Andrew Osenga House Show Information

Andrew Osenga, of the bands Caedmon's Call and The Normals, will be coming to our house for an intimate evening of story and song on Monday, March 22nd, at 7pm. If you don't know much about Andy or how awesome his music is, just go to the website to download some of his free EPs-- they're really really good, I promise. We won't be charging for tickets, but we will be happy to take your money to help defray the cost of bringing him to Baltimore (although we encourage you to buy a CD first if you only have $10 to spend.) We'll host as many people as can fit in our living room! (about 50 max) and we will also have snacks and beverages.

We will be selling beer and coffee as well. However, if you buy an Andy O pint glass, CD, or t-shirt, we'll fill you up for free all night!

We pretty much live in the 'hood, as my neighbors like to say. You might think you got horrifically lost while driving to the house, but you're fine! There is ample parking and the area is relatively safe if you are conscientious, but we often escort folks to/from their cars after dark if they so desire. So if you want, you can call my cell phone. Try to come early-- show will start at 7PM but it would be great if you could be there at least 10-20 minutes beforehand.

Please e-mail me at loftus dot matthew at gmail dot com for our address and cell phone number.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. We're (obviously) pretty excited about this-- just bring your own pillow to sit on! And feel free to invite other friends, too, whether they've heard of Andy or Caedmon's or not. Please come early!

a tale of two weddings

Since most people have probably only heard this story secondhand, Maggie & I figured it would be worthwhile (and fun!) to recount the tale of our crazy wedding weekend. This is incredibly overdue and we apologize! If you want to get right to the pictures, you can go straight to my parents' site to see 'em all or to the site of our awesome photographer, Josh Harris, who has a bunch of the best shots. We start on Friday the 18th...

I took my psychiatry shelf exam on Friday morning and only made it through once before my mind was completely occupied with thoughts about the wedding-- whether or not we'd be totally snowed out, how awkward I would look with my first dance, and whether or not the 4.5-hour schedule from the first few notes of Pachelbel's Canon to driving away would work. So I turned in my test, rode my bike home, and cleaned my house in preparation for the arrival of its new occupant. I then drove up to Harford County, receiving text messages from friends asking if we had a "contingency plan" for a foot of snow. Of course we didn't! We had had bigger fish to fry; having only just figured out how to get pinecones to adhere to the bottom of vases without shriveling or bobbing up to the surface of the water. Besides, all week the snow forecast was predicted to be six inches. No big deal.

But as the forecast grew more and more treacherous-sounding (I say sounding because I wasn't particularly worried), it became clear that we'd have to be open to other options. Yet we pressed on, and on Friday evening as the first few flakes began to fall we still told everyone who asked that the wedding was still on for the same time and same place. Various parental units and the pastor officiating the wedding (who lives way out in the woods with a half-mile gravel driveway) were concerned, but we were so enthralled with the idea that we were getting married! that we figured it would be alright. Of course.

Saturday morning we woke up to a landscape whiter than the Lands End catalogue. Maggie had stayed the night with some friends in a house, richly decorated for the holidays, on a hill in Fallston. A friend who was coordinating sanctuary decorations and the walking down the aisle called up with what sounded like a case of laryngitis and reported that the roads were in terrible condition. After speaking on the phone, we decided the best thing would be to postpone the wedding until Sunday. Though this was going to be pretty tough logistically, it would be the best way to celebrate with friends because, quite frankly, not even the entire wedding party would be able to come on Saturday (one of the groomsmen had to get his neighborhood to help him push his car out to come to the wedding on Sunday!) My mom then suggested that, since a pastor had offered to perform the ceremony on Saturday, that we go ahead with the wedding, but not quite as planned-- rather, we would hold the ceremony at the Loftus house! My mom immediately started cooking a lot of delicious food. I was shuttled down to the basement to avoid seeing my bride, where I watched funny YouTube videos with the other groomsmen.

Maggie's Turn: When April, Kez, Hannah, Nicole and I arrived to the Loftus house, I was immediately sent upstairs, to avoid being seen by Matthew (I was even chided for hugging a small Loftus child for a bit too long). We spent about an hour getting ready in the master bedroom while the baby slept. Our good friend Kez took charge and started organizing the event, running between the pastor and parents and me (her perspective on the events is here). I borrowed a dress and an ivory rose necklace from my future mother-in-law, and my mom brought my veil. Shoes were contemplated, but I had always said I wanted to get married barefoot, and here was my chance. Besides, with the shape and size of the living room at the Loftus house, the fact that most of the girls wore shirtdresses, jeans, and tiaras, things were beginning to look hilarious. We all queued in the upstairs hallway and waited for Kez to motion us down the stairs. The groomsmen escorted the bridesmaids down the zigzagged, makeshift aisle, with one person leading because it was so narrow. Then it was my turn. As I headed down the stairs, my father looked at me and began laughing. "This is so classic you," he reported. I, now catching sight of the stolen pointsettias lining the stairs, Matthew, and the forty people crammed into the living room, started to laugh as well. It was funny and heartfelt, and kind of perfect. The girls had scored enough decorations to make a small table with a unity candle set on it, and the tree was decorated to coordinate. I had been holed away for the hour while the setting up was going on, and now, realizing the effort that had been made to making the most of what we had on short notice, started to laugh and cry, all the way down the aisle.

