Word arrived at mid-week that Herb, our erstwhile Saturday Kitchen stalwart during the height of my Twenties/Thirties Club Group, ex-officio, involvement, has passed away ( Read more... )

Pale Male was supposed to be my warden when I got finished at the proctologist's. But, the doctor's waiting room no longer permitted a lot of seating so I was practically ordered to sign myself out. Pale had already garnered a car to drive down from West 96th Street to pick me up. I couldn't decide what to do until I sat down and as it turned out, ( Read more... )

This Sabbath Day was destined for disaster from the beginning. Rainy and cold, I was in no mood to go back into "The City" for the second time in 24 hours. Saturday involved brunch with Pale Male and being brought up to speed on the Saturday Kitchen situation. It's been in the work for months, but apparently there has been an intervention by M's ( Read more... )

I realized a week ago during an episode of "Bull", a new courtroom drama appearing on CBS, that my old Saturday Kitchen co-worker, Sam Gilroy, was alive and well and getting acting gigs. He had one foot in the door already as the son of well-known screenwriter, Tony Gilroy. When I knew him, he was still on the waiting list for Wesleyan and ( Read more... )

I've always said that to understand Sunday morning in America, you have to understand what went on Saturday night. Back when I was an honorary member of the Twenties/Thirties Group that often meant recovering from a night spent drinking. We were dutifully contrite the morning after and tried our best not to show the signs of wear and tear as we ( Read more... )

I have a soft spot in my heart for Saturday Kitchen. It was where I first got to know some of my oldest friends in St. Michael's, including Marilyn, Pale Male, Joinus, and the late Frances Harven. It was where VRaptor, Miss Honey and I carried on the sweetest of platonic relationships (I shudder at how close VRaptor and I came to becoming actual ( Read more... )

This was an Altar Guild weekend so there was every bit as much shuttling back and forth to St. Michael's as the weekend before, but, without the stress of a moonshot hanging over it. The first thing I did when I arrived before Kitchen was ask Andrea, who just happened to be putting in some extra hours that morning, to open the mail room. There, sat ( Read more... )

Got to Saturday Kitchen during prep time and bumped into Huggy Bear. He was coming from Morning Prayer. Apparently, he has a new apartment that puts him a lot closer to St. Michael's and he's been on the rotation list for leading the prayers since the summer began ( Read more... )

Dive Bar is so far the only place I can socialize with people outside of church with a minimum of fuss and bother. It is an old fashioned bar and grill that serves a pretty large variety of beers, ciders and greasy, delectable, food. I am told that it has a tasty vegetarian menu, but, no one I know - or, know well - has ever tried it. It has a ( Read more... )

It's funny. Since Mom died, weekends are now the busiest part of my week, the complete reverse of the way most people live their lives. The result is that a lot of what happens Saturday and Sunday is a complete blur of socio-economic classes, ages, and sexual identities as I flit from one St. Michael's ministry to another. Of the five people who ( Read more... )