THE NEW POPE is from Chicago. Perhaps you've heard? The jokesters on Reddit wasted no time: You can eat Italian beef on Fridays during Lent now, Malört is the new communion wine, as a Chicago sports fan he is familiar with suffering, and on and on. He grew up in Bronzeville, the neighborhood that Gwendolyn Brooks is from, and for which she named her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville.

I think all the miraculous, hocus-pocus Catholic stuff makes more sense somehow in Mexico City, where we visited not long ago, rather than here, but I do feel oddly proud to be from the same city as the Pope. Or maybe I felt pride on learning that the last Leo, Leo XIII, was, according to Sylvia Poggioli on NPR, known for his 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum," (Of New Things), outlining the rights of workers to fair wages, safe working conditions and the creation of trade unions. Also, "Leo XIII was called the social pope or the workers' pope, and he is really seen as the founder of the Catholic Church's social doctrine."

In other local news, Chicago is sinking.

As for us, we have been busy busy busy: Michaela's various extracurricular activities culminate in performances this weekend and two weeks from now. I have been increasingly active in community building, volunteering at Michaela's school's PTO and Oak Park's first Civics Engagement Festival.

I didn't end up making a new drawing or comic this week so here is an old one that I haven't updated in a while...I was calling it Cat Person but then I found out about the brilliant "Cat and Girl" and now, well, I don't really know what to call it. The first two comics I have included in newsletters before (I think?) but the last one is being published here for the first time.

I hope you enjoyed the new "Cat Person" or whatever it will eventually be called.

No three things this week, I was just too busy and also am so obsessed with Andor that honestly watching that has eclipsed pretty much every other thing in my life except for gardening.

Happy Mother's Day!

See you next week.

Love,

Claire