Hardly ever is anyone burning a fire. In fact, I just came in from a walk and no one was burning a fire. Once and awhile, I do see smoke coming from a chimney. Usually, it's right at the beginning of the winter and around the holidays. That's it. Most folks are working and too busy to mess with a wood burning fire.

In the past, when I burned a fire, my chimney gave off no smoke. This is because I used my gas along with the logs. The fire burned real slowly and took up hardly any logs even if I had it going all day. When I walked outside and checked my chimney there was no smoke. Zip. Nada.

So why did I feel guilty every time I lit up?

I blame the media. I read the stories about our local air quality problems and the Letters to the Editor by asthma sufferers and I wondered, "Gosh, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm causing some poor person in my neighborhood to suffer?"

But I still really wanted my fire and I indulged. I took solace in the fact that the county I lived in had only "recommended" no burn days. But the party was over when my county joined in with wood burning restrictions. Thinking about the fact that my chimney didn't give off smoke, I considered that I could still get away with burning wood. I didn't think the sheriff would come knocking at my door.

But my woodpile was almost gone.

I thought about ordering a cord of wood. I pictured it being dumped on my driveway and the whole neighborhood seeing what I intended to do in the privacy of my own home. The shame of it.

Then I thought about carrying logs into the house. It would involve going out into the cold, shaking out the critters, keeping them dry, and cleaning the ashes. My kids used to help out with all that, but they are grown up now and no help at all.

So while driving past a shopping center one day I stopped at a store that sold gas log sets. They had a whole wall of fireplaces filled with faux fire logs or "decorative gas log sets." Years ago, I had tried a set of fake logs. They were dreadful: ugly as heck and they didn't give off any heat. But now the craftsmanship has improved greatly.

The log sets on display were gorgeous and incredibly natural looking. They even come with fake ashes that glow like real embers. For less than $300, I was able to buy a set and have it installed. If I had popped for another hundred bucks or so, I could have had the fire controlled with a remote device. But the last thing I wanted was another remote control in my living room. My new fireplace lights by turning on the gas and using a lighter.

Now I enjoy a roaring or cozy fire almost every cold winter day. It is so comforting. And so clean. And so warm.

There are some tradeoffs. There is no crackling sound, and it heats so well that I often have to "turn it down." Sometimes at the start of the fire, there's a faint gas smell and it's bluish. But those problems go away after a few minutes.

I marvel that free enterprise comes up with a solution whenever there's a problem (real or perceived). Environmentalists complain about wood burning and we get fireplaces that are easier to maintain or they complain about flood irrigation and someone invents drip irrigation.

So everybody can be happy. At least until they decide to find something wrong with burning gas.

I first became aware of my accent when I was doing summer theater in Idaho. I remember the moment clearly. I was referring to our local newspaper, The Hanford Sentinel, and I pronounced it the The Hanford "Sintnel." The director of the troupe had no clue what I was saying. I kept saying louder and louder, "Sintnel, Sintnel." Finally, I spelled it and she said, "Oh, Sen-ti-nel." And she taught me how to pronounce it correctly. I was astonished. Soon, she was correcting me when I said "becuz" or "alls." What a blessing it was to have adults willing to mentor me.

Though I corrected my vowel substitution problem during my summer theater days, there were still words that were to be stumbling blocks in my adulthood. I don't remember them all, but I know I said "chick" for "chic," which should have been "sheek." And this was after attending UCLA and graduating from Fresno State!

My most humiliating pronunciation mishap was when I lost a high-power job as a fill-in booth announcer for ABC and KABC in Los Angeles. (I was the first female booth announcer in Southern California.) My job consisted mainly of saying things like, "Stay tuned for Happy Days." Well, to a small town girl, it seemed like a high-power job.

One of my duties was to read the sign-off news for local affiliate KABC at the end of the broadcast day. I knew my pronunciations were weak, especially with foreign names, so I used to go over the news scripts with the director; but sometimes there wasn't time.
 
One night I received a script and had to go on-the-air live and read it cold. I read "the Symbionese Liberation Army in a communiqué today…." I pronounced "communiqué" as "com-you-neek." The moment I said it, I knew something was wrong. You know I am chagrined to this day and it's still difficult to admit. Later, I heard that some broadcast guys sitting around the bar in Simply Blues at Sunset and Vine heard it and were not too happy. Soon I had to hit the pavement in Hollywood looking for work.

