Bear rescued from a high bridge

Neat story with some great pictures.

On patience

Some great thoughts to start the week.

via Elena Maria Vidal (Twitter)

A comprehensive list of social networking sites

Interesting.

via PJ Kaiser (Twitter)

"I am not the mother I wanted to be"

Mary Grace recounts the following exchange when she was out with her four boys"

"Four boys? I couldn't do that. No way. They would drive me nuts."...The woman then shook her head and delivered the jewel: "I couldn't have that many kids. There's no way. I just couldn't be the mother I want to be with that many of them."

Read her response and the rest of the post here.

via Making Home

A secular atheist talks about his discomfort with abortion

Interesting thoughts:

Recently, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare ruled that women are permitted to abort their children based on the sex of the fetus. In the United States, a woman can have an abortion for nearly any reason she chooses. In fact, a health exemption for the mother allows abortions to be performed virtually on demand.

If you oppose selective abortions, but not abortion overall, I wonder why? How is terminating the fetus because it's the wrong sex any worse than terminating the fetus for convenience's sake? The fate of the fetus does not change, only the reasoning for its extinction does.

Read the rest here.

via Making Home

Top 10 Priest Movies

A good list from the National Catholic Register.

Tips for taking care of your intellectual health

Bethany Hudson has some great tips for how busy moms can keep themselves intellectually stimulated.

Questions for a consecrated virgin?

I just discovered a new-to-me blog by a recently consecrated virgin. She's opened up a post for people to ask her questions about her vocation. Just thought I'd pass that along in case anyone has questions for her!

10 Quirky Economic Indicators

Interesting! (Who knew that romance novel sales go up as the economy gets worse?)

via...I forget -- sorry!

7 Ways to Find Motivation at Home

A helpful list.

35 Ways to Reduce That Grocery Budget

Some helpful tips.

New Homeschooler Statistics

The Political Housewyf has some interesting stats and analysis.

Hilarious product

Out of time on your paper? Don't let your professor know you didn't finish it! Just purchase a corrupted Word file to send him to buy yourself some extra time!

via Inside Catholic

Identical twins...then identical triplets!

Wow! Nice ending line: "It's not how they would have planned it, but it's how they believe it was meant to be."

The suburban battlefield

Spiritual warfare from the perspective of a suburban mom. Excellent.

via Totus Tuus

Ten Books to Read on Understanding the Culture

A great list. I would also add Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers as an absolute must-read.

The movement patterns of rats

Some rats travel as far as seven miles away from home.

A mammoth barbecue

A fascinating story about a barbecue pit from 29,000 B.C.

The Five Finger Prayer

Nice idea.

One of the craziest stories I've seen in a while

You've got to read this. It'll make you wonder about any pictures you've ever put on the internet!

"I never imagined..."

An honest, touching post by a mom reflecting on her experiences as an adoptive parent.

Consecrated widowhood

An informative article about the beautiful vocation of consecrated widowhood. (The formatting is messed up, but it's still readable.)

21 accents

I must note that the Texas accent could use a little work, but other than that it's a great video. Here's her tutorial on how to learn accents.


via Matteo

Monks continue their tradition of preserving manuscripts in the digital age

I thought this was an interesting story about a Benedictine monk who's seeking out ancient manuscripts to preserve in digital form. Though it's a long way from hand-copying them by candlelight, it's neat to see them doing the same thing they've been doing for more than a thousand years.

The Practices of Effective Catholic Leaders

Some great points.

Dolphin stampede - wow!

"I'm a busy mom - how can I find time to exercise?"

A good discussion over at Homeschooling with Joy.

"Judge not lest ye be judged"

A thought-provoking article about Christians' fearing being "judgmental":

Society only tolerates sexual sins and sins against life. And that tolerance is strictly enforced. People trudge out the "do not judge" phrase and use it like a club to silence anyone who might speak against such license. Society also rewards anyone who abides by its rules and strikes the word "sin" from his or her vocabulary...We even go so far as to give Jesus a makeover. We preach a weak, winking, desperate-to-be-liked, Jesus. This Jesus didn’t die to save us from sin; he made it so that sin doesn’t exist.

Read the rest here.

Adoption: how we afforded it

A fascinating post at Owlhaven.

The one hour BLITZ!

This is a great idea for housecleaning and organization.

via Pursuing Titus 2

Motherhood and control (or lack thereof)

Kate Wicker has a touching, honest post about how the lack of control she has over her daily life as a mom has led her to struggle with disordered eating.

Silencing Chicken Little

Elizabeth Esther offers a fascinating glimpse into life in a fundamentalist family. An excerpt:

When I was kid, we didn't have real Hollywood movie stars. But we did have our campy, quasi-horror flicks. One was called Thief In the Night and it scared me so badly that I had nightmares for years.

For a few years after that movie, I would panic every time I lost sight of my parents. I mean, most kids who lose sight of their parents in a public place assume they're lost.

I assumed the rapture had happened and I'd been left behind.

Read the whole thing here.

5 Ways to Misery

via World on Fire

In blind taste tests, people can't tell pate from dog food

I would not have been amused to have been part of this study.

The 13th Day

An upcoming movie about Fatima. More info here.

Another fantastic ad from CatholicVote.org

Really touching.


via OSV Daily Take

Great Depression vs. 'Great Recession'

Really interesting chart showing how our current economy compares to the Great Depression.

Broker leaves behind a lucrative career to become a man of the cloth

An inspiring story about a young man who left his six-figure salary to become a priest.

A great interview with Fr. Corapi

An interesting chat with the popular preacher.

