the priest Eleazar Furthermore, there’s a lot of Christmas imagery concerning lights and candles, from Jesus being the light of the world to Saint Lucia etc, etc.
I think the larger “objection” to the song might be the “call to action” and things like a call to justice. While some of it does sound like the language of the hippie movement, a lot of their language was “lifted” from Christian thought and principle. Speaking about justice, for example, is not a bad thing, provided that it is actually justice that is being called for. Christianity ought not to be considered a passive state, though we kind of hear that in statements like “I am a Christian”, but rather something that we are actively striving toward.
I also like that the song goes from the historical and to the personal before it talks about “going outward”. It is the order in which lasting change ultimately happens. I’m not even claiming that many of the saints lived perfect lives, but we live in an era where we have all these people who are more than ready to lecture the whole world about how everybody else ought to be living their lives without even having their own house marginally in order, and then everyone wonders why there is so much chaos all over the place.
In addition to the “Carol of the Bells” playlist, I’ve started a general playlist of Christmas songs that will include pieces mentioned here, for anyone interested.
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Wordle #545
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: At least I got an “R” here! 🙂
Line 2: Shifting the “R” over one, giving it something to blend with (“P”), using some vowels… Hey! Not bad!
Line 3: “PRO”-consonant-“E” – easy as pie, yes?
Line 4: “Prone”, right? What??
Line 5: Have I now exhausted the possibilities for what could fit in the 4th place? “Probe”
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
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Wordle #544
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: “Usual” didn’t do too badly, getting me the final “AL” right off.
Line 2: Wow. I wasn’t expecting this word to do so well, but with it, we already know four of the five letters.
Line 3: “Rival”
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
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Songs of the Season – Percy Faith and His Orchestra – Deck the Halls
I’m enjoying the mix of Christmas songs on our local radio station much more this year than years past. For one thing, they haven’t excised the religious carols until Christmas Eve, but the other is that probably at least half of what they are playing are older songs – Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra, Leroy Anderson, etc. Even with modern stuff, there’s a lot more Michael Buble and Josh Groban than Mariah Carey or Paul McCartney.
This is one that they’ve been playing, from 1954. I love the woodwind “interlude” with the oboes and bassoon (maybe even an English horn?) and I love how the melody goes into minor to make it interesting.
For anyone interested, the link to my local “Christmas station” is here: https://957bigfm.iheart.com/
In addition to the “Carol of the Bells” playlist, I’ve started a general playlist of Christmas songs that will include pieces mentioned here, for anyone interested.
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Wordle #543
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: “Spoke” didn’t do so much, but at least I can see that “S” is there somewhere.
Line 2: “S” is still not in the correct position, but I got a “U” that is.
Line 3: Here’s my line of thought on this… “S” doesn’t belong in spot 1 or spot 4. I figured that then, maybe it belonged is spot #2, but what kind of a word would have an “S” in spot 2… “Unusal” came to mind here, and it worked!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Songs of the Season – Diane Taraz – The Cherry Tree Carol
“The Cherry Tree Carol” is one of my favorite Christmas carols. I first heard the Peter, Paul, and Mary version, and that remains one of my favorite versions of the song.
It’s a very old song, and probably has roots that go deeper still. The Mary Hopkin version even retains the verse mentioning January 6th as Christmas. Whether this is a throwback to when Christmas and Theophany (Epiphany) were celebrated together, or an Appalachian variant is unknown, but there are all sorts of versions and verses that have been sung in the 600+ years the song has been sung in the West.
On my old blog, nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a post about what I like about this song. I’m not going to rehash the whole thing here, but I think it demonstrates a situation where someone who is walking in faith and has been very self-sacrificing is in a place where he or she has really been stretched thin and now is being asked to bear something else. It’s often something little, as it is here, but it’s the thing that the person feels is the tipping point – they can’t possibly bear one more thing. (Appropriately, I think this is where George Bailey was in this place in It’s a Wonderful Life – today’s ‘Tis the Season Cinema pick.) Yet this is also the place where miracles begin.
In addition to the “Carol of the Bells” playlist, I’ve started a general playlist of Christmas songs that will include pieces mentioned here, for anyone interested.
If you enjoy my posts, please consider:
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Breath of Hallelujah 