Mary Pezzulo

Blogkeeping Notes For Winter 2026 This is not a normal post. This is just my every-couple-of-months boilerplate where I tell you where to find me when I'm not here and how to support my work.

The boilerplate as always. We're still paying off the gigantic January and February utility bills from the cold snap, so consider a Substack subscription or a visit to the tip jar! Thank you to my readers!
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Suzanne Collins herself is going to shake my hand and congratulate me and I'll be rich and literally nothing bad will ever happen again.

Summer In Winter, Heaven In Hell We weren't in Heaven. The darkness of Hell had been seeping in here all along.

“We have to blow the boats out of the water! It’s a war!”
“Where did you hear all of this?”
“I saw it on TV. I was watching TV with my brother.”
I wished for a millstone around the neck of whatever television celebrity had so fascinated Jimmy’s boy.
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Let's Talk About Forever Wars In The Middle East George Bush posed happily under a banner that said "Mission Accomplished," and I guess we thought that would be that.But that wasn't that. The wars went on for years and years.

There is no denying that Ayatollah Ali Khameni was a horrible person. He was a ruthless dictator who held Iran in an iron grip, and I’m not sad to see him go. You don’t need to valorize a bad person to point out the ways in which war is wrong.
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To Be Yourself Instead I guess I should have expected everything to go wrong that afternoon. The art class I was teaching was supposed to be about Trompe L'Oeil, which means

I thought that being a mother was all that I was. I was supposed to be somebody who had a baby, and then another baby, and then anther until my oldest was having a baby of her own and I ascended to the rank of a grandmother.
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When The World Is Returning To Life Once I went with her and a group of friends on a hike at Raccoon Creek State Park, in March, when the world is returning to life.

“You should have kept him on the leash!” I scolded. “What would you have said if he’d drowned?”

“At least he went out with a splash?” joked the girl who was raised in a cult.

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Uncanny As The Empty Tomb The scene was so ordinary and, at the same time, so surreal. Uncanny. Uncanny as a friend you loved selling you to your enemy to be crucified.

The Holy Ghost rustled the dead leaves on the ground. She played across the surface of the vernal pool. The songbirds called to one another in Her praises.God exhaled the Spirit into the hands of the Father Who is everywhere present, and therefore into all the earth.
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The God Of Crows And Eagles The God of crows and eagles, streams of water, dilapidated Appalachian neighborhoods, of kind people like Jimmy and The Lady of LaBelle and of codependent failures like me.

Hawks will go after just about any kind of nest. They will eat crow eggs, and crows. The crows were defending their own lives and their future children against the more majestic bird, and they were fighting dirty.
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A Different Mercy I don't know if I went into Triduum justified, but I went into Triduum trusting in a God of Mercy, in a way I hadn't before.

I snuck into that chapel on the first floor– cautious, peeking around the corner as if I’d find that dark confessional waiting for me, but there was only Jesus in a different box, a gold one.

I sat quiet for awhile, listening.
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I Try To Imagine, I Try To Pray Her veil is a nebula, a whole world of stars more colorful than any rainbow. There, now I've set the scene. I can pray. What do I say? Not very much.

I try to banish all the imaginary people that I never became.
I try to just be myself.

I can’t quite manage it.

I am never myself in my imagination. I am always somebody interesting.
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For You Are Dust Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. You are a thing that can be good or evil, life or death, fire or water.

That is what you are. You are something that could make the world dirty if you liked. You could terrorize and traumatize, if you wanted. You could hurt and kill, if you chose to do so. You could destroy life. That is within your capacity. You are dust.
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May he intercede for us.

...and think the Civil War was a gentleman's disagreement. It gets horribly violent from there, because it's on the Hunger Games franchise.

...and there's a loud crash and she realizes her brother is tagging along to "help." Fortunately he takes after his dad and has brought a sack of tasty baked goods. The woods around District Twelve are full of crazed re-enactors who liked President Snow...

We have decided that Skunk Cabbage is the little girl who takes after her mother and is serious and good with a bow, and Bladderwrack is the well meaning bossy boy who is very clumsy and keeps messing things up. An aged Haymitch puts them up to it and Skunk tries to sneak out at night...

Adrienne does not like my idea for a Hunger Games sequel, where Katniss's two children, who are named Bladderwrack and Skunk Cabbage, have to go on a quest to rescue their father from an elderly Gale who is holed up in a booby-trap-filed dungeon in District 6. There's no accounting for taste.

If I were a real teacher and I was teaching my own curriculum at a private school or something, I would show preschoolers episodes of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and read them books and let them play outside all day. Attention spans get shorter by the generation.

I love the children at the church outreach. But it seems like Gen Alpha doesn't even watch normal TV anymore, just reels and tiktoks. They love learning, they're fascinated by my art and geography lessons. But it's new to them.

Oh yes. The Pizza Hut Book It campaign, the Scholastic book fair, library reading drives, PBS shows, it was everywhere and so wholesome. That should be revived.

YouTube video by PSA America (PSA) You're a Turkey! feat. TMNT - Partnership for a Drug-Free America

And who can forget when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whom I was not allowed to watch because they used dirt words like "dorks," told six-year-olds not to smoke an extremely small joint at elementary school?
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YouTube video by ClassicCommercials4U Milk Boy in A Mirror Ad from 1992

And who can forget the series of commercials telling prepubescent children that they might be creepily flirted with by 18-year-old aerobics instructors if they drink big glasses of milk?
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YouTube video by Wayback Wednesday VHS Transfers 1993 Kellogg's TV Commercial – Rope Climbing Gym Class Ad (90s Cereal Throwback)

I'm not exaggerating in the least. Here is a commercial, not for a specific cereal, but just "You should have breakfast!" My siblings burst out laughing because we thought these kids' given names were Davis and Wiznuski. We didn't know they were surnames.
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This is true, and it was a very good thing. But to be fair, it was an era of very weird commercials for random things like "drink milk!" or "don't do drugs!" or "have breakfast before gym class!" as well. I've never really understood where all that ad money came from.

Personally I'm sick of winning.

Oh my god no! The Iranians were developing Trump's healthcare plan.

He killed 150 little girls, let his buddy Bibi blanket a city of nine million people in toxic gas for the weekend, and replaced one dictator with another much younger and stricter dictator. Now he's had his fun, and the Middle East is in flames.

There'd better be a hell.

It's unspeakably evil.

LIVE SOON: Gospel Meditation: When Christ Asks You for Water.... Starting Mar 9 at 8:00 PM EDT

I'm hopping back on live for the Gospel meditation on the Woman at the Well! Hope to see you there! No paywall on this one!
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It's like I always say. Voting is harm reduction. When we give an addicted person test strips and clean needles, that's not ENOUGH. But it's better than what would have happened without them and it's the best we can do. Of COURSE both parties are bad, but one is objectively less harmful.