Just another writer

  • Another lousy drawing

    Another lousy drawing

    Since I wasn’t able to make it to Our Lady of the Wayside church this morning, I instead did a drawing taken from the painting, Madonna Della Strada. The original painting was in a church dating back to the fifth century, although the painting itself only dates back to the 13th or 14th century. The…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 18 June 1988

    A visit with my younger self: 18 June 1988

    Well, I missed a day for the first time back in 1988 and I return with an entry that is embarrassing in more ways than one: Why do people read or watch movies or TV or whatever? More than ever, I’m convinced that it’s because we’re all looking for answers but we aren’t even sure…

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  • Once again I pretend to be an artist

    Once again I pretend to be an artist

    Since there’s no church for me to visit for any of today’s saints, I decided I’d do the art thing and draw one of the saints. Looking through my Penguin Dictionary of the Saints, I found Saint Desiderius of Vienne who had a really rough time of things: he was rebuked by the pope for…

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  • Arguably my biggest Catholic nerd endeavor ever

    Arguably my biggest Catholic nerd endeavor ever

    For some time, I’ve thought that it would be cool to get a list of all the Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago and each day visit a church whose patron’s feast was that day. Finally, I got around to downloading a list, making a spreadsheet and finding the feast days for the saints.…

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  • I pretended to be an artist today

    I pretended to be an artist today

    The Art Institute of Chicago had a workshop on monotype prints and feeling adventurous, I decided I would go to it since I had the afternoon free. The workshop began by a visit to a monotype by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione from somewhere in the neighborhood of 1640. Castiglione created the print by filling his copper…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 16 June 1988

    A visit with my younger self: 16 June 1988

    Wow, I was being quite dilligent about keeping up this diary back in the olden days. Thoughts about “A little dignity”—How did Phillotson become the man he is? What trigger the bressedown, I think something here is a façade, but what? Is, the dignified Phillotson rool on is the comical)? Why not lead the reader…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 15 June 1988

    A visit with my younger self: 15 June 1988

    A bit of context on these journal entries, I suppose. This was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. I had a job working at the University of Illinois at Chicago computer center. I forget what I was doing that year, although if I remember correctly, I was  working in the Medical…

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  • A visit with my younger self: 14 June 1988

    A visit with my younger self: 14 June 1988

    I encountered recently a writer who was publishing his old journal entries on Substack, and it occurred to me that there was probably nothing that private about my old journal entries that I couldn’t do the same, so here it is. “Rescuer”—A boy who wants to grow up to be a hero.. When the opportunity arrives…

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  • Writerly resolutions: April status

    Writerly resolutions: April status

    Finally beginning to get back into a groove on the writing. After much delay, I finished my post-workshop revisions on chapter three and then managed to get a first draft and rewrite of a new chapter (which will become chapter two coming before the existing chapter two). I also think I solved a characterization problem…

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