A term I just coined, of course. But the Catholic Church has, for millennia, in fact, believed that to pray is to do something good for others, not just a form of personal entertainment such as reading a novel, nor a means to an end like taking classes to get a promotion. That belief has been fundamental to the very idea of monastic life. Yes, monks “saved civilization” through the scriptoria, and in American history actual cloistered religious life was... Read more
Dad has passed. Mom has dementia. At this point it is severe enough that she says only a few words, but it’s been quite a while since she has been able to say particularly much and even longer still since she has been able to tell us much about the past. And this means there are questions about my childhood I will never know the answer to. Exhibit 1: my childhood bedspread. Yes, what you see here is a bedspread... Read more
More stellar reporting from the Tribune: in a photo spread about a multicultural event, students at Bartlett High School are pictured holding a Palestinian flag as well as two signs, one reading “in our hundreds, in our millions, we are all Palestinian,” and the other, “From the River to the Sea” as well as Arabic text which, according to the students’ change.org petition, translates to “Palestine is Arab.” Upon discovering this, school staff paused distribution of the yearbook in order... Read more
Yes, I still subscribe to the Chicago Tribune, though I switched to the digital only option a while back, and I read the paper digitally relatively infrequently, but one opinion piece caught my eye from a bit over a week ago: “Why isn’t the SAT being translated into other languages?” by Gina Caneva, a librarian at East Leyden High School, in Franklin Park, a suburb a few miles west of Chicago, whose previous work experience includes 8 years as a... Read more
Tim Carney has a new book out, Family Unfriendly, with, as usual for books these days, a subtitle that explains what the book is about: “How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be.” And, in an effort to think more about the book before it goes back to the library, I’m going to blog about it. Before I get into the content, a brief why-it-matters: having parents who are stressed and unhappy matters for a... Read more
So, as it happens, 15 years ago, a transgender activist declared March 31st to be “Transgender Day of Visibility,” with the date chosen to spread the various “days” of transgender/LGBTetc. acknowledgement/awareness/celebration (as proclaimed by activists) throughout the year. When Biden came into office, he/his staff elevated this to official recognition through a proclamation, which went relatively unnoticed by the “outside” world until the proclamation was issued on Good Friday and the day itself coincided with Easter, and a heck of... Read more
So it’s Sunday night and I just clicked “publish” on a post I’d been working on, off and on, in which I observed that Pope Francis had made some, well, questionable remarks on the issue of “just war.” To repeat/tweak those comments: I find the Pope’s comments on just war to be genuinely concerning. There was a statement somewhere about the Pope disapproving of the idea of the “just war” and stating, in the context of the war in Gaza,... Read more
Over and over again, the Pope says things which make “traditional”/ “orthodox”/ “conservative” Catholics want to bang their heads against the wall. It appears that he is deviously attempting to change church doctrine, one step at a time, that he is acting as a dictator, that he is cruel and vicious towards traditionalists. But what if what’s really happening is that he just isn’t that bright? Sure, his writing “sounds smart” but in my view (though I acknowledge that his... Read more
What is “No Labels”? No Labels is an entity which may – or may not – field a “unity ticket” for the 2024 presidential election. They state that — in time for the 2024 election — they will poll key states and, if they deem it feasible, they will offer nationwide ballot access to a candidate-pair they select to be an Independent Unity ticket. For clarity, it is not clear to me from their FAQ whether they already have ballot... Read more
You’ve seen the quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It’s attributed to Margaret Mead, the influential anthropologist who died in 1978, though, as it turns out, according to Quote Investigator, there is no firm evidence, no time or place which she is known to have said this, though, it turns out, that quote has been trademarked by Mead’s granddaughter, Sevanne Kassarjian, though it’s... Read more
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