The Blue Chapel Blues- Union City

When I was a kid attending St. Francis Academy in Union City, I walked home some days past the cloistered home of some Dominicans nuns  who lived in the mysterious Blue Chapel.  That was back in the old days, when St. Michael's Monastery was the centerpiece of Union City architecture; when Veronica's Veil played every Easter season; when the Passion Play at the park Theatre was a Lenten obligation never to be missed.  Union City was a monument to the European Catholic diaspora - Irish priests, Italian customs, French nuns, and the German Fritz Rueter Altenheim on Union Hill.
The Blue Chapel was a place we went to buy religious articles -rosaries, cards - or to see the vestments that would sometimes be purchased and displayed along with the flowers at a funeral.  I never got the past the gift shop.  My mother did all of the talking.  I just remember that it was very quiet, and that I had to stand very straight and still.  To this day, it remains a curosity to me.
This article about the Blue Chapel appeared in this week's Star-Ledger.  The connected videos are great, too.  Give it a read, and remember when you were little and didn't know whether or not nuns had legs.  Better yet, place yourself in the time when there was a church dominated by some ethnic group in your neghborhood, a neighborhood candy store, and you walked to the neighborhood school -Catholic or public. The world was smaller and more familiar. What was your Blue Chapel? Like Blondie, what's the power and passion of your Union City Blue?

Keep reading and writing, especially during Lent when you are not eating potato chips or pretzels or olives,

Maureen*

*Thanks, Judy, for directing me to this article