I have the most brilliant internet friends. The other day, for example, my friend had a brilliant idea which I think will make our political discourse just that much more tolerable in the coming years. I’ll let Ksenia tell you about it in her own words: Proposal: draw attention to the ridiculousness of TV personalities trying to take on serious jobs for which they have no experience or qualifications by referring to them as “TV’s [whoever]” as in “TV’s Frank.”... Read more
I have a love-hate relationship with computers. I love the ease of typing, I love the internet, I love my Facebook; I love cake wrecks and mcmansion hell and checking the news every five minutes. But they frighten me just the same. Maybe it’s just my love of Kubrick and my ability to quote dialogue from 2001: A Space Odyssey at awkward intervals, but something about artificial intelligence gives me the creeps. When my husband kindly updated my laptop to Windows 10 without... Read more
I checked in with our friends at The Friendship Room on their facebook page today. This is the time of year they’re open 24 hours, to give shelter to the homeless and people who can’t afford heating in their homes. They’re full to bursting with guests at all times and constantly asking for people to bring them hot soups. This is the time of year you could actually die from sleeping outside in Steubenville– it was six degrees Fahrenheit this... Read more
It seems that there is significant doubt as to the veracity of that “heartwarming” five-year-old-dying-in-Santa’s-arms story which went viral last week. It may still be proven accurate, but so far no local hospital remembers a five-year-old dying during that time frame. Any writer can get a story wrong, as I know all too well. And this whole story may be proven true later; time will tell. But why did it go viral in the first place? I hadn’t read the story... Read more
Excuse a musical interlude: Christmas is a-coming, the goose and I are fat. Have you remembered your favorite bloggers yet? Michael and I are very fortunate to have this blog and to know all of you. We’re having a blast. And we’re extremely grateful that our basic needs are met almost all the time now; we’re in a better space than we’ve been Christmases past. But we don’t have very much wiggle room, and this is a wiggly season of... Read more
The lovely and talented Simcha Fisher has published a list of things she doesn’t appreciate for Christmas. Well, two can play at that game. There are plenty of things I don’t appreciate at Christmastime, and I was only longing to be asked. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Just what we need to get us in the Christmas spirit: a horrendously depressing film about a child and a slave laborer who run away from home to avoid bullying, ending with the dubious moral that people will... Read more
Growing up, we didn’t trim the Christmas tree until we lit the pink candle. We didn’t call it “Gaudete Sunday,” because we could never remember whether it was Gaudete or Letare. We called it ‘the pink candle.” Nobody was allowed to sing Christmas songs, bake Christmas treats, decorate for Christmas, watch Christmas videos or read Christmas books until the Saturday before “the pink candle.” This was the inviolable law in our household. Assembling the borrowed pagan symbol on that day made... Read more
I’m reading the news about Aleppo, as I’m sure most of you are by now. It’s changing every time I refresh my browser, so by the time you read this the situation will certainly have changed again. What I know now is that the city of Aleppo has fallen, and as of moments ago Syrian troops were murdering civilians— women, children, doctors, anyone they come across, in the streets and in their homes. The United Nations reported they’d shot dead eighty-two civilians, including eleven... Read more
(image via Pixabay) I don’t go for Elf on the Shelf, myself. My daughter doesn’t need a constant reminder that an authority figure is watching over her. That’s what parents are for. And I don’t really think that it makes sense to celebrate Christmas by claiming that Santa only brings presents to well behaved children. The whole point of Christmas is that we were very bad indeed, and God the Father responded to our badness by giving us the best Gift there... Read more
You may recall that I’m directing this year’s Christmas play at my church. This play has become a demonstration of a saying of one of my Orthodox friends: anyone who tells you Eastern Christianity is an organized religion is lying. It’s pure chaos. We had our penultimate rehearsal Thursday night. Half the children still don’t have costumes including my daughter, who decided at the last minute to play the part of an angel instead of being in the audience as... Read more
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