Today is her memorial – March 3. You and your children can read about her in my Loyola Kids Book of Saints:
(Link goes to publisher’s website, not Amazon)



And learn all about her here.
Posted in Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, Christmas Gifts, evangelization, Faith, First Communion Gifts, Gospels, history, Joseph Dubruiel, Loyola Kids Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, prayer, Reading, Religion, Saints, tagged Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, Catholicism, faith, First Communion Gifts, history, Loyola Kids book of saints, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Michael Dubruiel, religion, saints, travel on March 3, 2023|
Today is her memorial – March 3. You and your children can read about her in my Loyola Kids Book of Saints:
(Link goes to publisher’s website, not Amazon)
And learn all about her here.
Posted in Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, art, Bible, Catholic, Catholicism, christmas, evangelization, Faith, Gospels, history, Jesus, Joseph Dubruiel, Liturgy, Living Faith, Loyola Kids Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, Religion, Saints, tagged Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Catholic, Catholicism, Christmas, faith, Gospel, history, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Michael Dubruiel, religion, saints, travel on December 29, 2022|
First, on this Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas, we encounter Simeon again.
Another calendar year is drawing to an end. When I look back, what do I see? What emotions do the events of this year’s journey around the sun bring? Perhaps the year has been dominated by sadness or discord, and we won’t be sorry at all to see it go.
Perhaps 2020 will stand out in our memories for unexpected and surprising moments of joy. Maybe we’ll be glad for what we learned, even if that schooling was difficult and unwelcome.
In that moment in the Temple, Simeon knew he was in the presence of someone special. He knew God was at work. My challenge, as I reflect back and look forward, is to remember that this child who Simeon welcomed was with me every moment of this past year. And because of that, no matter what, because of him, I can move on the journey—in peace.
Remember Art & Theology? This link takes you to posts tagged “Simeon” – at which you will find some wonderful art, including the piece below from a Bolivian artist and what the blogger says is the painting that was on Rembrandt’s easel when he died.
And a poem by Richard Bauckham, on waiting:
…Two aged lives incarnate
century on century
of waiting for God, their waiting-room
his temple, waiting on his presence,
marking time by practicingthe cycle of the sacrifices,
ferial and festival,
circling onward, spiralling
towards a centre out ahead,
seasons of revolving hope.Holding out for God who cannot
be given up for dead, holding
him to his promises—not now,
not just yet, but soon, surely,
eyes will see what hearts await.
It’s also the optional memorial of St. Thomas Becket.
It is from a small book by Anglo-Catholic Enid Chadwick called My Book of the Church’s Year. Reprint edition available here but can be viewed online here.
He’s in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints in the section “Saints are people who tell the truth.”
Here’s the last page of the entry, so you have a sense of the content.
A couple of years ago, the British Museum had a special exhibit on Becket. Here’s the website for the exhibit and here’s a playlist of associated videos.
Of course, we read The Canterbury Tales in the homschool. Here’s my take – well, really quoting someone else’s take – on why everyone in the Church should read it right now.
He is the great poetic ecclesiologist of a Church marked by sin and so repentance. He is a voice for our times because he can act as a guide to living together, confessing our sins, telling our tales, and sometimes laughing on our way through the vale of tears towards Jerusalem.
Posted in Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, art, Catholic, Catholicism, Christian, education, evangelization, Gospels, history, Joseph Dubruiel, Loyola Kids Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, Music, Religion, Saints, tagged Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, books, Catholic, Catholicism, faith, history, jazz, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Mary Lou Williams, Michael Dubruiel, Music, religion, saints, travel on November 3, 2022|
I repeat this post yearly – as I’ve said, readers come and go here, so why not?
It’s one of my favorite posts, along with, of course, the Gallery.
New for 2022: St. Martin de Porres from the church of San Diego in Guanajuato, Mexico:
With Pope Pius X behind him, for some reason…
I love that the first saint we remember in a specific way after All Saints’ Day is St. Martin. He’s a strong reminder of what discipleship is: as followers of Christ, our call is to live like this – in deepest communion with Christ, risking all, bringing the love and mercy of Christ not only to all we meet, but, to extent our station in life permits it, to those outside, abroad, and outcast.