How you pronounce words really can affect your career and how people perceive you.

So what did I do to improve? Well, I never did anything formally to correct my problem. After all, there are no pronunciation classes that I know of. I did pay attention, though. I also started using the dictionary more. Most importantly, I made it a point to ask people whose pronunciation I respected to correct me. Or if they happened to correct me on their own, I thanked them and asked them to continue doing so.

Most people are offended if you correct them, so I don't advise unsolicited correcting of adults. In fact, I especially don't recommend it to employers as it could be considered a "sensitivity" issue. However, you can always let others know if you want correction for yourself.
 
Despite my progress, I'm still insecure about my pronunciation. I have always correctly pronounced the word "niche" as "nich" (rhymes with Mitch). But, recently, I have had so many people pronounce the word as "neesh" that I inwardly assumed I was wrong. Recently, I said "neesh" to a business associate. The person responded, "'Neesh?!' What's 'neesh'? I never heard of that word."

When I got home I checked three dictionaries and they all list the pronunciation as "nich" (rhymes with Mitch). Just to be extra sure, I called my Latin-French expert, Helen Boyer. She confirmed that the French pronunciation is indeed "neesh" but that it sounds terribly affected to pronounce it that way in English. "It's like you're trying to be French or something," she said.

Next time, I'll "git" it "said right." Sheesh.

One way for parents to arm themselves is to drastically restrict the amount of elecronic media beaming daily into our homes. Teresa Tomeo's new book, Noise, is a helpful resource for parents looking for ideas on what to limit, how to limit, and why.

What I like most is Tomeo's thoughtful approach. Too often we are inclined to be all or nothing. We say no to all television, video games, iPods, and computers — which highly frustrates our kids. Or we say, it's useless to even try and we give up. (If I had to err, though, I would err on the side of strictness.)

There is so much to consider, that it's important to have a thought-out plan. Granted, this plan will be constantly evolving and unique to each family's situation.

When my own children were growing up, after passing the Sesame Street and Mister Rogers years, my plan was no Nintendo and no broadcast television. At the time, broadcast televsion was not as bad as it is now, but the commercials were often salacious.

I know this is a difficult issue for many husbands, especially those hooked on sports or the news. I am a widow, and I am not sure if my late-husband would have gone along with the no television plan if he had been living. Today, I enjoy watching television, but, if I had little ones around, it would be off — if only to spare them the E.D. ads.

A noticeable benefit of our no broadcast television plan was that it included no Saturday morning cartoons. My kids never hounded me for the latest kid toy. Once, while we were at a museum, a tour guide asked my children then 5 and 7 what their favorite TV show was and they stared at him blankly.

Things began to change when my mother-in-law insisted on getting me a satellite so that I could watch EWTN. It cost her $800! Every penny was worth it, as our whole family really enjoyed getting to know Mother Angelica and family.

We also enjoyed the stations that broadcast the old television shows from the 50s. Since my kids had been exposed to very little violence or scary subject matter, they were real wimps. Once I came into the living room and they were hiding behind a chair. I asked them what was wrong, and they pointed to the television. Lassie was in trouble!

A few years later the computer and the Internet came into our lives. The first time we had a problem was when my daughter, then about 9, was looking for a picture of our Blessed Mother on some encyclopedia software. You guessed it. She found a picture of the female rock singer who has stolen our dear mother's name, and she was dressed entirely inappropriately. My daughter started screaming and begged me to turn it off.

While my children were little, I had no trouble enforcing our television rules. As they came into their teen years it was different. I started letting them watch the teen sit-coms on the Disney Channel. Overall, they were wholesome, funny, and always taught a moral virtue. They were like an updated and more hip Father Knows Best, a show from the 1950s.

Yet that seemed to whet their appetite for more. Soon it was more difficult to keep the television off for other programming. Although we had been happily homeschooling, they both now wanted to go to the public high school. Could those cute Disney Channel kids — having a blast in their TV-land high school — been a factor in their newfound desire?

Next came the video games. My son saved up his paper route money and bought his own television set and X-box. Music became an issue, too. My daughter got one of the first iPods for Christmas. (I confess I bought it for her, and I have no clue what I was thinking.)

