Association Of Catholic Bloggers

The good news is that folks on the Gulf Coast probably won't be affected by Hurricane Irma. Not directly. Cleanup and rebuilding there is taking a back seat to news of this weekend's hurricane and Mexico's major earthquake. I'll be talking about this week's disasters, and how folks deal with them. Also faith, reasonable and otherwise, and a little science.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Harvey's in the news, a lot, and probably will be for days. I noticed stuff piling up in my notes, and decided that getting part of my 'Friday' post done early was a good idea.... ...News reporting generally uses more superlatives than I like. "Unprecedented" seems to be particularly popular with BBC News editors at the moment. I don't mind things being biggest, smallest, newest, or whatever. But I've learned to be rationally skeptical when I read that something is the biggest, worst, or most devastating thing of its kind.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Harvey was still a tropical storm when it went over the eastern Caribbean. That was a little over a week ago. Folks in Barbados were without power for a while. At least one house was destroyed, and more folks had to evacuate their homes. Pretty much the same thing happened in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Suriname and Guyana had wind and rain: enough to kill at least one person, a woman whose house collapsed with her inside. Harvey was a category 4 hurricane when it reached the Texas coast, between Port Aransas and Port O'Connor . That was around 10:00 p.m. Friday.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

The prospect of a long winter ahead is daunting especially with memories of the epic snowfall amounts of last year still haunting many of us. I once anticipated January with dread. Winter can be dark, oppressive and confining: the arctic air and biting winds… the deep snows burying the landscape … ice covering the streets and sidewalks … darkness that greets us when we rise and meets us at the end of each work day. January is a quiet month. Birds don’t come to the feeder; their songs no longer greet me in the morning. Crickets and locusts have gone silent at night. January was a month without life. Then I read Henry Beston’s classic, The Outermost House and it changed my perception of winter forever ...   Click here to continue reading ...