July 9: Piano Player, Concert and Poetry Reading, Prayer of the Week

…I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I’d hate it.  I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me.  People always clap for the wrong things.  If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet…

Holden’s talking about Ernie, a guy who owns a bar and is famous for his piano playing.  Except Holden thinks Ernie’s a little too full of himself.  Ernie knows he’s good, and that makes Ernie’s playing bad.

I understand Holden’s thinking here.  I’ve heard some really good poets give readings and absolutely stink.  It’s not because their poetry stinks.  It’s because these poets somehow started believing all of the praise that had been heaped upon them.  They were reading as if each syllable they uttered was a golden apple.  They had no humility, and, because of that, they went from being talented to mediocre in the space of a few minutes.

I’m thinking about humility because I’ve got a couple of things happening in the next couple of days that require me to be a humble servant instead of a “great” piano player or poet.  Tonight, I’m performing a community concert with my praise band.  That’s at 7 p.m.  Tomorrow night at a poetry reading, I have to introduce Elinor Benedict, who may be the very first U.P. Poet Laureate.  In both instances, I have to remember my role and goal.  Tonight, hopefully, I’m a vehicle for God to speak to a whole lot of people through music.  Tomorrow night, I have to make people understand how great a poet Ms. Benedict is.  In both instances, it’s all about humility.

And that’s what my prayer of the week is about.

Dear God,

Please empty my heart of any kind of jealousy or pride in these next couple of days.  Help me to remember my role:  I am a servant, put on this planet to do Your work.  As I play the keyboard tonight, guide my fingers, guide the sounds I make.  As I introduce Elinor tomorrow, give me the right words, let me inspire the audience to love her writing.  And, above all, grant me humility.

That’s what I’m asking for this week.  I know I can sometimes get a little full of myself, like Ernie.  Please, don’t let that happen at the concert or the poetry reading.  It’s not about me.  It’s about You.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

I can admit my weaknesses...

July 3: Stupid Thing, Psychoanalyzed, Magical Thinking, Prayer of the Week

…God, he was a nice kid, though.  He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair.  I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage.  I don’t blame them.  I really don’t.  I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it.  I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it.  It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie.  My hand still hurts me once in a while, when it rains and all, and I can’t make a real fist any more—not a tight one, I mean—but outside of that I don’t care much.  I mean I’m not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway.

Holden is carrying around a lot of unresolved emotions over the death of his younger brother, Allie.  Holden is angry, depressed, guilty.  Yes, guilty.  I think he’s dealing with a little bit of survivor’s guilt.  It sounds like everyone loved Allie, and Holden seems to have been a “problem child” his whole life.  A smart ass.  Trouble in school.  Smokes too much.  Drinks too much.  Yet, Holden is alive, and Allie—the “nice kid”—is dead.  Maybe Holden believes God made the wrong choice.

Of course, that kind of thought process would be considered a version of magical thinking.  It’s about as useful as Holden believing that if he got all A’s, joined the football team, and dated Jane Gallagher, Allie would have survived.  There is no correlation between those events.

I, myself, frequently engage in magical thinking.  I say the same prayers every morning, read the same devotions, because, if I don’t, I might cause someone’s illness to worsen.  Or I might lose a writing contest I entered.  Even worse, if I do something that I know is wrong (use your imagination here), then God may punish me in some way.  For example, my hours might get cut at work.  Yes, I walk around believing that, when something really bad happens in my life, I’ve somehow brought it on myself.  That’s magical thinking at its worst.  It makes me feel like crap.

Yesterday, for some reason, I got it in my head that it was Worry Wednesday.  Hence, yesterday’s first blog post about being a conflicted character.  Since I’ve already focused on my worries this week, today I’m going to pray.  I sometimes engage in a little magical prayer thinking, as well.  I convince myself that I have to say a certain prayer in a certain way in order to obtain whatever my prayer intention is.  Of course, that’s treating prayer like the Avada Kedavra curse from the Harry Potter books.  It’s magical.  I know this, and yet I continue to do it.

