Author: D. A. Hosek
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: Our Lady of the Holy Family (Notre Dame de Chicago church)
Our Lady of the Holy Family parish was created by the combination of the former Notre Dame de Chicago and Holy Family parishes on the near west side. The latter of these two was later returned to the Jesuits from the archdiocese and it now serves as a chapel to St Ignatius College Prep as…
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: St John the Evangelist (one day late)
I tend to feel like anything much past Harlem Avenue is Iowa so Streamwood is a suburb that I would not have been able to place on a map before heading out to St John the Evangelist yesterday. I have a new candidate for newest church building in the archdiocese with this one which was…
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimge: Nativity of the Lord (a bit late)
Driving east on 37th Street, I saw the bell tower of Nativity of Our Lord Parish looming over the houses and 2 and 3-flats that populate Bridgeport east of new Comiskey,¹ a strong reminder of the days when a home parish was a key marker of self-identity in Chicago. But only once I was inside…
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: Saint John Cantius
There are certain parishes in the archdiocese where knowing that’s where someone goes to Mass regularly tells you a whole lot about them. Saint Sabina, Old Saint Pat’s and Saint John Cantius are three which spring immediately to mind. The last one on this list is the hyper-traditionalist parish. When I attended Mass at Holy…
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: St John of the Cross (one day late)
St John of the Cross parish has a Sunday evening Mass, a practice which has a sentimental attachment for me. Arriving at the church in the darkness of December, the first thing I noticed was a collection of handicapped spaces that rivals the size of some parishes’ entire parking lots. The liturgy itself was solidly…
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: Shrine of Our Lady of Guadupe (three days late)
I’ve been trying to give priority to shrines when they’re an option, so for Our Lady of Guadalupe, I drove up to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe which claimed on its website that it would be holding a 7p Mass. As near as I could discover on arrival, there was no Mass taking…
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New poem: Corpse in the mirror
Whenever I write an 8-line poem, I find myself wondering if it can be turned into a pantoum, a poetic form which takes 8-lines of poetry and twists them into something else. As a sort of deterministic randomizer, this sort of thing felt like a good fit for the Dada issue of Exacting Clam and the…
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Writerly resolutions: November status
So I attempted to be a bit more focused in these last two months of the year, with minimal success: Read through We, the Rescued at least once and get my editorial notes in place: I’ve read 17 out of 29 chapters. I was hoping to have read the whole thing by now, but I think…
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A visit with my younger self: 22 May 1989
It’s kind of interesting to me how memory works: with no context, the bit about the Danaïds was sufficient for me to remember that I wrote this in a motel room in St Louis on the first trip I took to teach LaTeX classes. This was at a defense contractor in St Louis which dealt…