The Luna Park Gazette

There once was a time when I looked forward to the sign of peace. That’s the part of the mass where you shake hands with everybody around you. It's kind of like a spiritual version of the seventh inning stretch. We started doing the sign of peace in the Catholic Church when I was in grammar school and I remember how one of my classmates once grabbed another kid’s hand during mass and said “hey, how’s the wife and kids?” Fortunately for him, none of the brothers caught him in the act for they would have no doubt sent him to meet his maker right there in church. It’s a much shorter trip. I’ve been attending services at Trinity Church for a few years now and I’ve gotten to enjoy this little hand-to-hand routine. I greet my regular buddies and new arrivals and next to the sermon, it is—or was —my favorite part of the mass. But that was before the H1N1 virus and all its attendant hysteria came to town. Now my church has a hand-sanitizing android stationed in the vestibule ready to spew ...

I finally found peace this week. No, not serenity, calm, stillness or tranquility—don’t be ridiculous. I’m still as neurotic as ever. I’m talking about a novel called Peace by Richard Bausch, a gift from my brother which I thought I had lost somewhere between my house and the New York City subway system. I had just made up my mind to read that particular book after looking through the stacks of paperbacks around here. I brought it to work, kept it in a brown plastic bag to protect the cover, but when I got home that night and looked in my bag, I found that I had been seperated from Peace . I looked all over my house, peeked into the garbage can, I even checked out the re-freaking-frigerator--nothing. I tried the Zen thing of letting go and the book apparently returned the favor because I couldn't find it anywhere. At breakfast the next morning I because convinced— convinced —that I had tossed the book in the trash can. Seconds later I heard the garbage truck pulling up in front of...

I was doing my evening shopping the other night when I heard a familiar song on the radio. I had trouble making out the tune because of the noise around me, but I knew I’d heard this song before. As I put my groceries down in front of the cashier, I listened carefully and tried to figure out the words. It was from the eighties, one of my favorite decades for music. And I could tell it was a woman singing. Then there was a sudden gust of silence around me and I was able to name that tune. It was “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna. Okay, well, if you just ring me up, I'll be on my way. Please, for the love of God, ring me up. As soon I got my change, I bid farewell to the Material Girl and bounced down to the corner drug store for some additional shopping. At first I wasn’t paying too much attention to the piped-in music, but as I roamed the aisles in a futile search for whatever the hell it was that I wanted, I started to listen to the song pouring out of the sound system—and wished I h...