{"id":258,"date":"2007-11-05T09:14:12","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T09:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html"},"modified":"2007-11-05T09:14:12","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T09:14:12","slug":"still-here-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Still here"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mind is just not on blogging these days – an excellent change, if you ask me.\u00a0 The major pre-occupation has been the fact that beginning today, we are having the floors for most of our downstairs finished – as I mentioned before, they are nice hardwood, but except for the foyer, all of it has been unfinished and under carpet for the 60+ years since the home’s construction. So for the past two weeks, I have been absorbed in preparing for that – getting the carpets up, stripping wallpaper (since you might as well paint, as long as you’re ripping things up), and slowly moving furniture, a task which got more intense yesterday as we moved the last of it – the couches and such.
\nSo for the next week or so, these are the views from my desk:
\n\"view2\"<\/a>
\nand
\n\"view\"<\/a>
\nThe only advantage so far is that when either the washer and dryer are running, it provides a great sound buffer – better than a door.
\nSo.
\nI’ve also had a project to work on, that was (is) due today. I need to give that one more hard look, and then maybe my brain will be clear.
\nMeanwhile, do consider more important matters, like the situation down in Mexico and the Caribbean. John of Catholic Relief Services sends this along and asks for your assistance in any way you can:<\/p>\n

Guatemala City, Guatemala, November 2, 2007 \u2013<\/span><\/font><\/strong> Catholic Relief Services (CRS) today announced an initial commitment of $1.5 million toward emergency relief and recovery assistance for thousands of people affected by a series of storms that caused the worst flooding in Mexico\u2019s history and tore through the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

A week of heavy rains has flooded 80 percent of the Mexican Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, prompting Mexican President Felipe Calderon to declare it the \u201cworst natural disaster in the history of the country.\u201d<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

About half of the 2 million people in Tabasco have been affected. Thousands are being evacuated to neighboring states while some 300,000 people remain trapped in their homes by the flooding.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the worst disaster in Mexico\u2019s recent history. The rains are expected to continue so we think it will only get worse,\u201d said Erica Dahl-Bredine, CRS Mexico Country Representative. \u201cAlready we\u2019ve seen that people are coming together in solidarity and support, but we don\u2019t know a whole lot right now because there are so many people still trapped and waiting to be rescued. CRS will be working through the national Church network to provide food and water to those people and those who have been evacuated.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

CRS staff members and local Church partners Caritas Mexicana and Caritas Tabasco are on their way to Tabasco to determine the scope of the devastation and the level of need. But with some 85 towns underwater, including much of state capital of Villahermosa, and many roads impassable, assessment is difficult.\u00a0<\/span><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

MORE here.<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mind is just not on blogging these days – an excellent change, if you ask me.\u00a0 The major pre-occupation has been the fact that beginning today, we are having the floors for most of our downstairs finished – as I mentioned before, they are nice hardwood, but except for the foyer, all of it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nStill here - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Still here - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My mind is just not on blogging these days – an excellent change, if you ask me.\u00a0 The major pre-occupation has been the fact that beginning today, we are having the floors for most of our downstairs finished – as I mentioned before, they are nice hardwood, but except for the foyer, all of it…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-11-05T09:14:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2349\/1873317622_55eb1dc2a1_m.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Still here - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Still here - Via Media","og_description":"My mind is just not on blogging these days – an excellent change, if you ask me.\u00a0 The major pre-occupation has been the fact that beginning today, we are having the floors for most of our downstairs finished – as I mentioned before, they are nice hardwood, but except for the foyer, all of it…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-11-05T09:14:12+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2349\/1873317622_55eb1dc2a1_m.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html","name":"Still here - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2349\/1873317622_55eb1dc2a1_m.jpg","datePublished":"2007-11-05T09:14:12+00:00","dateModified":"2007-11-05T09:14:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2349\/1873317622_55eb1dc2a1_m.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2349\/1873317622_55eb1dc2a1_m.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/still-here-2.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Still here"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}