I always forget that some people don’t love the rain. The daily weather forecast isn’t announcing rain, it’s warning people of rain, as if rain were a bad thing. It’s cautioning people so that they can carry their umbrellas and not plan time outdoors. When it says “”ninety percent chance of rain,” they’re estimating high so that people will be pleased if they’re wrong. To me, “ninety percent” is an exhilarating promise. I wait for the rain as the... Read more
Yes, I watched the CNN debate. It’s a choice I’ll regret for the rest of my life. So that you don’t have to watch the CNN debate, I live tweeted the whole thing over on X/Twitter. I’ve been covering Donald Trump’s political career for so long, it didn’t seem right to not tune in. I don’t ever want to think about what I just watched again, but I’m going to summarize my thoughts briefly. Really, it doesn’t need a lot... Read more
I was surprised to see Chesterfield, Missouri, mentioned as I scrolled through my social media. I was even more surprised to see that they were in the news because a Catholic parish there was supposedly organizing an armed militia. And the whole story, or at least what we know of it right now, is even more complicated than that. Yesterday on X/Twitter, Laura Burkhardt, a Missouri resident and a volunteer for Moms Demand Action, tweeted out a thread about a... Read more
I just finished reading Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass. I’ve avoided most of the book-sized hot takes on the presidency, but I wanted to read Apprentice in Wonderland, because its author, Ramin Setoodeh, did so many personal interviews with Donald Trump before and after his presidency– indeed, even before his presidency had even been anticipated. Now I’ve read it, and I’m feeling rather disgusted. My disgust isn’t Setoodeh’s fault. Apprentice... Read more
Here we go again. In case you haven’t heard, the Vatican’s chief comms officer has recently doubled down on the frequent use of icons made by the disgraced former Jesuit Marco Rupnik in their media. As I’ve mentioned before, the Vatican has repeatedly used pieces of art by Rupnik as clip art on their website, even though he’s currently under investigation for truly appalling sexual abuse of several nuns. The nuns have spoken out publicly on many occasions. The evidence... Read more
I am very sorry. I had so much I wanted to write this month. Being sick made everything so much more difficult. I was trying and trying to write out a stern rebuke of Biden’s executive order regarding asylum-seekers, and now that’s out of the news cycle and I should be writing another article praising his showing mercy to undocumented spouses and Dreamers. I want to write about Rupnik and the horrific way the Vatican responded to complaints about using... Read more
Twelve days of sick is too much. I’ve been sick with one thing or another my whole life, and almost completely disabled from fatigue with a misdiagnosed cause for ten years. You’d think that would make getting sick something I was used to, but it doesn’t. It makes it terrifying. I always feel as if I’m going to slide back down the rabbit hole into helplessness, and I’d rather die. Thirteen days after the mysterious illness started, it hadn’t... Read more
Monday was my first day with any real energy since the Tuesday before last. I wasn’t back up to snuff yet, but I was better. I’d finished my course of antibiotics. The nausea was nearly gone and I was back in ketosis for my PCOS. I was determined to get out to the movie theater, because Patheos was paying me to review Inside Out 2 and we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel after I’d been sick for a third... Read more
To my regular readers: this isn’t just one of my usual posts with musings about what I did this week. It’s also a film review I’m writing in collaboration with Skylight, a spiritual wellness platform that seeks to integrate mental health and spiritual practices. Be sure and give them a visit! Today, I finally got to see Inside Out 2. I don’t go to the movies very often, and I usually don’t like cartoons for kids, but I was told... Read more
The message came as I was waiting for my scan. I’m sorry that I’m still not able to write at a good clip, or about any news or anything that requires research. I’m still very sick from the colitis episode, and the antibiotics that they gave me to treat it. This has been going on for eight days now and it’s even more frustrating than you’d guess. The only writing I’m able to do is to pick away at... Read more
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