Category: Writing

Visiting Holy Name Cathedral

On By VickieIn WritingLeave a comment

This is the first in a series I am writing titled “Praying in Chicago: Religion in the Windy City” that will be published on Substack going forward. You can read the introduction to the project HERE to get more information on what is to come! Then you can subscribe to Substack for free for the rest of the series.

I chose Holy Name Cathedral as the first church I would attend for a couple of reasons. For one, it is close by. And across the street from my gym, which means I walk by it four to five times a week. And second, it is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese here in Chicago. So that seemed as good a place to start as any.

As for a little bit of history, this Roman Catholic congregation was established in 1852. Right before the church was formed, in 1846, Chicago had a population of around 14,000 people. An influx of German and Irish immigrants, most of whom were Catholic, were settling in large numbers north of the Chicago River. The only Catholic church around was St. Josephs, which was built by the Germans. As a result, mass was in Latin, but the sermons and confessions were in German.

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Praying in Chicago: Religion in the Windy City

On By VickieIn Writing1 Comment

I don’t attend church. And I haven’t attended church in years.

Currently, I live right in the heart of Chicago: a block off Michigan Avenue and across the street from the Hancock building. And there are dozens of churches within walking distance from my apartment. One day I realized that I had not stepped foot into a single one since moving here a few years ago. Which is strange because whenever I travel, visiting churches is near the top of my list of sights to see.

I’m a bit of an amateur photographer (although I have been hired out a few times for events), but since moving here, I have been drawn to capturing urban landscapes and street photography. You can probably imagine that Chicago has provided me with more material than I could exhaust in a lifetime.

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Photographing Protests – the beginning

On By VickieIn Writing1 Comment

On June 22, 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, as expected. And the pro-choice crowd took to the streets.

A hobby I’ve practiced for decades is photography. So after moving to Chicago in 2019, it seemed natural to seek out photography groups on Meetup. For those who don’t know about Meetup, it is a website where you can search for groups in your area who have similar interests as you. Pretty much every interest you can imagine has a group, especially in a big city like Chicago: history, singles, paddleboarding, dancing, women lawyers, Korean authors, hiking, etc.

One of the photography groups I found was Chicago Streets and Beyond Photography. They had planned an outing to photograph the first protest of the court ruling on Roe v. Wade at the Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago. We met a couple of blocks away beforehand, and the organizer gave us some tips on how to take photos at protests before we headed over and quickly lost each other in the crowds.

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Thoughts on Books and the Family Dog

On By VickieIn Captain, Captain and the Greyhounds, Dogs, family, WritingLeave a comment

Today is a huge milestone for me.

Seven years ago I started this blog, and I had no idea what I was doing. But the first two posts take on whole new meaning for me today. The first blog post was titled “Captain!” It was only a few paragraphs about the family dog and the fact that he was the inspiration for a screenplay I was woking on.

The second was titled “Captain and the Greyhound.” It’s purpose was to announce the name of the screenplay (which has since changed to Captain and the Greyhounds!). It also consisted of only a few paragraphs.

Read more: Thoughts on Books and the Family Dog

If fact, it should be no surprise that the dog in the blog photo is that same dog, Captain.

Since then, this blog grew into something completely different. I only wrote two other posts concerning the screenplay. As part of my research, I visited one of the few remaining greyhound racing tracks still in existence: Tucson Greyhound Park. The place was completely run down and close to closing. And the few people who were there were very suspicious of me, an outsider, assuming I was there for nefarious reasons. You can read about my trip to Tuscon in Part 1 and Part 2.

The rest of the posts on this blog have been a sharing of my thoughts on a very wide range of topics. I love writing here. It has served as a great outlet for my ideas and inspiration. 

I did complete the screenplay. I shopped it around and een had some bites. But then Trump got elected and those bites ran scared, certain that the economy would collapse and World War III would break out. People were hesitant to fund unknowns, especially in entertainment.

Many years have passed. I still have Captain, who is now 15 years old, and I live in Chicago, having lost track of my Los Angeles contacts since then.

But I have now come full circle. Today, the book Captain and the Greyhounds, a children’s chapter book aimed at 6-11 year olds, has been published!

It’s about an adventurous terrier mutt who is busy planning his escape from the people who adopted him – until the greyhound next door goes missing, and he learns the importance of family.

If you have children, grandchildren, know children, know people with children, or you enjoy reading, you can order the book on Amazon! And let me know what you think. My goal is to turn this into a series of books.

Also, please don’t forget to leave a review!

Just released!

