The Sanguine Sixties

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, immortalized by the song from Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." It's a haunting song with the haunting verse, "Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" Certainly in extreme life and death situations like this, we can feel abandoned by God.  There are other circumstances where one may wonder "where the love of God goes." Poverty, for one. I've been thinking about poverty, or more to the point, people who are poor, a lot this past week. On Friday, I participated in a Poverty Exercise at the Dream Center in Peoria. The approximately 50 participants were divided into families of 3-5 and given a task of items to accomplish, mainly surrounding paying bills. I was a disabled father-in-law, who was reduced to making suggestions and watching helplessly as my daughter and son-in-law scrambled to cover bills with no...

Franklin enjoying some coconut. I'm in the Dominican Republic with my husband John. He comes here frequently for Haitian Hearts work. I join him every two years or so to see in person some of the work we do.  Yesterday we traveled about two hours from Santo Domingo, the capital, to the home of one of John's patients, 13-year-old Franklin, who has a big heart problem. Ten years ago or longer, Franklin got strep throat, which developed into rheumatic fever, which has severely damaged the mitral valve in his heart. I will talk more about Franklin in a future post. John wanted to examine Franklin in his home (you learn a lot about a patient when you see him in his home environment). A driver took us through the city of Santo Domingo out into the country, to the little settlement where Franklin and his family live. Fortunately for us, yesterday was a national holiday, Constitution Day, so while there was traffic, it wasn't nearly as heavy as a typical Monday. Perhaps traffic acc...

At the top of my list of people from history who I would like to meet are St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and developer of the Spiritual Exercises, and Lydia Moss Bradley, founder of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Besides being on my list, they have something else in common: July 31st. Lydia was born July 31, 1816 and St. Ignatius was born to eternal life (i.e. died) on July 31, 1556. Today is his Feast Day.  The story of Ignatius's life is very compelling. Born in Spain, he was a soldier and lady's man, when he was seriously injured by a cannonball during a battle with the French. While he was recovering, he read the books available to him. He noticed that when he read adventure stories, he enjoyed them while he was reading them but afterwards, he felt empty. But when he read about Jesus and the saints, he felt uplifted afterwards. This was the beginning of his conversion, which led him to commit his life to Jesus and go on a rigorous pilgrimage through...

"FYI Monsignor Beebe's estate sale tonight," texted my friend Christy this morning to our group text. Christy is an inveterate estate sale shopper and keeps abreast of the sales around town. This one would be at our former teacher's condo. Msgr. Charles Beebe was a priest of the Diocese of Peoria. One of his many assignments was at my high school the Academy of Our Lady/Spalding Institute, where I was fortunate to have him as a religion teacher in 1977. Up until I had him for "Jesus and the New Testament," I had found religion class boring. Teaching/learning religion is kind of a strange thing, right? Are we supposed to learn a body of knowledge, a set of beliefs, practices to follow? Not sure, but the classes I had previously left me less than inspired.  I can't remember any of the details about Msgr's class, but I do remember that it was interesting and that Msgr. Beebe was a good teacher. Perhaps it was because the class was about Jesus. Whatever ...

West Peoria has a new city hall and as part of the city hall, they also have a new War Veterans Memorial. The memorial was dedicated at the Memorial Day service on May 24, 2025. We were especially interested in this year's ceremony as the names of John's dad and uncle, John A. Carroll and Thomas A. Carroll, were recently added to the memorial. John was a staff sergeant in the 90th Division of the Army, who landed on Utah Beach in Normandy, two days after D-Day, and was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. Tom was a lieutenant in the army, who served in the Pacific, and unfortunately, we don't know anything about his service. John lived in West Peoria from 1957 until he died in 1978. Tom lived the last part of his life at St. Joseph's Home in West Peoria, passing on in 1993.  They had a short but meaningful program. The city administrator Kinga Krider welcomes us to the ceremony. She said that they hope people come to the memorial to express gratitude and tell stories.  Col....

  Our son Luke graduated from Iowa State University on May 17, 2025 with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Kinesiology. We are. Here he is above with his fiancee Megan.  Four years ago, when we brought Luke to Ames for his freshman year, we first saw the campanile (in the background), an iconic structure on campus. Luke decided to attend Iowa State fairly quickly. When my sister Theresa brought Luke and her son Will to Iowa State for a visit, Luke said it just clicked.  Above are Luke and his roommate Jack. Luke is wearing a Haitian stole, to represent his country of birth and a George Washington Carver stole from his scholarship program. The graduation lasted from 7 to 9:30 pm. We got there quite early and while we waited, look whose name we saw flash on the sign. We were able to see Luke process, one of about 1,200 graduates from the College of Health Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Other colleges at Iowa State had their graduations earlier in the...