Hi guys, I absolutely hate doing emergency appeals; for months I’ve been trying to just do the regular monthly updates on all the places I’m writing and how to follow me on social media with the tip jar at the end. I’ll have a normal post worth your time up on the blog as soon as I possibly can. It’s just that I’ve gotten into the worst jam since November, which is the last time I had to do... Read more
There is a thing that can happen when you’re chronically ill. There’s a moment when you just start ignoring your sickness. Because you’ve been told to ignore it so many times. Because you’ve been told you have to pray and ask Jesus why you go to the doctor so much, since it must be a psychological need you’re filling and not a real condition. Because you’ve been taunted for being a hypochondriac. Because, so many times, doctors and family... Read more
Sixteen years ago, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, a naive young woman who wasn’t yet called Mary Pezzulo tagged along for the first time with a nice young man who was going to daily Mass. The man said he wasn’t going to Mass on campus; he was hiking on foot to the Mass at the great big traditional church downtown, and Mary said “I’ll go too!” The two of them hurried down the hill past the municipal... Read more
I thought I planted dwarf peas. The label on the seed packet said “dwarf,” which I thought meant the pea vines themselves would be smaller than average peas. Usually, when I plant peas, they grow up about ten inches tall or less, so I thought dwarf peas would grow six inches. But apparently the “dwarf” in “dwarf peas” refers to the size of the pea pod and not the vine. These pea vines were nearly four feet tall.... Read more
I wasn’t supposed to buy a rose. I was supposed to buy two tomato cages, to cage my last two tomatoes, plus a cheap seedling to fill the empty patch in the middle of the vegetable garden. But as I wheeled my shopping cart through the back of the garden center, I saw a shelf of rose bushes marked down to five dollars each. I have never grown a rose in my life. I don’t plant perennials. Why would I... Read more
Today’s the day. Donald Trump finally got a criminal conviction. You’d think I’d have planned all kinds of things to say, but I’m feeling tongue-tied. In the spring of 2016, just before Easter, my friend Sam asked if I wanted to start a Patheos blog for writing about Catholicism. In November of 2016, then-Father Frank Pavone put a 40-year-old corpse on an altar in order to shill for a con artist and serial adulterer who was trying to get... Read more
It was finally the cool of the day. I was hoping for rain. It’s now summer, meteorologically at least. Summer is full of heartbreak for a gardener in Steubenville. When it’s summer, the air swells with hot water as if you’re trapped in a steam room– hotter and more humid, still hotter and more humid. There is, invariably, between thirty and fifty percent chance of a good soaking rain to pop the bubble of humidity. That’s not enough to... Read more
All week, the people have been clamoring about a priest who bit a woman trying to receive Communion at Mass. I was bemused because I kept seeing that headline in isolation and wondering what on earth was going on. Everything about the story seemed bizarre. People were saying conflicting things about it. Somehow, a woman tried to receive Communion at Thomas Aquinas Church in Saint Cloud, Florida, and the priest bit her. I couldn’t imagine how such an event could... Read more
I woke up sore, itchy, and worried. One of the errands I ran yesterday, before I made that strawberry jam, was a trip to the doctor. In 2021, the nurse who was giving me my COVID vaccine pointed out that one of the moles on my shoulders was getting dark, so I got a referral to the dermatologist’s office to have it biopsied. The dermatologist cut off two odd-looking moles, one of which turned out to be normal, but... Read more
I figured out how to make strawberry jam. I planted those five little strawberry plants in 2020, when Trump and Biden were running for president and the whole world was falling to pieces. The menacing neighbor ran onto my property one Sunday morning in a fit of mania and tore one of those strawberry plants out of the ground, along with a bean pole and most of the broccoli, but the other four plants survived. They sent out runners,... Read more
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