I’ll try not to be too magical today.

Dear Dumbledore…Just kidding!

Dear God,

Yes, it’s me again.  Sorry I didn’t write yesterday, but I got a little off with my calendar.  Please don’t hold it against me.

Which sort of brings me to the subject of my prayer today.  Things haven’t been going that great for me this summer with money and work.  You know that.  Hours have been cut.  Paychecks have shrunk.  I had a little freak-out last night over a phone bill.  I think I said something like, “I am so friggin’ tired of going from disconnection notice to disconnection notice!”  I’m better today, but I’m starting to believe I’ve done something wrong, that I’m somehow being divinely spanked.

I know You don’t work that way.  However, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for getting angry last night.  I’m sorry for everything I said or did last night that disappointed You.  I’m not proud of myself at all.  There’s this whole thing about trust that I’m struggling with at the moment.  So, I also wanted to ask You for some courage during these difficult summer months.  Give me a little faith.  Let me know things are going to turn out alright.

I’ll try not to disappoint You anymore.  It’s a battle every day.  I get angry and scared and discouraged on an hourly basis, it seems.  I’ll try to cultivate joy and strength and hope instead.

I promise.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

I choose not enter,,,No punishment for me, thanks.

June 25: "F#@k You," Impossible. Prayer of the Week

I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall.  I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something.  It wouldn't come off.  It's hopeless anyway.  If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world.  It's impossible.

Holden's little diatribe about "Fuck you" signs is one of my favorite parts of The Catcher in the Rye.  He's right, too.  No matter how much time you have, you'd never be able to erase them all from the world.  The people on our planet are programmed with "Fuck you" attitudes, starting in grade school, which is where Holden sees the first "Fuck you" sign in the book.

I'm tired of all the "Fuck you" signs I've been encountering in my life recently.  No matter how hard I work, it seems like I've been running into entire walls covered with them.  I need to work overtime to pay my bills this summer.  Fuck you.  I need a full-time job at the university.  Fuck you.  A good friend of mine is losing the job he's worked for his entire life.  Fuck you.  My daughter wants to do two solos next year in dance.  She hasn't gotten a "Fuck you" on this one; just a possible "Fuck you."

I'm sorry for my language.  I've reached a level of tired that tends to shut down my internal censors.  I want some good news.  I want to get up tomorrow morning without thinking immediately, "OK, what's going to go wrong today?"  I'm barely into full summer, and already I'm counting the days until my checks start coming from the university again.  (It's a depressingly large number of days at the moment.)  I want to be able to focus on something happy.

That's my prayer for this week.

Dear Boss,

Yes, it's that guy who complains every Tuesday afternoon.  Today, I'm not going to complain, however.  Today, I'm going to simply ask for happiness.

When I wake up tomorrow, let me think of something happy.  Please.  Of course, thinking of something happy means not thinking of something unhappy.  So, I guess what I'm really asking is that You take away some of my worries.  A nice, full-time job at the school would help.  Or maybe some prestigious poetry prize, although it's too late for the Pulitzer and too early from the Nobel.  Heck, I'd be happy with an obscene phone call, as long as it's tasteful.

That's what I'm praying for this week.  Happiness, for myself, my wife, and my family.  Perhaps I simply need to look around me right now.  Maybe happiness is sitting right next to me...

All I see is a calendar, an old pair of running shoes, and a candle.  If that is what's supposed to make me happy, I'm in deep doo-doo.

Help.  Please, God, help.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I get it.

June 11: English, Books, Prayer of the Week

...They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent on 168th Street or 186th Street or one of those streets way the hell uptown.  The one next to me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and American government.  Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English.  Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them...

Holden meets these two nuns in a diner, and he strikes up a conversation with them.  He learns they are schoolteachers, obviously.  The one who teaches English starts asking him questions about books and plays he's studied.  Of course, being a teenage boy, he mind drifts toward sex.  Holden's mind almost always drifts toward sex.  He wonders how a nun who teaches literature deals with the "sexy" material.