I always thought I would closely monitor my kids' music and nothing wretched would ever enter our household. I confess I didn't. I did make some weak attempts to monitor the music. Sometimes, I found songs that sounded awful would have harmless lyrics, and some songs that sounded delightful had awful lyrics. I did overrule some choices. But when I looked at the stacks of CDs and stared at the iPod that could hold 5000 songs, I got overwhelmed. At the same time, I found myself trying to explain to them why downloading music illegally was stealing. Over and over. I'm sure their desire for the music was overriding any logic I could deliver.

MySpace next entered the scene. I was able to see what was going on — kids are sloppy and sometimes leave Web pages open. I wasn't always pleased with what I saw. So I talked with the kids about safety and using godly language.

As I write this, I get a bit of an understanding about why it was so difficult. So much new technology was coming at us so fast. I have a feeling it's only going to continue from here on out. That's why parents need to arm themselves with as much information as possible, including Tomeo's book, which lists resources for keeping up-to-date.

Looking back, there are media choices (sins?) I wish my kids hadn't indulged in. It's very difficult knowing when to give your maturing children a lot of line and when to reel them in. I don't think it can be quantified. My way was to try and follow my instincts and, hopefully, the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

As we wade through all this technology and media morass with our children, I think we need to truly focus on keeping the lines of communication open. I do this today by discussing with them my own personal problems with the media. I wish I were saint enough to never see a movie again, unless it's completely clean. But, I'm not. I'm too much a child of this culture myself.

So I share my own struggles with my adult children, especially if they want to see a film that I think is "over the edge." I sympathize with them that they want to see it because it's very funny; so do I. And then I ask, but do you really want to promote such and such, by buying a ticket?

But, back to parents with younger children. I do want to especially encourage you to unplug as much as possible. My children and I had many wonderful evenings reading books. Usually my kids would sketch in a sketchbook while I read. We read long books like Robinson Crusoe and silly books like Hank the Cowdog. This lasted until my daughter was 13 and my son 11. Even at those ages, when I would try to stop reading, the kids would always beg me, "Read more, read more!"

That could never have happened if the television had not been controlled or an X-Box was in the house.

P.S. My daughter who proofed this article for me suggests that dads who are reluctant to unplug their televisions might try TiVo.

P.P.S. Both my children have a strong faith life and have never strayed from the Church.

Anyway, for the past couple of years, Mormon missionaries have come knocking on my door every three months or so. I don't know if they are simply targeting this area or my cousins have told them to stop by, but I seem to have fresh-faced boys calling themselves "Elders" knocking pretty regularly at my door.

I always invited them in until I learned that they were uncomfortable. I am a widow and these boys are not supposed to come in to a lone woman's house. So now I invite them to sit on my front porch, and I offer them a soda or a cup of cold water, and cookies, when I have them.

They are always very appreciative of the treats. Hospitality goes a long way in the world, including the apologetics world.

The first thing to do, according to former Mormon Thomas F. Smith, is to get them to give you their first names. Missionaries will introduce themselves as "Elder Smith" and "Elder Doe" and they want you to call them that.

Usually, I have to ask them more than once to get their first names. Once I had a particularly difficult time getting their first names. Exasperated, I said, "I understand that in your church you are called Elder, but you are not my elder and if we are to have a discussion we need to be on respectful terms." They gave me their names.

What's Your Authority?

My usual approach with missionaries, be they Evangelicals, Jehovah Witnesses, or Mormons is to ask them to prove to me why I should listen to them in the first place. This works fairly well. Usually, they say, "Don't listen to me, listen to the Bible." This leads us into a discussion of where the Bible came from and helps me to show the importance of Church authority.

Mormons will agree about church authority. In fact, they have a saying, "Protestantism doesn't have a leg to stand on. Either the Catholic Church is true or the Mormon Church is true." This belief by Mormons that either their church is true or the Catholic Church is true makes young missionaries especially curious about the Catholic Church. They come to the apologetics table with at least a grudging respect for the Catholic Church; after all, we have a leg to stand on. That's why well-catechized Catholics have a real opportunity to dialogue with and evangelize Mormons.

Since Mormons believe that the very early Church was true, whenever I talk to missionaries, I always ask them just when the Church apostatized. From their literature, I know they say that the Church apostatized immediately after the death of the last Apostle. One time, the missionary repeated that to me and I replied, "Then you are saying that St. Polycarp who learned the faith from the Apostle John and was martyred was an apostate and also all the other early Church fathers who learned from the Apostles."

