random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon

*Thalidomide was the 1950s, wonder drug from Germany that was touted as being a perfect cure for morning sickness.  Dr.  Frances Oldham Kelsy was a pharmacologist, doctor and drug reviewer  for the FDA who realized after time and study that the drug worked but also attacked the fetus. There was pressure put on  Dr. Kelsy by the pharmaceutical company and by lobbyists who claimed the US was just keeping women down, being backwards sticks in the mud and pointing out that the sophisticated Europeans and the Canadians already had Thalidomide. A few American women with the financial ability got on the plane to Europe or had friends sneak the drug back for them. Frances Kelsy stuck to her guns and millions of American children were spared being born with no limbs. In 1962, Frances got a medal from President Kennedy.

Today we hear the same kind of talk about new wonder pills for women and girls and we're told that anybody who says "Hold up. Is this thing safe?" is a fuddy duddy who is just trying to keep women down. Shirley Bassey was right. The next big thing really is just history repeating.


*Georgetown is not a Catholic school anymore. It hasn't been for decades. Think of all those poor parents who were suckered into putting second mortgages on their homes in order to send their kid to a place that seems to be doing everything it can to suck the souls right out of them.




* The  way you dress is powerful. It tells people who you are and what you stand for.



* Rest in peace, prison angel. Mother Antonia was an awesome woman. She walked away from a comfortable life in Beverly Hills and willingly went to one of the worst places on earth to serve,  and save the souls of some of the most dangerous men on earth. She founded the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour, an order of nuns made up of older women -- in their eleventh hour  and is another Mother Theresa. She was 86.



*Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, that there are three kinds of people at the foot of the Cross: purity, represented by Our Lady, the penitent, represented by St. Mary Magdalene, and priesthood, represented by St. John, the only apostle who after running away in Gethsemane, came back and openly followed Him to His crucifixion.