It's that time of the year again. (Sigh) One week until I head home, and then a day more until I head back to the Seminary.
I must say it's been a great summer. The atmosphere at Salt and Light TV is fantastic. The people are friendly, smart, professional, Catholic, and most of them are under 30. (T-Ros is often asked why he's taking a chance on young people. He says that they called him crazy to entrust so much to them for World Youth Day, but the youth didn't let him down... many of them are even continuing to work with him at S+L. Besides, the youth are the future, you know -- get them while they're young.)
Oh, and by the way, I'll be makin my debut appearance on S+L... actually, you won't see me, but you'll hear me announcing the upcoming schedule for Catholic Focus, airing this weekend.
Aside from that, my major contribution this summer has been filming our 5-minute news show, Zoom, that airs every evening at 7:00. And helping our cameramen George and Wally set up/ take down sets and lighting.
I'll try to post pictures of the station in the upcoming days.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Steubenville trip
This weekend has been pretty cool. After a 15-hour bus ride, I got in to Steubenville at about 10:00. Joseph and Nicole have a beautiful 4-bedroom house they are renting for only 600 dollars a month (and it includes a pool. You can find a house for 40 thousand US):
The opening Mass for the university students was at 11:30; the bishop of Steubenville diocese was main celebrant and homilist. Mass was held in the athletic building because of the size of the congregation, which, fittingly, looks like a church, albeit a modern one:
Afterward we had lunch and toured the grounds:
where I found a replica of the Church of San Damiano (which is because the university is run by Franciscans):
then we went to the university bookstore where I bought Scott Hahn's latest book (he's a professor here.) Then we went home for dinner, after which we joined the weekly rosary walk organized by the Catholic families (and there are a lot of them) in the area. Joining us were Kimberly Hahn and hers and Scott's six kids (Scott was preparing his classes, which start on Tuesday) and three postulants of the Marian Fathers who live in the area.
Saturday we again went for Mass at the university (it was something of a charismatic Mass) and walked around the grounds. Then we went home and Joseph and Nicole invited the neighbourhood kids to play in the pool!
There's a great atmosphere at the university. Right of from the bat, the second and third-year students help the freshmen with settling in, and the parents, most of who come to see their children off, stay for the first few days of orientation and are given royal treatment. We met a family who were seeing their oldest son off. The father was Catholic and the mother was a converted Jew, and the son was entering a pre-theology program for those discerning the priesthood. The joy that the entire family showed was just inspirational.
Anyway. I'm leaving tomorrow for TO. Ciao for now.
A change in format
Eh, all. You can now post comments without having to log in to Blogger.com. Sorry about that. To leave a comment, scroll to the bottom of the post that you want to comment on, and click on "Comments." Then scroll to the bottom again and click "Post a Comment."
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Off to Steubenville
I'm travelling to Steubenville to visit two friends of mine, Joseph and Nicole, who moved there very recently so that Joseph could teach as an assistant professor in the biology department of Franciscan U. So I'll be off blogging for at least a day (not that I've been very faithful, mea culpa) because it's a 14-hour ride from TO to a city in West Virginia where I'll be picked up.
This past week saw the return of the university students, with an opening Mass tomorrow that I hope to be there in time for. Hopefully I'll be able to put up pictures.
This past week saw the return of the university students, with an opening Mass tomorrow that I hope to be there in time for. Hopefully I'll be able to put up pictures.
Monday, August 21, 2006
What a way to spend a Saturday
Quote of the Day:
"You can't argue with idiots." - George Hosek
Last Saturday was one of the best saturdays I've had yet. The morning was great - sleeping in until 11; mass at noon at the Cathedral in downtown Toronto; lunch about 2:00 with the guys (2 got back from New York that morning.) Then the call came.
"We're helping Flan move and we're having trouble with the U-Haul truck."
First question: "Didn't you see the documentary that W-5 did?"
Well, apparently they hadn't. W-5, a Canadian TV station, documented a study done on U-Haul trucks. According to their findings, U-Haul is terrible for automobile quality - in fact, all of the trucks are insured out of Arizona, because Arizona has the lowest standard for auto safety measures, or something like that. At any rate, it's terrible.
