Activist Archbishop, Stewardship & Limit Marriage Amendment

Two letters that arrived on the same day late last week presented a strange contrast. One was from our parish. The other was from the Archbishop.

Karin Fossum – Black Seconds, a mystery

Finding new authors and new books – at least new to you – is part of one’s ongoing reading adventure.  Some you find through friends, book reviewers or from the cover of a book someone is reading in a coffee shop; others just seem to jump into your hands from the shelves of a library or bookstore.  

  Black Seconds by Karin Fossum is one off those that jumped off of a library shelf about a week ago. Karin Fossum? – the name sounded familiar – at least it should have.  It should have spilled out of the memory folder of Scandinavians along with Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo… – but KarenFossum wasn’t in there. She is now.

Still talking about the debate

A different President Obama was back on the stump trail yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t a different Obama,it was the Obama we are used to seeing, not the one we watched Wednesday night.

In Denver and, later, at the University of Wisconsin, he told the crowds that when he reached the debate stage, “I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney, the real Mitt Romney

Presidential Debate 2012 No. 1 – It’s History

Mitt Romney’s handlers beat President Obama’s handlers last night, and in doing so the first presidential debate of 2012 surprisingly went to Romney.

It certainly wasn’t because of facts, details or candor, Romney wasn’t bothered with any of those things. In fact, most of his night was spent reversing much of what he has been talking about for months.

The Great Debate & the 2012 Presidential Debate

Tonight will be the 1^st presidential debate of 2012. TV “mavens,” commentators and columnists have been saying that this could be a make-or-break event or a momentum-stopper or, it seems, whatever comes to mind; or an event of little consequence on the election results. Many writers and talkers like to refer to tonight’s facing-off tonight as the Great Debate. Sadly, this is a very over-used phrase. Can we even expect that the fate of the nation hindges on what points the two contestants make or how well them make them? We’re hoping for a good debate, especially by our chosen candidate – but a Great Debate?

 Back when I studied United States History in high school and, then again, in college, THE GREAT DEBATE was

Autumn of Content; Autumn of Discontent

“SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 
   
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
       
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 
   
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 
       
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
           
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
   
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 
       
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
       
Until they think warm days will never cease,…”

These first ten lines of To Autumn, written by John Keats on September 19, 1819, less than two years before his death at age twenty-five, vividly capture the sights, sounds and smells of Autumns of days-gone-by. Walking through woods with the bright red and yellow leaves falling, beginning to form soft, crinkly piles; a last swim in the now chilly waters of the lake; a Sunday family picnic in the bright, still-warm sun. Life was better, more contented on these autumn days.

National Banned Book Week: Sep 30 – Oct 6

30th Anniversary! Banned Book Week has been a yearly event since 1982, a time when there was a large increase in the number of books that were challenged in schools, libraries and bookstores. Since that time 11,300 books have been challenged; 326 in 2011. These are just the books that have been reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom; many go unreported. Besides a couple of the usual suspects, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins (reasons – anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence) made the top-10 list for 2010.

The national book community established Banned Books Week as an annual celebration of the freedom to read.

Rising from the Ashes – Again

Just one day short of one year ago on October 1, 2011, I restarted this blog after having set it aside for a couple of years. The first post was Rising from the Ashes. At that time I said, “Rising from the Ashes may be a rather grandiose start-up theme, but I have always been fascinated by the ancient myth of the Phoenix who periodically regenerates itself from its ashes – a tale made famous world-wide for this generation by Harry Potter – so I take this opportunity use it here as this blog begins again.”

…So, I am taking this opportunity to use the wonderful image again; hoping that this start will be more active and long-lived. I had planned to post this on October 1; in recognition of Banned Books Week it is posted today followed by a post on Banned Books Week.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Book, Swedish Movie & American Movie – Noomi & Rooney

On December 31, we completed our The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy; the Stieg Larsson book in 2009, the Swedish movie in 2010 and the American movie in 2011.

As everyone in Scandinavia knows and most everyone in the rest of the western world knows, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in the posthumously published Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy:

Winner! The NaNoWriMo 2011 prize is on the wall!

At 10:45 pm, Nov. 23 I finished my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel with over 56,000 words. About 8:09 am cst I collected my 2011-Winner-Certificate

Before I  went to bed Wednesday night, I had completed a 23 day writing marathon that I had doubts about at the outset.