The End of Summer

This past weekend, I spent more than the usual amount of time with my parents. Friday evening, they came over and we watched an entertaining little comedy, "Good Company." It started Dennis Quaid as a middle-aged ad executive who gets a boss have his age when his company is acquired by a Rupert Murdoch-like media mogul. Entertaining--not profound--yet it kept me laughing.

Saturday evening we attended the 5:00 PM mass at Saint Gregory. This was the parish's 20th anniversary, so there was due attention paid to the saint himself. The deacon read an excerpt from a homily of the St. Gregory, which extolled the virtues of not being owned by the things we own. A point still relevant today.

Sunday night we attended the final concert of the Summer Pops. They moved the location from where it used to be: it's now down by the embarcadero park between the Convention Center and the bay. They used to hold the concerts at Navy Pier, which is now home to the Midway Museum.

The nice thing about the new venue is that it's all on the grass. Un concert sur l'herbe. And the view of downtown was spectacular, as the sun set and the skyscrapers lit up. Seeing that view truly reminded me of the blessings of living in this city. Yes, it's obscenely expensive to dwell here--but the finest things in life are expensive (one way or another, not necessarily monetarily) and well worth the price. I felt a tug of remorse, enjoying myself on the balmy September evening, listening to Tchaikovsky's "Variations on a Rococo Theme" while the citizens of New Orleans fled their ruined city.

Then I snapped out of it!