Slate Magazine’s<\/a> presence on NPR. It airs at noon around these parts. <\/p>\nSo, I was listening, and this essayist starts reading an essay. It was one of those “I’m noble and probably better than you because I hate Christmas” kind of things. Guy can’t find joy in the season, he’s too busy contemplating his mortality as the solstice nears. Wife and kids aren’t deterred, especially young son who finds an old music box that plays Nutcracker music and follows dad around the house with it, even to the bedroom where he awakens him with a “Mewwy Chwistmas, Daddy”. Dad almost says it back – but holds strong. Whew.<\/p>\n
I was listening and hating it, not because the guy hates Christmas, but because he thinks I should care. Arrogant, I’m thinking. Get the heck over yourself. <\/p>\n
So I’m mentally dissecting this, when the announcer returns, and in dulcet NPR-ese announces the essayist’s name.<\/p>\n
I WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH HIM!<\/p>\n
I literally shrieked right there on S. Clinton Street and Rudisill. <\/p>\n
He’s adjusted his name a bit – extending his first name, and adding another last name, and I wouldn’t have had a clue who he was but for the fact that he was featured in a piece in the back home diocesan newspaper about a month ago, being in town for a book signing (he writes mystery novels). I remember him as a very affable guy, a year behind me, who was in some activity I was in – maybe Model UN, or something. <\/p>\n
Small world, sort of. Odd moment. Still didn’t like the piece, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay, here’s what happened. I was driving around, cautiously because it was snowing and I had Mr. Precious Cargo about to begin his mantra of “I want somepin’” in the back seat. I was listening to Day by Day, which is (take a breath), Slate Magazine’s presence on NPR. It airs at noon around these…<\/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-8285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
Past Blasted - 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\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Past Blasted - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Okay, here’s what happened. I was driving around, cautiously because it was snowing and I had Mr. Precious Cargo about to begin his mantra of “I want somepin'” in the back seat. I was listening to Day by Day, which is (take a breath), Slate Magazine’s presence on NPR. It airs at noon around these…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2003-12-20T01:03:32+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":"Past Blasted - 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\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Past Blasted - Via Media","og_description":"Okay, here’s what happened. I was driving around, cautiously because it was snowing and I had Mr. Precious Cargo about to begin his mantra of “I want somepin'” in the back seat. I was listening to Day by Day, which is (take a breath), Slate Magazine’s presence on NPR. It airs at noon around these…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2003-12-20T01:03:32+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html","name":"Past Blasted - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2003-12-20T01:03:32+00:00","dateModified":"2003-12-20T01:03:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/past_blasted_1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Past Blasted"}]},{"@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\/8285","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=8285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}