So we all pile into the Frassati House van and drive down to Fran's old apartment. We get there and the U-Haul has been packed to the roof, literally. There's a few things that have to be put in the van because there's no room, so we load that in. Meanwhile Dave (a different Dave) is on the phone with U-Haul in Arizona, trying to get a mechanic to come and jump-start the truck.
Finally, we are told that a mechanic is on the way, so we all sit back to wait. 20 minutes pass, no phone call from the mechanic, nothing. So the Frassati boys decide to go pick up some jumper cables, first because the van didn't have a set, and second because we didn't know if "He'll be there in 15 minutes, (plus 10 for downtown traffic, and 10 for unseen problems)" meant 15 minutes or 4 hours. So they head out.
The mechanic got there on time (which was nice) and he got the truck up and running in no time. He warned us to let it run for 40 minutes before trying to turn it off and re-start it, so we sat back to wait for the Frassati guys to return, because we couldn't fit anyone but the driver and one passenger in the U-Haul. (There were 5 people that packed the truck, plus the four of us that showed up to help unpack.)
Anyway, the Frassati boys were taking their time returning with the (unneeded) jumper cables, so Dave and I decided to drive to the new apartment and start unloading, then the rest of the crew would show up later. Low and behold, in the middle of downtown traffic (in the middle of Chinatown, no less, on a 2-lane street) during a standstill in the traffic, the engine stops running. So I get out and start directing traffic while Dave phones up U-Haul, the Frassati guys, and the people back at the original apartment.
So we do the whole Arizona process again, and we find out that the mechanic is 40 minutes away. By this time, about 40 minutes has already passed, the Frassati van has tried jumping the truck (which didn't work) and Dave has gone looking for Asian girls (with no luck). So the Frassati van goes to the new apartment to at least unload what it's carrying, while Dave and I and Jasmin wait for the mechanic. Jasmin decides he want to get a picture of the mess, since we'll all look back and laugh at the moment, so he takes off on his bike to buy a disposable camera.
The mechanic finally gets to the truck, and instead of jumping it, we insist that he tow it to the new apartment, wait while we unload it, and then tow it back to the U-Haul place. So he tows it and we start unloading.
Meanwhile, Flan, who is handling all of the stress very well, is trying to figure out how she'll get to the airport because she's flying to Saskatchewan at eight o'clock that evening (by now it's about 6:00.) A well-timed move, let me tell you.
So we start moving things in, and we get the first four loads up the elevator when Flan comes rushing upstairs saying that we need to take the door off its hinges. It turns out that Flan inherited what my comrads called "The Monster": a huge, old, heirloom desk that ended up just barely fitting. But it's the last thing we brought up, and Flan got the airport on time, and we all ended up having a well-deserved beer (with a toast to Brett, Flan's husband, whom we toasted as "the luckiest man in Toronto" because he was away that weekend).
The moral of the story? Never rent a U-Haul truck.
But at least we didn't spend the Saturday lazing around.
"You can't argue with idiots." - George Hosek
Last Saturday was one of the best saturdays I've had yet. The morning was great - sleeping in until 11; mass at noon at the Cathedral in downtown Toronto; lunch about 2:00 with the guys (2 got back from New York that morning.) Then the call came.
"We're helping Flan move and we're having trouble with the U-Haul truck."
First question: "Didn't you see the documentary that W-5 did?"
Well, apparently they hadn't. W-5, a Canadian TV station, documented a study done on U-Haul trucks. According to their findings, U-Haul is terrible for automobile quality - in fact, all of the trucks are insured out of Arizona, because Arizona has the lowest standard for auto safety measures, or something like that. At any rate, it's terrible.
So we all pile into the Frassati House van and drive down to Fran's old apartment. We get there and the U-Haul has been packed to the roof, literally. There's a few things that have to be put in the van because there's no room, so we load that in. Meanwhile Dave (a different Dave) is on the phone with U-Haul in Arizona, trying to get a mechanic to come and jump-start the truck.
