UNDER A LUCCAN SUN FROM VIMEO

This is a wonderful video from VIMEO done by Leonardo Dallessandri

Under the Lucan Sun from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo.

This is the Common Blackbird.  It is a very sweet singing and relatively friendly songbird that exists both in the Brittish Islands as well as in Italy, where I saw and heard it a week ago, as well as in the rest of Europe.



Catherine of Siena--Peace Maker Saint

Yesterday I put a picture of OUR LADY OF PEACE that I photographed in the Roman Basilica of "Mary Major".  Along with Mary, the Mother of God who, with her Son, ardently desires peace, forgiveness and reconciliation in today's world is the great saint, Catherince of Siena.  In my trip with my two brothers to Italy I visited the house where Catherine of Siena was born. There I took this photo of the holy and powerful St. Catherine.  Catherine spoke both to kings and to Popes urging them to create peace and to allow reconciliations to happen.  Needless to say she was not always heeded.  But I add this picture of Catherine hoping for peace in our terror torn and war torn world.

Our Lady of Peace

When I arrived in Italy on vacation with my brothers on May 1st there had been first the information about the air strike in Libya in which the son of Khadaffi was killed and also the news about the raid on Osama Bin Laden's haven in Pakistan in which he was also killed...For this reason the most poignant image that I have brought home from Italy is this one of OUR LADY OF PEACE.  It is in the Basilica of Mary Major just one block from the world headquarters of us Redemptorist Missionaries on the Via Merulana in Rome....Killing our enemies, "taking them out" as the phrase says....will not bring peace to the world. My two brothers and I were "warned" on arriving in Rome that there was a "travel alert" for Americans travelling abroad.  The fact is that there exists the need of a "peace making and reconciliation alert" in all parts of the world.  Recently I read something that said that..."one of the gravest mistakes in today's world is the belief that idyologies can be overcome simply by killing or "eliminating those who believe in them or live by them"....Many years ago there was a group in Venezuela called "Los Guaraguao".  They sang of injustices in both Venezuela where the poor lived in "Casas de Cartón (Cardboard Shacks).  One of their most popular songs was..SI SE CALLAN EL CANTOR  (If the Singer is Silenced).  The song dealth with the death squads that in that era as in our own kill, threaten and maim those who speak out against evil and injustice.  One of the last phrases of this song went...."If the singer is silenced...LIFE is silenced.."  One of my firmest beliefs is that in today´s world the prophetical voices are not heard or not heeded.  Leaders who are both prophetical, loving deeply humanity and are religious in the deepest and truest sense of what religious "should mean"  need to speak up.  In this way the extended arms of OUR LADY OF PEACE and of her little Jesus who also has his hand outstreched will lead us to the peace that nor political leaders nor terrorists have achieved.

MIGUEANGELO'S TOMB WITH HIS "THREE MUSES"

These are the three muses, of Painting, Arquitecture and Sculpture that are part of the beautiful "Tomb of Miguel Angelo.  We saw them in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy

Long Eared or Tufted from the South Florida

Kyle, a friend of my brother Dan, shot this short video of what seems to be a Long Eared or a Tufted owl, or whatever it is called in South Florida..