This column took me so long to research and write that I was flat laid out for a bit after it ran. Ergo, the delayed posting here for my dedicated followers! I spent two months this summer in mostly email dialogue with a number of unvaccinated acquaintances. It was frustrating because the vast majority of …
Continue reading "Trying civil discourse with the unvaccinated"
“The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. … The Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone with all their problems.” -- Pope Francis I …
The National Society of Newspaper Columnists just announced its 2021 Contest Winners and I got a badge – see the sidebar to your right. There were 200 entries from 120 publications for ten categories. I received Honorable Mention in the Crisis Category, along with two other great columnists. This means, as I explained to my …
The day the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced that persons fully vaccinated against COVID-19 could go back to pre-pandemic behaviors, my family was driving up to Flagstaff with a box of American-made, FDA-approved surgical masks to give guests at our son’s wedding. The announcement was both cause for celebration and confusion. Celebration because more …
Brutal honesty: A side effect of this pandemic has been an increase in my distrust of other people. I hate this. And yet how can I trust someone who thinks that the more than 500,000 U.S. citizens who've died from Covid didn't actually die from Covid? According to these deniers, hospitals coded all deaths beginning …
Last weekend for Easter, some of my family ventured inside a church for the first time since COVID-19 hit Arizona. I remained home, huddled up with a headache and chills, courtesy of my Good Friday dose of the Pfizer vaccine. As my husband reached the front doors, a woman in front of him paused to …
In a nano-second on an otherwise lovely Sunday afternoon, I sustained a traumatic brain injury. There are currently 45,000 Arizonans living with TBIs, according to the Brain Injury Alliance of Arizona, and prior to the accident which caused mine, I never thought about any of them. Now, I think about them every day when I …
Were you excited last month listening to President Biden’s inaugural address, full of hope and relief like I was? Were you thinking, "Yay! Everything will be better - or at least more stable - now?" Me, too. Then February came and I realized I wasn't just waiting this past year for a change of president. …
Continue reading "Bored awaiting your vaccine? Try these time-killers"
The Brits have saved my sanity during the pandemic, from the meditation app where a calm, lilting voice calms me down to the encouraging couple on my exercise videos exclaiming, “Blimey!” But the highlight has been British television, and it isn't just because those fabulous accents make even the tersest dialogue sound soothing. Nope, it's …
Condensed from my original column published Sunday, Jan. 17, in the Arizona Daily Star, which you can find here. I’d originally planned this week to pen a column about how British TV can save your mental health while you endure pandemic isolation as local officials write memos about how they’re trying to launch a mass …
Continue reading "As we start new future, we must agree on facts"
Renee Wrote This 