Red October

Last Thursday my choir buddies and I participated in a medieval ritual. We have the opportunity to do this because of the fact that our Catholic university is burdened blessed with a law school on campus.

I'm talking about Red Mass, which is celebrated in Catholic churches all over the world around this time of year, but which I'd never heard of until I joined the St. Mary's choir. It's attended by all kinds of local bigwigs—judges, lawyers, councilmen, university administrators, etc. Our young mayor (I know he looks like he's about 12, but he's smart and charismatic and has been doing a good job in office so far) was even there.

So it's a nice gig, choir-publicity-wise. But what makes it really special for me is the chance to sing in such an acoustically fabulous place—San Fernando Cathedral. I told you something about this wonderful structure last summer when Joan and I paid a short visit. I thought I'd give you a few more glimpses of it here. Unfortunately I don't have audio for you of the music we performed, but I think we sounded pretty good!

On the right above is a look at one of the side aisles before folks started arriving for the mass. It ended up being almost a full house. On the left is another look out that doorway at the end of the side aisle. It looks out onto our new plaza (where there used to be a street). This is a great improvement to the area between the cathedral and the river. Here's a look through some of the decorative banners on the plaza at the cathedral itself. Pretty impressive, no?
Here's one more shot of the interior, on the right, showing the quite lovely baptismal font at the back of the church.

It's pretty cool to have such a historic structure still in the middle of things downtown. It's just across the street from the courthouse and a block away from city hall. The Alamo might be more famous, but for acoustics, you can't beat San Fernando!

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Thursday this week I'm off on a short road trip that will hopefully generate lots of photos and stories. So after a Wordless Wednesday post in a couple of days, don't look for too much blogging from me for a while. Hopefully what I can come up with after the trip will make it worth the wait!