Some from all over:

Kathryn Lively has re-started her blog, with the best banner of any Catholic blogger. I’m jealous.

Your Pastoral Coach has high praise for a new rosary book.

Dom Bettinelli has a new blog URL

Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex has startling news about a startling new book

Terry Teachout updates us on his condition

Time finally ran out on me last Thursday night. I took a cab to Broadway to see a press preview of Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, and no sooner did I arrive at the theater than I knew something was very, very wrong. After the show was over, my companion for the evening (bless her!) helped me up the aisle and a press agent (bless him!) hailed a cab. It took me ten minutes to climb the two flights of stairs to my apartment. I collapsed on the couch and spent the small hours deciding what to do. I packed a bag and straightened up the apartment—very, very slowly. My plan was to descend carefully to the street in the morning and hail a cab on Columbus Avenue, but when the sun came up and I saw that it was snowing, I came at last to my senses, called 911, and unlocked my door. Two minutes later a two-man team of paramedics was slapping an oxygen mask on my face and slipping an IV into my right arm.

“So you’re a drama critic, huh?” one of them asked as they carried me down the stairs. “My grandma is coming to town for Christmas—I want to take her to a show. What do you suggest?”

“Oh, definitely The Trip to Bountiful,” I said, my voice muffled by the mask. “I guarantee she’ll like it.”

Is it crass of me to mention that Terry mentions The Edge of Sadness in this post? . Probably. But the passage he quotes is one that stuck with me as well for years as well, after I first read the novel in my late teens (when I read everything in my parent’s house). Do go read the post – it will lift you up and open your eyes a little bit more to how precious this gift of life is.

Well, God bless you Terry, and here’s to your recovery and improved health.

By the way, my father was in New York over Thanksgiving, and based on Teachout’s review, went to a production of Bach in Liepzig – and enjoyed it very much. A critic you can trust!