I used to mentor a child, through a program in the town I grew up in. This all happened well over a decade ago. I’m fudging identifying details to avoid betraying anything said in confidence, but the story is true. I mentored a little boy whose name wasn’t Isaiah, but let’s say it was. Isaiah was supposed to have been assigned a male mentor, but there were hardly any young men in the mentoring program, so he got me.... Read more
There was a stone in my pocket. I kept forgetting it was there. Several weeks ago now, when Rosie and I went grocery shopping, I found one of those hand-painted rocks that some people scatter around for an art project as if that isn’t littering. This one was stuffed in the fencing around the old DiGregory’s Nursery; I found it because it was right next to my usual parking spot at the end of the grocery store lot. The... Read more
Today I was in a mood. Nothing was going right. I have been a bit fatigued and tending toward a fibromyalgia flare since my Moderna shot last Thursday, and that made me nervous– for some mysterious reason I haven’t had a bad fibromyalgia flare since about last February, and I want to keep that streak going. I was also nervous about the situation with the neighbor and the restraining order. The neighbor has gone from hiding quietly for a few... Read more
I think it all started when Mr. J. D. Flynn of The Pillar expressed the desire to get together with friends for breakfast and talk about Christ once a month. He tweeted this, worded rather unfortunately, and was pounced on by Traditionalist accounts with fancy crosses instead of profile pictures. They teased him. Someone called Brother Martin Navarro said “Women do breakfast. Men do cigars,” with that perpetual Trad implication that every activity has a gender, and the female activities are... Read more
Rosie came with me to run errands. We run errands in a car now. For the first nine and a half years of her life, she was bundled onto the bus, but we’ve had a car for six weeks. I am getting used to driving. “Can we try to go through the bank drive thru?” Rosie asked. I’d been nervous about driving through because maneuverability was the reason I failed the driving test the first time. I still tend... Read more
It hasn’t been a very good twenty-four hours. Our menacing neighbor has been harassing us again– letting her enormous barking German Shepherd out to urinate on our lawn when Rosie comes out to play in her sandbox, then screaming curses and imprecations at us when we look up at the dog. She’s been calling Rosie and me four-letter euphemisms for a prostitute and luridly speculating aloud about what kind of services we provide. She’s pasted obscene messages to... Read more
I must admit I had about two weeks feeling exceptionally shaky since the Father Morrier indictment last month. I am very far from the epicenter of most of the abuse that went on at that school– I was only spiritually and emotionally abused by the Charismatic Renewal and Franciscan University. I didn’t suffer half of what many have suffered. Still, being stuck out here, so close to where so many dreadful things happened, estranged from most of my family because... Read more
I don’t know exactly how the kerfuffle started on Catholic Twitter. I think someone had an innocent question about vocations. And then multiple priests were informing people that the best and highest vocation is objectively the Roman Catholic priesthood. Nothing else held a candle to that. The rest of us were all right, but they were best of all. Other Catholics objected to this. The debate went on for some time. I sometimes wonder how nasty God would have to be,... Read more
Here’s an earth day post, for you. The other day I saw the beautiful Shirley Raines on Twitter, building a toilet. Raines is the founder of Beauty 2 the Streetz, a charity that provides hygeine, haircuts, makeovers and meals for the homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles. She photographs and makes short videos of her projects as proof that she’s putting all the donations she receives to good use, and to raise awareness about homelessness in America. Usually... Read more
I’ve had a car for a month now. The Neighborhood Trolley is my first car ever, and I’m thirty-six. I have lived without one since I was twenty-one in Steubenville, which is a small enough town we’re lucky to have a bus system at all. The bus is only a bit bigger than a handicap-access van, it comes about once every hour, and all the routes are done by six in the evening, so having a chronic illness and... Read more
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