Just another writer

  • Today’s saint picture, slightly less crummy, Saint Justin

    Today’s saint picture, slightly less crummy, Saint Justin

    Surprisingly, there is no Saint Justin church in the archdiocese of Chicago, so today doesn’t have an obligatory church visit (and yesterday’s visit covered my Sunday obligation so I’m good for the weekend). St Justin, commonly known as St Justin Martyr, is so called because, not surprisingly, he  was martyred for refusing to sacrifice to…

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  • Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Visitation

    Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Visitation

    Today is the feast of the visitation, commemorating when the newly pregnant Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist at that time. As a result I visited St Basil/Visitation church on the south side of Chicago. The church is located in a poor neighborhood as evidenced by the fact…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 30 June 1988

    A visit with my younger self: 30 June 1988

    Once I lost my daily habit, it turned into a less than weekly habit as I didn’t write another entry for almost two weeks. This time, I wrote down a collection of story ideas (story ideas are cheap—my punk-ass self was crapping these out like a gringo tourist in rural Mexico). Story ideas:“Rite of Passage”…

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  • Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Ferdinand

    Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Ferdinand

    Today’s saint is Saint Ferdinand, who, reading his biography, is kind of politically incorrect as saints go, being notable for “christianizing” Spain which largely consisted of military conquests on the Iberian peninsula. This is the guy who pissed off Osama Bin Laden so much, he felt obliged to mention him in his justification of the…

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  • The Catholic nerd pilgrimage continues: Ascension

    The Catholic nerd pilgrimage continues: Ascension

    Today is Ascension Thursday, which has been moved to next Sunday by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, but since the Sunday I showed up at a church and said I wanted to be Catholic was the Sunday before Ascension Thursday when it was still on Thursday, I have a bit of an emotional connection…

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  • Today’s saint picture, slightly crummier today—Saint Bernard of Montjoux

    Today’s saint picture, slightly crummier today—Saint Bernard of Montjoux

    Today is the feast of St Bernard of Montjoux who, it turns out is exactly the St Bernard that the dogs are named after thanks to his establishing a pair of permanent rest houses in passes through that Alpines. That said, even though one of the two pictures I found online shows him with a…

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  • Today’s somewhat less crummy saint picture—Saint Augustine of Canterbury

    Today’s somewhat less crummy saint picture—Saint Augustine of Canterbury

    No church available for any of today’s saints, so I decided to do a portrait of Saint Augustine of Canterbury. Less well-known than his namesake, Augustine of Hippo, Augustine of Canterbury led a delegation of monks to England where he would become the first bishop of Canterbury. Not long after leaving Rome, this group of…

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  • Today’s crummy saint picture—St Philip Neri

    Today’s crummy saint picture—St Philip Neri

    There is a St Philip Neri church in Chicago, but it’s been renamed for a different saint and the daily Mass was too early to drag the kids to, so I’m doing a saint drawing again today. This time around, I decided to do it with a felt tip marker thinking this might make the…

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  • Today’s crummy saint picture

    Today’s crummy saint picture

    Continuing my saint a day project, since both St Bede the Venerable parishes in the archdiocese were a bit far to go with my kids, I opted to do another crummy drawing. This one is a colored pencil impressionist rendering of the James Doyle Penrose painting, “The Venerable Bede Translates John” which depicts Bede on…

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