A collection of child safety products

A great list, especially for parents of young children or children with disabilities.

First person to fly was a Benedictine monk

Neat story!

7 ways to get in the habit of cleaning up after yourself

Great post from Bearing.

Farmer spends 30 years building model of the temple

Alec Garrard has dedicated a massive 33,000 hours to constructing the ancient Herod's Temple. More amazing pictures here.

The Science and Psychology Behind Overeating

Former FDA commissioner David Kessler examines the causes of excessive eating.

Russian cake baking contest

Wow!

The modest Power Ranger

A young actress from the Power Rangers now devotes her time to talking to teens about modesty. Nice interview.

Top 10 Science Hoaxes

Interesting.

Potato peeling made easy

Stress and pain

The connection between stress and pain. (I personally saw some pretty amazing results to back pain issues after reading Dr. Sarno's book on this topic a few years ago.)

Bacon flavored vodka

Seriously.

via Creative Minority Report

Just got this PR email that I thought I'd share

This site does look good:

I want to make you aware of a new website for Catholics called "Big C Catholics." Big C Catholics is for Catholics who are faithful to the Magisterium and seek the fullness of truth. This is a place to reflect on and renew our faith, deepen our commitment to love and receive guidance on our spiritual journey. We seek to promote understanding of authentic Catholic teachings.among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

We are currently accepting homilies, short to medium length articles, reflections, commentaries, and reviews of publications of interest to orthodox Catholics. All submissions will be considered, however, we focus on theology, the complementarity of faith and reason, and other issues relevant to the life of the Church.

Please tell your readership about this site and the opportunity to submit articles. Again, all submissions will be considered subject to editorial review.

An Etch-a-Sketch clock

Neat!

via Grapevine

Make your own baby leg & arm warmers

Cute idea.

via a comment at Toddler Dredge

Some beautiful music to start your week

55 Maxims for Christian Living

This list by an Orthodox priest has a lot of good food for thought.

The Daily 7 for a Highly Successful Household

I thought this was a great list of a few very simple things you can do to keep your house running smoothly. (Although I thought #5 wasn't quite as solid as the others. If I that were easily doable for me I wouldn't need to be reading lists like that in the first place!) :)

Inspiring show about adoption on EWTN on Thursday

I got this press release from EWTN and wanted to share it:

What do you do if you’re Catholic couple faced with infertility? Rather than resort to in-vitro fertilization, in which many embryos are created and destroyed, Donna and John Kurtz of Coatesville, Pa. began adopting. They are now the parents of 21 children (17 adopted, four under their guardianship) from all over the world. To feed, clothe and house them -- and others who need help -- they’ve started a non-profit organization called Saint Joseph’s House. Hear their amazing story at 8 p.m. ET, Thursday, April 16 on Life on the Rock.

Horses with hair extensions

Amusing.

Scientists create chocoholic dream: all the taste with none of the calories

Le Whif, the chocolate inhaler. Seriously.

via Grapevine

Children and the consumer ethos

Some good food for thought. An excerpt:

The consumer ethos is above all one of individual self-fulfillment and autonomy, of keeping choices open.

This makes it irrational to bear a child, since children represent the commitment of a lifetime. In the wonderfully apt phrase of novelist Michael Dorris, children "hold us hostage to the future." They limit a parent’s mobility, their needs dictate how much of their parents' money is spent, and they create "agendas" a parent otherwise would never have imagined-let alone have chosen. Attempting to stay true to consumption as a way of life, we soberly build daycare centers that label children Precious Commodities, fixate on the monetary costs of rearing a child from diapers through college, and seriously wonder whether or not we should "force" our faith and morality on our children.

Read the rest here.

Surviving Tough Times: 12 Books That Will Help

A great list.

via Happy Catholic

Crucified: Jesus' Experience on the Cross

Powerful reading for Good Friday.

Stations of the Cross online

With reflections by Mother Angelica.

The Amazing Christopher

Kind of a cool act. The only live person is the one in the middle; the rest are puppets.

Facebook for rich people only

It's hard not to snicker at this guy's "problem" when he started his rich social networking site, but it's an interesting idea:

RF: How did you get the idea to start the site?

SM: When I sold my internet business (Tunes.Com) for $180 million in 2000, I had what you might call sudden wealth syndrome. Despite our wealth, my wife and I thought Olive Garden was Italian cuisine's panacea. We thought Apple vacations was how you book travel. We didn't have friends who could recommend travel to the French Riviera.

It took me years to build up that network. So the site was created to give people a network of other wealthy people who are facing the same unique decisions and challenges every day.

Easter and holy week artwork

A great collection of links.

"Love should never be confused with pity"

This is a must-read article about how the world mistakenly perceives people with disabilities, and what the meaning of life really is. An excerpt:

Love should never be confused with pity, a sentiment we feel only for those whom we really don’t know at all. It infuriates me that children such as Domenica are invariably described as "suffering from Down’s syndrome". In what way are they suffering? They have no disease. They have no ailment to “cure”, except - via the process of antenatal screening - their very existence.

What underlies this misplaced pity is a kind of selfish empathy. Someone sees a child lolling in a wheelchair and thinks he himself would rather not have been born than exist in such a condition - and so he decides that it would have been much more humane never to have allowed that child to have been born. He does not, however, consult the child.

Read the rest here. Lots of food for thought.

via Confused Agnostic

Remember how we used to use Google back in the day?

Amusing.

20 minutes

Good point from Red Cardigan.

Myths about the Middle Ages

An interesting list.