St. Vincent de Paul regional seminary

On parties, galas in particular.

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In the world of parties, fundraising galas have a special place, and I love them.

When I volunteered at the Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill, I worked at the gala, but at St. Vincent de Paul I have had the privilege of being an invitee!

So what makes a fundraising gala different? Consider the purpose: to raise money for your institution. That is going to make your guest list interesting i.e.: rich. Second, you are going to have other events within the party: an auction, a silent auction, and of course, the basic building block of parties: food, drink, music, possibly dancing; in our case a wonderful mass with ten bishops!

What I love the most about these parties is the socializing, the connections, the conversations, the banter, the joking, the good, positive vibe.

One of my few friends in the suburban wasteland that is South Florida I met at our gala five years ago and we are super friends! Plus a few acquaintances, and people that you only meet that one time, but have a nice conversation with.

It is a privilege for me to attend these galas and I love going and meeting people and chatting with different folks. The fact that the event is run by our students, and I get to chit chat and joke with them makes it even more fun!

On the importance of first lines.

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You might not know this, but first lines are really important, first lines in writing specially. I recently had an opportunity to expound on this at a Language Dept. workshop at school.

We started by talking about how skillful writing hacks your brain so that you might not know your brain has been hacked. We showed a few examples of great first sentences -of course, there are many, many more. (Try to figure out the author and book, answers below – don’t cheat!). (We played a similar game on this blog on my post about Russian Literature, check it out here.)

  1. “Here is a small fact: You are going to die.”
  2. “En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.”
  3. “Happy families are all alike; unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way.”
  4. “Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.”
  5. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
  6. “Lees ese anuncio: una oferta de esa naturaleza no se hace todos los días.”
  7. “Call me Ishmael.”

We had a good time going over those sentences and what made them good first sentences. Then we looked at how to write good sentences in general and especially for academic writing. The hands-on part of the workshop involved the students writing a sentence each until we had a first paragraph!

We had a good time and I hope the students left understanding the importance of first sentences!

Answers:

  1. The Book Thief. Markus Zusak
  2. Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes
  3. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
  4. Cien años de soledad, Gabriel García Márquez
  5. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
  6. Aura, Carlos Fuentes
  7. Moby Dick. Herman Melville

Hispanic Heritage celebration at the Norton

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The Norton Museum in West Palm Beach is such an oasis of culture for me that I have already written about it five times in this blog. Well, here is the sixth:

Understanding the importance of Hispanic Heritage and Hispanic Heritage month, the Norton organized an open house “Nuestra Cultura” day in celebration. I took advantage of the opportunity and took some students from my classes. We had a blast!

We skipped the piñata making table, the Latin dance lessons, and the food stalls. We checked out the mercado set up in the garden, and what we really dug our teeth into the actual museum. Although the collection is small, it contains top notch art. We walked around discussing different pieces and paintings.

We had a wonderful time, and I enjoyed (finally) being able to share the Norton with my students!

My first Passover Seder

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Coming from fairly isolated early 70s Spain I was never exposed to Jewish culture until we moved to NY in the late 70s. I was fascinated, and have been since. Although many times there has been talk of me going to a Passover Seder it ended up never materializing. It finally happened when the Rabbi who teaches at my school hosted a Passover Seder.

If you think about it, Abraham is credited with spousing a monotheistic religion, making Judaism the root, the origins of Western culture (Abraham is in fact, key in all three modern monotheistic religions (Abramahic religions) as Islam recognizes him as the prophet Ibrahim). Judaism threads a rich tapestry in Western thought and civilization, it deserves our attention, appreciation, and in my case last Thursday, enjoyment!

Rabi Laurence Kotok is a bit of a rock star of rabis: Rabi of a temple for years, scholar, Air Force Chaplain, author, and professor, and his Spanish is quite good! He guided us through the Seder, explaining every step, singing The Ballad of the Four Sons and Chad Gadya, everything. It does take a while before you eat, but it is worth it, it is a very enriching experience which references the history of the Jews.

I can’t wait for my next Passover Seder!

A (brief) return to coaching

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St. Vincent de Paul is a graduate School with only 120 odd resident students, so we do not have a formal athletic program. The guys do sports, but on their own. Except for a once a semester soccer game against the St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami.

Last year, due to Covid we did not play. This year seeing a need, I volunteered to coach the SVdP Shepherds.

I have been coaching (on and off) for 17 years. At this point what I enjoy the most about coaching is building the team, working first on communication and trust, then on skills, technique, and strategies and all the other bits necessary to succeed as a team.

What a pleasure to return to the field, to work with the guys at skills that we do not teach in the classroom.

Unfortunately, we did not have a lot of time to practice, but we did the best we could.

We lost the game 3 – 4, but I am really proud of the men, we played a far superior game, we played as a team! But halfway through the first half while we were winning 2 – 0, we lost steam, we lost our shape, and the Miami guys took advantage of that. In the second half we came back and scored the third goal, but it was too late.

I was blessed to have a student volunteer as an assistant coach! Misho led the warmups, worked with our goalie, and helped to organize practices, helped me with strategy on game day, what a blessing!

All in all, it was a great experience, and I can’t wait to start preparing next year’s game!!

PS: The initiated will notice our colors are red and white stripes. This is our traditional kit, and in NO WAY my decision. I would have been fine just wearing plain all white 😉

Photo Creds: Carmela Grande, Chris Holsom.

Get out in nature and walk

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Boynton Beach is a bit of no man’s land, there is not much here. If you go South, you have the more interesting Delray Beach and Boca Raton, and if you go North, you are in the Palm Beaches. East is -as the name implies- the Ocean, and if you go West, you fortunately will hit the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge which, as I’ve mentioned before, is a massive swamp.

Unfortunately, there is no forest in which to do a “shinrin-yoku” forest bath, which is just as well, because forest in Florida means jungle. Fortunately, there is a man-made trail that goes all around the swamp, it is very boring, but at least you get to walk in, or rather, along nature!

Last Saturday I went on a nice two hour walk on the trail. Since it is quite monotonous, it is easy to get into a rhythm and have a walking meditation. In winter, it is too cold for most of the Florida wildlife, so I only saw birds, plenty of interesting birds.

As I was starting my walk, I bumped into a group of my students! The seminarians from Raleigh had also decided to go on a walk! So we took the photo here before they went exploring.

Back in civilization, as soon as you exit the park there is a wonderful farm shop called Bedners. They have great produce, most of it their own – they have a huge agricultural plot behind the shop- as well as great homemade soups! So I stopped to get some groceries and soup.

If you have access to nature, any nature, go for a walk, you are welcome.