It really doesn't matter if you're a nun or Brad Pitt.  If you're an English teacher, students feel uncomfortable discussing things of a sexual nature in a classroom.  I've been teaching college-level English students for over twenty years, and I can say, without a doubt, that, even though sex is on all their minds, they don't want to talk about it.  It's like the elephant in the room that everybody's ignoring.  That's one of the challenges of teaching young adults.

I love teaching.  I love the hormonal intricacies of young minds.  I love making students see things they've never seen before.  I taught a class a year or so ago called Good Books.  I chose books that all focused on mental illness.  We read about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and the history of the medical treatment of mental illness in the United States.  It was a great class.  In fact, I would rank it as the best class I've ever taught.  I could actually see the changes in my students' attitudes and thinking.  It was exciting.

I would love to teach full-time at the university.  It's my dream job.  I've been doing it part-time for most of my adult working life.  I don't do it because it pays so well (it doesn't).  I don't do it for the glory (there isn't any).  I do it because I can make a difference in the world.  That may sound corny, but it's what I truly believe.  I can open minds and change people's ideas.  There's nothing better than that.

So, my prayer of the week is about teaching.

Dear God,

Yeah, I know.  You're getting tired of hearing from me.  But You did say that You'd always listen if I wanted to talk.

Well, You know I how I feel about teaching.  You know it's what I've wanted to do full-time for as along as I can remember.  I'm just asking if You could help me out a little bit here.  I'd like some job opportunity to open up at the university.  You don't have to kill one of the poets a week before classes start in the fall.  I don't want anything catastrophic to befall anyone.  I would just appreciate a few little miracles.

Here's what I need:  some publications, some awards in writing contests, and a full-time teaching assignment.  On the scale of miracles, those are pretty small, when You think about it.  The Israelites needed You to part the Red Sea and write some commandments down on stones.  All I'm asking for is an itty, bitty little job at a university.

Thanks for hearing me out.  I know You've got my back, no matter what, so I'll try not to worry (even if my job at the hospital gets eliminated).  You are the God of enough.  You've always given me and my family enough to get by.  I trust You.  Like I have any choice.

Your child,

Saint Marty

It's all about trust

May 28: Dead Guys and Tombstones, Sick Kids, Prayer of the Week

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave.  I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out.  In the first place, I certainly don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery.  Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all.  It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice--twice--we were there when it started to rain.  It was awful.  It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach.  It rained all over the place.  All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars.  That's what nearly drove me crazy.  All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner--everybody except Allie.  I couldn't stand it.  I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway.  I just wish he wasn't there.  You didn't know him.  If you'd known him, you'd know what I mean.  It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.

Holden is strongly attached to the memory of his brother, Allie.  In fact, I would say that a majority of Holden's problems in The Catcher in the Rye stem from his grief over Allie's death, a grief he's never really allowed himself to express in any healing way.  I think the whole Caulfield family was sort of torn apart by Allie's illness.  Holden has never dealt with his emotions because his parents have shut down, too.  Holden describes his father as distracted, removed, a workaholic.  His mother fares a little better, but not by much.  And I understand this portrait.  As a father, I will admit that one of my greatest fears is losing my children.  Any parent would agree with me.  I would probably shut down like Holden's dad.

My daughter has been sick for over a month-and-a-half.  This morning, she called me before school to say that her throat was sore and getting sorer by the minute.  She is already on her second round of antibiotics, and nothing seems to be doing the trick.  She still has an infected ear.  She still has a sore throat.  And now she's missing one of her last days of sixth grade.

I know that an infected ear and throat don't compare to Allie Caulfield's leukemia, obviously.  But there's a certain helplessness I'm experiencing right now that is driving me crazy.  I want my daughter to be well.  I want her to enjoy these last few days of the school year.  Her dance recital is next weekend.  I want her to enjoy the fruits of all her hard work in dance class over the last nine months.  She's worked her butt off.  Instead, she's probably coughing and sitting out most her rehearsals this evening.