Finally, we are told that a mechanic is on the way, so we all sit back to wait. 20 minutes pass, no phone call from the mechanic, nothing. So the Frassati boys decide to go pick up some jumper cables, first because the van didn't have a set, and second because we didn't know if "He'll be there in 15 minutes, (plus 10 for downtown traffic, and 10 for unseen problems)" meant 15 minutes or 4 hours. So they head out.
The mechanic got there on time (which was nice) and he got the truck up and running in no time. He warned us to let it run for 40 minutes before trying to turn it off and re-start it, so we sat back to wait for the Frassati guys to return, because we couldn't fit anyone but the driver and one passenger in the U-Haul. (There were 5 people that packed the truck, plus the four of us that showed up to help unpack.)
Anyway, the Frassati boys were taking their time returning with the (unneeded) jumper cables, so Dave and I decided to drive to the new apartment and start unloading, then the rest of the crew would show up later. Low and behold, in the middle of downtown traffic (in the middle of Chinatown, no less, on a 2-lane street) during a standstill in the traffic, the engine stops running. So I get out and start directing traffic while Dave phones up U-Haul, the Frassati guys, and the people back at the original apartment.
So we do the whole Arizona process again, and we find out that the mechanic is 40 minutes away. By this time, about 40 minutes has already passed, the Frassati van has tried jumping the truck (which didn't work) and Dave has gone looking for Asian girls (with no luck). So the Frassati van goes to the new apartment to at least unload what it's carrying, while Dave and I and Jasmin wait for the mechanic. Jasmin decides he want to get a picture of the mess, since we'll all look back and laugh at the moment, so he takes off on his bike to buy a disposable camera.
The mechanic finally gets to the truck, and instead of jumping it, we insist that he tow it to the new apartment, wait while we unload it, and then tow it back to the U-Haul place. So he tows it and we start unloading.
Meanwhile, Flan, who is handling all of the stress very well, is trying to figure out how she'll get to the airport because she's flying to Saskatchewan at eight o'clock that evening (by now it's about 6:00.) A well-timed move, let me tell you.
So we start moving things in, and we get the first four loads up the elevator when Flan comes rushing upstairs saying that we need to take the door off its hinges. It turns out that Flan inherited what my comrads called "The Monster": a huge, old, heirloom desk that ended up just barely fitting. But it's the last thing we brought up, and Flan got the airport on time, and we all ended up having a well-deserved beer (with a toast to Brett, Flan's husband, whom we toasted as "the luckiest man in Toronto" because he was away that weekend).
The moral of the story? Never rent a U-Haul truck.
But at least we didn't spend the Saturday lazing around.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
AIDS conference
Hi all! It's a busy week with the AIDS conference here in TO. I went yesterday with a media pass to film an interview with a young lady named Tess who is involved with aids work in Malawi. She was a worker for WYD in TO four years ago, met her husband through it, got married last summer, and is now working for an NGO in Africa, where her husband also teaches high school.
Needless to say, the "global village" at the AIDS conference, which was open to all the public, was rather grotesque. Instead of anything informative, as most of the rest of the conference tried to be, (many come to get the most recent research on HIV/AIDS, such as a young lady from Catholic Charities in Houston, whom we also interviewed) the "global village" was geared toward teens and hypocritical "safe" sex. It completely demeaned the beauty of sex, lowering it to a game (and getting HIV was "game over,") with innumerable stands selling (or shelling out) condoms, pamphlets, posters, etc.
I'm told that the actual conferences were more focused on the problem - combatting and preventing the spread of AIDS - and while much vitriol was spouted against the promotion of abstinence, some progress was made, I'm told, in favour of "empowering women" (which has largely been touted as supplying women with condoms, but in practice has more to do with education and recognition of the dignity of the female person, which is exactly what is lacking in Africa.)