Civil governmental and social and cultural structures can enhance that or put up obstacles. That doesn’t change anything about how we’re called to meet our day, every day – like Martin and all the saints.
We’ll start with the July 1962 issue of Ebony and read about the canonization:
(Click on image for a larger version, or just go to the archives site and read it there.)
Complete with sweet mid-century ads!
(Honestly, those back issues of Ebony…don’t know about you, but they put me at great risk of rabbit-hole exploring..fascinating. So be warned.)
From John XXIII’s homily at the canonization:
The example of Martin’s life is ample evidence that we can strive for holiness and salvation as Christ Jesus has shown us: first, by loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind; and second, by loving our neighbours as ourselves.
When Martin had come to realize that Christ Jesus suffered for us and that He carried our sins in his body on the cross, he would meditate with remarkable ardour and affection about Christ on the cross. Whenever he would contemplate Christ’s terrible torture he would be reduced to tears. He had an exceptional love for the great sacrament of the Eucharist and often spent long hours in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. His desire was to receive the sacrament in communion as often as he could.
Saint Martin, always obedient and inspired by his divine teacher, dealt with his brothers with that profound love which comes from pure faith and humility of spirit. He loved men because he honestly looked on them as God’s children and as his own brothers and sisters. Such was his humility that he loved them even more than himself and considered them to be better and more righteous than he was.
He excused the faults of others. He forgave the bitterest injuries, convinced that he deserved much severer punishments on account of his own sins. He tried with all his might to redeem the guilty; lovingly he comforted the sick; he provided food, clothing and medicine for the poor; he helped, as best he could, farm laborers and Negroes, as well as mulattoes, who were looked upon at that time as akin to slaves: thus he deserved to be called by the name the people gave him: ‘Martin the Charitable.’
The virtuous example and even the conversation of this saintly man exerted a powerful influence in drawing men to religion. It is remarkable how even today his influence can still call us toward the things of heaven. Sad to say, not all of us understand these spiritual values as well as we should, nor do we give them a proper place in our lives. Many of us, in fact, strongly attracted by sin, may look upon these values as of little moment, even something of a nuisance, or we ignore them altogether. It is deeply rewarding for men striving for salvation to follow in Christ’s footsteps and to obey God’s commandments. If only everyone could learn this lesson from the example that Martin gave us.
I’ve written in the past about artist Jean Charlot. Among many other things, he illustrated a biography of St. Martin de Porres:
Oh. And let’s end with some Mary Lou Williams – jazz artist, Catholic.
Suitable for the day, but I much prefer her Anima Christi
Last, and certainly least…he’s in the Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints – first page here
Posted in 7 Quick Takes, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Catholic, Catholicism, Christian, Church, education, evangelization, history, Internet, Jesus, Joseph Dubruiel, Michael Dubruiel, Morality, Reading, Religion, tagged 7 Quick Takes, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, Catholic books, Catholicism, evangelism, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, religion on January 16, 2021|
Well, that’s strange. In my rush to publish this on Thursday night/Friday morning, I guess I published it for last Friday (the 8th). Huh. Those of you who subscribe to direct links saw it, but those who just show up to look at the front page…probably didn’t. So here it is again….
Yes, yes, I have more to say about social media and the internet and such, but I got a bit tired of saying it, so we can all wait a bit more. God knows, the landscape will probably undergo another avalanche and earthquake before we’re even close, so there’s no hurry. Ever.
If you want to check out what I’ve been gabbing about, just click backward.
The rest of this will be ridiculously random. Apologies in advance. I’m in a strange mood tonight.
With Ordinary Time, we’re in year B – which means the focus of the Sunday Gospels is Mark.
Consider this book – The Memoirs of St. Peter– as an apt accompaniment to this year. I am! I’ve had the book for a while, read chunks of it, but will be keeping it at hand as a reference and spiritual companion to the Mass readings.
