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When I was in Austria in 1999, already the kind of cell phones were popular where the person just had a wire around the head--you see these more and more here--and at first I was wondering why all these people were walking the streets having conversations with themselves.
I wish I had brought back the T-shirt I saw that had a pciture of a cell phone in a red circle with a slash through it, captioned "Nur ein Toten Handy ist ein Guten Handy". (The only good cell phone is a dead cell phone)

Actually I'm at the point where I need to get a cheap phone to keep in the car for emergencies. I've had a couple medical situations on the road where if I had been alone in the car, it would have been very bad.

Peace, Bro. Mike

OK...you would remember "Shahtan", he was with the Buffalo Sabres for awhile...

The parish in which I live and sometimes work, St. Matthew in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, was formed in 1993 from a consolidation of 2 parishes 4 blocks apart. St. Kieran though named for an Irish abbot was essentially the territorial parish; St. Mary Assumption was ethnic Slovenian and both had their own schools and rectories at one time. The friary where I live, next door to St. Kieran/St. Matthew rectory, was the convent for the Sisters of Charity who staffed St. Kieran's school (torn down in 1995, now the church parking lot). Both schools are gone and St. Mary's old rectory is now the home and office of a local lawyer.

Our pastor has submitted a request to the diocese to close one of the 2 churches, most likely St. Mary's the smaller, but the way things are going
we may end up closing St. Matthew's altogether. The people and the funds just aren't there anymore. Our official parish census is just short of 700 families but you wouldn't know that by who comes to church on Sunday. We're probably like a lot of places having only about 30-35% actual attendance. If either church closes, or if both close, it will be painful for many but these are the realities we face.

I grew up in a large parish in the Cleveland suburbs (3000 families) and never knew the experience of "our family has been in this church for generations, my grandfather paid for that stained glass window" etc. Some of my mother's relatives had that with parishes in the old neighborhoods (my father's people were mostly various sorts of Protestants). In one way, it's hard for me to understand the passions attached to a building; in another, I envy that sense of rootedness.

Peace, Bro. Mike