Just another writer

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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.…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…

  • 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…

    Read More…