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Mapping My Travel
This is one in a series of blog posts I'm writing for my ENG 599 (Rhetorics of Travel) class, as part of my graduate school coursework.
I love old, historical maps. Before my husband and I went to Iceland last summer, I found a print of a map created by Abraham Ortelius, a 16th Century Flemish geographer and cartographer. (Ortelius is credited ( Read more... ) -
Adoption Presumptions & Progress
I've been trying to keep quiet about the adoption stuff we've been going through, because (a) it's generally private; and (b) really, I don't presume that people will care about such intricacies. But our home study has been officially approved (yay!), and this is what the process has been like for us so far.
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The Return from Iceland
We decided to come back from Iceland. Did you miss us? I took lots of pictures.
Iceland from Michelle Szetela on Vimeo.
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Iceland
Ed and I have been in Iceland since last Monday, and we'll be here until just after Independence Day, because, dammit, we've been married for two years and we're finally taking our honeymoon ( Read more... ) -
Close-Minded Comments
The very first semester I taught, a student asked sarcastically, "Why would anyone want to be a teacher?" To which I replied, without thinking, "Because it allows me to meet a variety of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, keeps me open-minded, and stops me from dismissing career choices whose value I don't immediately see." To which the ( Read more... ) -
Year Two
Two years ago today, at 2:00 p.m., I promised to be true to Ed in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I promised to love him and honor him all the days of my life.
It's still the best decision I ever made.
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(Untitled)
"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world ( Read more... ) -
Catholic Catechism
St. Joe's doesn't have weekday Masses on Fridays, but today was the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed - the Feast of All Souls - so a Mass was said anyway. Yesterday, being All Saints' Day, was a Day of Obligation, but I was able to go to Mass this morning as well. There were only nine of us there, and with one exception I was the youngest ( Read more... ) -
The Big Goodbye
Today we buried my mother-in-law, who died Friday, July 20th. She had been diagnosed with lymphoma a couple weeks ago, thought to only have developed within the past three months. Within 10 days of her first round of chemotherapy, she went into septic shock, which in turn led to massive organ failure.
I wish I could have gotten to know her better, ( Read more... ) -
How Not to Live
#protip: If you’re angry with someone you love and have had a long-term relationship with, romantic or otherwise, work it out. I’ve recently witnessed an extreme example of how anger, fear, and miscommunication have led to deep depths of bitterness, which in turn led to a destruction of a marriage and long-term friendships. A life ended in ( Read more... )
