Building A Home Library: Part 2 The works of Sophocles, Socrates and Plato sat together on the dusty bottom shelf, concealed in a cramped corner, of our small town, public school library. Cobwebs covered Plato’s Republic  adding irony to his allegory of “The Cave.” I slouched under the study tables, reading these seemingly neglected works, discovering these old,…

Building A Home Library: The Case for Books, Part 1 My living room library is an ongoing labor of love. Upstairs in the hall and bedrooms of our old farm house, bookcases are bulging with over-used (somewhat abused) homeschool curriculum, along with non-evolving histories, honest biographies, legendary, heroic adventures and all other literary facts and fictions that we’ve…

Monday morning found me moaning, slumped on my slouchy couch, babying a reoccurring back pain from an old injury. After wrestling all night with shooting pain, finally at 5 a.m., there on my saggy-in-the-right-spot sofa, I could feel the pressure leaving, the pinched nerve pain dissipate, and peace of mind returning. My very happy vertebrae were slowly sliding…

Being a faithful Catholic woman has never been easy. When we’re living our faith to the fullest, most of our days are maxed out with “regular” responsibilities. The chasing of children, the juggling of jobs, the busy-ness of parish ministry, our own “vocation within a vocation” and everything and everyone sandwiched in between, can work to wear us…

“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly,” right?  On that note, with Chesterton’s quote clearing the way, welcome to my “still-a-work-in-progress” website. Consider it an adventure in the making, a project of potential. The point of these pages is to share my other works in progress – books, illustrations, essays – as well as revive my original blog…

I never was much for horror stories. My limit for creepy stops at The Addams Family, but, I bit the proverbial silver bullet, and read Jennifer The Damned, by Karen Ullo. It’s a one-of-a-kind horror story. Jennifer -- an orphaned girl, adopted by religious sisters, and a vampire to boot -- is a timely read, especially with teen vampire stories being today’s…

On a chilly windowsill, my flowering cyclamen blossoms in hot pink. Its five petaled blooms reach out from strong, spring-time green tubers, as a reminder, that against all odds, in season and out, we are called to thrive. It’s a brave little plant. Bold against cold. Outside, the Midwest winter weather hangs on. Over the weekend we celebrated a…

I feel like a Paul Revere rider, with my boots to my knees and woolen coat draping below, except my shout is “One foot might land, Two it could be!” But it’s not the depth of snow so much as the plunging temperature. The wind chill factor drops us to below thirty below. Frigid, rigid and frosty. The…

The story of the wedding feast at Cana is one I’ve heard a thousand times. I prayed my way through it recently, Lectio Divina style, expecting a real good, feel good, prayer time. I wasn’t looking for anything fresh, nor expecting new insight. The story in sum: six large stone jars held dirty wash water, and, in response to Mary’s…

In my years BC, before children, I shopped at a local flea market and found a one of a kind find – a sturdy, slightly roughhoused, man’s immigration trunk. The Douglas fir grain, aching with age, is textured with tiny rivulets and boasts a host of small scuffs and steely spike impressions. Rustic iron grab handles, forged and…