And much vitriol has been spouted against the church. Imagine this: tomorrow the church allows condoms, and suddenly the AIDS crisis in Africa is over, and everyone lives happily ever after. It's the same logic as the Da Vinci Code: "exposing Christianity as a fraud will lead to stopping the oppression of women worldwide and lead to peace among nations, in saecula saeculorum, Amen." Give me a break. If the church allowed condoms, what would it stop? Anything? The practicing Catholics in Africa already practice abstinence and fidelity; they're not the ones infected/infecting. how would a Catholic reversal of the teaching on contraceptives stop anyone from getting HIV/AIDS?!? And yet the Church is called "complicit in the mass slaughter of Africans through AIDS because of its 'ridiculous'[sic] stance on condoms."
Again: how would allowing condoms change anything, especially considering the sexual practices in such cultures? Women have no control over sex, and these victimized women are the ones our liberal brethren want to throw condoms at. Instead, both the women and the men must be educated on dignity and sexual ethics. We're talking about fundamental cultural change here. It will take time, but it's the only way. Condoms will not help the situation. (Sorry, Melinda.)
Anyway. I'm filming one last interview on Friday for the "AIDS and the Catholic Church" Focus episode, and that will be the end of the conference.
Needless to say, the "global village" at the AIDS conference, which was open to all the public, was rather grotesque. Instead of anything informative, as most of the rest of the conference tried to be, (many come to get the most recent research on HIV/AIDS, such as a young lady from Catholic Charities in Houston, whom we also interviewed) the "global village" was geared toward teens and hypocritical "safe" sex. It completely demeaned the beauty of sex, lowering it to a game (and getting HIV was "game over,") with innumerable stands selling (or shelling out) condoms, pamphlets, posters, etc.
I'm told that the actual conferences were more focused on the problem - combatting and preventing the spread of AIDS - and while much vitriol was spouted against the promotion of abstinence, some progress was made, I'm told, in favour of "empowering women" (which has largely been touted as supplying women with condoms, but in practice has more to do with education and recognition of the dignity of the female person, which is exactly what is lacking in Africa.)
And much vitriol has been spouted against the church. Imagine this: tomorrow the church allows condoms, and suddenly the AIDS crisis in Africa is over, and everyone lives happily ever after. It's the same logic as the Da Vinci Code: "exposing Christianity as a fraud will lead to stopping the oppression of women worldwide and lead to peace among nations, in saecula saeculorum, Amen." Give me a break. If the church allowed condoms, what would it stop? Anything? The practicing Catholics in Africa already practice abstinence and fidelity; they're not the ones infected/infecting. how would a Catholic reversal of the teaching on contraceptives stop anyone from getting HIV/AIDS?!? And yet the Church is called "complicit in the mass slaughter of Africans through AIDS because of its 'ridiculous'[sic] stance on condoms."
Again: how would allowing condoms change anything, especially considering the sexual practices in such cultures? Women have no control over sex, and these victimized women are the ones our liberal brethren want to throw condoms at. Instead, both the women and the men must be educated on dignity and sexual ethics. We're talking about fundamental cultural change here. It will take time, but it's the only way. Condoms will not help the situation. (Sorry, Melinda.)
Anyway. I'm filming one last interview on Friday for the "AIDS and the Catholic Church" Focus episode, and that will be the end of the conference.
Friday, August 11, 2006
I've got a big weekend coming up. As I previously mentioned, I'm travelling to the Midlands tomorrow with one of our producers, John, and our programming director Justyna. Following that, on Sunday I am visiting a Lebanese parish for Mass and also to film a procession.
Another of our producers, himself Lebanese, has just returned to TO after spending a month in Lebanon, including the first two weeks of the Israel-Hezbollah war. He was making a documentary on Lebanese political prisoners in Syrian prisons (as Syria had occupied Lebanon for a time after the war in the '80s.) He was scheduled to leave shortly after all hell broke loose, and he ended up fleeing to the north and eventually got out.
Please pray for the end to the war in Lebanon, and an end to all terrorism.
