Events

Christmas program at church

There was a nice little Christmas program at our church this past Saturday, December 19, 2009, and you can watch a video of the three groups which sang in it below. My wife planned the program, in-between planning her own art show, directing our church’s choir, and taking part in two separate choirs that each gave Christmas concerts this past week. Can you tell she’s had a busy agenda lately?

A children’s choir sang first, followed by the church choir. Then she read a short story, which she wrote the night before, and handed out Christmas sweets, prepared from her own recipe following raw food methods, with the aid of a friend. After that, it was a mix of carols from the church choir and a women’s group, plus a musical bells group (which I didn’t record, but which you can watch in action here).

http://blip.tv/file/2997419
Watch this video on blip.tv

You can also see me singing in the video, as part of the church choir. Given how different the photo on my about page is from the way I look now, I wonder how many people can spot me. Should be fun to know that.

Events

Ecumenical Christmas concert at Margarethenkirche, Medias

This past week, churches of several religious denominations from the city of Medias got together and gave a wonderful Christmas concert, as they’ve done every year since 1989, at Margarethenkirche (Church of St. Margaret). It took place on Wednesday evening, December 16, 2009. I recorded video sequences from the concert, which you can see below. While I couldn’t record it in its entirety, I know a professional video team was on site with two cameras, and they’ll make their edited video available to the public in the near future, possibly even this week.

I need to apologize for the quality of the video… At the time, I had a cold, and was literally shivering up there in the drafty upper level, trying to hold the camera steady. It didn’t work very well, so the video sequences are quite shaky. I had to leave early, too, as I felt a fever coming on and didn’t want to make things worse. At least I stuck around until the choir in which my wife participated sang their carols (Seventh-day Adventist Church of Medias).

http://blip.tv/file/2997380
Watch this video on blip.tv

At the end of the concert, selected choristers from each church choir sang together in a unified, ecumenical choir. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around for that, but my wife sang in that choir, and she said it sounded heavenly. By the way, in the video, my wife is the very pretty, curly-headed girl on whom I kept focusing my camera. 🙂

Events

Organ concert at Biserica Sf. Margareta

All summer long, the city of Medias sponsored weekly organ concerts at the oldest church in town, Biserica Sf. Margareta (Margarethenkirche). Medias is a medieval city in the province of Transilvania, Romania.

The concerts were held every Monday night at 7 pm. We attended one of them on September 7, 2009. A wide selection of music was played for 1 ½ hours, from medieval pieces to Bach, and all the way to a modern piece written in the 1940s. I lost the program note, so I can’t go into the details, but overall, the concert was good, and some pieces were great. I’m definitely looking forward to attending more of these recitals next summer.

Places

The feeding of the multitudes

A panoramic photo (made of three individual 12 megapixel photos) showing the main ceiling mural of the Matrei cathedral, in Osttirol, Austria. The scene depicted is that of the feeding of the multitudes, where Jesus Christ multiplies a few loaves of bread and some fish to feed over 5,000 people. The original resolution of this panorama is 4209x5974 pixels.

Places

A look at my church

Have you ever wondered if I go to church, and where I go? Well, I put together a set of 89 photos that looks at my church, inside and out. You can go directly to the slideshow view if you’d like.

If the word “church” scares you, don’t worry, I’m not proselytizing. The photos are portraits, abstracts, and macros of various people, objects, details and flowers inside and around the church. I think you’ll like them. My church is quite beautiful in both spring and fall. There are a ton of things to photograph, and I thought it high time I put together a set to show them off. If you’re ever in the area on a Saturday morning, drop by and say hi to me.

Here are several selected photos from the set.