The power is finally back at our friary here in Griswold. Deo Gratias! Our prayers go out to all who have not gotten their power back or have suffered more tragic losses. Even with our small problems here we now have a much greater appreciation for the wonders of electricity which we normally take for granted.

It was mighty hurricane Irene, one of the biggest hurricanes (if you count size alone) which knocked out our power.

But it was a little tiny mouse which prevented our standby generator from coming on. After working feverishly to get the engine of the generator working properly before the storm hit we didn’t have time do a real test of putting the friary on generator power alone. But we figured it had worked fine a few months ago so we should be all set. Well, as we were praying early Sunday morning with the howling winds of Irene (a tropical storm by then) shaking the chapel, we were not too surprised when the power went out. We confidently waited for the generator to come on and, indeed, we heard the engine fire up automatically just as expected. We looked around the darkened chapel anticipating the lights to surge back on in a flood of lumens, but after a moment’s pause, and after a Hail Mary, we were quite sure the power was not to be restored so easily.

Upon investigation we found that small, fury creatures like the one pictured above had made a nest in the control box of the generator and in the generator itself. For such cute little critters they are actually quite destructive and rendered the generator inoperable, and …. rather smelly.

Fra Augustine made a special trip back form Mt St Francis Hermitage where he was working on the radio station and he and Fra John worked almost continuously for the next four days trying to get it working. Using the internet to get manuals and read the tech blogs, (via a cellular modem on a laptop powered by an inverter plugged into a car) they learned more about Onan generators than they ever cared to. They actually tested every component and even after replacing the few failed components the generator still never worked. The local electrical shops could not help because they where swamped with over seventy other generators that people needed to get working.  I guess the mice were very busy, indeed!

Eventually the many work crews who where cutting up fallen trees and replacing the downed wires along our Connecticut roadways got the main power on for us, beating our intrepid tech friars to the punch. As they say, the best laid plans mice and men often come to naught. Our generator back-up plans were dashed and the mice lost their nest which they had planned to be their permanent home.

The power came on at half voltage last night.  We did manage to get the homily up this morning even with the blinking, half-dimmed lights and the laptop switching back and forth between outlet and battery. Then full power came on at about noontime.

So we survived the biggest storm to hit New England in twenty years and even survived the tiny mice. We found out that we were in the worst hit areas in regard to wind damage and power outages in New England, as we are about ten miles away from North Stonington, which was the very worst hit.

We are now considering what to do with our generator. We definitely need to get it running so we don’t have to break out the candles, inverters and buckets again, especially with hurricane Katia threatening already. We are also trying to figure out what to do with Slink and Barb, our derelict cats, who let the mice play right under their noses! (To be fair they had no way of getting into the shed, but they have definitely lost their hero-hunter status here at the friary)

Thank you for all your prayers and kind words and for lending a helping hand in keeping the friary and the friars going during this difficult time. We are grateful. Stay tuned for more homilies and videos.

Ave Maria!

Ave Maria!

We are out of power here at Air Maria after hurricane Irene came through and knocked out power to about half the residents in the state of Connecticut. Our town of Griswold and the surrounding towns have 100% power loss and it could be a full week before it is restored. No definitive estimate has been given.

In the meantime, we are trying to find power whenever we can, using inverters to get power from our cars. We may get tomorrows homily up but there will be none from today and yesterday. All other posting will be reduced as well.

We do have good sized generator and even got it running the night before in a fevered, pitch battle against time, but in the morning when the power went out, the generator started up but the switch gear failed to hook into the generator. So now we are waiting to get an electrician but these, of course, are hard to find when they are so busy restoring power. Our friary only has two days of stored water so hopefully we will back on line soon. Keep us in your prayers.  You will be in ours.

Ave Maria!

Fi News #116 – Bloomington on air ( 05min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Our newest radio station, With Our Mother Blest, in Bloomington, IN – WOMB 89.9 FM Ellettsville (the community of license) – is now on the air at full power! In fact, it was cranked up to full power a few weeks ago, but we have been so busy with three AirMaria road trips for conferences and then to World Youth Day in Madrid, that we have not been able to get this post up until now.

This is the 3rd radio station on the air belonging to our AirMaria Radio Network, the first being Holy Virgin Mary Radio, 91.9 FM Owego, NY, and the second being CorMariae, WPMW 88.5 FM Bayview, MA.

We are still fighting to find a tower location for Holy Name of Mary Radio, WHNM 89.5 FM Pawcatuck, CT.

With Our Mother Blest, WOMB 89.9 FM, is a very strategically located radio station because it reaches the 42, 000 college students and 3,000 professors that are at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Simply put, for the first time Catholic radio content will be delivered via this station to one of the major intellectual centers of the United States and of the world.

We are currently an EWTN repeater, rebroadcasting the EWTN Radio satellite feed 24/7 with our own top of the hour ID’s chiming in every hour to comply with FCC regulations, but we plan to build our own studio at the new friary in the winter and to begin to add more of our own content as we become more capable.

Ave Maria!

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Ave Maria!

The AirMaria team is in Madrid and will start posting video soon – hopefully.  After a long flight, with a long layover, and travel time (36 hours all told) we finally arrived on Monday at the hotel in Madrid late in the afternoon, but there seems to be great confusion reigning here and a few technical mishaps that have delayed getting things on AirMaria.