I have been reading about St. Margaret of Scotland the past couple of days. If you’d like to read the biography of her written by Turgot, her spiritual advisor and confessor, you can access it through the Internet Archive here.
I do have a work purpose in studying up on her, which means I am reading about her, searching for lessons and finding teachable moments.
What have I found? What I often find: Sanctity begins when we find ourselves in a certain moment and pray, not that God will help us “be happy” or “find our true selves” – but when we pray, instead, for God to work through us to serve the people he’s put in our lives, especially the poor.
To go from saints to sinners, but really, who has the right to proclaim the difference except for God, from the Public Domain Review – quickly becoming a favorite site – pages from the first published collection of mug shots.
Not a bad looking crew for horse thieves, barn burners and pickpockets….
Quite thought-provoking.
When Swingin’ the Dream opened on Broadway on 29 November 1939, the creators of this jazz version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream had every expectation of a smash hit. The music alone seemed worth the price of admission. Among the hits were Ain’t Misbehavin’, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Jeepers Creepers, and
Darn That Dream. All this was intermingled with swing renditions of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, from his 1842 Midsummer Night’s Dream. The music was performed by some of the biggest names around: Bud Freeman’s band played on one side of the stage, Benny Goodman’s inter-racial group on the other, and in the centre Donald Voorhees conducted an orchestra of 50.
The Shakespeare musical had a 150-strong cast, featuring many of America’s most popular black artists, including Maxine Sullivan as Titania, Juano Hernandez as Oberon and none other than Louis Armstrong as Bottom. The trumpeter reportedly turned down a part in another Broadway-bound jazz show, Young Man With a Horn, to star in it. Butterfly McQueen (AKA Prissy in Gone With the Wind) played Puck. Agnes de Mille, who a year later would break new ground in her Black Ritual for the newly formed Negro Unit of Ballet Theatre, oversaw the choreography.
The dancers included the great tap star Bill Bailey, the three Dandridge sisters (who played Titania’s pixie attendants), as well as 13 tireless jitterbugging couples. With set designs based on Walt Disney cartoons, it looked great, too. Sullivan’s Titania entered enthroned in a “World of Tomorrow” electric wheelchair, microphones appeared in the shape of snakes and caterpillars, while a pull-down bed hung from a tree.
It seemed destined to a be a hit, and a startlingly original one. But Swingin’ the Dream closed after only 13 performances – and lost its investors a staggering $100,000, the equivalent to about $2m today. Critics continue to debate what went wrong, hampered by the fact that no script for the show, other than a few pages from the Pyramus and Thisbe scene, has ever been found, despite extensive searches.
As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been reading Hemingway stories. I must say that “An Alpine Idyll” is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever read. Not in a necessarily bad way – just…..strange.
I wonder if it’s based on something he heard about that really happened?
Anyway. Speaking of Gospels, today’s Gospel from the Mass readings is the healing of the paralytic from (of course) Mark. Here’s the first page of my retelling from the Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories.
For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!
Posted in 7 Quick Takes, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Catholic, Catholicism, Christian, Faith, Family, Family Travel, history, Joseph Dubruiel, Loyola Kids Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, Saints, Travel, travel with kids, Yellowstone and Grand Teton NP August 2020, tagged 7 Quick Takes, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, family travel, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, saints, travel, travel with children, travel with kids, Yellowstone and Grand Teton NP 2020 on August 27, 2020|
—1 —
First, St. Augustine, who’s in the Loyola Kids Book o’ Saints, under “Saints are people who help us understand God.” The first two pages:
Secondly…well, we’re back. And about to be gone. So here’s what happened today.
We packed up and left Gardnier, WY, at the north end of the park, about 7:30. We were met at the Yellowstone entrance (which is right there) with the news that not only was the road I knew was closed still closed because of fires (between Old Faithful and West Thumb), but another road – the alternate I’d been assuming would be our way out – was closed as well, because of an overturned gas-carrying 18-wheeler. That one, between Canyon and the lake (below is a campground map – first thing I grabbed – it’s the road between Canyon Village and “Fishing Bridge” campground.)