On a lighter note, T-Ros flew to Saskatchewan to preside over the wedding of yet another of our producers, G. After that, he's flying to Sydney to meet with the people in charge of the next biggest gathering of Catholic youth the world has ever seen.
Apparently he's pleased with the direction the Australian bishops are taking: "They're saying that it will be the start of a 20-year pastoral plan for the renewal of the faith in Australia." Please pray for their efforts. And GO TO WYD SYD!
Another of our producers, himself Lebanese, has just returned to TO after spending a month in Lebanon, including the first two weeks of the Israel-Hezbollah war. He was making a documentary on Lebanese political prisoners in Syrian prisons (as Syria had occupied Lebanon for a time after the war in the '80s.) He was scheduled to leave shortly after all hell broke loose, and he ended up fleeing to the north and eventually got out.
Please pray for the end to the war in Lebanon, and an end to all terrorism.
On a lighter note, T-Ros flew to Saskatchewan to preside over the wedding of yet another of our producers, G. After that, he's flying to Sydney to meet with the people in charge of the next biggest gathering of Catholic youth the world has ever seen.
Apparently he's pleased with the direction the Australian bishops are taking: "They're saying that it will be the start of a 20-year pastoral plan for the renewal of the faith in Australia." Please pray for their efforts. And GO TO WYD SYD!
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Thought of the day
I suppose I should have realized it before, but man-oh-man, making tv shows really takes the magic out of it all.
Today we filmed two FOCUS episodes, one on the Vocations Crisis and a second on Angels. I'm learning about lighting and image composition, as well as learning the editing program, Avid.
On Saturday I'm going to the Midlands, to the site of the martyrdom of St John Brebeuf, to film the end of a week-long walking pilgrimage that the Polish community does every year. I'm pretty excited because SJB is one of my favourite saints.
Other than that, I'm just under a month away from coming home, and then the start of the school year...
Today we filmed two FOCUS episodes, one on the Vocations Crisis and a second on Angels. I'm learning about lighting and image composition, as well as learning the editing program, Avid.
On Saturday I'm going to the Midlands, to the site of the martyrdom of St John Brebeuf, to film the end of a week-long walking pilgrimage that the Polish community does every year. I'm pretty excited because SJB is one of my favourite saints.
Other than that, I'm just under a month away from coming home, and then the start of the school year...
Friday, August 04, 2006
Week 2
A little update from my work at S + L:
I've been involved over the past weeks in several areas - I've been to several location shoots for FOCUS programs, and also behind the camera a few times for "Zoom," which is a five-minute news program airing at 7:00 pm, re-capping the daily news from a Catholic perspective. I've also been doing research on films and TV movies that our station is interested in broadcasting. All in all, work is never boring.
I've also been to several bbqs over the past 2 weeks - namely, one that saw a number of Toronto officials gather to celebrate the 4th anniversary of WYD2002 (people from the municipal government, from the police force, from the ministry of transportation, etc.) which was a resounding success - as well as a S+L staff bbq at one of our producer's houses, and a third where a group of teachers and principles gathered whom T-Ros taught a religious-ed course to a decade ago. Tonight is a fourth bbq, tomorrow is a wedding, and Sunday we're going over to the house of the owner of the TV station. Me thinks that T. knows too many people.
I've been involved over the past weeks in several areas - I've been to several location shoots for FOCUS programs, and also behind the camera a few times for "Zoom," which is a five-minute news program airing at 7:00 pm, re-capping the daily news from a Catholic perspective. I've also been doing research on films and TV movies that our station is interested in broadcasting. All in all, work is never boring.
I've also been to several bbqs over the past 2 weeks - namely, one that saw a number of Toronto officials gather to celebrate the 4th anniversary of WYD2002 (people from the municipal government, from the police force, from the ministry of transportation, etc.) which was a resounding success - as well as a S+L staff bbq at one of our producer's houses, and a third where a group of teachers and principles gathered whom T-Ros taught a religious-ed course to a decade ago. Tonight is a fourth bbq, tomorrow is a wedding, and Sunday we're going over to the house of the owner of the TV station. Me thinks that T. knows too many people.
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