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07/17/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

What exactly is a blog?

This question came up recently and I couldn’t answer it outright, which struck me as funny. Other than to say it’s a written personal reflection, I can’t explain the phenomenon.. Whatever that means…Anyway, apparently the word appeared in the late 1990’s as a shortened version of “weblog”. All I know is that I’ve been writing them since January of 2022. Now I have enough to fill a book of several hundred pages. Since I’ve already been there and self-published two books I don’t intend to produce another volume.

I tell my children that these blogs are my legacy for them when I’ve left the planet. Whether or not they find them useful in any way is entirely up to them. Jackie is pretty faithful about reading them on Facebook, but Ted has been done with Facebook for several years. When I write one that I think he will find interesting, I email it to him. 

There is a small group of people who read and comment on them. I am so grateful for the feedback and hope the writing has some meaning for them, or, at the very least, some helpful information. I do a little research when I’m addressing current events, or scientific studies. I want my writing to be as accurate as possible. I admit that one source is Wikipedia, but I consult scientific journals and news sources as well. 

Here’s what I know for sure. I have discovered a most powerful therapeutic tool. Writing the blogs gives me joy – most of the time, unless I’m writing about 47 or Congress. Then I indulge my anger and outrage and let them fly across the page. I usually write about spiritual topics, or my work in immigration, or the latest pride and joy in my kids. Sometimes the topic is quite random. Those are the mornings when I stare at my computer screen and wait for something to bubble up from my early morning brain cells. Sometimes I’ve listened to NPR and learned some fact that is amazing to me and must be shared.

As an aside – please email our senators Schmitt and Hawley and ask them not to defund Public Broadcasting Service and NPR. This has to be done today as the senate is in session deciding on appropriations. Dear God, it’s too late. In today’s top stories, the senate approved legislation to rescind $9 billion in federal funding for NPR, PBS, and their member stations and also to stop funding foreign aid programs. Now I’m ready to rant.

What is going on in this country should scare every one of us. I know for sure that 47 and his minions are still throwing spaghetti on walls to see what sticks. More and more pasta is adhering to the wall followed by some destructive move to banish anything “woke”. As for the mothership, NPR, I am sad and mad that my one steady source of honest reporting is under siege. I can only hope that listeners will increase their donations, and that Bill Gates will give a billion or two to support Public Broadcasting. 

In Saint Louis, our NPR station will lose $575,000 annually. This means that STLPR will have to raise this money from donors and corporate sponsors every year in order to continue to provide the programming many of us depend on. This morning I will listen to my NPR station on my drive to work. Just yesterday, I had a “driveway moment” – an episode where I get to where I’m going in my car, but sit and listen to the rest of the reporting before I turn off the engine. I’ve spent many a minute doing just this. 

So this is what a blog is to me: a very present and current reflection of my state of mind. As I said, I love writing it and am grateful there are people who read it. In a way it’s a blog about nothing much but what occurs to me in the darkness before dawn. This week Richard Rohr has written about the value of darkness. Today’s meditation quotes Dr. Barbara Holmes, who made her transition last year. Here are a few of her words:

“But there are many types of darkness. There is the darkness of determined ignorance and hatred, impenetrable and smothering. There is the tiny microcosm of darkness that gave birth to the universe, its new realities and new worlds. There is the mothering darkness of the womb, and the protective darkness of the ‘cloud by night’…Because I saw my Aunties negotiate darkness as a reality with as much potential as light, I stopped being afraid of the dark…”