Category: Odds & Ends

When I visited the top of St. Peter’s Basilica in ’84, the Daughters of St. Paul had a gift shop up there, and it’s an ideal spot to provide pilgrims with religious articles. But why stop there: the roof now also features a coffee bar. Now that’s a nice idea: is it time for a pilgrimage to St. Biscotti’s?

Does anyone know a retreat house with good vegetarian cooking? A friend of mine is looking for a weekend meeting place for a group she belongs to, and a fair number of the members are veg. She doesn’t happen to be a Catholic, so feel free to suggest places run by other religious communities or even non-religious conference centers.
Please reply in the comments; thanks.
PS: I forgot to specify a geographical range. Anywhere in the Northeast should be OK: say, from Maine to Pennsylvania. Thanks to the reader who asked.

Often, when I’m looking for something at CVS, I notice the aisle containing something called “Family Planning.” I’ve looked at the contents, and except for the ovulation detectors, it’s all about contraception.
Shouldn’t the aisle thus be called “Family Prevention”?

A reader in Massachusetts sent a note the other day looking for some advice. She’s thinking of moving to Virginia, together with her husband and their several little kids, and she’d like to know if she can find strong and sound church life there. Can our Virginia readers and writers recommend places to live or schools to attend (Catholic or public)? How the Commonwealth is doing in regard to Catholic issues? (Probably better than Massachusetts.)
Discuss.

“My local post office leaves the front door open all the time now so that people can buy stamps through a vending machine in the lobby.
“I put a bulky envelope on the scale, punched in the zip code, slipped in a credit card, and got back a label to stick on the piece. Then the machine asked, ‘Do you want to buy stamps?’, and I figured, ‘Don’t mind if I do.’
“I pressed the button for ‘yes’ and got a packet of eighteen first-class stamps, at a price of — uh, 18 times 37 cents, that’s… $6.66. My soul shuddered.
“Later, the stamps squealed lightly as I burned them.”