image source In the great river of used clothing that courses through America, our family plays the part of sieve.  Oh, I’m not going to moan and complain.  I really am grateful.  People could be throwing these clothes away, or selling them — but instead, they wash and fold them and save them for us. I generally take anything that anyone offers, and — let me repeat — I really am really, really grateful.  I have no idea how much... Read more

My column this week shares a little bit of what I have learned from Rome about time and perspective: When your daily life is an encounter with nearly everything that has come before you, you develop an appreciation for what is important, and what is not, what is passing and what will last, and how quickly time marches forth and away from even the greatest of artists, the holiest of men, the loftiest of ideals. To be a Roman is... Read more

Tomorrow morning we start our homeschool year. I often choose the Nativity of Mary as a starting date because leaning on Our Lady a bit helps me fight off that choking feeling of panic that rises in my throat every year at the beginning of September. So, here we go. I have written before about my ambivalence about homeschooling (Darn that new Inside Catholic site — it’s very cool and all, but I can’t seem to make the links to... Read more

When your parish choir has six people, and that number can on any given week dwindle to three, or two, or one, and furthermore, none of you really has a pyrotechnical kind of voice, it’s good to have something simple-yet-effective to whip out of the ol’ binder of a Sunday. We’ve been working at expanding our chant repertoire, because although it goes up and down a lot,  chant is a music which simple, untrained voices can sing well. It also... Read more

I hope nobody minds if I re-post something from my blog from last week.  (In my defense, this is not so much shameless self-promotion as shameless scrambling for a post.)  It just cracks me up, and maybe you nice folks would like to play along. WordPress keeps track of all kinds of stats, including lists of phrases people searched for to end up at your blog.   It’s like peeking into the collective unconscious of The Reader (and discovering that, as... Read more

(Note: This column was originally published at Fathers for Good, an online initiative of the Knights of Columbus.) When I wrote “Do You Make Your Husband a Better Father?” I heard from more than a few moms demanding equal time. Far be it for me to shortchange the ladies! Today we’ll consider some ways men can encourage their wives in motherhood. 1. Lend a Hand Even a strong mom has physical and emotional limitations. Pay attention to how your wife... Read more

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(Note: This column was originally published at Fathers for Good, an online initiative of the Knights of Columbus. I know I’m not the only wife who needs regular reminders in my efforts to support my husband in his fatherhood, so I thought it might be helpful to re-run it here.) As wives, we want what’s best for our husbands. As mothers, we want what’s best for our kids. One of the best ways to accomplish both of these things is... Read more

It’s my turn to post some music videos. First, I’ll see Simcha’s “Jolene,” and raise her a “Train, Train”: * Mostly, now that I think about it, trains fill me with a sense of something approaching melancholy:  of understanding what it is to be melancholy, maybe. Even the one which crosses at the bottom of our street, and which goes exactly two places — the coal source to the west, the power plant to the east — strikes me as... Read more