Association Of Catholic Bloggers

This isn't the America I grew up in. But human nature hasn't changed, and freedom of expression still makes some of us uneasy. I'll be talking about that; and sharing a little family history that relates to the America of my youth. A Son of Librarians Information, Attitudes, Access, and Me Free Speech, Social Media, and Perceptions Prepublication Censorship, a Near Miss Politics, Panic, and Principles Social Media: New Forum, Old Principles, and Being an American More at A Catholic Citizen in America . (Freedom of expression, being able to share opinions and information, matters: even when it makes some of us uneasy.)

I've added Caroline Furlong's "A Song of Joy..." to More Perspectives From the Catholic Laity , in the sidebar: A Song of Joy by Caroline Furlong Writing for Joy She's a science fiction/fantasy writer: and so is more "a writer who is Catholic", than "a Catholic Writer". I talked about that distinction, back in 2017: " A Writer Who is Catholic " (July 16, 2017) (Just what the title says. This is the entire post.)

I'd been planning on having something else ready for posting. By Friday afternoon, that obviously wasn't going to happen. So I'll talk about what has been happening. I should have my ducks in a row by the end of next week. This week's highlight was an unexpected visit from number-two daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. They'd been vacationing in Kentucky, and had planned on driving straight through to their home in North Dakota. Then our granddaughter had a learning experience involving a swing and gravity. She'll be okay, but right now she's dealing with a broken arm. And that's why they stopped off in Sauk Centre. More at A Catholic Citizen in America . (A visit this week, a broken arm and illness in the house have distracted me. So I this week I talked life, health, faith and making sense.)

It hasn't been quite four years since a small patch on my tongue's underside went numb. My wife said I should call our town's emergency room, so I did. I'd long since learned that she's got common sense.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America . A checkup and changing plans: atrial septal aneurysm and other medical terms, mostly good news from the scan. And a happy musical memory from 1963.

First, the good news. A month after deciding to start using WordPress blocks before their classic user interface became one with Nineveh, Tyre and rotary telephones — I don't have the usual Saturday post ready. The good news is that I'm more comfortable with WordPress blocks than I'd feared.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America . I spent this week fixing technical issues. Not-so-good news, RSS feeds don't work with HTTPS. Good news, I should have a regular post ready next week.

(Norbert Nerdly — my frustrations, personified.) If you have tried writing a comment on one of these posts, thank you! And if you have been unable to do so, sorry about that. You're not alone.... ...That process hasn't been made any easier by "difficulty thinking or concentrating (sometimes referred to as 'brain fog')" that I've been experiencing.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

This will be my 31st daily 'journal' entry. I hadn't been planning on a daily posting schedule. But Sauk Centre's weather gave me something to write about three days in a row.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I've been feeling frustrated. Nothing unusual there. Feeling frustrated, satisfied, discouraged, elated: that's part of being human. Emotions happen. I'll get back to that. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I started "A Catholic Citizen in America" on September 16, 2008; as a Blogger blog. Time passed. By 2016, I was having technical issues with Blogger. Then, in May of 2016, the service's zeal to protect users and viewers from a particular image file format gave me the last straw. That's when I decided to re-launch "A Catholic Citizen in America" as a WordPress blog. Which I did, finally, a few months later.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I never wear a face mask while at my desk. Make that almost never. I did this morning — Saturday, January 23, 2020 — while taking that picture. △ And I wore one I'd had at the hospital while taking a picture for " Back from the Hospital: The Masked Minnesotan Rides Again ."... The face mask I'm wearing in today's photo is from Sauk Centre's Walmart. And that brings me to one of the two things I was going to talk about today. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I read about "loss of identity" and "information overload" the other day.... ..."Information overload" is well on its way to becoming a cliche. Or cliché, for folks who like their English with a dash of diacritics, and that's another topic. I keep seeing warnings against "information overload," the Internet's "hive mind," and suchlike threats. But I don't feel overloaded, informationally or otherwise, even after being online for hours. That gives me the task of deciding whether I react to "information overload" — and how I react, if I choose to do so. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Lent is fast approaching. How I see it and what I do is up to me. Ash Wednesday is next week, so I don't have much time to decide. Christians, Catholic and otherwise, in my culture generally change what we eat for this season. I'm a Catholic, so I've got rules. But not all that many. Mostly they're guidelines. I put a link to my territory's rules about diet under ' Fast & Abstinence ' near the end of this post.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Someone said "write what you know." It was definitely Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Nathan Englander, or somebody else. I've mostly seen the quote applied to writing fiction. Apparently some folks assume that it means authors should only write stories about events they've experienced. That may help explain why fantasy and science fiction stories aren't taken seriously in some circles, and entirely too seriously in others. Others, including John Briggs , Diablo Cody /Brook Busey-Maurio and Jason Gots , say it means using the author's emotional memories when telling stories. They're professional writers, so I figure they know what they're talking about. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

