Because all of a sudden, it’s in stock!!!!!!!!!!!!
Buy The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning straight from the publisher, Our Sunday Visitor
or from Amazon. I just happened to go the page and realized it was in stock! It says there are only 19 copies left!
If you were darling enough to pre-order my book a month ago, it should be winging its way to you very soon!
Good heavens!
WordPress is being extra special today and won’t let me upload any images, so you will just have to imagine that peppy yellow 7 Quick Takes logo here.
When I banned reading at the table, my kids used to do dramatic readings of condiment labels. The mustard was the best.
Sadly, the length of a mustard label is about as long as I am able to sustain my attention while I’m reading, lately. If you have but attention the size of a mustard label, then that is not very good. It means that you have all these tabs open all the time, and you are totally going to go back and read more carefully because you can see this is good stuff. If you leave the tab open long enough, you may actually finally get around to reading the thing, and then you’re like, “Wow, that was great. I should write about it.” And then you have to leave the tab open for another day . . .
Anyway, here are the things I read and liked but never did write about this week:
–1–
Via John Herreid, a huge, fascinating collection of short first-hand accounts of things that happened during the Civil War.
–2–
From Eve Tushnet (DID YOU KNOW SHE IS WRITING A BOOK?), some “Snow Day Thoughts” that I loved, especially this:
The Dutch portraits were a striking contrast to all the Spanish stuff we saw in other parts of our trip. I’m not sure I’ll ever love Rembrandt, but I did find his cloudy, lumpy-faced people very beautiful and relatable. There’s a gentleness to his work, at least in the paintings we saw in New York. The Dutch people also often looked worried or questioning. They lacked that “mask of command” intensity which the Spaniards typically had. The Spaniards were basically either in ecstasy, or staring right at you like, “AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM. *drops mic*”
–3–
Good stuff: Let your husband love you.
[G]uys are weird. Once they fall in love with you, there’s nothing you can wear, no amount of weight you can gain, and no lack of make up that will make them see you any differently. You are their love, their bride, and after he’s been at work all day, you are a sight for sore eyes.
So instead of rolling your eyes, huffing and puffing, throwing out gut kicking comments about how he has it easy, doesn’t understand, is lazy, a jerk, whatever comes to your beautiful stressed out brain… BREATHE. Look away from your day and see the man that won your heart.
Let your husband love you.
Because he needs to love you. As much as you need to receive the love he has for you, he needs to be received. He needs to be welcomed, embraced, and loved. Even if the last thing you want is to be touched or to hear how amazing you look when you feel insecure and disgusting. Let him love you. Don’t push him away. If you do, I can guarantee there will come a day when your cold shoulders and eye rolling will have trained him to stay away. There will be a day when you will need to be hugged and need to be reminded of how amazing you are and he won’t know how to tell you.
–4–
Not one but two new free resources for art online:
and
As part of an increasingly common trend (the British Library did a similar thing at the end of last year) Wellcome Images has released tens of thousands of images from its archive into the public domain.
–5–
This is driving me crazy, because I can’t find it anywhere. I heard a story on the radio about a young oceanographer who wanted to record sound in the Mariana Trench. So he came up with a glass sphere, half the size of a basketball, with recording equipment attached to it. You just drop it overboard, and down, down, down it goes. It sits there, recording, for six weeks. Then, when it’s all done, it’s preset to jettison some weight, and slowly rises to the surface, and a strobe light starts to blink, to let you know where it is.
Isn’t that lovely? The fellow let it go, and thought, “I may never see it again.” He had spent $50,000 developing it, and nobody really thought it would work. He sweated out the six weeks, and when it was time to fetch it, he went out on a bridge and looked out across the dark, dark ocean. Just a wall of black, with nothing but darkness to be seen. He looked and looked, and there was nothing but darkness, and then the guy next to him casually says, “Ah, there it is.”
And so he got his glass ball back, full of sounds from the darkest, coldest, heaviest bottom of the sea. He went home and plugged it in to download all the sound, and went to bed. And when he woke up in the morning, it was like Christmas: he knew that, waiting for him, was a sound that nobody on earth had ever heard before. And he had fetched it with his glass ball.
I didn’t make this up! I heard it! But I can’t find it anywhere.
–6–
Wow, this is turning into a long post. Here is something I never ever considered writing about, but it made me laugh, especially after all these Real Beauty campaigns and “OMG this model didn’t have her armpit fold airbrushed out, OMG OMG this will change the world.” Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good trend, but I still liked Nine Unretouched Photos of Disney Princesses That Disney Doesn’t Want You to See
–7–
And finally the real reason Pope Francis said that the internet is a gift from God.
Phew! Happy weekend. May all your tabs be closed.
A nice way to add some color to a house full of people who are pretty much tired of brown, white, brownish white, and black. This is one of those crafts that is easy, but you have to not give a crap about your furniture or clothes.
Step 1: sit on a bunch of coffee filters to flatten them. Irene, 4, notes that this step is important, “although it’s a little bit vulgar.”
