A while back I suggested my book group read Tunnel Vision, one of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawki novels. In that novel, V.I., one of the first modern female private eyes, investigates a seemingly shady charitable organization. Along with solving more than one mystery, V.I. attempts to help a homeless woman and her children. As is often the case, V.I.’s methods are unconventional, and she distrusts authority. I thought the social issues the book raises would be great to dis...
Read More
Falling is Part of the Practice
Every morning (okay, about 5 mornings out of 7), I practice yoga. It’s the only exercise I’ve managed to stick with. I think it’s because I can do it in my pajamas. I’ve tried joining health clubs, but as soon as I need to take any extra step to work out, like pack a workout bag, go somewhere special, or put on gym shoes, the odds of it actually happening plummet. Rolling out the yoga mat in my living room, though, I can manage.I also love that yoga is so laid back....
Read More
It’s Not The Coffee
It started during my first year at a large law firm in Chicago’s Sears Tower. The Starbucks there, furnished with gleaming wood tables and chairs and a few armchairs to one side, occupies a corner of the Tower’s first floor. I usually worked weekdays from about 7:45 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. with a half hour lunch at my desk, then another four to six hours on the weekends. I don't drink coffee, but when I was especially busy, I stopped in Starbucks in the morning. I drank Chai La...
Read More
Joss Whedon and The Power of Myth
I read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth years before the first Buffy episode aired on TV. I’d just begun reading about the origins of religion and was struggling with learning that the gospels were not as historically accurate as I’d been taught. Intellectually, I grasped Campbell’s message that just because the stories or myths we are told did not literally happen does not take away their value. (I’m very roughly paraphrasing. It’s been a long time since I read it.)&n...
Read More
See Jane Get Married
The past three years have been busy, maybe a little too busy. I started my own law firm, published my “first” novel (first published -- I wrote several before this one), and stood up in two traditional weddings. After eight years as a lawyer, I decided to start my own practice and spent a year planning it. Two friends who’d gone on their own right out of law school offered a huge amount of advice and encouragement. Some people I’d only met once or twice did things like ta...
Read More
How Buffy and Joss Whedon Helped Me Understand My Mother
When I turned 21, I got my ears pierced. Most of my friends had pierced theirs in high school or even grade school. When I came home, my mother – who was 42 years older than me and grew up in a different time – frowned and said, “Only cheap women pierce their ears.” For much of my life, I believed the difficulties my mother and I had relating to one another were due to the over forty-year age difference between us. Most of my friends had grandparents who were my pare...
Read More
Mary: The Unachievable “Ideal Woman”
“Well, that’s serious Catholics for you. All women should be both virgins and mothers if at all possible.” In this line of dialogue, fictional character Nate Spencer echoes something that confused me from the time I was old enough (about 11) to understand what being a virgin meant and put that together with the gospels.In mass and in hymns, Mary was often referred to as “ever virgin.” My parents and religion teachers told me Jesus had no brothers and sisters because Mary stayed...
Read More
What I Learned About Religion From The Prince Of Darkness (Spirituality, Religion, and Philosophy, Entry 10)
I recently read Prince of Darkness by columnist Robert Novak. In part of the book, Novak talks about converting to Catholicism. In passing, he mentions how people “hostile” to Catholicism sometimes say “I was raised Catholic” when asked if they are Catholic. It never occurred to me saying this would be viewed as hostile. Saying “I’m a recovering Catholic” strikes me as a little hostile given that alcoholics use that terminology. But saying I was raised Catholic to m...
Read More
Yoga, Life and Stretching (Spirituality, Religion, and Philosophy, Entry 9)
I find routines comforting. If I’m behind on my bookkeeping, or a client is unhappy with me, or I’m working 11 hours a day – or if all the above are happening at once – it helps me to eat the same kind of oatmeal each morning with a glass of the same kind of orange juice while I read the same newspaper (Wall Street Journal) for 10 minutes. Then I walk the same way to work and make the same type of tea (Earl Grey) when I get there before I sit down to start the stress/work wheel all o...
Read More
Queen of Heaven (Spirituality, Religion and Philosophy, Entry No. 8)
When I was in second or third grade, my parents attended church every Tuesday night for a novena. The service focused on prayers to Mary, the mother of Jesus. I remember this going on indefinitely, but a search of the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia tells me novenas usually involve prayers for nine days in a row. We didn’t go every day, so maybe it was every week for nine weeks and only seemed endless because when you’re seven or eight years old that's how time passes. ...
Read More
