Miss me? Our guest bloggers are going to make you forget all about me! Aren’t they great? Still processing Rome but will have lots to write and pictures to share. I have remembered all of you intentions to St. Philip Neri, St. Catherine, St. Ignatius and many more! I love it here, but miss my routine! Read more

(Taylor Swift’s “un-feminist” song and video, Mine) Doesn’t everyone love a good love story? Maybe not. At the feminist blog Feministing, commenter Chloe recently confessed that she enjoys listening to Taylor Swift’s music now and then, even if it’s what she calls “an un-feminist guilty pleasure.” What exactly makes Swift’s music “un-feminist”? Why, it’s the misogynist love-story lyrics, of course. Specifically, the lyrics to Swift’s newest hit, Mine, are scary stuff. They’re full of dangerous woman-hating, man-loving nonsense — at... Read more

I don’t know what my problem is, but I have a problem with novenas.  I guess I’m overly cautious about superstition — maybe I’ve seen too many of those classified ads:  “Force the Sacred Heart of Jesus to grant your top wishes!”  I may be an idiot, but even I know better than to drag the Holy Spirit into a pyramid scheme. But seriously, I do understand the theology behind a novena.  You’re just kind of proving to God that... Read more

We gave away all our Little Tikes-type stuff two years ago when we moved from Tennessee to North Carolina, and I haven’t exactly been paying attention to what’s trending, as they say, in Plastic-Land. Boy, have I been out of it. I Totally Missed Baby’s First Cubicle. Why be outside, lying on your stomach in the clover with wrens twittering over your head, when you could be doing pretend spreadsheets, sending around pretend inter-office memos, and forwarding pretend email jokes?... Read more

Here’s a peek at the view from my living room window a couple of days ago. It’s Dan, with a hammer. In preparation for the coming winter, we have been replacing some of our windows with more energy efficient ones. And by “‘we” I mean Dan. Because I don’t do that kind of thing. He does. When we were dating in high school, Dan once drew me a picture of a rabbit. I held on to that drawing for years... Read more

(image source) My kids fight sometimes.  Of course they do.  But I have long thought that well-meaning parents actually cause much of the sibling rivalry that worries them so.  Most parenting magazines, sooner or later, run an article for parents expecting baby #2, explaining how to guide the usurped older child through the horror and the devastation of bringing a new baby into the home. Now, I don’t mean to be a pollyanna about what really happens.  Sometimes it’s not... Read more

Stumbled across this in my reading some time ago and posted about it. Stumbled across the post again this afternoon and thought it seemed apposite, in a general, universal, whatever-kind-of-day-you’ve-been-having way: Though the Lord has established the signs of his coming, the time of their fulfillment has not been plainly revealed. These signs have come and gone with a multiplicity of change;  more than that, they are still present. His final coming is like his first. As holy men and... Read more

Warning: Video features some disturbing images and one instance of the “n” word. This is a trailer for a new film, Maafa 21 (available on DVD). Maafa 21 shows the connection from slavery and eugenics to birth control, abortion and black genocide today and is routinely called “stunning,” “breathtaking,” and “jaw-dropping.” Many viewers have said they were left “speechless” by what they saw and several have told us that it filled them with anger. One African-American pastor and 1960’s civil... Read more

Last week, a supermarket cashier counted the kids in my cart and pronounced me a saint. “Wow,” he said. “I can’t even handle my three — and that’s every other weekend!” Everyone around us laughed, but I didn’t. I don’t know what to say to people like these, people to whom divorce is so normal it is even sometimes a joke. Ask those three kids every other weekend if it’s a joke. I was especially moved by writer Amy Henry’s... Read more

I happened to pick up Isabelle Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea, and now I’m sorry.  Okay, so the cover said it was “[t]he sweeping story of an unforgettable woman–a slave and a concubine determined to claim her own destiny against impossible odds.”  So I was warned. In my defense, I didn’t expect it to be great literature, and I assumed I’d have to skip some steamy parts (right-o).  But Allende’s earlier novel, The House of the Spirits, was actually a... Read more