So here’s a map.
You can see the problem. There would be no way to get from Gardiner, in the north, to the South entrance, which then would get us on the road to Jackson. It was going to be a 3.5 hour drive, straight shot (you can’t go over 45 on most park roads), and we were planning to take our time and see things we’d missed and maybe take another look at some geysers.
But with that news, the route had to shift, didn’t it? Like, dramatically – out through West Yellowstone and out and over further west, then south through Idaho, to Jackson from the west. Adding not only distance, but time as well. Okay, champ, I’ll settle in to drive, you settle in to sleep.
And now is the part where I tell you that I just learned that as of 8am this morning that road between Old Faithful and West Thumb was opened. I don’t know why they didn’t know that at the entrance gate at 7:35, but it is what it is. No regrets. It’s fine – we saw some lovely sights along the way.
I shook traveling companion awake not long after departure to take in the Roaring Mountain – it used to emit this steam with a lot more force and noise (hence the name), but it’s still impressive.
After that – the drive to West Yellowstone is gorgeous, with stunning cliffsides lining the road.
Then….Idaho. So, new state! That means three new states added to our list with this trip, and I’ve now realized I’m up to 45. Only Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, Alaska and Hawaii remain.
It also means that one traveling companion awakened and learning where we were, it was a steady diet of Napoleon Dynamite quotations until the Tetons loomed into site again – and from the west, they are quite lovely. And we were delighted to see that we could, at last…actually see them, since the smoke from the fires further west had evidently dissipated.
Once over the pass, we took a slight detour into Teton Village, since I was curious what a ski village would look like. I’ve known folks who’ve traveled to the area to ski, and I confess my image of what that was wasn’t exactly what I saw, and not just because it’s summer. I guess I imagined something more bucolic and rural, not condos crammed at the base of a mountain. Huh. Well, it’s probably real nice in winter and obviously people like it, so they can have it.
On to Jackson, lunch, since it was a little early, wander around a bit, since it was still early, finally gain access to hotel.
This is not from our hotel, but from the balcony of a shop. See the arch? It’s elk antlers, and there’s more of the same on the square, and one at the entrance into the Jackson airport terminal, as well.
Then back into the car and back up to Jenny Lake – about 30 miles north. We had hours of daylight left, so why not get in some more hiking to points we’d missed before? The route was partway around the lake to the Moose Pond trails – no moose where seen – there– and then up the rest of the way to where the boat had dropped us before, the starting point for hikes to Inspiration Point, Hidden Falls and then the Cascade Canyon trail, which we’d walked a good bit of on Friday, and greatly enjoyed.We decided the best use of our time would be to get up to Hidden Falls and then take the boat back to the other side. Which we did, getting back to the car by 7, back into Jackson by 8, then to dinner at Bubba’s Barbecue, which was excellent.
And so…..animals today? Lots of elk, of course. Two does with their fawns crossing the road near the Visitor’s Center on this end of Grand Teton NP, and then, on the Jenny Lake hike…
And….
I think he was in the same spot 45 minutes later when we rode the boat across the lake, because I could see a group of folks on the trail there, looking down. For video, go to Instagram.
As per usual, I’ll do a post– probably tomorrow, from the airport – describing our itinerary and accommodations choices, for anyone contemplating a similar trip.
Back to ordinary life very, very soon. But in these days, of course, “ordinary” is anything but….
For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!
Posted in Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Bible Study, Catholic, Catholicism, Christian, Faith, France, history, Jesus, Joseph Dubruiel, Loyola Kids Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, Mission, Pope, prayer, tagged Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholicism, history, Ignatius of Loyola, Jesuits, Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, Loyola Press, Michael Dubruiel, poetry, The Words We Pray on July 31, 2020|
It’s July 31 – the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola.
