Leeds Parish Church

On Sunday, the day before I left, I attended a sung Eucharist at
Leeds Parish Church, the big Anglican church in the city, with Erika and Susan. The night of our gathering the two of them stayed at Haley's Hotel where I stayed. May I say what a pleasure it was to meet Susan and Erika in real life? I wish we'd had more time to visit, but I'm pleased we had what time we had.

I wanted to link directly to the history page of Leeds Parish Church, but the hosts want you to visit the home page first. Click on "Back to History" on the home page, and that will take you there.

We had to park a good distance away, after a rather long ride round and round the road that circles the City Centre in Leeds. From the circle, you can see the place where you want to go, but the difficulty is in finding the right exit from the circle to actually get to where you want to go.

After we parked the car, as we approached the church on foot, we heard change ringing. What a delightful surprise! The first and only other time that I heard change ringing was at St. Martin in the Fields in London, quite by accident. I was so excited, and I knew what it was that I was hearing, because I had read THE BOOK on the subject, The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers.

Listen to one of the peals from Leeds Parish Church. Isn't it lovely? It sounds like angel music to me. I suppose that some of you folks in England take the pleasure of change ringing for granted, but try to imagine my excitement in hearing it for only the second time in my long life.



Erika, Susan, and I were seated by the very nice lady usher in a place of honor directly across from the pulpit, pictured above. We were somewhat awed and a bit concerned that someone would ask us to move to a lower place, but that never happened. The service was lovely with the men's and boys' choirs doing the honors.

Below is a picture of Erika and Susan after the service, standing in front of the very pew where we were seated.


After church, they headed south toward home near Bristol, and I went back to the hotel for a farewell lunch with the Doorman-Priest family.

The Red Head

Here's another for you. It's just as bad or as good as the Easter tale.

A man is dining in a fancy restaurant and there is a gorgeous redhead sitting at the next table. He has been checking her out since he sat down, but lacks the nerve to talk with her.

Suddenly she sneezes, and her glass eye comes flying out of its socket toward the man.. He reflexively reaches out, grabs it out of the air, and hands it back.

'Oh my, I am so sorry,' the woman says as she pops her eye back in place.

'Let me buy your dinner to make it up to you,' she says.

They enjoy a wonderful dinner together, and afterwards they go to the theatre. They talk, they laugh, she shares her deepest dreams and he shares his. After paying for everything, she asks him if he would like to come to her place for a nightcap. They had a wonderful, wonderful time.

The next morning, she cooks a gourmet meal with all the trimmings and invites the guy over. The guy is amazed. Everything had been SO incredible!

'You know,' he said, 'You are the perfect woman. Are you this nice to every guy you meet?'

'No,' she replies...

(Wait for it...)

(It's coming...)

(The suspense is killing you, isn't it?)

She says:





'You just happened to catch my eye.'


Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

Well, it made me laugh out loud, and it's my blog.

Please Pray For Barbara

From Susan S:

My youngest sister, Barbara, 52 years old, is now fighting her 3rd round of Breast Cancer. She had it first in 1992, then a more virilent strain showed up 2 years ago. Now a different but still breast cancer has appeared in the skin on her chest. She will get 25 radiation treatments, 2 different oral Chemos, plus surgery to remove what they can. It is moving fast. She sent this letter today.

"I saw the radiologist today. He said that I was between a rock and a hard place. He, the surgeon, and the oncologist will discuss and let me know on Friday if they will still want to do surgery on Monday. He might want to start radiation now because there is no way the surgeon can get it all - even the area visible to the naked eye. It has spread on the skin in a noticeable way in the past 2 weeks.

The radiation treatment will have a 20% change of extraordinarily bad consequences including ribs that will just break due to the bone marrow being killed, and/or a chest wound that will not heal - period. he said less radiation than that won't do much good, and of course even with radiation it might just slow it down for awhile.

He did say that without radiation, the cancer will do what the radiation might do. It will just eat my chest up. He said there is no medicine, food, or anything that I can do now to make it go better. He said there is no test that can be done to determine if my chest can withstand the treatment. (i had 37 treatments in 92-93). he said the consequences probably wouldn't start until 6 to 12 months after radiation was done. he said they would probably do 25 treatments (mon - fri for 5 weeks.) will take the chemo pills at the same time. Tykerb & Xeloda - look them up. Very festive.

I'm going to be as positive about this until I start screaming - will holler out when that begins.

I've been eating chocolate all day. It doesn't hurt.

Please pray for my baby sister.

Susan S.

And the latest update:

My sister Barbara had surgery yesterday to remove what they could of the cancer. There was more than they thought because it is spreading faster than was at first suspected. I told her we are praying for her. Please keep her in your prayers.

Ugly Doesn't Change....

From Bob Marshall in the Times-Picayune:

Ugly doesn't change, even when you see it coming. Neither does stupid.

I'm talking about the decision by LSU to fire Ivor van Heerden, the head of the LSU Hurricane Center who earned world-wide renown for his work before and after Hurricane Katrina. This move had been rumored and threatened almost since van Heerden began his post-storm work, but it was no less repulsive for its inevitability.