The boy was astounded and backed off saying, "Well, yes, there were early Christian martyrs who were faithful."

"So, when did the Church apostatize?"

He was stumped.

But after awhile, I wasn't happy with my apologetic approach of "explain why I should give you a hearing." They would always try to steer the conversation to some pat, prepared argument that I was ill-equipped to handle. I have tapes which teach you how to explain why various Mormon arguments are wrong, but, honestly, I don't have the time or the inclination to study and memorize those arguments.

Touch the Heart and Reach the Mind

I needed to find a way that worked for me to try to reach these earnest, but errant souls.

Last summer, there was a knock my door.

I answered it and was surprised to see two young men there. They introduced themselves as Elder "Smith" and Elder "Doe." It was hot, so I asked them if they would like a cup of water. They said, "Yes." As I went to my fridge and scooped ice into a couple of paper cups, I prayed. "Oh Lord, help me to talk with them rightly. I really need your help, I don't know squat."

As I stepped onto the porch with the water, I said, "I know from prior visits you are not supposed to come in when a woman is alone, so we can sit on the porch and talk."

They took their cups and arranged themselves on the porch. I made a mental note to maybe get some chairs out there.

I decided to take the initiative.

"Before we get started, I need to tell you something straight out. If you start quoting scripture to me or a prepared speech, my eyes will glaze over, my mind will freeze, and I won't be able to follow you and we can't talk at all. If you want to talk to me, then we have to talk together like human beings."

I paused and stretched out my hand.

"I'm Catholic, my name is Kathy, what's yours?"

In turn, they shook my hand.

"My name is Darren."

"Mine is John."

Wow! They didn't even try to get me to call them Elder!

I remembered what a wise homilist once said. "When you meet someone new, don't ask them what they do. Ask them where they came from. How many are in their families? How many brothers and sisters do they have? Get to know their personal lives." The priest said that was a great way to get people to really open up.

So I did this with the missionaries. They told me about their hometowns and their families. At one point, Darren said that he had strayed from his faith during his high school years, but eventually had come to believe it.

"Why do you believe in the Mormon faith?" I asked.

"Because I feel it's right," Darren replied.

"Is that what you base your faith on, a feeling?" I asked.

"Yes. Well, more than that…" he looked a little confused.

"What?"

"Well, you look around and you can see that there is design to the world, you know that there is a God," he said.

"That's true," I agreed, "but why do you believe in the Mormon faith?"

"I feel it's true."

Now that they had had a chance to share some of themselves and their faith with me, they gave me the same courtesy.

"That's not enough for me. I know that Mormons ask you to read The Book of Mormon and see if you get a burning feeling. I could never base my faith on a feeling."

The two of them looked genuinely surprised.

I continued, "I have an aunt who gave me a book called History of the Origin of All Things. On its cover page it claims "Given by the Lord Our God" and then a few lines down it says "Revised by Him." I guess 84 years later God's work needed revision. By the way, this book was written around the same time as The Book of Mormon. My aunt believes it faithfully. When I ask her why, she says its because she feels its true. And she is passionate about it. When I try to point some inconsistency out to her about it, she just gets worked up and says she knows it's true."

This seemed to trouble the two missionaries.

"What do you base your faith on?" Darren asked.

"Well, first we have to define faith.  How do you define faith?" I asked them.

Paraphrasing Hebrews 11:1, John said, "Faith is believing in the unseen."

"That is a part of faith, but it's not a sufficient definition," I replied.

"Then how do you define faith?"

"Faith is believing in something that someone has told us but that we wouldn't know on our own. When you go into the store and look at a can of beans you have faith in the label. You have faith that beans are actually in the can, but you don't know it. You didn't actually see the beans being put into the can and sealed up. Still, your faith is well-placed because can labels are pretty reliable."

I paused for a moment to let that sink in and then I continued.

"This is real faith, but it's not infallible. A can might be mislabeled — indeed, that happened to me once and it was a very strange feeling to open a can of peaches and see green beans. A lot of religious people are going to be surprised after they die, too."

They nodded in agreement.

"When we speak of religious faith we are speaking of a divine faith. Catholics define this type of faith as believing what God has told us. And how does he speak to us? Through the Church."

"How do you know God speaks to you through the Catholic Church?" asked John.