Step 2: drip some water on them.
Step 3: drip food coloring on them. You may also do food coloring first, and then water.
Step 4: let it dry. The end.
These dry fast and make nice marbled, stained glass effect, very cheery hanging in windows. They look like planets. You can experiment with different amounts and combinations of water and food coloring. I know you can get this same effect with decent watercolors, but the kids really love squeezing the food coloring droppers.
Bonus: you get Hulk Hands for a good week or so!
As long as old lies keep circulating, we have to keep the truth circulating.
Wow – not sure what to think about this:
Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant, the doctor in charge of the pioneering project has revealed.
The women were born without a uterus or had it removed because of cervical cancer. Most are in their 30s and are part of the first major experiment to test whether it’s possible to transplant wombs into women so they can give birth to their own children.
The intended procedure, as it stands now, is not ethical by Catholic standards:
The transplant operations did not connect the women’s uteruses to their fallopian tubes, so they are unable to get pregnant naturally. But all who received a womb have their own ovaries and can make eggs. Before the operation, they had some removed to create embryos through in-vitro fertilization. The embryos were then frozen and doctors plan to transfer them into the new wombs, allowing the women to carry their own biological children.
But what if doctors eventually learn how to connect a transplanted uterus to fallopian tubes, to permit for natural conception? Could the procedure then be ethical? It’s not surrogacy.
At first I thought, “Well, a uterus is just an organ, and other organs can be transplanted ethically.” But it’s not really just another organ, because its purpose is to support another human being; whereas if you undergo a risky heart transplant, it’s only your own life you have to consider. So far, no one with a transplanted womb has brought a baby to term. Is it ethical to get pregnant when you have reason to believe the baby may not survive? If so, is that different from a woman with the womb she was born with, knowingly getting pregnant even if she’s had several miscarriages before?
Also, who could ethically donate a womb, according to Catholic bioethics? I’m pretty sure it would not be ethical for a married woman of childbearing age to donate her womb, even if she considered herself “done” having children. What about someone who made a vow of celibacy? A purely medical question: would a post-menopausal woman’s womb even be useful to a young woman with younger eggs who was trying to conceive?
Does it make a difference that these are intended to be temporary transplants? The idea is that women try to have as many as two children, and then the uterus is removed so they can stop taking anti-rejection drugs, which have bad side effects.
I don’t want to automatically shy away from science. Just because something sounds creepy doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But this is an especially complicated situation. What do you think?
. . . that I do not find this irritating at all?
It sounds like a cross between one of those nutty medieval instruments — what is it called, a flageoblat or something — and those straw kazoos we used to make. You know how to do that, right? Just bite down on the end of a plastic drinking straw to flatten it, cut the corners off to make a “reed” to vibrate against itself, and blow hard. Yeah, like this:
With some experimentation, you can figure out where to cut holes to play an octave.
You can also make a straw trombone — just slightly crush the end of one straw until it fits inside another. Cut a mouthpiece in the end of the outer straw, and slide the other straw in and out the other end as you blow. IT IS FUN, okay?
I was like this:
But I went 1.45 miles at an average of 3 MPH, watched 2.4 episodes of Wonder Pets, and burned enough calories to make up for, like, an egg or something. Before you know it, I’ll be like Detective Greg Medavoy: I turn sideways, and people question where I went.
But seriously, I am feeling much better, physically and emotionally. Thanks for your prayers, you guys, and back atcha.
Oh, the internets just got a little Fisherier. My husband has been writing much longer than I have, and finally put together a blog featuring a bunch of the weekly columns he does for his paper. Gosh, if only someone had thought of this sooner, like years ago, like his wife or something! I’m crossing my fingers that he will continue to put up little vignettes like this one from the other night, in which we discover that our house is so weird and creepy that not even the guy who flipped his car in the snow after midnight wanted to hang out very long.
To give you a general idea of what kind of material he covers, here are his tags:
Yeah, that sounds about right.Oh, man. He’s blogging! He’s blogging! Now I just need to harass him to include a photo of his chiseled, handsome face with the long eyelashes and the cleft chin, so I won’t have to keep using this one:PIC drunken Irishman sitting on gunpowder barrel
. . . without having to get off your hiney and go out in the horrible, freezing cold.
[This post originally appeared on The National Catholic Register on January 22, 2013. Comments there are closed; comments here are closed. I will not respond to any emails about this topics. Anyone who comments about it on any other thread, here or at the Register, will be banned. As I said on today’s other post about graphic images, I spend part of every day crying for my lost baby, and I am not up for another round of hearing that I’m not really pro-life. I have already heard what you have to say, and the rage and condescension only persuades me further that the pro-life movement needs to be purged of misogyny if it will ever gain ground.]
*****
Are you going to the March for Life, either in DC or in your state? If so, are you planning to display graphic photos or videos of aborted babies?