Of course, the twisted part of my person is imagining horrible illnesses that my daughter could be suffering with.  Let's start with strep throat and work our way up to leukemia.  That pretty much covers the whole spectrum of my parental nightmares, from the treatable to the fatal.  Yes, I've entertained the notion that my daughter would come away from the pediatrician this morning with some kind of incurable, unpronounceable disease.  Cystifibroleukematicalysis or something like that.  She didn't.  She came away with a prescription for different antibiotic.

But, because of today's health crisis (if it can be called a crisis), I have been contemplating my daughter and son, and all that I hope and dream and pray for them.

Dear God,

It's me again.  I know You're probably getting tired of hearing from me.  It seems all I do is ask You for things.  Health.  Money.  A new job.  A new house.  Kellie Pickler to lose on Dancing With the Stars.  I don't mean to be so self-centered, but I'm human.  And a writer.  And a parent.  And a adjunct college instructor.  And a Zendaya fan.  I have a lot of strikes against me in the ego department.

Tonight, I want to ask You for health for my daughter.  Let her start feeling better.  Give her strength and stamina to battle this virus or cold or whatever it is.  Let her know how much I love and care for her.  And the same goes for my son.  Even though he's not sick at the moment, I ask You for good health for him.  Keep him safe from harm.  Let him grow into a strong, smart young man.  And let him know how much I love and care for him.

I know You understand the love I feel for my kids.  You had a Kid, too.  My son and daughter are great children.  I've tried to teach them about Your love for them.  Please, tonight, smile down upon them.  Touch them with healing.

Thanks for listening to me again.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

If she couldn't beat Kellie Pickler, at least make my daughter well

May 21: A Christmas Pageant for Americans, Prayer of the Week, Daughter

"'A Christmas Pageant for Americans.'  It stinks, but I'm Benedict Arnold.  I have practically the biggest part," she said.  Boy, she was wide-awake.  She gets very excited when she tells you  that stuff.  "It starts out when I'm dying.  This ghost comes in on Christmas Eve and asks me if I'm ashamed and everything.  You know.  For betraying my country and everything.  Are you coming to it?"  She was sitting way the hell up in the bed and all.  "That's what I wrote you about.  Are you?"

Phoebe wants Holden to come to her Christmas program.  (By the way, doesn't the plot of her program sound a little like Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Funny how things dovetail like that.)  Anyway, she is like any little kid with a solo or dance or recital.  She wants her big brother and sister and mother and father and aunt to be there.

Tonight, my daughter has her final chorus and band concert for the year.  It's called the Collage Concert, because it basically features every student who's involved in music in the middle school.  That may sound like a tedious and horrifying way of spending an hour.  It's not.  The musical selections are done one after another, without any pauses for applause.  One song ends, another begins.  It's the slickest school music program I've every attended.

My daughter has a solo flute part in a band ensemble tonight.  That's a big deal.  She had to audition for it and was chosen from all the other flutists.  She's really excited.  I, on the other hand, am a typical parent.  I will want to vomit until she is done with her solo.  Then I will relax and enjoy the rest of the concert.

My daughter sort of reminds me of Phoebe in the above passage.  My daughter isn't nervous about playing her part.  She knows it cold.  My daughter is interested in who's coming to see her.  Tonight, it will be my wife and me.  I know my daughter gets nervous.  However, her nerves manifest as temper tantrums and screaming.  It's not a pretty sight.  My whole goal this evening is to deliver my daughter to the band room before she melts into a puddle of adolescent sweat and tears.

I do have a prayer for this week, and it has to do with my daughter.

Dear God,

It's me again, you know, the one who calls himself a saint.  Yeah, yeah, I know you're getting tired of hearing from me.  I'm sorry for making a nuisance of myself.

Today, I'm asking you to look out for my daughter.  She's got that band and chorus concert tonight.  She's acting like it's no big deal, but I know she's nervous.  Give her strength and courage.  Let her play her piece the best she's ever played it.  Let her shine.

