3. Here In The Cellar (2)

You might wonder how I came to get on the Internet.  Only a few years back,  I discovered the Abbot Agnes had a laptop computer in the bottom drawer of a tiny desk the prior Abbot had used for his office.  Agnes said neither Sparky (Brother Abbot Saint Florian of Linz,) or he ever had any need of it.  I asked to borrow the little computer and told Agnes I would use it to seek donations from the general public. I said it with a straight face and I kind of intended to do just that, despite the small likelihood that such begging would be lucrative.   He was frankly disinterested, knew nothing about the Internet and evidently thought of it as a modern version of the old Western Union Telegraph, where messages came in on spaghetti-like strips of paper that were cut into sentences and glued on a message form.

Now that I know a little about the wired world, I can say with some degree of certainty that tremendous odds were stacked against my success as I got the laptop connected to the Internet and started a blog.

And while it’s true that I may be the only novice ever to open the directions packed with the computer and follow  them explicitly from A to Z, it’s also true my Guardian Angel had to have contributed to the enterprise significantly.   She is something!  More about her later.

2. Here In The Cellar (1)

Hello out there!  I’m a monk!  Let me tell you about myself.  First, where I am!

If you fly south from Albany down the Hudson River toward New York City, the Catskill Mountains will be seen off to your right, their green stretches of forest coming all the way from the western horizon.  Closer to you, less than ten miles away, the rippling blanket of pine and hemlock  drops precipitously down an escarpment to a flat plain of mixed hardwood forest and open fields that run to the waterway gliding by beneath you.  The river is the Hudson, a stretch of water that is edged with towns named Red Hook, Saugerties, Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Port Ewen. 

Push the stick forward a tiny bit and move your feet to adjust the ailerons and your plane will swoop around and point west toward the mountains.  Follow a glide path gradually sloping down to just below the top of the mountain wall ahead of you.  Aim right at it, losing altitude as the mountain grows larger and details begin to show.  Between the trees you’ll see a house here and there.  Look for an old summer resort that is long past its prime, a cluster of buildings with a dilapidated tennis court.  There!  Among the trees.   Atop the highest roof of the resort sits a man in a monk’s robe.  You wonder why.  Well, because I’m a monk.  And you’d better pull up now because I don’t like airplane crashes.  I’ve been in one.

I don't spend much time up here on the roof.  Most of the time I can get a wifi signal down in the cellar.  The abbot here at Our Lady’s Monastery at West Saugerties has told me on more than one occasion to stay below decks.   So I spend most of my day in the cellar.  In the monasteries of olden times I might have been the cellarer … the monk  who kept track of  the  wine.  Given the predilections one might expect to find among a bunch of old celibate guys,  any wine we use today comes from the a liquor store in town and is held under close guard by the Abbot. We don’t need to have that kind of spirit sitting around beckoning to us.