Sic transit gloira Mundi– or, as we say in America, that was quick. The Mooch is out. The New York Times is now reporting that TV’s Donald Trump has fired Anthony Scaramucci from his position as communications director at the White House– firing people, as you recall, being the president’s only real talent. This occurred a scant ten days after Sacramucci’s hiring and four days after his infamous obscenity-laced phone call to the New Yorker. Amusingly, rumor has it that... Read more
Rose has a new skateboard. We found a brand new, pink and yellow skateboard on the deeply-discounted-broken-items rack at the back of Ollie’s. The only thing wrong with it was the packaging was scuffed and dirty. It was only seven dollars. Rose has been having a rough time of it lately. Most of her friends live in West Virginia near our church, but we don’t live in West Virginia yet and likely won’t until fall at the earliest– maybe much later,... Read more
We were shopping–my daughter, Rose, and I. It was the second store I’d dragged her to, on an errand four stores long. I’d promised her at the outset that we couldn’t afford toys, only school supplies and groceries. She was tired and more than a little fed up, but she was looking forward to riding and playing with the steering wheel in one of the truck-shaped carts at Dollar Tree. But when we got there, the store was crowded. There was... Read more
Apparently I have once again missed Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, the happiest week of the whole year. I don’t know how to celebrate anyway. Put up a fertility pole and sing Creighton Carols, I guess. Or put some buns in the oven. Or at least write a blog post. If you want a beautiful meditation by an NFP instructor, you should go and read my friend Sarah Babbs’s gorgeous litany. I can’t top that. If you want a lamentation about motherhood... Read more
My friend Rebecca has harvested her onions for the year. She set up a tent on her farm to keep the onions under– to dry them, I suppose, whatever one does with onions. She snapped a picture for Facebook. There were bunches of yellow onions braided and hanging on the tent poles. There was a lumpy heap of purple onions on a wooden flat in the middle, looking like a charcoal fire with onions instead of briquettes. “What’s the tent... Read more
If your plan involves knowingly endangering lives as a means to an end, then it's not pro-life, it's not Christian, and it's a sin. Read more
I was going for my walk after dark, after the heat of the day had broken. I walk past the latest burned-out wreck. I didn’t mean to walk past it, but I mistook the street numbers in the dark, and there I was. The police haven’t released the official cause of this fire, yet. They haven’t even finished their investigation; the pile of rubber-scented charcoal is still there, with an old Comcast satellite dish sitting on top of the ash and... Read more
Our old friend Deacon Jim is at it again. Jim Russell, a persistent man whom I’ve been assured has “a deep love for same-sex-attracted people,” has penned a short comedic article for Crisis magazine; the whole thing is available online, and won’t take you very long to read. In it, the waggish Deacon Jim identifies himself as a “QTBGL Catholic,” that is, a Catholic who is “Quietly Totally Believing God’s Law.” He professes to be, in other words, a Catholic... Read more
Everyone’s talking about pornography these days, what with the Game of Thrones season premier and all. People seem to do an awful lot of thinking about pornography, what counts as porn, whether a piece of art 3000 minutes long containing between fifteen and thirty minutes of unappealing pudenda can be written off as porn, that sort of thing. I’m trying to keep my mouth shut. I was homeschooled on the Planet Charismatic, so I’m told my opinion doesn’t... Read more
I need everyone to stop what they’re doing and pay attention to something. Watch the first video in this news article, and do it with the sound on. Listen to all the men screaming for help. Read the article. It was 100 degrees outdoors in Saint Louis yesterday, and in the Medium Security Institution it was about 109 with no air conditioning. The inmates were suffering more than I can stand to think about, and they were screaming for help. I know you’re... Read more
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