The sunflowers are drying out for the year. Some of the Lemon Queens and the Autumn Beauties are still giving me a firework display of blooms, but every one of the great big Mammoth sunflowers is drooping over. I’m keeping them upright in the garden as a feast for the birds. Last year I had only one goldfinch on my sunflowers, and this year I have at least six, plus my friends the cardinals. When I come out to pick... Read more
They say the mad king is dying. I don’t know exactly when the president’s frail health stopped being an observation that a small group of people were pointing out, and became a mainstream joke. I feel as if it happened within the last fifteen days or so. But now the pictures of his badly bruised hand have become a meme. His increasingly unhinged rants at press conferences have become a punchline. The vice president mentioned, in an interview, that... Read more
A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope. A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope. A nation that says that soothing the paranoia of grown-ups is more important than safeguarding the lives of children is a nation without hope. A nation that says that fattening the bottom lines of stockholders is more important than saving the lives of children is a nation without hope. A nation that says pacifying gun... Read more
My aunt has a disabled son. My cousin, several years younger than me, is autistic, as I am. Many, many people in my family surely are. But in the 90s, a verbal girl with a normal or higher IQ wasn’t likely to get diagnosed with autism. My cousin is a boy who was nonverbal until he got speech therapy, and is hovering just around the line of where you’d diagnose an intellectual disability. He got his diagnosis. Not every... Read more
Somehow, my posts on the death of spanking enthusiast James Dobson was extremely widely shared yesterday. I’m still getting notifications about them every few minutes. Most of the comments are positive, but there’ve been a few clinkers. It seems there were two types of people who reacted to Dobson’s death yesterday. Most of the responses I saw were from people like me, Christian and not, who despised the man because all he ever did was advocate evil and claim he... Read more
I woke up this morning and found out that James Dobson was dead. It’s hard to even know what to say, when an evil man dies. As a Catholic, I’m supposed to say “May God have mercy on his soul,” and that’s sticking in my throat just now. My mother taught me not to speak ill of the dead, but this particular dead man committed the sin of scandal so many times that I feel I’d be sinning myself if... Read more
I shouldn’t have to talk about eugenics. Eugenics is one of those ideas that was stupid to begin with and never should have had a renaissance: like miasma theory, or the myth that vaccines cause autism. Yet here we are. Everything that was old is new again. When I was a teenage conservative who thought all Christians had to be Republicans, I was told that Democrats who were pro-choice were pro-eugenic. They wanted to eliminate disabled babies to create a... Read more
If I am just overreacting lately, I’ll be pleased. But I don’t think I am. If things never get any worse in the United States, but just stay exactly as they are, it’ll be better than I expect. But I think they’ll get worse, and I think they’ll get worse quickly. I don’t know how it feels to be in a great big city right now. I only know how it feels to be in a small town... Read more
Assumption Day was a puzzling day, as all Marian feasts are to me. Other people have an easy time envisioning the Blessed Virgin as their mother, and I don’t. I would like to know what it’s like to feel close to a mother. I have never known what to do to make a mother love me, not once. Earning love from a mother, even placating a mother, was always impossible. I don’t know how to do that. “Mother” is one... Read more
Summer ends, first with a bang, and then a whimper. I had been moping at home for several weeks, worrying about the Artful Dodgers and the end of the world, entertaining Jimmy’s Boy, going to the lake when it wasn’t too hot. But then I helped out with the end-of-summer camp at the church outreach, reading storybooks out loud until I was hoarse. It felt relaxing to not have any time to think. I didn’t worry about anything for five... Read more
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