Campion

I am a Golden Age Detective Fiction junkie. This year I have been on an Albert Campion tear. Reading everything Campion in order of publication, plus watching the eight novels made into TV movies on DVD.

Moms in Politics?

How can a woman with a husband and five kids expect to hold one of the highest elected offices in our nation, and be on the short list of succession to the Presidency of the United States, and still be a good mother?

Ask Nancy Pelosi.

Constitution Day

Didn't know it was Constitution Day, did you?

Book:



Web:

Read the Constitution online.

Dividing an Equilateral Triangle

This year Arch is using the wonderful, hands-on math program called RightStart Mathematics Geometric Approach. It is an intermediate-level math program which he is using for fifth grade. He loves it.

Last week he was dividing equilateral triangles into even pieces. The book took him to twelvths, then challenged him to do more on his own. He made a large (16") equilateral triangle on paper and divided it into - 1,536 equal pieces!

Fra Angelico

We are doing Fra Angelico this week in art.

Books:



Web:

Bl. Fra Angelico on the Patron Saints Index

Remnants of Ike

We are getting wind and rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ike which are passing through Southern Ontario. Gusts up to 60 mph. Thunder and lightning. It is hot and muggy, still at 10 pm.

Updated BlogRoll

If you scroll down the right sidebar on this blog you will find my blogroll, titled (unimaginatively) "Interesting Blogs." I hadn't paid this blogroll any attention in, say, a year at least. I just went through and deleted all of the blogs which no longer exist. If a blog is not updated, but still "up," I kept it. If a blog changed names, but kept the same url, well, too bad, I kept the name it had on the day I originally blogrolled it.

I got away from blogrolling when I first got into Google Reader. But then, too many feeds to read every day. Now I only sub to feeds in Reader that I really, really want to see every day, and put the rest of the great blogs in my blogroll.

So, enjoy.

Oh, want to be in my blogroll? Just ask!

Where Was I When....?

I have seen around the blogosphere today people's remembrances of where they were on the morning of 9/11/01.

I was doing payroll. And I had to finish it before I could leave, or the company wouldn't have had any paychecks on Friday.

I was the part-time controller for a small contractor, where my husband was a technician. My three-year-old son came to work with me every day.

Just about nine, the phone rang. It was the just receptionist and myself in the office that morning. Everyone else was out on jobs or sales calls. The phone rang. It was the owner's friend, calling to see if he'd heard the news. We got out the tiny old black-and-white TV our boss used to use for tailgating, which for some reason he kept in his office. We found an outlet and turned it on. It only got ABC. We tuned in just in time to see the second plane hit the second building.

I called my husband, who was over an hour away in a rural county working on the construction of a grain facility. Then I called my mom. I had one uncle and one cousin in the vicinity of the Twin Towers, though neither one had their offices in the WTC at that time. My uncle had been in the building for the first Twin Towers bombing in 1993.

The rest of the morning is a blur of phone calls and a tiny black-and-white TV screen. We watched as the towers fell one by one. I didn't finish payroll until after ten. I faxed it out and gathered up my son to leave. It was then that the first reports came about a plane crash in Pennsylvania.

The rest of the day was spent in front of the TV and on the phone, crying mostly. I am from New York City. We used to drive past the Twin Towers on our way to our grandmother's house in Brooklyn. We would argue over who got to sit on the side of the car passing closest, because you could look up, up, up out your window at the tall South Tower just before you plunged into the darkness of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

When my husband was coming home late that night on the Thruway, eastbound from near the Pennsylvania line, some 400 miles west of New York City, the overhead message boards in the rural darkness said simply, "NYC Closed."

It would not be until the next day that I learned that all of my family was safe. Phone lines were jammed, and my uncle didn't actually get home until after midnight.

September 11

Public domain image from Wikipedia

St Peter Claver

Peter Claver was a 17th-century Spanish Jesuit priest who came to the Caribbean and was appalled by the slave trade. He spent the rest of his life ministering to the slaves. September 9 is his feast day. He's on the calendar in the US. There is a nice picture book on him I just bought with a gift card I had.

Hanna

Tropical Storm Hanna is raining on the greater New York City area where my family lives. Watching the radar from the NWS.

Mother Teresa Books

Today is the feast day of Bl. Teresa of Calcutta. Here's what we are reading:

RIP Ann Ball

I found out when I got my latest catalog from Ecce Homo Press that Ann Ball had passed away in June.

I have a bunch of her books. Rest in peace!

Labor Day Books

Fr. John Corapi in Buffalo in '09

Fr. Corapi will be in Buffalo on the Feast of the Assumption in 2009. More info from the Station of the Cross.