Just another writer

  • Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Norbert

    Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Norbert

    Today being the feast of Saint Norbert, I headed up to Northbrook for their 8.15 Mass. It was moderately attended, sans music and there seemed to be no mention of the fact that it was the parish’s patron’s feast. I suspect, given the fact that the parish’s full name is Saint Norbert–Our Lady of the…

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  • Today’s crumy saint picture: Saint Boniface

    Today’s crumy saint picture: Saint Boniface

    Yesterday, I accidentally did a saint for June 5th instead of June 4th (thanks, Wikipedia for updating on GMT instead of local time). I suppose I should do a June 4th saint today, but I decided to just google Saint of the Day which turned up Saint Boniface, a Benedictine monk who was martyred trying…

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  • Today’s crummy saint picture, Saint Luke Loan Ba Vu

    Today’s crummy saint picture, Saint Luke Loan Ba Vu

    I wasn’t able to find any real information about this Vietnamese martyr online, beyond the link to a general wikipedia article about Vietnamese martyrs which only said that he was a Vietnamese priest. My old parish in California had a sizable Vietnamese community which seemed almost like a separate church within the parish. Unlike the…

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  • Writerly resolutions: May Status (a little late)

    Writerly resolutions: May Status (a little late)

    I got a bunch more work done on the novel this month, getting two new chapters completed and most of a third chapter written this month. On the short story front, I finished a draft of a new story which got workshopped just before month’s end, did revisions on three short shorts and put them…

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  • Today’s (less) crummy saint picture, Saint Charles Lwanga

    Today’s (less) crummy saint picture, Saint Charles Lwanga

    At least in part because Christianity has been centered on Europe for the largest part of its history, the canonized saints tend to be white Europeans, so it was a bit of a delight as I looked through my resources for today to discover a saint who isn’t white, Charles Lwanga. A convert to Catholicism…

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  • Today’s crummy saint picture, Saint Eugene

    Today’s crummy saint picture, Saint Eugene

    St Eugene is an interesting figure in that he was a pope elected while the previous pope still lived (his predecessor having been deposed by the emperor over one of those abstruse matters of doctrine—does Christ have one will or two?—that most contemporary Christians likely never think about and if they do, are as likely…

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  • Today’s saint picture, slightly less crummy, Saint Justin

    Today’s saint picture, slightly less crummy, Saint Justin

    Surprisingly, there is no Saint Justin church in the archdiocese of Chicago, so today doesn’t have an obligatory church visit (and yesterday’s visit covered my Sunday obligation so I’m good for the weekend). St Justin, commonly known as St Justin Martyr, is so called because, not surprisingly, he  was martyred for refusing to sacrifice to…

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  • Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Visitation

    Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Visitation

    Today is the feast of the visitation, commemorating when the newly pregnant Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist at that time. As a result I visited St Basil/Visitation church on the south side of Chicago. The church is located in a poor neighborhood as evidenced by the fact…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 30 June 1988

    A visit with my younger self: 30 June 1988

    Once I lost my daily habit, it turned into a less than weekly habit as I didn’t write another entry for almost two weeks. This time, I wrote down a collection of story ideas (story ideas are cheap—my punk-ass self was crapping these out like a gringo tourist in rural Mexico). Story ideas:“Rite of Passage”…

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