Ash Wednesday

OK. My world is now a world of dust. Scraping popcorn off the ceiling is not really a good idea. It looks great, but the rest of the house is a wreck.

There's certainly a parallel to Ash Wednesday in my dusty house, but I'm at a loss to develop it right now.

But I wanted to post something, so here's something unusual that happened at work today.

Every once in awhile the media calls. Usually it's the local diocesan paper. Only twice so far the media has called from Minneapolis. Today someone from one of the television stations called. He was following up on a 2007 pitch he received from my predecessor in the communications office. He wanted to know about "this nun who can play the piano with her hands behind her back." I got the information-- he didn't know her name, but there was supposedly existing video, and he was working on features and would like to find out if he could come interview and film her doing this feat. She played piano in nightclubs before she became a nun, he said.

I asked S. Olivia, who told me that it was indeed S. Ellen Cotone, and she still can play the piano standing facing away from the piano. She did it at parties all the time. However, she is in frail health and her memory is not what it used to be. Which is why everyone is surprised she can still do this trick. It may not be possible to do an interview. I put in a few calls and will find out tomorrow what the situation is. I'm also working on tracking down the existing video, and found the man who might have taken it-- he lives in St. Joseph and is the cousin of a friend of one of the monks I know. That kind of connection is helping me track people down.

May Lent be a time of renewal for us all.

Here's a YouTube video of someone playing the piano backwards.