Category: Daily Life in the USA

Fratelli Tutti

Even as individuals maintain their comfortable consumerist isolation, they can choose a form of constant …. bonding that encourages remarkable hostility, insults, abuse, defamation and verbal violence destructive of others, and this with a lack of restraint that could not exist in physical contact without tearing us all apart. Social aggression has found unparalleled room for expansion through computers and mobile devices.

[From Fratelli Tutti, #44, by Pope Francis]

Dangers of Phone Use

“Even in social company people often slide into a kind of connected isolationism, in which ordinary conversational connection seems to be undermined by the near-addictive grip within which the machine holds us. We tend to exalt the value of such connectedness without acknowledging the divisive effect it can have on our senses, our emotions, our relationships, and our need for times of solitude and quiet. From a spiritual perspective the electronic gadgetry can easily become a compensatory “god” on whom we depend for the satisfaction and fulfillment of our most basic needs.”

From Diarmud O’Murchu’s Ecological Spirituality

Around Louisville

Part of my transition back to Louisville is getting acclimated to Cherokee Park. Through extremely visionary planning on the part of Louisville’s early leaders, a series of large urban parks was created here by Frederick Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in New York City. One of these is the 400-acre Cherokee Park on the east side of downtown. All of my early years were in the West End of Louisville and my years as a priest in the South End so I’m very unfamiliar with the maze of trails and paths in Cherokee Park which is near my home now. Today I took an exploratory bike ride to the park and ended up at the Daniel Boone statue, one of the park’s landmarks.

Room In The Inn

Room In The Inn (RITI) is an organization that utilizes church personnel, church volunteers, and church facilities to provide housing at night for homeless people during the coldest months. I was supposed to be an all-night volunteer tomorrow at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral, but today we got notice that the city of Louisville has refused to give the permissions necessary to use the church facilities for this housing even though they allowed it in January, 2025. Fire safety regulations are the issue. It is especially sad to receive this message on the morning after the coldest night this winter in Louisville.

Bicycle Gloves

I bicycled to work daily in Phnom Penh but cycling there was much different from what it is in Louisville. The cold is one big difference. I had a pair of leather gloves but on the really cold days here in Kentucky, after fifteen minutes my fingers were frozen. People at Nazareth Home and at St. Boniface Church heard me talking about how unpleasant it was, and then they started giving me gloves! But even gloves purpose-made for cycling didn’t work when the temps were below 35ยบ or so. Then some of my brothers and sisters got me a Christmas present of heated bike gloves–and they work! Riding with them in cold weather is heavenly!

I tried all sorts of gloves to keep my fingers warm and tried putting a thinner pair of gloves inside heavy gloves but that didn’t work either. The large gloves on the right, with the blue lights on the cuff, are the ones that gave me relief. They have USB-charged batteries in those large cuffs.