Saturday on Substack 27.V.2023
I’m sitting here, finishing this up on Sunday afternoon after having opened this up before noon yesterday (Saturday) to get things going… And… It’s been nothing short of a catastrophe, and my patience is at an end.
Oh, Lord, it’s been a stressful week! I know, I sound like a broken record, but it just seems like everything is at least a little off-kilter, and trying to manage it all is an impossible trick. I shouldn’t even say “manage”. I don’t have control over most of it; it’s just trying to keep going.
On a positive note, the kids are done with school, and so I’m hoping to use the time when they sleep in to get some stuff done. People seem to think that with only one child at home during the school day, I’ve had lots of time to do things, but my first two hours every day seemed to get eaten up by getting them to school, and there were a good many days that I was exhausted already once I got back home. Then there were all the days the kids missed from school for being sick, all the doctor and dentist appointments, and just running around trying to do grocery shopping and the like done during the school day so that I was only shopping with one kid!
Writing
Posts
Signal - Signal (https://signal.org/) is an app that acts a lot like WhatsApp, but isn’t owned by Facebook. I’ve run Signal on my phone for years for both secure messages to other Signal users and video chat as well as for SMS text messages. Signal announced last fall that they were going to end support for the SMS messages. From their perspective, they wanted to keep their focus on the messages that go through their ecosystem, not keep fiddling with the insecure SMS stuff.
I think an awful lot of tech people use Signal, and maybe just about everybody in their address books use Signal, but for the rest of us, a big draw of Signal was that it did do SMS messages, and would back those up as well. Now that they’ve phased out SMS, I think about 1/3 of my Signal contacts have dropped the program - it’s just not worth the effort to keep running for a couple of contacts. I’m not planning on dropping it, but it’s really annoying that I’m running my SMS messages separately.
Reading
I’m actually working on reading a book right now - The Tools of Spiritual Warfare by Joy Corey. I know Joy from church, though it’s been years since I’ve seen her in person. I’ve had the book for ages (and it’s currently out-of-print, though I hope it will go through a third printing) but it seemed like the time to read it. She’s got a lot of good points with it, but it does make Joy feel closer, and maybe I’ll write her once I finish the book.
I also have one other book checked out from the library - Windswept House by Malachi Martin.
Apart from Rod Dreher, I don’t know that I’ve been reading a whole lot this week. Here are a couple of things…
Fr. Gregory mentions the “tradwife” movement here. It’s something some of the “Orthobros” have picked up on as the “ideal”. As a stay-at-home mom to five, I know nothing about wearing heels around the house!
The pediatric transgender debate is not an issue that is going to leave us alone, and it’s not all confined to the issue of pediatric transgenderism, it’s about how and why we set boundaries as a society.
Interesting piece on the LA Dodgers, Sam Brinton, Bud Light, Target, etc. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/404611.php . I’ve been in Target maybe a dozen times in the last 8 years - I quit going when they started all the bathroom nonsense. My oldest - a girl - was six at the time and I wasn’t going to shepherd her two brothers (5 and 2) into the women’s bathroom every time she might need to go. Sure, a pervert might go in anyway, but Target was telling me, as mom, that I had no right to demand that this person behave properly or be removed.
This, from Naomi Wolf, is interesting - I just have no idea how to process it. She’s not a theologian, but I’m not saying that you have to be a theologian to read and understand these things. She’s incredibly smart, but I think she kind of attracts a crowd that says “Yay, you’re so smart” rather than giving much feedback to the issue at hand. On the other hand, I’m thrilled that people that one wouldn’t necessarily expect get excited about God, and share that excitement to others. https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/do-we-resemble-god/
Erin Geary is one of the writers filling in for John Kass as he is recovering from health issues. She’s got a Substack as well, and here’s her latest:
Laugh a little
This really had nothing to do with this past week, but Parry Gripp is always a welcome distraction:
Watching
I really didn’t do much for watching this week. I managed to watch the movie Suspicion with
and Erin at Cracker Crumb Life. Oh, yes I was folding laundry at the same time, but it was still fun.Music
Not much for music either… One thing, though, but I haven’t had much chance to mull it over.
It reminds me very much of music out in the Pacific Northwest with the kind of folky, mournful, storytelling thing going on. I miss it out there.
I wish you all a blessed week!
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