Ave Maria (traditional)

Language: Portuguese

This third song in the virgin trilogy was of course a bit more translated than usual: I was working off of what I'm told was a relatively literal English translation of the song. So the chain is, Latin to English to Portuguese to English.

My primary association with this song, not having been raised Catholic, is a pop-cultural one: I don't recall the context particularly, but I remember that Nell Carter, on "Gimme a Break," once took a ridiculous (considering how much airtime costs) amount of show time to sing it once, and it was very pretty the way she did it. That may well have been the first time I'd heard the song, and it's still kind of the way I expect to hear it, when I hear it, which is not very often.¹

The photo is from the Ugly Duckling car dealership in Clearwater, Florida, in 1996. There were apparently similar streaks on the building's other windows, but only this one looked like a figure in a hooded robe. The likely explanation is that the sprinkler system was throwing oil from the palm trees adjacent to the building up onto the glass, building up over time and forming rounded interference patterns. I think it's pretty, in an odd way, though not supernatural.

-Jessi

¹Carter's is kind of a tragic story, by the way. Check out the Wikipedia link.

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They hail Mary of grace,
Mary, completely full of grace.
Hail Mary, full of the grace:
hail you, Sir. You are blessed with
women; you enter,
and bless, and bless,
the fruit of its womb
(of its womb).

Hail Mary de Jesús! Pray
so that we will pray for them (sinners).
Pray for us sinners
now, and in the hour of death,
and the hour of our death,
and the hour of our death,
and our hour of the
death of Mary. Hail!