The Council of the Congregation and the General Chapter are over.  They were interesting.  At times they were a little sad or painful.  It is not easy to close a province.  Besides the Southern Province being closed (and joined to another province), the English Canadian Province and the French Provinces were changed from the status of province to the status of a vicariate under the direct authority of the superior general.  If the French Canadian Province of Brothers and the French Canadian Province of Priests do not merge soon, the French Canadian Brothers Province will also become a vicariate.

 Early in the morning, John Korcsmar, Brother David Andrews, and Brother Richard Gillman left the place where we were all staying at 3:30 a.m. to go to the Rome airport.  It was about 4:00 a.m. when they got there, and there were very, very few people there.  Fortunately, the flight that they were on was being checked in--all of the other desks were closed.  It was a very eerie feeling with no one in the airport.  To make matters worse, there was no place to get a cup of coffee--Anything less than coffee in the morning simply isn't civilized!!

The Amsterdam airport was something to see.  First of all, it was HUGE!!  Secondly, it is loaded with different kinds of stores, shops, and restaurants.  They actually checked passports when you enter one of the sections.  The flight from Amsterdam to Houston was looooooooooooooooooooooong, over 10 hours.  Thank God for upgrades and at that an empty seat next to me.  John was able to, first, sleep and sleep.  Then, using the power supply on the plane he was able to get a number of hours of work done on the plane on the laptop.  He didn't even look at any of the movies.  He did, however, manage to find the time to get a couple of meals down while he was working.

Then back in Houston, one has the joyful experience of going to customs and immigration.  There was some kind of a beagle sniffing the suitcases for drugs.  John couple but wonder if Duffy had missed his true calling.  He was always sniffing, but he was just looking for food. 

It's not time for the last flight to Austin yet, but John keeps pushing the wrong buttons.  We think that he is kind of tired.  He'd better get off the computer before he launches a missile to Leningrad by mistake.  That may sound far-fetched, but he did write a letter to his province suggesting that it was time to close the province, and he caused over 60 people to come to Rome for only the second extraordinary general chapter in the Congregation's history.  The first was in 1868.  You never know how many people you are going to inconvenience.