Anna Quindlen

Columnist Anna Quindlen quit her back-page column in Newsweek to make way for younger, browner talent, but she went out scolding:

"It’s undeniable: America’s opinionator's are too white and too gray. They do not reflect our diversity of ethnicity and race, gender and generation. They do not reflect the diversity of opinion, either, mainly because most are part of an echo chamber of received wisdom that takes place at restaurant tables in New York and Washington. Conservative pundits are making themselves foolish, flailing wildly because their movement itself is aging, confounded by the popularity of a president who stands for much of what they revile. But liberals are little better, fighting the same old battles in the same old ways, as though the world during their tenure had not changed radically."

It wasn't until she turned 50 that Anna Quindlen realized she didn't care any longer what people thought about her. "After all those years as a woman hearing, 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning & thought, I'm enough."

Quindlen's new memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, explores her past, present and future — her relationships with her parents and children, her faith, her career and her feelings about herself over the past five decades.

Our Madonna of the Toast

Bought for $28,000 on E-Bay

Bought for $5.00 at a Kitchen Supply Store

OMG !!

The efforts of an elderly parishioner to restore a 120-year-old fresco on a column inside a Spanish church have some wondering about his effort. YA THINK?!?!?!

The fresco, titled Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), is a depiction of Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns. It was painted on a wall of the Sanctuary of Mercy at Borja, near Zaragoza, Spain, by artist Elias Garcia Martinez more than a century ago.

Chartres Cathedral: Sacred Geometry

When Mary Was Black

When Mary Was Black

"As a writer &researcher, I believe that there is much that I could say about the image of the Black Madonna. As an artist, however, I also believe that the age-old adage is true: a picture paints a thousand words. So I will let these pictures -- a small portion of the many that I've collected -- speak for themselves.

When I have found both the time and the finances to support an unprecedented film project like this, I will produce my full documentary on the Black Madonna. One which marries both pictures and words. In the meantime, I offer this mock film trailer to herald that future time project of mine. This is but a glimpse into a remarkable tale that has thus far gone untold; and but a glance at that now largely forgotten time when Mary, the Mother of God, was black."

-- Paco D. Taylor

Paco Taylor has been studying and collecting photographs of Black Virgin icons since the mid-1990s. His collection features more than 500 such works, culled from every corner of Christian Europe, and other parts of the Christian world.

Happy Birthday, Daddy Dear xo

It's interesting to me how the soft underbelly of those we love comes forth most profoundly in their birth & then in their passing.

Another chapter in a whole lifetime seemed crammed in to that last month my dad and I had together. At home he rustled the pages of his last presentation paper for his Wranglers group about the brain while asking me if flowers have a memory since they repeat the life cycle. I told him, no, that was simply genetic coding & so we went round & round as usual & then I went home & actually tried to find out on the internet if flowers DO have tiny brains. 

I stood by my father's hospital bed after our 'last' real meal together of salmon, baked potato & fruit crisp, which he had gobbled down with gusto. On my way out, he motioned for me to lean down closer & closer until he could peck me on the cheek & then I kissed him on his head & he thanked me, as he had thanked Moe the big guy who had turned him & the nurses who had shifted his pillows or brought him ice. Chivalry until the end.

A week later, for all intents & purposes my dad mostly laid in twilight between two worlds. I was wishing he didn't have to experience the shutting down of time & space & organs & thought somehow a head on collision would be more humane. I was dreading the drive again to witness his disappearance, although at the same time I wished I was there holding his hand so he was not braving this journey alone.

I took solace that his soul was slowly arching away from the constraints of earthly plane. How strange though it seemed that one so wearily encased could rally for that final flight! Those days were so precious to me; perhaps more so then all the years we had leading up to them. The aching wait, the man child, the long rest into the long sweet sleep of peace. I believe you are truly in your element now.


 God Speed, Daddy Dear xo

Wise Woman

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." ~ Georgia O’Keeffe