Just in case you missed this the first time!

John Beale, Post-Gazette photos
Dick Marshall and his dog, Woof, sit in the chapel in Marshall has built inside his home in Crafton.
Click photo for larger image.
As the plaster saints, stained glass and carved oak disappeared from Catholic churches, Dick Marshall watched sorrowfully.
"These things brought you closer to God. They're part of our culture, our history," said Marshall, 60. "You used to walk into church and something special happened. It rarely happens anymore."
Marshall now gets that feeling in his own home in Crafton, in the chapel he added three years ago.
The 12-by-29-foot- vaulted space contains eight large statues, seven stained-glass windows, four small pews and nearly two dozen smaller statues, candelabras, fixtures and other items, including holy water receptacles, Communion bells and two wrought-iron votive candle racks.
Adding to the contemplative mood is a stereo playing traditional hymns and Gregorian chants. Overlooking it all is a tiny loft that holds a 1950s Hammond organ. Marshall has been a part-time church organist since he was a teenager and has sung in choirs since age 10. He currently sings in the men's choir at Epiphany Church, Uptown.
"All of this was soothing for me as a kid," he said, looking around the chapel. "I have always loved it and collected it."
One of his first purchases was the organ he had played while growing up in Green Tree. St. Margaret of Scotland Church sold the organ, which is now in Marshall's library, after building a new church in the 1950s.
Few shared his interest in religious items.
"People think it's beautiful, but they don't want it in their homes," he said. "It's been a rescue mission, saving this stuff from people's basements, antique shops, auctions."
The Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese used to auction or sell stained-glass windows and other items when churches closed. Marshall bought one ornate votive candle rack from a Braddock church at an auction about 20 years ago. But for the past 15 years, the diocese has tried to make sure that religious images are sold or donated to other Catholic churches. Still, some items end up on the market anyway.

Marshall noted that many windows and statues bear the names of parishioners who paid for them. He wondered why the diocese doesn't try to give them to the patrons' families.
"These are sacred things that people loved. I'm sure they would love to have them."
People who know of Marshall's chapel sometimes give him items. A large hand-carved crucifix has on its back the name and photo of the nun it once belonged to, from the Sisters of Divine Providence in Ross. Marshall was a driver for the nuns as a teenager.
"They said she had died and had no family. 'Can you give it a home?' " he recalled.
The nuns also have given him two statues, both of which stand in his large, meandering garden. It's filled with a variety of lilies -- his favorite -- and dozens of plants that he brings back by the carload from spring vacations in Florida. Because many are not winter-hardy here, he digs them up in the fall and stores them in his basement.
Marshall has also restored his 1898 brick house in Victorian style. Many of the religious pieces were displayed in the house until he built the chapel three years ago.
"It's really sacred space. Next to the garden, it's my favorite place to be," he said, adding that he comes regularly to meditate. Three Masses have been held there.
"I needed this on 9/11. The church was locked."
Marshall said he decided to build the chapel when he acquired a large altarpiece from a Lutheran church that was too big for any other room. On a friend's recommendation, he hired Rich Riberich of Riberich & Sons in Forest Hills. They had no blueprints, only a small mock-up Marshall had made from cardboard and Scotch tape.
"I had the whole thing in my head my whole life," he said.
His cousin, Jack Repine of Rosslyn Farms, laid the marble tile that was bought by friends as a birthday present for Marshall. His boxer, Woof, likes the tiles' cool surface in the summer and the radiant heat beneath it in winter.
Marshall said only one person has ever reacted negatively to his home chapel: a Christmas party guest who was offended that people were drinking wine while viewing it. But generally, both Catholics and non-Catholics seem to appreciate it, he said.
"People gasp when they walk in the door. One non-Catholic friend said: 'I can't believe your courage, to do something that most people would never do or understand.'
"When some people hear about it, they have this idea that I play priest, that I'm making fun. It's not that at all."
Older Catholics seem to understand best, he said.
"It reminds them of something that in many ways is lost."


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sectionfront/life/religious-items-find-new-home-in-crafton-mans-chapel-590550/#ixzz20QAU6eBg

WHAT I LEARNED FROM GIRL SCOUT COOKIES

"Make new friends but keep the old...one is silver the other is gold". I read that on a box of girl scout cookies about a hundred years ago. (My cousin and I were both cub scouts by the way...but we only stayed long enough to make our birdhouses...we were afraid there were a few too many mentions of going to "camp"...a word that had always terrified both of us...too much emphasis on sports...and competition ...and scary things like dirty old sleeping bags and mean men yelling out orders...plus we were busy planning to put on a production of Snow White in my garage as soon as we could schedule auditions...we were much too busy that year to be bothered with oaths and good deeds. We were already nice little boys...strange little nice boys.)

At four AM this morning I drove down to the Amtrak station to pick up two good friends visiting from Japan. ( At least I vaguely remember driving down there..I was so half asleep that I worried for a few minutes that I'd picked up the wrong people and brought them home. Just kidding. Being the only car on the road seemed really weird...like I was in one of those end of the world movies like "The Road".

