Friends. I see you, and the sweat on your brow as you labor in the summer heat. You own a bit of earth. You care for your bit of earth. But despite your care, perhaps you have a corner of your yard that you are tired of mowing and weeding and watering. Perhaps you find… Continue reading What I Did for Summer Vacation: a Fable
I’ve been away long enough that I feel I ought to post a proper essay; but since that thought has kept me from posting anything at all for several months, perhaps now’s the time to table that project for a minute or two. So; what non-terrible things can I talk about? Well, I’ve been Wordling.… Continue reading About last night, and other quick takes
Hello and welcome to today’s episode of “saints whose biographies we may have misunderstood.” Let’s talk about Ss Louis and Zélie Martin, parents of Thérèse of Lisieux and the first spouses to ever be canonized as a couple. If you know any story about… Continue reading Mutual Help & Support: on the Ss Martin and their Josephite Marriage
Non-Covid related things have happened recently! Let’s discuss! Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood, had an op-ed in the NYT in which she comes out to say something along the lines of “well, yeah, turns out Margaret Sanger was kinda a racist eugenicist who exploited poor women in Puerto Rico as test subjects in… Continue reading It’s Gonna Be May: Some Quick (but perhaps no longer fresh) Takes
A year ago I wrote up my thoughts about the life and death of St. Maria Goretti. Remembering those thoughts, some friends recently shared with me Molly Wilson O’Reilly’s essay about the death of 16-year-old Anna Kolesárová, a teenage victim of attempted rape and successful murder, who was beatified in 2018 by Pope Francis. I’d… Continue reading Preserved Whole and Entire: St. Maria Goretti and her Successors in Martyrdom
The overflowing dumpster fire that is 2020 continues to rage, and at this point I’m just waiting for a metaphorical (or real) wombat to offer me shelter underground until everything flammable has finally been burnt to a crisp. There is too much to discuss, and yet it seems everything worth saying has been said a… Continue reading What Goes Around: Past-me, and Her Opinions
A friend of mine was just expressing her concern at having attended a mass wherein the priest edited the doxology to say: “Through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ…” I’ve heard the same change on occasion, and been annoyed by it. Of course that particular edit doesn’t invalidate the mass — so was our annoyance… Continue reading Per ipsum, cum ipso, in ipso: Gender Inclusivity Strikes Again
Just a few things I’ve been reading this month! First and foremost, against all odds, the video recording of the original cast performance of Hamilton is FINALLY being released, and by finally I mean not until October 2021 and then only in select theaters. Disney shelled out in the amount of $75 million for the recording,… Continue reading Links, Reactions, Inappropriate Nicknames
A friend recently pointed me to this blog post, wherein the pseudonymous “Boniface” addresses what he sees as certain modern errors in how we interpret the life story of St. Maria Goretti. Namely: he wants it known that a) Maria was canonized a saint because she died to protect her virginity, and b) any rape… Continue reading What They Died For: Maria, Agnes, and Mistaking Virginity for Virtue
A study on abortion’s effect on women’s emotions, titled “Emotions and decision rightness over five years following an abortion: An examination of decision difficulty and abortion stigma,” was published last week in Social Science and Medicine and has since been making the rounds online. 30 clinics, 21 states: researchers solicited survey responses from women after… Continue reading Regretting, Forgetting, and Trying to Make Sense of an Abortion-Related Survey
Hwaet I Meant to Say 