Beautiful Trinity Episcopal Cathedral near Downtown Cleveland. Frida Berrigan's Talk

Last evening Brian Rice and I traveled downtown to hear Frida Berrigan speak. The venue was a comfortable room at Trinity Cathedral, near E. 20th and Euclid Avenue (across from Cleveland State University). Before the talk Brian and I visited the magnificent cathedral and I took a few photos (below). This looks like a 13th Century European Gothic Cathedral, complete with flying buttresses, rosetta windows, and a magnificent interior space. Trinity is Cleveland's oldest church, founded nearly 200 years ago.

So Trinity is a magnificent building, but what is even better is its welcoming nature. The Dean of Trinity, The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, welcomed us to the talk saying, "You are all welcome at Trinity--no exceptions."

Frida Berrigan gave a wonderful talk and reading from her new book, It Runs in the Family. She is a warm and engaging young woman. Frida was there with her mother, Elizabeth McAlister, and her two young children (they were in the nursery, so I didn't meet them). I briefly met her afterwards and told her her uncle, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, wrote the introduction to the book Judith Bechtel Blackburn and I wrote, Building the Beloved Community: Maurice McCrackin's Life for Peace and Civil Rights (originally published by Temple University in 1991--new edition available on Amazon).

Frida Berrigan (left) and the Very Rev. Tracey Lind

Magnificent pipe organ

Incredible carved limestone

Grampa Connie Coughlin and Telling-Belle Vernon Baseball Team

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Telling-Belle Vernon Baseball Team, around 1914 or 1915

My Grampa, Connie Coughlin, played shortstop for a great Cleveland semi-pro team around 1914-15, the Telling-Belle Vernon Strollers. The Belle Vernon Dairy Farms. Co was a Cleveland dairy, and they merged with the Telling Co., makers of ice cream, on the 29th of January 1915. They played a baseball game in September of 1914 or 15 at Brookside Park, a natural amphitheatre near the Cleveland Zoo-- before an audience of over 100,000 fans. There are photos of this crowd available, the largest gathering to ever witness a baseball game (and an amateur game at that!).

The photo above is not clear enough for me to identify my grandfather. I think he is in the upper right corner.

The Great City of Cleveland

You laugh?

Last evening we went to supper in Cleveland's Little Italy neighborhood, right where Mayfield Road meets Murray Hill, at Presti's. They sell some simple Italian foods, as well as some not-so-simple (spectacular, really) Italian pastries. What a wonderful place to sit, chat, and eat with your family and friends. Presti's is as good as any place, anywhere!

Then we drove a half mile or less north to Severance Hall, and heard the world-famous Cleveland Orchestra, led by Franz Welser-Moest, as they played a ballet by Stravinsky (Agon); a violin concerto by Tchaikovsky; and Bolero by Ravel.

I especially liked the Tchaikovsky piece (Violin Concerto in D Minor), featuring the spectacular violin playing of Nikolaj Znaider. And the wonderful Bolero. When Bolero ended, I spontaneously let out a war-whoop, embarrassing myself a bit.

Cleveland might have its problems, but it has Little Italy, Presti's, and the Cleveland Orchestra!

A Great Poem by Clevelander Mary Oliver

When Death Comes

by Mary Oliver

From "New and Selected Poems" by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St, Boston, MA 02108-2892, ISBN 0 870 6819 5).

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. #

Mary Oliver is from Maple Heights, a southwest suburb of Cleveland. And we are very proud of her, one of America's greatest poets. What can be added to this poem? She says it all. I love her lines "and each body a lion of courage and something / precious to the earth." We humans are the only creations of God called on to be courageous--and in so many cases we are!

Amazing Lake Erie Webcam

I accidentally ran across a website hosted by a neighbor of my cousin Bill Brock. Bill lives right on Lake Erie in the North Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland, a quarter mile from St. Jerome's Church. This is my Mom's old neighborhood! The lake has frozen up in the past few days, and the webcam clearly shows the wild wintry lake:
http://billhogsett.com/webcam.html

"Grada" & "Pitch the Peat"--Great Irish Bands

Last night Linda and I went to the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland and heard 2 terrific Irish bands. The first band is from Greater Cleveland (though 3 of the members were originally from Ireland). They are called "Pitch the Peat." http://www.pitchthepeat.com/

They are probably the best traditional Irish band in the Cleveland area. Their fiddler, Nikki Custy, is a tremendous musician and a fine composer of songs and tunes. The flute/whistle player (Pat Custy) is brilliant and I talked to him for a while. He said, "Wait till you hear the next band--'Grada.' Their whistle/flute player (Alan Doherty) is way better than me." And he was right. "Grada" was fabulous, the most ecstatic, fun Irish music I've ever heard. Their virtuoso fiddler, Mattie Mancuso, an Italian-Irish-American from Brooklyn, New York, pulled out a trumpet during one of the tunes and played fabulous jazz trumpet, in a weird fusion of Irish trad and jazz. Alan Doherty and bodhran player, Nicola Joyce, are wonderful vocalists; and Joyce's bodhran playing is simply fantastic. We had a great time at this concert.

Something that struck me as a bit odd: two members of this band are from New Zealand! Grada represents a fusion of cultures and music genres. Here's the band's web site: http://www.gradamusic.com/

Both bands have deep connections to the great city of Galway. I'd love to live in Galway for a while, close to the university, the vibrant town, the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht, and the western sea.