I met Lee the first day of my first teaching job in LA in 1970. We've been friends ever since, and her husband Peter replaced me in my teaching position when I left California in a VW bug after my first boyfriend split. Even Tim and I remained friends for the rest of his life. I'm always fascinated by what it is that connects us to another person so quickly sometimes, and for me, usually means that we'll be friends forever. I think it has something to do with authenticity. Sometimes we meet people and just like them immediately....without knowing much about them at all. For me, I think I sense a "realness"...and a transparency...and an honesty about their presentation. Right off the bat, what you see is what you get, like Lee and Peter. As I've gotten older I've also learned that there are lots of people who can really connect...but are unable to sustain the connection. That's a biggie.

Lee and Peter don't live quite close enough for us to hang out together very easily...but Peter takes gorgeous photographs which he sends out periodically, and Lee writes to me faithfully about every ten years. We've always sustained our connection with Christmas cards...or birthday greetings, and my promise to visit them someday. My life is blessed with lots of authentic people...some really UNUSUAL ...but undeniably authentic people. Woof of course helps keep me connected by sleeping with many of my overnight visitors...usually curled up in a single bed with them. My friend Lou from Naples is the only one who honestly likes that. ( So much for authenticity.) Lee has already put her foot down about waking up to dog breath, but I think Peter is hoping for his chance tonight.

So I do make new friends as we all do...and those magical first moments keep happening, as I work pretty hard at sustaining those relationships. My partner has tons of friends as well, many from childhood, and college...but worries that I'm a little too eager to keep expanding our Christmas card list. When he's waiting in the car for me at the Jubilee Food Market near our cottage. he's often worried that I've been chatting too long with the new lady in the Deli...asking me on the way home if I've invited her for dinner after I tell him how much I liked her. Our standing joke is about me inviting some strange little handyman who cut some bushes down for us to our annual Christmas party. I secretly put his name in my address book so he can be a surprise guest at our wedding someday...maybe  as my best man. 

A COUPLE OF SERIOUS QUESTIONS

I have a couple of questions that I would like to hear the presumptive republican candidate for president answer. What would Mitt Romney do about the war in Afghanistan? Would he close the Guantanamo detention camp? Does he still consider transporting a dog on the roof of a car to be an acceptable way to travel? Is he serious about "getting rid" of Planned parenthood? Would he try to reinstate the " Don't Ask Don't Tell" military policy? Would he do anything to deny equal marriage laws in the country? Did he think it was the right thing to do for the US to attack Iraq? Was that preemptive war worth all the American blood and treasure? What would he do about Syria...and Yemen...and Iran? Does he believe that a twelve year old girl who is raped by an escaped psychotic criminal should not be allowed to terminate a pregnancy? What would he do to reform the health care system if he replaced "Obama Care" ?

Now perhaps he has already answered some of these questions, but I'm not certain about what his responses were. I think a lot of independent voters may be unsure of his stances as well. Jobs and the economy and tax cuts are all important....but so are these issues, at least for a guy like me.

A DAY OF DAYS

It finally cooled off enough for Woof to take me for a walk last night. I spent the last few days keeping her cool and keeping my mother comfortable as well. (wrong order?)

Just venturing out to water seemed like a dangerous thing to do as we had a heat index over one hundred, and as Aunt Katie would say..."it really takes the starch out of you". The sweet peas like bright sun but cool air...so the pictures I sent out might represent their last hurrah.

I've taken to planting geraniums (boring as that sounds) anywhere that's hard to keep watered. I guess that's why people plant them in the cemeteries all the time. Seems like Vinca will also take heat and dryness pretty well. All my gardening friends have been bemoaning the fact that we've had so little rain. There's such a relatively small window to get things planted...that I've taken to canceling plans and rescheduling work when we have a good "planting day".

Some of my zinnias have been driven up to the cottage with a promise of growing and blooming by the lake shore only to be taken back home a few times because it was too hot to plant them. They seem to like the ride.

The big gardenia out by the back porch is happy as a lark..about five big blooms right now and the shiniest leaves I've ever seen. Woof thinks it must love the heat. I fertilize it with MIRACID about every two weeks and that seems to be the "trick". Some of the hydrangeas are bluer than blue this year...once again it's the MIRACID that makes them blue. We saw some last night that were a deep deep purple. Same trick...just more of it.

The garden paths are becoming jungle- like right about now. Crepe Myrtles are beginning to show their pinks and reds, and the lilies are still perfuming the whole yard. It's one of those glorious mornings when I'll soon get a call from my cousin who will proclaim this a " DAY OF DAYS ". Woof is ready to finally tackle some weeds...and my partner returned from the lake yesterday with about two billion blueberries that we need to start freezing. It won't be all that long until I take some out of the freezer in January and think back to days like today and wonder where the time went. Somehow shopping with my buddy Bill yesterday and seeing Christmas on display made me wonder if the months might fly by a little less quickly if people would slow it down a bit. Like the guy in the movie said " No wonder they call it the Human RACE ".