Captain and the Greyhounds by Vickie Oddino

Available on Amazon

Thoughts on Childhood, Walks to School, and Gum

On By VickieIn family, WritingLeave a comment
The house I lived in through 5th grade

*this was written in 2010 (but never published – until today!)

I go for a walk most mornings while my kids are at school. I usually walk to the school, around its perimeter, and back home as I listen to a tape in my “World of Philosophy” series. One day, as I turned the corner around the school’s parking lot, I noticed a tree up ahead with multicolored spots all over the trunk. I squinted as I moved closer, trying to figure out what those spots could be. I soon realized that each spot was a wad of gum. Apparently kids have been leaving their gum here for quite some time.

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Thoughts on Funerals and Rebirth

On By VickieIn family, Writing1 Comment

When my son was in high school, the wife of one of his baseball coaches passed away in her thirties, leaving her husband with four young children. The Catholic funeral was packed with people, literally standing room only. The Mass was beautiful, moving, and also heartbreaking. And I had an important revelation.

Even though I attended a Methodist church with my family when growing up, I have not belonged to any church since graduating high school. And I didn’t raise my children in a church either; however, I did send them both to religious schools. I felt like the education provided was better than the local alternative, and I appreciated the focus on character and values. But that didn’t mean I raised them in a religious household.

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Thoughts on Protesting War in Today’s World

On By VickieIn Current Events, Writing2 Comments

My birthday always lands around Presidents’ Day weekend, and for many years I have elected to plan out-of-town trips to celebrate it. But this year, as my birthday approached, I grew concerned as I had not made any plans. Then one day while scrolling through Twitter, I saw that the Libertarian Party was planning an anti-war rally in Washington DC on my actual birthday.

I have recently become interested in attending protests with my cameras in tow. When I attended the first protest as a photographer, I was incredibly nervous and self-conscious. I have always been uncomfortable taking photos of people and usually avoid doing so, or I try to sneak in shots when people aren’t looking (which rarely results in a memorable photo). 

But I quickly realized that people at protests are pretty much begging to have their photos taken. That still did not make me feel any more comfortable, and it took a couple of protests to get into my groove. 

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Book Review: The Horrific Costs and Willful Ignorance of Net Zero

On By VickieIn WritingLeave a comment

What I have learned from the book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara about the situation regarding the mining of cobalt and other minerals in the Congo has haunted me. 

I am typing this on my rechargeable laptop, and the only solace I can find is that it is considered ancient in today’s world; I bought it in 2015. At least I can say that I don’t frequently upgrade my electronics and, as a result, am rarely in the market for the rechargeable batteries that demand cobalt.

Kara wrote Cobalt Red to bring attention to the plight of the Congolese as well as to disprove the claims made by companies like Apple and Tesla that the minerals they use in their products are all “clean,” meaning not the product of artisanal miners. In fact, one of Kara’s hopes is that the executives at these companies take trips to the Congo to see for themselves just where exactly their minerals are coming from.

I am certainly not naive. I am 60 years old and have repeatedly seen the corruption and the lying that takes place both in powerful corporations and at all levels of government. I am aware that people are ruthlessly exploited and that the United States is more than willing to kill innocent civilians around the world for resources, ideology, and abject power.

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Lessons Learned Walking to the Gym

On By VickieIn Current Events, Writing4 Comments
Alone and invisible while surrounded by hundreds of people

I had a whole plan for today, all mapped out on my calendar. But my walk to the gym put a huge wrench in those plans. And I feel the need to write about it. So here we are…

At around 11:15 AM, I left my apartment, and about a half block ahead of me, I saw an elderly woman with a cane fall in the street near the end of the crosswalk. I quickened my step as I watched her struggle to get up. People walked up and down the sidewalks without even a glance at her. So I yelled out that I was coming, to just stay put and that I would help her. 

She was a bit overweight – I wasn’t going to be able to get her up by myself, so I called over to a woman walking across the street. The two of us were able to get her to her feet. But she was very shaky. I then wondered if she was injured and that we shouldn’t even have tried to get her up. But she insisted she wasn’t injured. Just shaken up.

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Writing Process (Part 6)

On By VickieIn Cassandra's Daughter, Writing4 Comments

Today’s post is the last installment of my series on the writing process of taking Cassandra’s Daughter from idea to print, a process that took years in the making!

If you haven’t read the series from the beginning, you can start HERE. In the previous post, I got my draft pretty darn close to being finalized. The main step that was left at this point was preparing the manuscript.

This was the stage where my experience with Clara’s Journal proved the most valuable. I should probably also point out that what a lot of people may not realize is just how much the traditional publishing world has changed. I had pretty much decided that I would go the self-publishing route. The cons for going with a traditional publisher simply had too many cons on the ledger. 

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