My #3 daughter has some of my qualities, and attitudes. About four years back now, she vented frustration about writers, faith, and assumptions. She wasn't nearly as loud as I've often been during 'vents.' When folks learned she's a writer, they'd often say something like 'oh, good: we need more Catholic writers.' She'd say something like "I'm a writer who is Catholic, not a 'Catholic writer.'" I know what she means. She isn't writing another 'lives of the Saints,' or book of prayers. She's a Catholic who writes.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Joy of community. Writers go forth. Onward and Upward. God Bless Welcome, Join me in my camp here. Are you familiar NaNoWriMo? It is National Novel Writing Month. It is a virtual camp for writers to achieve their goals in creative writing. Having tried to do this camp NaNoWriMo thing for years. Finally, I am a participant yeah for me. In July, the writer can choose their own word count. Well, in any camp you can. Just do not let the stress and getting it perfect get to you anymore. My saying is “better done than perfect”. If I reach the goal, great and if I do not great. I am participating, to me that is all that matters right now.                 read more

I am part of a little Catholic book called  Love Rebel: Reclaiming Motherhood . One of the contributors, Bonnie Way, asked me questions about blogging for her own blog,  The Kola Mom . First, tell us a bit about yourself. It took me years to finally decide to start writing again. I had taken a 30-year sabbatical after leaving university to raise nine children. I just couldn’t seem to start writing, probably because the computer still intimidated me before I started blogging. No wonder- I had written all my university papers on a MANUEL typewriter. However, realistically there was simply too much work running a household for eleven people and helping with the farm animals and our large vegetable garden. continue

Four years ago, when I tried to write on a computer, I could not translate the same creative energy that I experienced telling a story verbally to the keyboard. My intuitive, imaginative side stayed buried and my logical intellect wrote boring drivel. God used blogging to heal my frozen gift of writing.  I snapped to attention when I stumbled on blogs.  Suddenly, I was thinking up a username,  a title for a blog,  looking at templates and design and layout. All these activities loosened up my creativity while I sat typing. It was like an invisible barrier slowly melted, allowing my imagination to bubble up in a stream of written words that felt just as exhilarating as my oral tradition. I was  excited to start sharing written stories with other people, people who would read them,  respond, comment and give me feedback on what I had written.  Within weeks, I was no longer an island but part of a community of other writers who had the very same insecurities and problems as I

I'm sure that every Catholic blogger has asked themselves at least once why they do it. Is it really worth the time spent away from work, from family, from prayer? Is anybody listening? Does anybody care?  One of my friends recently shut down his personal blog altogether , saying "While I have a lot of respect for many bloggers, I feel the blogosphere to be a net negative to the Catholic Faith.  ... It is the epitome of Francis' 'self-referential Church.'  Far from leading to a deepening of the faith, it has led to a corrosion of it." Could this be true? My friend's words certainly don't describe the work of CatholicMom or any mommy blogger I know. But I've seen the corner of the Catholic blogosphere he describes -- the place where people attack one another viciously over minute points of doctrine or liturgical practices that baffle non-Catholics and fail to bring anyone to a holier and more peaceful frame of mind. I regularly engage in verbal

For my first post here at the Association of Catholic Women Bloggers, I thought it best to give you a flavor for why I write. Why I write Catholic, converted , unequally yoked , mother, Latina,  Dominican Spirituality with a smattering of funny. I try to apply what I learn at mass to what I see in the secular .  I started on Pinterest - which isn't very common. As a convert to the faith married to an atheist, I wanted a place that I could gather all I could about this wonderful, rich tapestry of faith while at the same time respecting my first vocation as a wife. In the dark, I could collect images attached to websites that spoke of scapulars, saints, the Virgin Mary, Third Orders, the Mass and the Sacraments. This would be my first schooling into the faith as it happened in real life - after RCIA.  The images turned into writing on a summer day last year and I write most every day. Some of my favorite posts are funny, revealing, controversial and deeply personal. The poin

Do you blog primarily on Catholic spirituality? Not a blog on Catholic doctrine or apologetics, politics, book reviews or a “Mommy blog”–but one focused on helping your readers grow closer to Christ? I have not been able to find an exclusive list of  spirituality links, so I decided to create one. Send me an email at crossini4774 at comcast dot net to have your blog listed on my new link page. See more details on the requirements first.