MONKEYS

I think my monkey period began when I was about ten years old. Waldameer park was a short walk up a dusty path from my grandmother's cottage in Erie. It's a nice little amusement park that has survived the times, and in spite of a new water park addition, and a harrowing new roller coaster called the " Ravine Flyer ", a lot of the park hasn't changed since I was a kid.

They still have some of the kiddie land rides that I squeezed into until I was about 18, but the monkeys are long gone.

The monkeys lived in a cement shelter surrounded by a moat, which was surrounded by a smooth cement wall that was just the right height for a kid to rest his chin on. My cousin and I went to the park every morning...long before the rides opened....just to watch the monkeys. I think there were about 25 of them, and they entertained us for hours and hours. The big mean ones were the most captivating...as they had bad tempers, especially when we'd toss some food to them that they had to go into the water to retrieve. They'd make a real mean monkey face at us and yell something that was untranslatable. They spent a lot of time grooming each other...picking something or other off their backs and then eating it. My cousin would yell "oooh" and they'd all turn and glare at him and look like they were going to swim over and climb the wall and eat him.

Every once in awhile one would escape...like the one that chased our cousin Janet while Aunt Katie chased him...(so goes the tale that none of the relatives could actually swear they'd witnessed.) Usually the renegade monkey would be caught up in a tree, and I'd tell my cousin that he was the reason for all the fuss...a few of those monkeys had it in for him.

Other than the time a giant tree caught fire when the park had fireworks, the most fun we ever had at the park involved the monkeys. We did ride the Old Mill although we were both afraid that the giant belt that made the boats go up the hill was eventually going to snap and send us hurling over the trees into the monkey pit where we'd not be treated very well.

Since I was always the instigator (crowned as such by my wise godmother)...I brought all things monkey-like into our daily lives at the lake. A lot of the really young kids thought I was part monkey myself...as I could ( AND still can ) make really good monkey noises. My cousin Carole was about two at the time and we communicated mostly like monkeys. She  now has grown children, but a place in her heart for monkeys...maybe because I bought her all sorts of stuffed monkeys instead of teddy bears, and because she once took a real one for a walk on a leash when her unusual neighbors were away. She loves dogs and has always had a couple of them, but I know what she'd REALLY like to have.

The monkeys are long gone...someone said they all went to the space program...but I doubt that. I still go to the park...still obviously think about the monkeys, and spend lots of time looking for old post cards from Erie...just to prove that a kid could have a wonderfully memorable time at an amusement park without ever getting on a ride.

DISTURBING THE PEACE

When I was a kid people had to go somewhere to see the fireworks...like to a local park, or as we got older, to downtown Pittsburgh....and that was once a year...and the fireworks were really special. Now it seems like they're an all year display, and they're all over the place. Woof hates fireworks, as do a whole lot of other dogs. Watching her pant and shake while the local community celebrates for 30 minutes or so is one thing, but when the neighbors are shooting them off almost every night in the summer, it gets real old real fast.

Sipping an ice cold Limoncello on the deck while watching the full moon rise above the lake just looses some of the magic when the cherry bombs start to rattle the cottage and the sky starts to look like Bagdad during Bush's "Shock and Awe" attack. Woof runs for cover, my mother starts looking for the local police phone number, and another neighbor storms out in his pajamas ready to strangle someone because he has to get up for work at six...and it's only July 1st. Since it hasn't rained for weeks, and bonfires are banned all over the township, watching loose rockets of fire land in the trees is a bit disconcerting to peace loving dogs and people.

Somehow I don't remember the supermarkets selling fireworks until recently, nor do I remember having much more that "sparklers" and "snakes" until a few years ago. Woof et al. suggested we pack up and go back to the city last evening...to avoid what promised to be firecracker bedlam on the beach, so we spent the prime explosion hours on the highway...munching on dog biscuits and chocolate chip cookies, arriving just as the crowds were leaving our local park after the fireworks. We were still getting out of the car when the ground began shaking from all over the neighborhood. The sky was orange and red and blue...Woof's ears went back, and I used the name of God in vain.

By midnight the last of the skyrockets had detonated, we all breathed a sigh of relief and climbed into our beds just as the sky began to flash all over again and the thunder made the house shake once again. There's no way I could have been punished that quickly for just saying two words...but then again I've always bet that He/She has quite a sense of humor.

15 things to do today.

This blogger has decided to do the following today instead of writing a blog.

1.  Put his feet up on the deck and have another cup of coffee.

2.  Take Woof for a walk on the beach.

3.  Water the garden.

4.  Have lunch at a lakefront restaurant.

5.  Order a glass of white wine.

6.  Finish reading " Sense of an ending".

7.  Take a nap.

8.  Freshen up for cocktails.

9.  Have dinner on the patio.             

10.Write a letter.

11.Play the piano.

12. Watch the sunset.

13. Write a letter.

14. Throw this laptop into the lake.

15. Fall asleep listening to the waves.