I'm not saying this as a jealous parent or because I want her to humiliate the other flutists in the band.  I'm saying this because I want my daughter to be confident.  I want her to know that she's beautiful and talented.  I want her to feel that tonight, in every cell of her body.

I know you're watching out for her.  You've been watching out for her ever since she was a baby and my wife was struggling with bipolar.  All those days my wife spent in bed, holding our infant daughter, afraid to let her go.  I know You were with her then.  Be with her again tonight, please.

Remember my little girl.  Your child.

Yours in love,

Saint Marty

P.S.  If You want to humiliate the other flutists a little bit, that would be OK, too.

Please, God, let the other flutists be jealous of my daughter.  Amen.

May 14: Prayer of the Week, Allie, Dave

...[Allie's] dead now.  He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946.  You'd have liked him.  He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent.  He was terrifically intelligent.  His teachers were always writing letters to my mother telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Aliie in their class.  And they weren't just shooting the crap.  They really meant it.  But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family.  He was also the nicest, in lots of ways...

Holden doesn't know what to do with the pain of Allie's death.  The only way Holden ever expressed his grief was by breaking some windows and injuring his hand.  Holden doesn't have a mother or father he can talk to.  He doesn't have a mentor or friend.  His spiritual life is nonexistent.  He doesn't know how to pray.  He feels like he's completely alone.

Today is the first Prayer of the Week post.  To be honest, I put off typing this post all day long.  I didn't know how to write a prayer.  I think I'm a little too Catholic in my prayer life.  I'm used to memorized prayers.  Hail Marys.  Glory Be's.   Our Fathers.  That kind of thing.  However, one of my best friends is a United Methodist pastor, and I remember how he used to pray aloud when we were together.  It was like he was talking to me when he prayed.  There wasn't a lot of "Our Father, Who art in Heaven."  There was a lot more of this kind of thing:  "Dear God, I'm having a really shitty day.  Here's why..."  He was honest.  Brutally honest.  Sometimes he was angry or hurt or confused.  But there was trust in his prayer, and a lot of love.  I can do that kind of prayer.

So, here goes:

Dear God,

I want to talk to you about Dave.  You know him.  He sings and plays guitar and bass and violin in our band on Sunday mornings.  His path to You wasn't easy.  You know he was an alcoholic for many years.  But he does amazing things now for You.  He uses his musical gifts to glorify You, to spread Your word.

But You know all that crap.  And You know he's sick now.  Pancreatic cancer.  He's been suffering a long time, but he never complains.  These last couple of months have been tough for him, with chemo and doctor's visits and tests.  Yet, when he shows up on Sunday mornings, he jokes, laughs, corrects my mistakes in his delicate way ("It's just a one, a four, a five, and a one chord!  It's simple!"), and gives thanks to You.

I'm sure Dave has his dark times.  I'm sure he gets pissed and sad.  I'm sure he despairs.  Yet, he never shows it.  Ever.  He's always full of peace and love, in his prickly, Dave way.

My prayer, God, is to give Dave strength.  Bring him the healing he needs.  Let him know that he's one of Your cherished children.  I'm giving Him up to You, because You can do a hell of a lot more for him than I can.  We love Dave, and we want him here, with us, because we're selfish.

Forgive our selfishness.  We love him and want him with us as long as possible.

But, as the prayer goes, "Thy will be done."  Hopefully, Your will is to let us have Dave a little longer.

You loving child,

Saint Marty

Dave's on the far right

May 13: Magic 8-Ball Monday, Summer Schedule, Something New

Well, with only my instincts and the statistics from the good people at Blogger, I have finalized the summer schedule for Saint Marty.  Either you, my disciples, are completely happy with the current offerings of this blog, or you're totally apathetic.  Either way, it's time to shake things up a little bit.

Without further adieu, here is the new daily line-up for SMN (the Saint Marty Network):

Monday:  Magic 8-Ball Monday.  Monday posts will essentially remain the same.  I will be using whatever book is my focus for the year (for 2013, it's The Catcher in the Rye) as my Magic 8-Ball.  I will ask a burning life question, randomly flip through the book, and find my answer in its pages.

