So far, my February has not been great. It’s only been twelve hours, and I’m already fed up. February, my readers will recall, is the month my seasonal blues get the worst. I rarely have pleasant things to say in February. This year seems more depressing than the last, because there isn’t any snow on the ground. There’s snow in the air, or there was yesterday. But it doesn’t stick to the ground. It doesn’t make anything look pretty... Read more
Scrolling through social media early this afternoon, I encountered a public conversation that made me cringe. A blustering blowhard who runs a famous pro-life NGO at the UN had tweeted: “There is great pressure to feminize the pro-life and pro-family movements. I salute the remaining tough guys” and then “I mean some want all of us to be wusses.” People were liking and sharing these musings, as if they meant something. Another internet-famous talking head chimed in. “They want the... Read more
It was snowing, but I couldn’t see it. This has been the most disappointing of winters– mostly rain, sometimes slush, never enough snow to cover the mud and make LaBelle look clean. The weather swings back and forth between clear and drizzly, nearly-comfortable and bone-chilling so quickly that my fibromyalgia is out of control. I’ve barely been out of the house since Christmas. Last night, I had a bit of a remission in the pain. There was nowhere useful to... Read more
It started innocently enough. EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo, who apparently had no pressing news stories to report on yesterday, was making fun of people’s outfits. He tweeted a picture of a group of outlandishly-dressed celebrities to make fun of their costumes and complain that singers today wear costumes to cover up for their lack of talent. Apparently these were pop music stars at the Grammy awards; I didn’t recognize them because I’m not cool. Everyone was decrying the music stars’ clothes–... Read more
At my grandparent’s house in Maryland, there was a three-volume clothbound set of sparsely illustrated children’s fairy tales. This was what I got for a bedtime story, almost every time I went to visit. At home I usually had Curious George, Babar the Little Elephant or Island of the Skog. But when we went to my grandparents’ house, we left the picture books at home. At night, when I sat up in bed in the spare room where my mother used to... Read more
I have tried so hard to ignore coverage of this year’s March for Life. Last year was bad enough. That was the year I was informed that demanding that people claiming to have the moral high ground uphold themselves with fortitude and courtesy when heckled is inimical to the pro-life cause. Every kind of bad behavior is excusable as long as the bunglers who committed it were trying to be pro-life, I was informed. I didn’t want to talk about... Read more
I want to say a few words about gaslighting, and about how abusive people manipulate their communities. The other day on Facebook, I met a woman who has been the victim of some extreme domestic violence. For the record she’s not the same domestic violence survivor as the one we all helped with a gift registry in December; this is a new friend of mine. She’s told her own story publicly for the very first time this week. It’s extremely... Read more
I have lived by the Ohio River for over thirteen years. The sources of the Ohio River are the Manongahela and the Allegheny. Allegheny means “good river” and Monongahela means “falling banks.” Ohio also means “good river,” but it’s not. It’s a red and gray ribbon of toxic runoff, the most polluted river in the United States. The mouth of the Ohio river is the Mississippi. A river is a thing that does not drink with its mouth; a... Read more
Hi guys, I’ll be on with a post worth reading as soon as possible. This is just my absolute least favorite part of blogging: your regular quick reminder that Steel Magnificat, and my family, run on tips. I get a small paycheck for clicks in the United States every month from Patheos, sometimes as high as a three-digit number. The rest of my living right now comes from gratuities from satisfied readers. The button on my page says “donate,” but... Read more
No doubt many of you have read the shocking article in the Associated Press, about even more sickening sexual abuses by the Legionaries of Christ and their lay arm, Regnum Christi. It is now known that girls as young as six were brutally raped in the chapel at the Legionaries’ elite Catholic school in Cancun, Mexico, while their classmates were made to watch and read the Bible. And nothing has been done to punish the rapists, even though this... Read more
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