St. Ignatius was in my Loyola Kids Book of Saints, and you can read the entire chapter here:
Because he had spent all those months in his sickbed, Ignatius got bored. He asked for something to read. He was hoping for adventure books, tales that were popular back then: knights fighting for the hands of beautiful ladies, traveling to distant lands, and battling strange creatures.
But for some reason, two completely different books were brought to Ignatius. One was a book about the life of Christ, and the other was a collection of saints’ stories.
Ignatius read these books. He thought about them. He was struck by the great sacrifices that the saints had made for God. He was overwhelmed by their love of Jesus.
And Ignatius thought, “Why am I using my life just for myself? These people did so much good during their time on earth. Why can’t I?”
Ignatius decided that he would use the talents God had given him—his strength, his leadership ability, his bravery, and his intelligence—to serve God and God’s people.
While Ignatius continued to heal, he started praying very seriously. God’s peace filled his heart and assured him that he was on the right path.
When Ignatius was all healed and ready to walk and travel again, he left his home to prepare for his new life. It wasn’t easy. He was 30, which was considered old in those days, and he was getting a late start in his studies for the priesthood. In those days, the Mass was said only in Latin, and Latin was the language all educated people used to communicate with each other. Ignatius didn’t know a bit of Latin. So for his first Latin lessons, big, rough Ignatius had to sit in a classroom with a bunch of 10-year-old boys who were learning Latin for the first time too!
That takes a different kind of strength, doesn’t it?
Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.
In The Words We Pray, I wrote about the Suscipe Prayer. That chapter is excerpted here:
The more you roll this prayer around in your soul, and the more you think about it, the more radical it is revealed to be.
One of the primary themes of the Spiritual Exercises is that of attachments and affections. Ignatius offers the account of “three classes of men” who have been given a sum of money, and who all want to rid themselves of it because they know their attachment to this worldly good impedes their salvation.
The first class would really like to rid themselves of the attachment, but the hour of death comes, and they haven’t even tried. The second class would also like to give up the attachment, but do so, conveniently, without actually giving anything up.
Is this sounding familiar at all?
The third class wants to get rid of the attachment to the money, which they, like the others, know is a burden standing in the way. But they make no stipulations as to how this attachment is relinquished; they are indifferent about the method. Whatever God wants, they want. In a word, they are the free ones.
The prayer “Take Lord, receive” is possible only because the retreatant has opened himself to the reality of who God is, what God’s purpose is for humanity, and what God has done for him in a particularly intense way.
A Response to God’s Love
The retreatant has seen that there is really no other response to life that does God justice. What love the Father has for us in letting us be called children of God, John says (1 John 3:1). What gift does our love prompt us to give?
In ages past, and probably in the minds of some of us still, that gift of self to God, putting oneself totally at God’s disposal, is possible only for people called to a vowed religious life. Well, God didn’t institute religious life in the second chapter of Genesis. He instituted marriage and family. I’m not a nun, but the Scriptures tell us repeatedly that all creation is groaning and being reborn and moving toward completion in God. Every speck of creation, everything that happens, every kid kicking a soccer ball down a road in Guatemala, each office worker in New Delhi, every ancient great-grandmother in a rest home in Boynton Beach, every baby swimming in utero at this moment around the world—all are beloved by God and are being constantly invited by him to love. And all can respond.
“Dante is often presented in a very secular way,” Schmalz said, noting the obsession that universities, artists and writers have had with the Inferno, ignoring the rest of poem.
According to Schmalz, limiting the poem’s scope to the Inferno means “not giving the proper representation of Dante and also the Christian ideas that are in the ‘Divine Comedy.’
“As a Catholic sculptor I have been very angry about this for many years,” he said.
An example of the fascination Dante’s Inferno has had on artists throughout history is the famous “Thinker” by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The popular image was originally meant to portray Dante as the “Poet,” and a miniature version of it can be found atop Rodin’s massive representation of “The Gates of Hell.”