After the ceremony, everyone was treated to a buffet in the Loftus dining room. Lydia sat on Maggie's lap the entire time, demanding salad. And Potatoes. When Keller sat next to Maggie, Lydia looked at Maggie and asked, "Why does Keller get to sit next to you?" (Be warned, gentlemen-- some females are truly never pleased!) Eric Cabell led some dancing in the living room after dinner, and a good, snowed-in time was had by all. At the end of the evening, the newly married Loftuses escaped to a hotel room, which a friend had generously purchased.

Matthew again: Emma picked us up the next morning and awkwardly stared at her bagel while we talked, and then we were off to our separate locations. I was ferrying stuff from house to church to church and trying not to forget things (like my tie-- good thing Joel was still back at the house) and after a couple of trips back and forth between churches and houses (including a few times running through foot-high snow with a vegetable platter in my hand) we all got to church on time. One of the groomsmen, who owns a pretty sweet car that is also very close to the ground, had to get his neighbors to help him push it up the hill to get there!

Of course the ceremony was wonderful and every Loftus kid got to be involved one way or the other, even if it was just sitting there looking cute (Julia was still recovering from the chickenpox but still made it!) It was way too hot inside the sanctuary but we dismissed everyone, took our pictures, went out into the snow, took more pictures, and then went to the reception! I doubt our friends will ever forgive us for making them go out into the snow when only Maggie had adequate footwear, but that is another story for another day.

We were so happy that we got to have two weddings-- one a small, intimate family affair and the other a huge party with all the friends that could drive there! And boy was it a party. Despite the lack of alcohol, we still had a massive dance-off and plenty of people dancing for hours, an incredibly embarrassing best man speech, and an Arrested Development imitation that you had to be there to see.



The only other recent event in human history so well-documented was the Obama inauguration, and they had no breakdancing 6-year-olds. So you can look at all the pictures any time you want:







Wedding #1 (December 19)








Wedding #2 (December 20)







Reception

we were not born to be niggers

If it was us, if it was our lonesome ass shuffling past the corner of Monroe and Fayette every day, we'd get out, wouldn't we? We'd endure. Succeed. Thrive. No matter what, no matter how, we'd find the fucking exit.

If it was our fathers firing dope and our mothers smoking coke, we'd pull ourselves past it. We'd raise ourselves, discipline ourselves, teach ourselves the essentials of self-denial and delayed gratification that no one in our universe ever demonstrated. And if home was the rear room of some rancid, three-story shooting gallery, we'd rise above that, too. We'd shuffle up the stairs past nodding fiends and sullen dealers, shut the bedroom door, turn off the television, and do our schoolwork. Algebra amid the stench of burning rock; American history between police raids. And if there was no food on the table, we're certain we could deal with that. We'd lie about our age to cut taters and spill grease and sling fries at the sub shop for five-and-change-an-hour, walking every day past the corner where friends are making our daily wage in ten minutes.

No matter. We'd persevere, wouldn't we? We'd work that job by night and go to class by day, by some miracle squeezing a quality education from the disaster that is the Baltimore school system. We'd do all the work, we'd pay whatever the price. And when all the other children are out in the street, learning the corner world, priming themselves for the only life they've ever known, we'd be holed up in some shithole of a rowhouse with our textbooks and yellow highlighter, cramming for finals. Come payday, we wouldn't blow that minimum-wage check on Nikes, or Fila sweat suits, or Friday night movies at Harbor Park with the neighborhood girls. No fucking way, brother, because we pulled self-esteem out of a dark hole somewhere and damned if our every day desire isn't absolutely in-check. We don't need to buy any status items; no, we can save every last dollar, or invest it, maybe. And in the end, we know, we'll head off to our college years shining like a new dime, swearing never to set foot on West Fayette Street again.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.

It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.

Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith.

Why? The truth is plain:

We were not born to be niggers.

-from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, by David Simon and Ed Burns.

you can read a decent chunk of the book here, thanks to Google Books!