Tuesday:  Prayer of the Week.  I will highlight my prayer focus for the week on each Tuesday and compose a prayer.  Amen.

Wednesday:  Worry Wednesday.  These posts will stay the same.  I like being able to vent or bitch about my life at least once a week.

Thursday:  A Piece of My Mind.  I took a class in high school called Current Events.  Every Thursday in that class, we chose a topic from the news or popular culture and talked about it.  That's what Thursdays will be this summer.  I will be giving everybody a piece of my mind, for what it's worth, about some current event.

Friday:  Fairy Tale Friday.  Every Friday, I will write a new fairy tale.  I wrote a fairy tale a little while ago, and it was really popular.  Plus I had fun doing it.  Stay tuned for more "Once upon a times..."

Saturday:  Beatnik Saturday.  I will publish an original poem every Saturday, as well as my weekend installments of the Confessions of Saint Marty cartoon strip.

Sunday:  Classic Saint Marty.  I've published over 1300 posts on Saint Marty.  A few of them have to be worth reading again.  On Sundays, I will choose some of my favorite posts (classics) and re-post them.  To tell you the truth, I don't remember half the stuff I've written.

So there you have it.  That's what you have to look forward to for the next four or so months.  If I eliminated one of your favorite Saint Marty features, let me know.  I'm always open to flattery and cajoling.

My question for Magic 8-Ball Monday today is:

Will this summer schedule bring a lot of readers to Saint Marty?

And the answer from the book of Salinger:

"...The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with.  Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with.  So they gave up looking.  They gave it up before they ever really even got started.  You follow me?"

I'm not sure if that answer means that I should give up before I even get started with this new plan or that I should move forward with it, unlike the guys who surrender so easily.  I think I'll go with the latter interpretation, since I've never been much of a quitter.

Now if Saint Marty can just come up with a catchy logo for the SMN.

I think this one's already taken

May 9: Summer Schedule

Well, I have been working with the same weekly line-up of posts since January.  Some of the posts have been pretty popular (Rye Dip Monday, Poem of the Week Friday).  Other posts have suffered poor ratings and readership (Saint of the Week Tuesday, Blessing Thursday).  The time has come for me, as head of the SMN (Saint Marty Network), to make some decisions about summer programming.  I mean, on TV, American Idol is coming to an end, and America's Got Talent is gearing up.

I'm not sure what I'm going to change.  I will continue with The Catcher in the Rye.  That is a year-long commitment.  However, I'm pretty much open to any other shift.  Perhaps Saint of the Week Tuesday will take a break for the summer, and I'll replace it with Poet/Writer of the Week.  Or maybe I'll try something like Prayer of the Week Tuesday.  As I said, everything is up in the air.  I may even suspend some of the more popular posts, like Poem of the Week Friday.

I've thought about posting some reruns:  some of my favorite older posts that deserve to be dusted off and re-posted.  I like that idea.  I mean, after all, The Sound of Music and It's A Wonderful Life are aired once a year.  I've written over 1300 posts.  There have got to be one or two that are worth repeating.

I may also scale back my posting output to once a day to allow me to work on a few other writing projects over the summer.  No, I'm not getting lazy.  I just have a couple manuscripts that need attention, and the summer months are much less labor-intensive for me, job-wise.

I put it out there to my disciples.  Give me suggestions of what you want to continue to read during the summer, what you want to see canceled permanently, and what you want to see added to the weekly line-up.  Don't wait forever, however.  I will be finalizing the schedule by next week Monday.

Saint Marty needs to know what you like and hate:

1. Rye Dip Monday
2. Saint of the Week Tuesday
3. Worry Wednesday
4. Blessing Thursday
5. P.O.E.T.S. Day Poem of the Week Friday
6. Good Reads Saturday
7. My Favorite Things Sunday

Even Oprah canceled Rosie O'Donnell