Ordinary Beauty VI: health

Our culture does not value beauty beyond its relationship to function or earning power. Girls are taught to pursue careers and earn good money; they are taught to develop a career before they consider marriage and family. Men seek wives who can add a solid second paycheck; men used to seek wives who had the skills to create a beautiful home for a family. There was a time when the beauty created by home makers was valued. Girls were taught the skills and could expect to have those skills valued.  Those days are long gone. Our culture glorifies the career … Continue reading

Everyday Beauty IV: Aesthetics

Ayn Rand argued that mechanical function was in itself beautiful and that decoration did not make it more beautiful but less. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD, she uses architecture, which at the time often hid the functional aspects of a building behind a facade of classical motifs, to argue for function being beautiful in itself and that decoration was fake.  I do not disagree at all that functional things have their own inherent beauty, and that adding a fake exterior to hide the functional beauty does not add but may even detract from the true beauty of the object, but why must … Continue reading

Catholic Writer’s Guild LIVE! Conference REVIEW

I spent most of this past week in Arlington taking in the amazing Catholic Writer’s Guild Live! Conference, that took place in the same place as the Catholic New Media Conference, and the Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show.  WOW!!!  It has taken me nearly three days of recovery to even begin to absorb all that I attended. First, the good.  I loved meeting people whose blogs and books I have read, am reading, or would like to read. That was so very very FUN I can barely handle it yet.  Give me time.  I’m a mite slow in managing input … Continue reading

Self Publishing or Submitting to a Publisher?

I’ve this wonderful little story of which I am very proud and it would make a nice children’s picture book. I know what kind of art work I want to see put with it and would prefer to work with the artist myself to plan the series of illustrations. Ideally, I would learn the ropes and create this book with the help of the artist I choose and a good graphic designer. I know just who I would choose as I LOVE how she designs even her notes for graduate classes! But the traditional path is submission to an established … Continue reading