I’m kind of a finals widow this week, since the Ogre is giving finals, keeping late hours at the writing center, and coming home in the wee sma’s with gazillions of blue books to grade. Obviously, I’m super sick of 12-15 hour work days, but this week his nightly absence has given me a chance to try out some new facial tricks from ye olde crunchtacular interwebs. In case you missed it, we still live in southwest Florida, which is... Read more

A few months after we moved to Ave Maria, I was talking with another mother in our neighborhood. She kept asking me if I knew so-and-so, who lived around the corner, or so-and-so, who lived at the end of my street. Finally, she asked if I knew the neighbor directly across the street from me. When I responded in the negative yet again, she shot me a kind of sideways glance and asked, “Do you ever leave your house?” At... Read more

This is part II of my review of Ave Maria’s Shakespeare in Performance’s Much Ado About Nothing. You can read the first part here. When I wrote my first review of Ave’s Much Ado About Nothing, I focused mainly on Don Pedro and Claudio. I was upset by them, but to tell you the truth, there was another character that upset me so much more that my ire at Don Pedro and Claudio paled in comparison. My most brilliant and... Read more

#7 Thanks to everyone who prayed for me and/or listened to me yesterday! Surprisingly I had a great time, only said “umm” twice (I know this, because the Ogre kept a running tally via text message), and only cringed a few times when I listened to it this morning. If you want to hear it, here’s the link to listen to it streaming. #6 Unfortunately, Sheila mispronounced my name, but I was so intent on not “umming” that I didn’t... Read more

Sorry for the silencio this week. We’ve been doing the doctors’ appointment thing, plus I have bronchitis. But I got antibiotics today, so yay. If you have access to Relevant Radio, you can catch me tonight on A Closer Look with Sheila Liaugminas at 6 pm ET, 5 PM CT. I’ll be joining the two Gregs (that’s the Deacon and the Doctor, for the uninitiated) for a roundtable discussion on – you guessed it! – babies in Mass. Listen, guys,... Read more

  Deacon Greg opened up a can of worms the other day when he posted a letter from a reader asking why parents with screaming children don’t remove their kids from Mass. The letter-writer has Meniere’s disease, and loud, high-pitched noises are physically detrimental to her. I read her letter with true sympathy, read the comment section with sympathy for most commenters, and then sat down to write this because there were a few comments that literally left me astounded.... Read more

So here I am, joining in the roundtable discussion of Pat Gohn’s Blessed, Beautiful, and Bodacious: Celebrating the Gift of Catholic Womanhood. Unfortunately, I’m the professional equivalent of the kid who put off writing her term paper until 3 am the morning before it’s due. Today is the last day of the roundtable, and I’m typing this up at 10:22 pm, hoping I can finish before midnight. It’s been a hell of a week for this country. Emphasis on the... Read more

This morning, I read through this link of images of people helping each other in the wake of the horror that happened at the Boston Marathon yesterday. All these things were inspiring, but this is the one that had me in tears: It’s beautiful to see human beings being human to each other. No questionnaire, no check-list of qualifications. No “I have a place to offer if you’re a Christian, or an atheist, or a Democrat, or as long as... Read more

How do you measure the success of a Shakespeare in Performance play? For me, the standard is this: by the end of the play, when the cast breaks into their final, triumphant song, you will want to smile and laugh and get up and cheer but by that point the muscles in your face will be aching and twitchy from having laughed for three solid hours. You’ll try and give the cast your best, most sincere and hearty big-toothed smile,... Read more

Yesterday, the National Catholic Register blew up over Simcha’s article about how Traditionalists should try to distance themselves from the Holocaust deniers/belittlers in their midst. The subject of Traditionalists and Holocaust-denial is not one I want to touch, but I was fascinated that one objection kept coming up in the comment box. It was asked in a number of ways by a number of commenters, but what it boiled down to was this: What’s wrong with denying the Holocaust or... Read more