St. Anne Church

St Anne Church
Categories: Elementary Schools, Middle Schools & High Schools
Neighborhood: Queen Anne
10/2/2008 First to Review
Queen Anne. St Anne. Who has heard of either, one a queen, the other a saint?

It is hard to be direct about the impact of living near a parochial school AND church without offending others.

Nonetheless, I will state that, notwithstanding my great respect for all the religions of the world (and less so for the religious institutions charged with the responsibility of...) I am not always comforted by the proximity of children who occupy the playground from 8 am until 3:30.

With outdoor recess from 10:30 am until 1:30 pm, I am wondering how much time these kids have for classroom learning. Or are they diligently practicing for extras in a new movie about kamikaze pilots on their last mission?

Children will be children, I know.

I still wonder, though, if they are in training to become the future Attila the Hun (and Hun-esses), exercising their full-throttle voices so that their piercing screams and cries can be heard hundreds of meters away, traveling through double-plated glass windows?

Not only are we the neighbors blessed with their weekday presence, but on weekends we are occasionally treated as well to the appearance of white-tents, on the asphalt playground, from which bull-horns blare into our homes.

During the Sunday morning service the playground is transformed into a sea of cars and excited parishioners rushing out from the, euphemistically speaking, nondescript modern brick-and-concrete church. (Luckily the bell tower does not chime on the hour).

Late Saturday evenings the school apparently rents outs it gymnasium which results in some pretty raucous parties with very loud music.

What great luck to have such a model neighbor...

However, I admire the dark red Tudor-ish brick building at the corner of 3rd W., with its quiet, unprepossessing, ivy-covered dignity: a sign of a different era, different values, namely, respect for others.