“Because I am a Christian sculptor I will right this wrong,” Schmalz said. “I will do what has never been done before in the history of sculpture, which is to create a sculpture for each canto of the ‘Divine Comedy.’
— 4 —
On a biography of Charles Peguy
In a way, Péguy preserved and cherished each of these influences: He would maintain an obsessive concern for the dispossessed, an ardent passion for France, and an unyielding faith in God all his life. But his intensity of belief did not prevent him for recognizing and pointing out the flaws in that which he loved. Péguy deplored the Catholic Church’s reactionary excesses and the Third Republic’s racialist conception of citizenship, and his unorthodox view of socialism rejected Marx’s enforced equality and anti-religious undertones. To him, solidarity — and politics itself — began with the “mystical,” that is, the set of myths and shared transcendent beliefs that underpin the construction of communities. Resolutely anti-cosmopolitan, he did not believe in the transnational alliance of workers that would become central to the Soviet project. For him, to reject the centrality of local attachments was to abstract away the suffering of people close-by; only cold-hearted bourgeois were rootless enough to live in multiple cities at once, to oscillate between cultures and languages, to detach themselves from the warmth of traditions and communities. The very small and the transcendent were the scales that mattered. Real change would not come through centralized Jacobin putsches, but through local micro-revolutions.
Péguy abhorred all attempts to demystify life’s mysteries. He rejected the scientism of his era, and laughed at the claim — seemingly blind to its own metaphysical assumptions — that empirical science would ever supersede the need for metaphysics. He thought that Adam Smith and Karl Marx had equally simplistic views of history, views that sacrificed transcendence on the altar of materialism. Yet he did not believe that the Bible had all the answers, either — or, at least, he did not believe that any human being could ever access all the answers. In fact, he fervently opposed what he saw as a conservative attempt to weaponize scripture. In a way, he thought, both sides emptied metaphysics of their significance; the Left reduced religion to “the opium of the masses,” and the Right relegated faith to a mere political tool. Like Dostoevsky, Péguy thought that in the absence of God, men would devolve into beasts; unlike Dostoevsky, he also believed that if God were too present in human affairs, the same degeneration would ensue.
— 5 —
Watch out. This Sunday brings us the Miracle of Sharing….
— 6–
One of the newsletters I enjoy reading is The Convivial Society..about tech and life and such. This is from a recent edition – not from the author of the newsletter itself, but from a writer named Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation (1981). See if you can relate.
Rather than creating communication, [information] exhausts itself in the act of staging communication. Rather than producing meaning, it exhausts itself in the staging of meaning. A gigantic process of simulation that is very familiar. The nondirective interview, speech, listeners who call in, participation at every level, blackmail through speech: ‘You are concerned, you are the event, etc.’ More and more information is invaded by this kind of phantom content, this homeopathic grafting, this awakening dream of communication. A circular arrangement through which one stages the desire of the audience, the antitheater of communication, which, as one knows, is never anything but the recycling in the negative of the traditional institution, the integrated circuit of the negative. Immense energies are deployed to hold this simulacrum at bay, to avoid the brutal desimulation that would confront us in the face of the obvious reality of a radical loss of meaning.
Tomorrow is the memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, whom I wrote about here. Just a brief excerpt – related to the travails of writers, which he shared:
The letters reflect quite a bit on his concern to get this books out there to people who will read them – Naples is always out of copies, but that’s one of the few places he has an interested audience, and the priests, well….
I am glad that the History of the Heresies is finished. Once more, I remind you not to send me any copies for sale, as the priests of my diocese are not eager for such books; indeed, they have very little love for any reading whatsoever.
Besides, I am a poor cripple, who am Hearing my grave, and I do not know what I should do with these copies.
Rest assured, that I regard all your interests as though they were my own. If I could only visit Naples, I might be able to do something personally. But confined here in this poverty-stricken Arienzo, I write letters innumerable to people in Naples about the sale, but with very little result. I am much afflicted at this, but affliction seems to be all that I am to reap from these negotiations.
So, writers….you’re not alone!
For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!