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
As I am writing this, it is three o’clock Eastern daylight time, in the afternoon on Easter Tuesday, and I don’t know what will happen with the Iran war tonight. As am I writing, the president is still adamant that he’s going to kill “a whole civilization” at eight o’clock PM Eastern. Theoretically, if he can be trusted, we have five hours. But I have no idea whether he’ll follow through on his threat or not. This, to me,... Read more
They discovered graves on the hillside just down the street. Down on the south end of LaBelle, just behind the laundromat, construction workers tore up the vacant lot that’s been empty for as long as I’ve lived here. I was sorry, because there’s so little nature here in LaBelle. I wish they’d let every vacant lot grow up wild and turn back into prairie, but of course, they can’t. Workmen came in their noisy excavators and flayed away the... Read more
You didn’t kill Jesus. You couldn’t have. Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father. Such a Being couldn’t possibly die, unless He chose to become something else. And He did. He voluntarily chose to become a man, with a body that could break and die, so He could be closer to you. Jesus is not angry with you. He isn’t upset with you. That’s not what this day is about. Jesus came to earth because He wanted... Read more
Hi friends, this isn’t a real blog post. This is my every-few-months boilerplate where I tell everyone where to find me when I’m not here and how to support my work. This winter was a turbulent one in our country, and I’ve been documenting that by discussing white supremacists’ odd notions about immigrants including the family of Steubenville’s own Dean Martin. I have been reminding people about the Catholic Church’s Just War Doctrine and how the war in Iran doesn’t... Read more
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