As someone who covered that story, I always thought the state should be rewarding van Heerden, not chasing him away, because metro area residents -- indeed, citizens of any U.S. community currently relying on federal levees to keep them safe -- owe Van Heerden a huge debt.

Bob, that makes, at least two of us, but I expect there are many more who feel the same way.

Please read the entire editorial. It's difficult to pick and choose more quotes. Marshall lays out, step by step, the debt the people of New Orleans and south Louisiana owe to Ivor. Don't forget that the original story from the press was that Katrina flooded New Orleans. It was only when Ivor and his team began investigating that the truth began to emerge.

What they found was something else: Signs of catastrophic engineering failures.

In other words, the floodwalls and levees failed not because they were too small, but because they had been either poorly designed, poorly built -- or both.

But for Ivor and Team Louisiana, would we even know this?

Happy 50th, Barbie!

Thanks to Ann and Doug.

Don't Let The Door Hit You On the Way Out!

Shall I tell you about my Easter Day after church? I shall. My three children and my six grandchildren came over for Sunday lunch. Many years ago, I'd plan a sit-down meal, not formal, but all gathered around two tables at the same time. I should say that my plan was to have that happen, but it never did. Someone or ones always drifted in late. On each holiday, we faced the question of whether to wait for the missing, or to go ahead and start eating without them. Finally, one of my children told me that my plan wasn't working, which was quite true.

The new plan is that we prepare a meal and people drift in whenever, sort of like an open house. The cousins like to be together, so I ask my children to try to be there at least part of the time AT the same time. Plus, we have an Easter egg hunt. This seems to work, and I'm a lot more relaxed than on the former, more structured occasions.

My daughter arrived first with her three boys. Grandpère had already started his meal. The food is ready. Why wait? I ate with the first shift. The next shift came, my son, his two children and his girl friend. I don't think his children ate a meal. They may have eaten while they were with their mom earlier. They plunged right in to the Easter candy. Then came the third shift, my son, his wife, and their son. They had already eaten, but my son ate again.

The children behaved decently for a good while, but then the sugar highs kicked in, and the scene began to get wild. We tried to get them to keep their wildness outside, but they continued to drift back in. We had a few clashes, some hysterical crying and consoling to be done, but no major injuries.

Diana, our dog, escaped from the yard only twice, and on one of the occasions, she took a swim in our neighbor's pool, returning home dripping wet. She thrives on all the excitement. I could see that Grandpère was becoming agitated, but I had my wine, so I was chillin'. He should drink on these occasions.

He tried to settle them down with a video - Wait! - "Fawlty Towers". Needless to say, that did not work, and soon all drifted away and back into mischief. When the wildness peaked, their parents decided that it was time to go, and I couldn't disagree.

God bless them all. I love to have them come, but it's a bit of a relief when they go, too.

Thought For The Day - Not Mine

God forgiving us, and our forgiving others, are parts of the same act. There is not forgiveness of one without forgiveness of the other.

(James Alison in Knowing Jesus)

An Easter Tale

A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jumping across the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately it's too late.

The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, not only is the rabbit dead, but... it's also the Easter Bunny.

The driver feels so awful that he begins to cry. A beautiful blonde woman driving down the highway sees him crying on the side of the road and pulls over. She steps out of her car and asks him what's wrong.

"I feel terrible!" he explains. "I accidentally hit the Easter Bunny with my car and KILLED HIM."

The blonde says, "Don't worry."

She runs back to her car and pulls out a spray can. Then she walks over to the limp, dead Easter Bunny, bends down, and sprays the contents onto it.

The Easter Bunny jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them, and starts to hop down the road. Ten feet away he stops, turns around and waves again. He hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet, turns and waves, and repeats this again and again, until he has hopped out of sight.

The man is astonished. He runs over to the woman and asks, "What's in that can? What did you spray on the Easter Bunny?"

The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label.

It says...

(Are you ready for this?)

(Are you sure?)

(You know you're going to be sorry.)

(Last chance.)

(OK, here it is.)

It says, "Hair Spray: Restores life to dead hair, and adds permanent wave."

Don't credit me. Credit Doug. I think this one is quite funny, and I'd like to claim it as my own discovery, but that wouldn't be right.

MadPriest's Longest Day

On the day that MadPriest and I were to meet in Newcastle, I left Leeds on the 9:05 AM train. MadPriest told me that I had to be on that train. We'd had the near miss in our previous plan to meet at Thornaby, and neither of us wanted a repetition of that.

Before the alarm went off at 6:00 AM, I awoke at 4:00 AM, anxious about the train, I suppose, and there was no falling back to sleep. I had lots of time to get dressed and drink my tea in my room and eat my cereal bars and an apple in good time to get to the train station by 8:00 AM, which I thought would be enough time to buy my ticket and find the right platform. It was. Once I boarded the train, I dutifully called MP to tell him that I had caught the right train at the right time, and that I was on my way to Newcastle.

I'm not sure I remember the exact sequence of events after I arrived in Newcastle, but I believe we walked from the station to the River Tyne, along the river (a lovely walk!) to the pedestrian bridge to the Sage Music Centre. The picture at the head of the post shows the river, the Tyne Bridge, a graceful structure, and the arched roof of the Sage beyond the bridge.

