The sunflowers will not stop. In 2023, I planted a few different varieties of sunflower in my garden to see what would happen. I ended up with great towering blooms that I left to dry out until frost as a treat for the birds. The birds dropped seeds. The next year, and every year thereafter, I have had scores of free cross-pollenated sunflowers, growing out of the garden beds and the compost. Every year I transplant as many as... Read more
I don’t want to talk about modesty. In fact, I refuse to talk about modesty. It’s the least interesting subject in all of internet Catholic discourse and it just doesn’t matter to me anymore. I don’t want to talk about modesty any more than I want to talk about felt banners (which I don’t mind) or tambourines (which I loathe) or the song “Mary, Did You Know?” The modesty discourse is a meme from 2019 and we all need... Read more
I can’t tell you what it’s like to be a good Christian. But I can tell you a few things about nature, in northern Appalachia, in the springtime. I hadn’t seen nearly enough of nature this Spring. I had been so tired. I was finishing up my school year of classes at the church outreach, nearly done for the year but not quite. I was trying to get things in order to plant the backyard garden since it’s nearly May.... Read more
I saw that photo, of an IDF soldier smashing a crucifix in Lebanon. I saw it several times. Everywhere I scrolled on social media, I saw it: a rather pink plaster corpus, upside down with his feet in the air, and a man slamming into it with a great big hammer. It hurt just to look at, and as I looked, a thousand images ran through my mind– not words or sentences or morals of the story, just images and... Read more
I’m calling the sunflowers “The LaBelle Special.” Sunflowers are a flower that cross pollenates with ridiculous ease. If you want to keep only one breed of sunflower and store the seeds for next year, you have to grow it a very long way off from any other breed, and I don’t have a large backyard. In 2023 I planted three different breeds of heirloom sunflower: lemon queens with a myriad of small yellow blossoms, Red Velvet with dark burgundy... Read more
I want to address a few misconceptions about Catholicism that I’ve seen all around social media lately, in response to President Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance and their current feud with Pope Leo XIV. I’ve been writing about this feud as it’s progressed and gotten sillier and sillier. I’ve heard both pro-MAGA and anti-MAGA talking points on this issue that are driving me mad, because the facts they presume about Catholicism are objectively mistaken. Some people trying... Read more
There’d been a bit of an emergency downtown, because the derelict building behind a row of storefronts collapsed. On Easter Monday, the owner of the bookstore came to check on his shop, and realized that the whole edifice behind it was leaning and about to go. The internal structure of the abandoned building had crumpled, leaving the clapboard walls sagging like a half-baked cake. The bookshop was unharmed, but would be flattened if that building sagged in the wrong... Read more
We need to talk about the spat between the Trump Administration and the Pope one more time. It needs to be mentioned, first of all, that there have been conflicting accounts about exactly what happened at that meeting between Cardinal Pierre and Elbridge Colby which I told you about last week. No one denies the meeting happened. It certainly did. No one denies words were exchanged. Some are saying it was perfectly cordial and that claiming Colby threatened the... Read more
We are God-People We went on an adventure– Adrienne, Jimmy’s boy, and me. For a long time, I had been promising Jimmy’s boy that we were going to visit the Hellbender Preserve in Bloomingdale, to see the historic Lincoln Bridge and the railroad tunnel. When the day came, I packed up the car with snacks and water and went to collect him. He came out of his house, carrying a tablet in a stout blue protective case. He’d borrowed it... Read more
I wanted to speak more about the president’s threats against Iran and his subsequent surrender today, and I will soon. But there’s no time for that just now, because we’ve got another political bombshell to talk about. It’s now being reported that in January, the Pentagon threatened the Vatican. It has been reported, and confirmed by a few different outlets, that in January, Cardinal Cristophe Pierre, then the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, was summoned to the Pentagon... Read more
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