Friday night blogging

The Rangers are beating the Devils ... third period ... Madden just missed a penalty shot ... I go back and forth in my thinking that watching an intense hockey game is easier than playing in an intense hockey game.

The theme of tonight's activity is "photographs".  I just finished going through a box of photo negatives, uploading pictures on photo CDs to my computer, and going through old photo albums to make sure I already have copies of the stuff that I'm about to throw out.

Obviously the big story this week has been Pope Benedict's visit.  You've got to love our technological age.  From my rectory, I can watch the events taking place on live television.  If (and this time it's been more like "when") I get tired of the commentators, I can switch to Vatican Television's live streaming on the Internet.  Finally, thanks to other websites like the Vatican and the USCCB, I can get copies of the Holy father's talks.

Why am I not giving you up to date commentary and photos on the events?  Please, there's plenty of people out there doing this (heck, I read many of them myself).  Some bloggers, like Thomas Peters at American Papist, was "on the ground" in the District of Columbia, taking photos and making videos, giving us the "eye-witness" view.  Others, like the indomitable Fr. Zuhlsdorf at What Does The Prayer Really Say?, maintained his "command post" while posting commentary on the events (both his own and the comments of other bloggers).  This may also be the first papal event in which I got the bulk of my information from the Internet rather than the mainstream media.  Peggy Noonan has a great column on the Wall Street Journal website: saying something like, "If Pope John Paul II was the 'Pope of images' (remember, when his pontificate began in '78, television stations still signed off for the night), then Pope Benedict can be called the 'Pope of the Internet' (having the kind of events that make you want to download his words to ponder).

There's still some events left, culminating in Sunday's Mass at Yankee Stadium.  

By the way- the Devils lost.  In a way, I'm glad.  I can now watch the rest of the playoffs without the emotional attachment I have to the team I've followed since they arrived in 1982.  Emotions get in the way sometimes.