We bummed around in the city center, saw one of the oldest buildings in the city, a timbered structure, and many handsome buildings in the classical style, which were built in the 19th century. Newcastle is a compact city, and I liked that. MadPriest is an excellent guide. You'd have thought he was a professional.

If memory serves, The Cathedral of St. Nicholas was the next stop. The cathedral calls for a post of its own. There's so much to see there that this would be the post without end if I described and linked to the highlights there. It's well worth a visit. All this before lunch.

We stopped for a cuppa, tea for me, coffee for MadPriest, and to rest the feet, and then we were off to meet Mrs MadPriest for lunch at the university.

After lunch, it was on the bus to MadPriest's shrine house, into the car, and on to Hexham Abbey, on the site of an ancient church built by St. Wilfrid (I know. Lotsa links, but it can't be helped.) in the 7th century, which is also the present Parish Church of St. Andrew. What a magnificent structure, part quite old, part not so old, but all-around wonderful.


At first, one of the guides took us around. She was pleasant enough except when it came time for us to go down into the crypt.

For visitors who come to Hexham Abbey in search of the past the greatest thrill of all is the Anglo-Saxon crypt. A steep stone stair descending from the nave takes you back thirteen hundred years, into rooms and passageways left intact from St Wilfrid’s original church. The only comparable crypt is beneath Wilfrid’s other great church at Ripon. Everything that he built above ground at Hexham has gone, except for carved fragments set in the walls of the nave. Only his crypt is essentially as it was first built.

She blocked the gate to the stairs down to the crypt until she recited her entire long-winded spiel. What an inspiration to watch MadPriest fight a valiant inner battle for restraint, as the lady droned on and on. In the end, he won the battle and did not shove the old lady out of the way. She did not even mention some of the coolest things we would see down in the crypt. Once again, MadPriest was an excellent guide, much better than the real guides.

Inside Hexham Abbey Crypt. Note the various stones in the wall... all reused from the Roman settlement at Corbridge, some 3 miles away.

Photo and quote from Sokabs at Flickr.

The decorative stones set in the midst of rough stones took my breath away. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it is not.

Below is the stone stairway in the abbey.

Thirty-five worn stone steps rise from the south transept of Hexham Abbey, leading to a broad gallery behind a stone parapet, with three doorways opening from it. People have used this Night Stair through eight centuries. It was probably built early in the 13th century by masons working for the team of canons who then lived and prayed in the Priory.

I won't say an unkind word about the other guide lady in the abbey, because when nature called rather insistently, she permitted me to use the church choir's private loo, which is through one of the doors at the top of the the worn, uneven stairs. She volunteered that the choir, along with the crucifer, processed down the stairs at the beginning of services. The stairs are quite a challenge without a cross in hand. Just sayin'.

I'm giving just a few of the highlights of the riches to be found in a visit to Hexham Abbey. What can I say? Read more about it, or go visit yourself.

The post is running long, so I will hurry through the visit to St. Oswald's Church, which I was quite pleased to see, although, to get there, I had to walk across a field in a gale wind which included a light rain on the way back to the car. My knees are bad, but I can still walk.


The Battle of Heavenfield, between Oswald, King of Northumbria, and his soldiers, against the Celtic king Cadwallon and his men in the 7th century was fought on the site of the church. Oswald prayed to God to win the battle, and he did, although he fought, it is believed, against superior forces. God was on his side.

The earliest church was built in 1140, with reconstructions over the years. At the time of the visit to the church, I couldn't keep the history straight, and I probably caused MadPriest a good bit of frustration, but after doing some homework, I believe that I have a better grasp of the sequence of events.

After our windy and wet walk across the field to the car, we returned to MadPriest's shrine house. Mrs MadPriest was home, and I had a glass of wine and a delicious Yorkshire cheddar and good brown bread sandwich, fixed by the hands of MadPriest. It was just what I wanted. I left a only small corner of the bread on the plate. I should have wrapped it and taken it home with me and bought a small reliquary for the bits of bread. MadPriest will be canonized one day, don't you think? Perhaps even by Rome if he decides to swim the Tiber like his mentor John Henry Newman. If he deserves sainthood for nothing else, he should have it for his kindness and graciousness in his long day with me. He and Mrs MadPriest are lovely people, and it was a great pleasure to meet them.

Before I left, I managed to break their towel bar, (or re-break it, for Mrs MadPriest told me that it had already been mended) and nearly forget my HANDBAG at their house, which would have meant that I'd have missed my train, which I caught with only minutes to spare, and stretched out the day even longer and caused further complications in the lives of MadPriest and his missus.

Thanks again for a lovely day, you old curmudgeon. I became a bit soppy there for a spell, and I know how you hate that.

Pastor Rick Warren - Exhausted!

From Attaturk at Eschaton:

And Rick Warren...the day his "Savior" allegedly rose from the dead, finds him too tired to rise out of bed?

I think Attaturk is one of them atheists, but ya gotta say this is funny.

UPDATE: See The Huffington Post for a possible alternative explanation.