If you are, I’m begging you to reconsider. Fr. Pavone famously said, “America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.” Most pro-lifers understand that Americans are tragically ignorant about what abortion really is — what it really does to real babies. Many of us remember seeing those bloody images for the first time, and can recall being shaken out of a vague, fuzzy support for the pro-life cause into the realization that this is a life-and-death struggle — real life, and real death.
But a public place is not the place to use these images — ever, I’m convinced. These images are like a terrible weapon which should be used with fear and trembling, and only as a last resort. Why?
There will be children at the march. Do you let your kids watch gruesome war movies or slasher films? No? Well, those movies show actors with fake blood, pretending to be tortured and killed. Why would you let them see the real thing? The pro-life cause is about protecting innocent life, and that includes protecting the innocence of young children. Studies show that violent images stay with us for a lifetime, and damage us.
There will be post-abortive women at the march. Imagine their courage in being there at all. Then imagine what it does to them to see, once again, the dark thing that keeps them from sleeping at night – the thing that often keeps them in decades-long cycles of self-loathing and despair. We don’t ask victims of rape to look at videos of rape in progress. We don’t ask holocaust victims to look at huge banners showing the piles of emaciated bodies. As pro-lifers, we must remember that every abortion has two victims: the child and the mother. We must never be on the side that hurts mothers. Never.
Mothers will be there. Thousands of the women at the March are mothers — mothers who have already given birth, mothers who are pregnant as they march, and mothers who have miscarried, delivered dead babies. For many of them, the grief over a miscarriage never goes away entirely. Many women stay away from any public march for fear of being subjected to these images so similar to the thing that caused them so much pain. Motherhood makes a woman’s heart tender. The pro-life movement should be a shelter that protects that tenderness — because the world needs it desperately.
Those are real babies. Christians are almost alone in affirming the dignity of the human person. Catholics, especially, understand that the human body is mortal, but still worthy of respect. When we use pictures of real babies as a tactic or a tool, we are in danger of forgetting that these are children with an immortal soul, and who have a name that only their Heavenly Father knows. They have already been killed. Let us treat their poor bodies with respect.
Public image matters. Some people’s only contact with obvious pro-lifers is with people who shout and condemn and terrify. It’s just basic psychology: if you want people to listen to you and have sympathy for your cause, don’t come across as a lunatic. You’re not a lunatic — but to people who don’t already agree with you, you sure look that way. Yes, your cause is worthy. No, you’re not helping it.
They sometimes push women into abortion. Do these images change hearts sometimes? They sure do. I’ve heard pro-life activists tell stories of women who saw these horrible images for the first time and decided on the spot that no way could they be any part of that. They kept their babies.
And I’ve heard pro-life activists tell stories of women who were pregnant, scared, and undecided — and when they were confronted with bloody images, they freaked out and rushed into the clinic as fast as they could, to get away from those maniacs with the signs.
So, yes, sometimes they save lives. And sometimes they cause lives to be lost. We don’t do things just because they work sometimes.
Desensitization is a real danger — even among pro-lifers. It’s just how humans are made: see something too often, and you stop really seeing it. I thank and bless those who work so tirelessly for the pro-life cause. But I beg them to stop and consider that, like policemen or like soldiers, they are human, and are in danger of becoming hardened out of self-preservation. People who have become hardened must never be the public face of the pro-life cause. If you, as a pro-life activist, see a bloody image and you don’t flinch, then it’s time to take a break — move into a different segment of the ministry, one that emphasizes prayer and reparation.
People see what they want to see. When the apostles begged the Lord to send the dead to persuade people to repent, He said that if they didn’t listen to the prophets, then they wouldn’t be impressed by the dead coming back to life, either. Many pro-choicers speak as if everyone knows that pro-lifers use photoshopped images — that the tiny, mutilated feet and hands and heads are a hoax that’s been thoroughly debunked. It’s a lie, of course. But people believe it all the same, because they want to (and pro-lifers don’t help their cause by being sloppy about things like identifying gestational age on photos).
*****
All the same, bloody and shocking images have their place. Pro-life activists are right when they say abortion depends on silence and darkness, and that truth must be exposed. Too many people who are pro-choice because they somehow still don’t know what fetuses actually look like, or what happens to them when they are aborted– or because they’ve simply slipped into a comfortable shelter of euphemisms. These lies, this comfort must be stripped away.
So when should you use graphic images? When a teenager shrugs and says, “My health teacher says it’s not a person until 25 weeks.” When someone who works at a clinic says she’s doing a gentle, compassionate work of mercy. When your boyfriend wants you to get rid of “it” before it becomes a real baby. When a college girl likens unborn babies to tumors or parasites. Then you can respond to the actual situation, to the actual person. Then you can take out the picture and say, “Is this what you’re talking about?”
I believe that everyone should see an image of an aborted baby once in their lifetime. And I believe that, like any traumatic image, it will stay with you. Once or twice in a lifetime is enough.
Abortion is violent. Abortion is cruel. Abortion inflicts trauma and pain. As pro-lifers, we should have no part in any of that. Let us save the graphic images for a weapon of last resort.