We have, in fact, been quite productive but we are doing multilingual videos for some of the European sites through Fr. Alfonso Bruno, the FI communications director and this has taken most of our time as well as spending a good hour to get anywhere on the Metro Train. We may even be doing some live streaming at some point, again, hopefully.

The Pope will have his first Mass this evening and they expect upwards of a million people coming for the final event at the Madrid Aerodrome. So far the trains are already packed full of super energetic Catholic youth from around the world.

I cant imagine how busy and crowded it will be later on and how enthusiastic they will all be now that the Holy Father is in Madrid.

Packed likes Sardines.

Viva Italia!

Go America!

We will be attending the first public showing of the John Duns Scotus film at 5:15pm this evening where we will do an interview. The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate produced this movie in conjunction with TVCO in Italy. It is the official World Youth Day film and won the Vatican’s Silver Fish Award.

A map showing the incidents of persecution against Catholics at the Photographic Presentation of Christian Persecution at St Jerome’s parish in Madrid set up by the . This was narrated for our French site by Cristina Tatu of Aid to the Church in Need. Wait for the Video.

Yesterday, 16 December 2010, was the unofficial birthday of Radio CorMariae. At around 5:30pm we jerry-rigged the newly installed antenna line, connected it up to the transmitter, and fired up the radio station for the first time. It was an incredibly joyful event as this was the culmination of over 2 years of hard work by a huge team of volunteers to get this radio station up and running – and we, the privileged few, got to enjoy the fruit of all that hard work – if only for a brief period of time.

Don’t get excited and tune in your radio to 88.5 FM yet! This was only our first test transmission and there is still a lot of technical and engineering work to be completed before we can go on the air full-time. Our official launch date is set for 25 March 2011.

A picture tells a thousand words:

All hands on deck to assemble the antenna.

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Dave, the “Tower Monkey” prepares to climb the tower.

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The antenna is hoisted up the tower.

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The “Jerry-Rigged” antenna line is connected to the transmitter.

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Frank Baptista fires up the transmitter for the first time!

We can’t thank all our benefactors enough – we can do nothing without your help and support. You are too many to be listed – you are all in our daily prayers.

Merry Christmas and long live Radio CorMariae!

Ave Maria!

It is no coincidence that momentous things in our order always seem to occur on the Feasts of Our Blessed Mother, it is after all, Her Order and we are Her possession and property.

Today, on the Feast of Our Lady of  Loreto, Our Lady’s Radio Station, Radio CorMariae, WPMW, 88.5 FM New Bedford, MASS was granted a minor modification to our Construction Permit which allows us to install a highly directional antenna mounted on a cell phone tower overlooking the city center. It is a relatively small transmitter, with an effective radiated power of only 140W, but the location means that we should get a good strength signal covering most of New Bedford.

We will find out very shortly just how good our coverage is as Friar John will be arranging the installation of the antenna and the transmitter early next week and we will probably be testing our signal mid-week and be on the air and broadcasting (unofficially) on Thursday 16th December.

We rejoice with Our Blessed Mother on Her Feast day for the projected launch of the second radio station owned and operated by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate in the United States and our heartfelt thanks goes out to all our benefactors without whom we can do nothing. Many thanks to the numerous volunteers who have worked tirelessly to fund raise for this project as well as work on the engineering and construction sides of the station.

Also many thanks to Steve Gajdosik of the Catholic Radio Association, Matt Wesolowski (engineering),  Stu Nolan (legal counsel), and Dennis Kelly (also legal counsel).

Dennis also gave us this little snippet so appropriate to today’s Feast and the launch of Radio CorMariae:

“In reviewing today’s traditional Roman Martyrology, I found the following reference to the Basilica of the Holy House at Loreto, Italy, one of the more memorable Catholic shrines I’ve visited:

“At Loreto in Piceno, the Translation of the Holy House of Mary the Mother of God, wherein the Word was made flesh.  Pope Benedict XV declared the same Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of Loreto, to be the chief Patroness before God of all airmen“.”

Airmen - Hey, that’s us. AirMaria men. Airwaves men.

A very Blessed and Merry Christmas to you all.

Ave Maria!

Ave Maria!

If you can see this post then the

Server is Working

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Thanks again!

Ave Maria!

Thanks to the generosity of our benefactors we ordered the new server. Deo Gratias and may he reward all who made this possible.

And it is being installed now. In fact, the site may be switching over to it tonight. I am not sure though. In theory it will be smooth. But we ask for your prayers.

Ave Maria!

Ave Maria!

Well, as many of you have noticed, we have been down quite a few times in the last 24 hours with a message something like:

Our generous benefactor who gives us the web space free (he owns a web design business) has told us that AirMaria has maxed-out the current server.

The Good News

This is good news in that we now have about double the traffic coming to the site.

The Bad News

But it is also bad news in that we now need to upgrade to a dedicated server! This will be about four times the price. Our benefactor would love to pay for the whole server but with EIGHT kids (truly a pro-life Catholic!) he has some pretty serious budget constraints. The cost will be $200 per month.

He is willing to pitch in $50 per month and a lot of his precious time in regard to free consulting and tech support. What we need is three more people to commit to supporting us with a $50 monthly donation. If you are willing, we can even set up an electronic payment feature that will make the entire process as easy as possible in the months to come.

With this server we will be able to keep AirMaria going well into the future, even with 20 times the traffic! It is something to seriously pray about. Let me know by sending an email to apostolate@airmaria.com

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Fra Roderic