this one, an account of his recent vacation.<\/a> \n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I am reading all sorts of things these days, as noted on the side, none of them very heavy at all. I read most of the new Hahn book last night, and thought it was a good intro to the sacraments, with Hahn’s typical unique angle – with Hail, Holy Queen<\/strong>, for example, it was typology, and here it’s the connection between a theology of sacraments, covenant, and oath.<\/p>\n\nBlue Shoe I read, not because I’m an Anne Lamott fan (which I’m not – don’t hate her, but just think she has one or two things to say…and she’s said them), but because as I start to tear apart, rewrite and reshape, I’m thinking about what sort of novel mine is, what it’s comparable to, and how this sort of thing is done these days, not in slavish imitation, but just by way of inspiration. It occurred to me that perhaps I might be doing the same sort of thing she’s doing in her fiction. Oh, well, I hope not. Or at least I hope what I do paints a little broader and deeper picture, places the characters in a larger context – emotionally, socially, culturally and spiritually – than she seems to, at least to me. And all the quirkiness is just too self-conscious, as well.<\/p>\n
The Know-it-All isn’t coming out until October – it’s a BEA find – about a guy who sets out to read the entire Encylopedia Brittanica in the course of a year. Just as the task would, the book gets tedious at times, although the author is a magazine writer with a light touch. He and\/or his editors wisely decided to included a more compelling through-line in the book than “Can he do it?”, which is the problem of his and his wife’s apparent infertility and their struggle to get pregnant. By “L,” that was keeping me reading more than the other quest was.<\/p>\n
And I’m still reading Top Secret stuff for work purposes, and this week I have the most awful task of reading the galleys for my Fall Loyola book. I don’t think it’s awful, but it’s still scary, in its own way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Talk in Cincinnati went well, I think. Except for the poor gentleman who turned green and passed out during the talk preceding mine. They took him away, and the last report I heard was that he would be okay. I was really glad to meet John, a sometime commentor on this blog who hails from…<\/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-7126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
Varia - 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\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Varia - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Talk in Cincinnati went well, I think. Except for the poor gentleman who turned green and passed out during the talk preceding mine. They took him away, and the last report I heard was that he would be okay. I was really glad to meet John, a sometime commentor on this blog who hails from…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-06-21T00:12:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Varia - 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\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Varia - Via Media","og_description":"Talk in Cincinnati went well, I think. Except for the poor gentleman who turned green and passed out during the talk preceding mine. They took him away, and the last report I heard was that he would be okay. I was really glad to meet John, a sometime commentor on this blog who hails from…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-06-21T00:12:46+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html","name":"Varia - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-06-21T00:12:46+00:00","dateModified":"2004-06-21T00:12:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/varia_30.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Varia"}]},{"@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\/7126","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=7126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}