First Anniversary of New Life

 

Today marks one year since my husband passed away.  It’s interesting that I feel even worse. I wonder when a person starts to feel a little better after the loss of someone who was a part of their life for two-thirds of that life?

To keep busy this year, I went back to teaching school again. It worked great because teaching elementary school is an all-consuming job when you’re in the middle of it. But then, I get home, and — yup, he’s still dead.  It’s interesting that life just keeps imposing itself on you even when you feel that your existence is on pause. The trash has to go out to the curb. The car still needs gas. Your stomach growls reminding you that food is needed again. I do the laundry, I clean up the kitchen, I wash my hair, and I water the plants. The world is turning, and I am living in it still, but it often feels like I’m just watching my life from a distance.

The In-between Days

 

Our son got married last weekend. At the rehearsal dinner, I shared what I believe are fundamental truths about marriage and the uniting of two people as one.

I clicked the red “Leave” button on a Zoom call; I pushed down so hard on my mouse, I was surprised it didn’t crack. I was furious at the conversation that had just taken place. The source of my frustration was a loyal teammate who had been by my side for seven years.

A Caretaker’s Job is Hard Work

 

I don’t know how they do it—those people who take care of their sick or incapacitated loved ones for months or years. Even if they have assistance from friends and family or even the government, it’s a demanding job.

Right now, I’m trying to be available to my husband in his recovery after hernia surgery. Let me tell you, he’s one tough cookie: he doesn’t get Novocaine when he gets a tooth filling; he hates the way his mouth feels afterward.

Member Post

 

I have a simple question:  What device should I get for my wife? Her IPAD Air died, so she’s been using mine but the screen is smaller (about 8.5 x 7) and that causes her some sight problems.  I have given up trying to teach her about safari (good luck with Brave!)  I also have […]

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Blacks Must Redeem Their Families

 

Some people claim that the differences between blacks and whites, blacks and Asians, or blacks and black immigrants result from discriminatory policies. These people claim the persistent wealth gap between blacks and others is responsible for blacks’ low quality-of-life issues. Many who appeal to this claim embrace Critical Race Theory or antiracism as the reason and antidote for the divergences between blacks and their multiethnic peers.

But is that true? Is discrimination the reason for these disparities? Not really. Sure, one can claim that bigots still exist in America, but individual bigots aren’t at the same level of segregation, which was the paramount example of institutional racism in America.

Within political discussions on the Right, social conservatism is on the rise. Why did the Right have a libertarian phase, and why is it leaving it behind? What does social conservatism look like in the world of practical public policy, and what is its future? How do religious citizens fit within the conservative movement?

Ryan Anderson ’04, is the director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a thinktank at the forefront of just such questions. After graduating from Princeton, Dr. Anderson pursued his PhD in Political Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the co-author of five books, most recently Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing (Regnery, 2022). His research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, in two Supreme Court cases. In addition to leading the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Anderson serves as the John Paul II Teaching Fellow in Social Thought at the University of Dallas, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute.

The pill has rocked our society to its core: but have we fully examined all its repercussions? Influential author and essayist Mary Eberstadt thinks we’ve only scratched the surface; in her most recent book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited (Ignatius Press, 2023) she argues that the papal encyclical Humane Vitae predicted our deep loneliness and other modern woes.

Mary Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic information center in Washington, D.C., and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute.

The Man in the Moon

 

Monday night, I was driving around doing some errands and I was not having even a teeny, tiny, mildly good time. Other drivers had exceeded the usual levels of irritating dumb decisions. (One person decided to change lanes at a traffic light and nearly backed into me until I honked my horn repeatedly to stop them. Over and over, there were those drivers who had to dodge in and out of their lanes trying to get a little bit ahead of everyone else. Etc., etc., etc.) I was seriously grinding my teeth.

And this came after a day with a group of 5th graders whose ability to make snarky comments about the topic we’re learning, or sigh loudly in irritation when I ask them to actually write down stuff in their notebooks, exceeds all I’ve ever experienced in 24 years of teaching this age group. How many days do we have left until school ends?

Amidst fraught debates about what gender is, and how it fits into feminism, Annika sits down with Dr. Abigail Favale, an English professor specializing in gender studies and feminist literary criticism turned Catholic convert. Dr. Favale is now a professor and writer at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, and the author of “The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.”

More about Dr. Favale: https://abigailfavale.wixsite.com/home

So There We Were….

 

We had a President under attack and a VP with lots of questions about their ability to serve. We were fighting what some called a proxy war against a large competitor on the grounds of a county that many couldn’t have found on a map before the conflict. Gas prices were going up, and we were about to be held hostage by gas-producing countries. This was causing an economic and employment crisis, and there were political riots in the country.

That was 51 years ago today.

More year-end awards today!  Jim and Greg embark on the second half of their six-episode saga known as the 2022 Three Martini Lunch Awards. Today, they offer up their selections for the best political idea, worst political idea, and boldest political tactics for the year. Their selections range from the campaign trail to the halls of Congress to the biggest land war in Europe in more than 75 years.

Member Post

 

The announcement I never thought I would get to make: Samuel Christian Schley was born November 11, 2022 at 2:50 PM. He was 20 inches long and 7 pounds, 3 ounces; now almost a month later, he’s 22.5″ and 8 pounds, 12 ounces. (Finally my boobs are doing something useful!) We are both doing well. […]

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My New Life

 

In December, nearly a year ago, I wrote that my husband had been diagnosed with a form of leukemia. However, that was not correct, we found when we visited a specialized cancer center. He was quite sick, but it was a liver problem and some kind of blood cell problem…just not cancer.

He died on October 27, 2022, a little over two weeks ago. We had a lovely funeral here for him. Our five children were all able to come, and our four grandchildren. Many friends have comforted me in person, and I’ve heard from many more via the internet and snail-mail.

‘Same-Sex Couple’ Does Not Equal ‘Two-Sex Couple’

 

Same-sex “marriage” is in discussion again, as the US Senate seems intent on forcing the issue further down the throats of resistant Americans. There are multiple arguments for why same-sex couples do not qualify for “marriage.” My primary argument is that same-sex couples cannot produce children.

Marriage is socially and legally recognized for couples of two sexes because such a couple may, even is likely to, create new life, i.e., produce children. Those children blend the two families from which the couple came into a new branch on the tree of humanity and perpetuate that blend far into the future. Throughout history and across cultures, it has been and is the expectation of children that drives marriage. “Romance” or “erotic love” are very late additions to the long and broad history of marriage, and not particularly central to why marriage exists.

Your questions were so good that Jim and Greg decided to take on three more today! In this edition, they address why supposed conservatives not only refused to support Donald Trump but stopped advocating for conservatism and openly embraced the Democrats while insisting they are still the principled ones. Then they discuss who they would choose as their running mates, with the condition that they cannot choose each other. Finally, they talk “Die Hard” – you knew it was going to come up! This time they are asked to rank the films in the series from best to worst.