This year it is nineteen years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks– almost a whole generation. The children who were babies and toddlers then, are just about old enough to start a family now. I write about 9/11 every year, and I still don’t know how to do it justice. Every year I watch the news footage of the attacks, trying to remind myself what it was like. Last year, 2019, was the first time it looked old. The camera footage... Read more
Friends, I have a huge opportunity for you to perform a work of mercy. I have a Twitter follower named Carl Cooper, who banters with me from time to time. I didn’t know him too well, but I’ve googled him and he’s definitely a real person. He lives in Florida. I’ve found out in the past week that Carl is an older man who is disabled and suffering badly because he can’t roll over in bed. He’s currently sleeping... Read more
I picked corn yesterday. Corn is a plant that only yields if you plant a huge quantity; that’s why real farmers’ cornfields are so big. The pollen blows through the field and gives you a good crop. If you plant only a few stalks of corn, you’ll harvest much less per stalk. I only had room for twelve corn stalks, so I planted twelve, and from the twelve I harvested one armload of cream-colored sweet corn. I put it in... Read more
Did you ever get so severely exhausted, your eyes wouldn’t focus? Forgive me. I think this entire month of blog posts is going to be brought to you by a bad-mannered stray cat. I’m finally off of my amoxicillin horse pills, but I’ve still got one rabies shot to go Saturday, and apparently I am one of the people who gets intense flu-like symptoms from rabies prophylaxis. Every time I get a shot, I have an increasingly longer period... Read more
I just read Rod Dreher’s unbelievably racist, ugly, self-satisfied essay “Moral Order and Civil Conflict” in The American Conservative. I don’t reccommend you do the same, but I do want to talk about just one bit of it because Rod has accidentally beautifully illustrated how white privilege works. The article itself is dreadful. It’s long-winded, pompous, light on actual facts, and overtly rather than casually racist. I’m not even going to do one of my now-famous paragraph-by-paragraph takedowns because I... Read more
The week has not been conducive to very much writing. I had my second rabies shot on Wednesday, after the terrifying emergency room misadventure on Sunday night and Monday morning. It was a little earlier than I’m accustomed to going out of the house thanks to my fights with fatigue. Of course, the infusion department is right across a whimsically-decorated hallway from the labor and delivery ward, which made me feel worse. The nurses were very gentle, and the shot... Read more
You may recall that yesterday I wrote a short blog post, ending by telling you that I was going outside to have fun with Rosie. Well, that’s not what ended up happening. At least, not for more than a few minutes. It was a beautiful evening. We haven’t had a beautiful evening in the longest time. It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t cloudy; the sky blue and the low sun cast long shadows. My neighbors’ giant sunflowers were... Read more
I saw a photo today I wanted to share. You can see it on the Friendship Room’s facebook page. These children visit them all the time. I promise Molly is super careful about wearing her mask; she just took it off for a moment for the picture. Look at that lovely family biking and playing outdoors. They blew soap bubbles and enjoyed the sun today. You all know that I’ve been upset for a week straight about the horrendous... Read more
I used to volunteer at the Unity Kitchen. I still don’t know if the Unity Kitchen was the official name of the soup kitchen in the basement of a church downtown, or if that was just Pastor Tony’s nickname. Everyone else called it “the soup kitchen” and she called it “the Unity Kitchen.” We would help put food together and then serve it, then do the dishes if there was time, and then a car would take us back to... Read more
Today is the Roman Catholic feast of Saint Augustine, who was an African man with an African mother, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at most of his icons– and of Saint Moses the Strong, whom nobody could whitewash. Most paintings of Augustine make him look like he’s from Scandinavia, but Moses looks Black. Saint Augustine said of money: “The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess superfluity, you possess what belongs to... Read more
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