To anyone who still shows up here, hoping to read something new from me, today you are in luck. I have started a new blog called "Viking Funeral" and you can find it here.

I will leave Some Have Hats up, for whatever it's worth. But I will be doing all my posting over here.

Tell your friends!

Yes, and so soon!

Lots of stuff going on. One of the things I'm most excited about is the Grand Re-Opening of Black Bear Books. We trying to nail down the date, but it will be late July/early August. The main event on the author front is that my friend Mary Doria Russell will be reading at 7 p.m. that day. There will be a buffet on the cafe table. You're all invited!

We have a lot of other activities planned for that day, but I'll supply those details later when I see how many of them are actually going to come to fruition.

There have been many changes since Chris and I bought the store last November. For one thing, we now have a website where you can order books online. In the store, there is a new sitting area and there is now a sofa and some craftsman furniture in the cafe.

Another big change: Laura's Yarntastic has moved in. It's a great addition to the store. I love looking at all the beautiful yarn every day, and I'm even learning to knit myself. (That is to say, I myself am learning to knit a scarf.) Laura gives free lessons every Thursday night from 6 to 9 p.m. We are an official "Stitch 'n Bitch" location, I am proud to tell you.

On the other side of the country, I am (thank you God) extremely busy in show biz land. I am writing and producing a movie for NBC. I will also be exec producer. We will be shooting in Toronto starting in August. Ah, August in Toronto. What could be more romantic than that? I'm also still working on my Starz pilot. It's a tough concept, so it's moving slowly. But I am happy with the first scene, which any pilot writer can tell you is huge.

Caleb survived the third grade. My garden has survived the horses. (Now growing: radishes, red peppers, red onions, yellow onions, watermelons and potatoes.)

I took and passed a Colored Stones Essentials course at GIA. I am now certified to bore people to death talking about gemstones. I'm now learning to set stones, which is much harder than it looks. And I'm working on a website where I can sell the gemstones that we continue to mine.

Brian is still in law school. I should probably know whether this is his second or third year, but I don't. Christine graduated and, as far as I can tell, is the only person from the class of 2010 who got a job. Julianne is still plugging along at college, and is working at the Sierra Madre playhouse this summer as the costume mistress.

Molly and the horses are getting old and gray. But then, who am I to talk?

Back when I have something new and worth telling.

Oh, one more thing. We took our Nascar-obsessed son to the race in Charlotte. And I painted my nails in Junior colors, but it didn't help.

I'm in the process of putting together an online jewelry store, otherwise I'm going to go broke turning my driveway rocks into gemstones. (Cutting them is very expensive, since they can only be cut by diamond blades, which don't last very long.)

I'm adding a photo album of some of my gemstones and will post a link to the webstore as soon as it's up and running. If you see something you can't live without in the meantime, give me a holler and I'll figure out its value and give you a discounted price. Western North Carolina draws people from all over the planet to search its gem mines, so gemstones are a lot cheaper here than they are in your local jewelry store. 

Burt Prelutsky, a pal of mine who once wrote for M*A*S*H and now writes for World Net Daily, has written a brilliant column that sums up the (I'll be kind) perplexing state of the current administration. Here is my favorite paragraph:

"The Ark of Hope" was built to house the "Earth Charter" and, as you can clearly see if you go here, has poles so it can be carried just like the Ark of the Covenant. Subtle, no?

I don't know what else to say about the earth worshipers, except good luck with that.

First of all, if you didn't see "The Good Wife" last week, watch it on the CBS website. It's the episode I wrote and it will be up until next Tuesday. After that, you can watch it on www.hulu.com. It is called "Unplugged."

And after that, go to our book store's new website and start ordering there instead of Amazon. Think of it as supporting a small community in the Appalachian mountains, where it is a hub for congregating. Or think of it as keeping Caleb in jeans and tennis shoes.

Next go to the photo album of Caleb's First Communion, which I'm about to upload.

By the time you're done with all of that, I'll be back with job news. I am in L.A. this week and next, interviewing for staff jobs and pilots and such. Next week the major networks will announce their schedules, and then I'll know more. (There are shows where I like them and they like me, but if they don't get picked up, it's a moot point.)

Sorry I don't make it here often for updates. Feel free to "friend" me on FB if you want daily updates.

I'll be back.

Over at Insight Scoop, Fr. Fessio has written a very good article explaining in detail what actually happened in the case of the pedophile priest that has the world ready to lynch the Pope. It explains the case from a POV that, surprisingly enough, I had never seen mentioned in any of the MSM reports.

The remaining problem, in my humble and quite unsolicited opinion, is that the MSM has no way to understand what is there between the lines: it is yet another case of the American bishops throwing the flock to the wolves one more time.

This is the decisive context of Cardinal Ratzinger's letter to Bishop Cummins. It is not a smoking gun. It did not mean that Ratzinger was not taking the priest's sins seriously. (He called the accusations "very serious" [gravis momenti].) It meant that he, following the policy of John Paul II, was taking the priesthood and its commitments very seriously.

And again, this entire affair had nothing to do with preventing further abuse by this priest. That had already been done, or should have been done, by the local bishop.

Emphasis mine.

In order to understand Fessio's explanation of the case, one would have to understand the Church's position on the nature of a vow. Needless to say, in a world where the celebrities we worship get married for a weekend, it's hard to make anyone other than an orthodox Catholic understand that context. (As we discovered in the last election, 54% of American Catholics cannot be bothered to care what the Church teaches.)

Of course, it is very helpful for Fr. Fessio to spell it all out for the orthodox Catholics one more time. (I say that as someone who needed to have it spelled out.) I have always said that there is nothing wrong with preaching to the choir, because the choir needs the moral support! And the choir is capable of becoming extremely confused, in a world where they are told that they'll go to Hell for missing Mass, and yet they watch Abortion Queen Nancy Pelosi waltz down the aisle to communion every Sunday.

But...

I still have a problem with the state of things. (Everyone is surprised, right?) And it is this: WHY do the Powers That Be continue to use "the bishop should have done it" as an excuse, when surely they know who our bishops are. Yes, this case is very old. But how many years has Cardinal Mahony remained the shepherd of Los Angeles, long after Rome knew full well who he was/is? While everyone is now celebrating that L.A. will finally have a real bishop, anyone who lives in L.A. knows what he is up against, and knows that it will take many years before he's able to make a difference.

And now the chorus about how slowly the Church works... blah blah blah.

Here's the thing: mothers don't care how slowly the Church works. Mothers care about the souls of their children.

A priest friend told me, not long ago, that the #1 cry he hears from parents re their children is not that they'll get into a good college or find a good spouse, or even that they'll escape accident and illness. The #1 concern of parents is for the souls of their children.

For years I have been saying that if priests, bishops and popes had children, the Church would not spend hundreds of years righting a wrong.

Maybe the Pope was guiltless 25 years ago, but he knows who our bishops are now, and they are still our bishops. So I still have a problem.

Here is Caleb at Mass this morning. We're one month away from his First Communion. Where on earth has the time gone? But isn't he handsome?

We celebrated Easter here in North Carolina, at our "home" church. The liturgy was gorgeous. All bells and smells and no restrictions on kneeling.

He is risen indeed.