By David Fortier
Come Sunday morning, the white pine (concolor if you recall from last week’s column) has been decorated with lights but not ornaments just quite yet and stands in our living room. It’s a relatively short one and very round, which works well.
On Saturday, a busy day all-around, we celebrated the youngest grandchild’s first birthday, which is about an hour and a quarter drive away. Mary and I arrived just after 10 a.m. and shorty afterwards the others were knocking at the door. We blew up balloons to string across the ceiling, chatted with the World Cup as a backdrop, ate and ate and ate and then ate cake.
Late afternoon, Mary and I headed out with leftovers. (What was a nice treat is the Fortier-Boyle cake tradition continues: the homemade white cake, Quick Gold Cake from our old Fannie Farmer cookbook, if you can believe that, along with homemade buttercream frosting, from the same, lives.) And it’s as tasty as ever.
Saturday night was the Holiday Showcase of Stars at St. Paul, with its cast of local talent, and a special dance remembering the local police officers who lost their lives in tragic gun incident on Oct. 12 as well as honoring the officer who survived. Police Chief Brian Gould was on hand to address the audience and also to draw winning tickets from the long list of raffle offerings.
Kudos to Deb Schur, director of the show which raises funds for local Catholic schools, and who also came down with a case of laryngitis, keeping her from making her traditional address closing the evening.
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A few weeks ago Mary and I attended the Hartford Stage performance of “It’s a Wonderful Life: the Radio Program.” This is the second year it has been offered, and I have to say, I enjoyed the second time around as much if not more than the first time. The show runs through Dec. 24, if you are interested.
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Listening/reading this week is a little different. If you haven’t already experienced AI (artificial intelligence) in its latest iteration, you might be interested in clicking here. OpenAI chat-gpt answers your questions about most anything, writes essays and discusses how it reaches conclusions. You will have to create an account to use it. Once you do, you will have glimpsed the future. After you do, you might have to sit back to recover.
For your listening, try the latest On The Media podcast episodes on Hunter Biden’s hacked laptop and Disney’s recent experience with the culture wars. Click here.
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And another reminder, please consider supporting TBE with a small recurring monthly contribution beginning at $6 a month. That way we will be able to increase our coverage of all things Bristol, our own attempt to bring local news coverage back to the community.
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Enjoy!
“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.
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