 "When Jesus walked the earth He taught that He was the Son of God and backed it up by His miracles, especially the Resurrection. Jesus personally established the Catholic Church as testified in St. Matthew's Gospel. The Apostles and early Christians bore personal witness to Christ, and they handed down what they saw through the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church teaches the same today as it did yesterday. Testimony and consistency is essentially why I believe what I believe. I do not believe because I read a book and waited for a feeling."

I wanted to involve them more in the conversation, so I asked, "Darren, when you used the argument about belief in God from design, you were not using your feelings, you were using your mind. Reason is a gift from God; He wants us to use it."

"I agree with that," Darren said.

"You were using one of Saint Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God. Have you ever heard of Thomas Aquinas?

"No, I haven't," replied Darren.

"Neither have I," said John.

"You are using Catholic arguments for the existence of God; you should at least read Aquinas and the other early Church Fathers."

"Who are the early Church Fathers?" asked John

"They are the great teachers of the early church."

"I would like to read them, how can I do that?" he asked.

"Just go on the Internet. Use Google and type in Church Fathers.  You will find a ton of information."

We didn't really discuss this further. We discussed a few other things like prayer and contemporary miracles. Since I had said that testimony was important to me, they asked about the testimonies in the introduction to The Book of Mormon. There eleven men claim to have seen the original golden tablets on which The Book of Mormon was given to Joseph Smith. They asked if I had read those testimonies.

"Yes. But I understand that most of them took back their statements."

Darren quickly replied, "They left the Church but they never renounced their testimony."

Having no deep knowledge of this incident, I simply said, "Their statements would not be sufficient for me to put credibility into the Mormon religion. The only Apostle who renounced Christ's testimony hanged himself. The others were all martyrs for Him."

"I don't wish to offend you, but the Catholic Church is resplendent with miracles and holy men and women down through the ages, despite her sinners. I invite you to seriously consider the Catholic Church, it is your heritage."

"How is it our heritage?" John asked.

"The LDS faith came out of Protestantism which came out of Catholicism."

We had reached a bit of an impasse. Before they went their way, I wanted to touch on one more important subject.

"Before you leave, would you mind telling me one more thing about your faith. What is the Mormon conception of the Cosmos? Who is God?"

They looked uncomfortable. Talking with a non-Mormon about their belief in more than one God is not in their plan.

John said, "We believe that God is the father and the creator of all this."

"God is the creator of everything?"

"Yes."

"I am happy to hear you say that, that you believe in just one God. I have heard other things about your beliefs. So, if I understand you correctly, God did not have a creator Himself?"

"No. He had a creator."

"Then He's not God. God can't have a creator."

Then I spread out my five fingers and pointing to my baby finger I said, "You are saying that this is god and he was created by (pointing to my ring finger) this god and that this god (pointing to tall man) was created by this god and that this god (pointing to my index finger) was created by this god and so on and so forth so that it goes on forever. You have a series of gods with no ultimate source. So none of them exist."

Darren said, "But God is never beginning and never ending."

"Yes," I said, "but God can't have anything greater than He is. If He is created, then the creator is greater than the creature. God is the uncaused cause. That is the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Even the great Greek philosophers knew that."

I wanted to end on a positive note with them and not sound triumphalist. I commented to them that there is much that Catholics and Mormons agree on, like Church authority. I pointed out to them that I had read a letter their President Hinckley had written and that it read like a papal encyclical. I didn't want to offend them, but I honestly believe their leader was copying the style and content of Pope John Paul II.

Amazingly, they didn't get defensive at all and John admitted, "That might be true."

I put Darren and John's names up on the list in our Adoration Chapel and in my prayer journal. I admire their willingness to go out and evangelize. I pray that they will find the truth and that at the end of life, they will not have opened a can of peaches and gotten green beans.

As a seasoned coed, this time she wasn’t worrying about taking every single thing she might possibly need. Besides, she’s promising to come back in a few weeks to celebrate my birthday. It’s odd. I would have been perfectly content with a card, but she likes to come home and celebrate it. And school is just a mere three-hour drive away, so it’s doable.

This summer’s end, it’s harder than ever to part with her. We had a wonderful summer. I didn’t cook virtually the whole time. She was really into making salads — huge fruit concoctions with mangoes, raspberries, and watermelon. Or fancy green salads. She would “fry down” mushrooms and red peppers and toss them in. She also bought Brie a lot. She spared no expense with my credit card when she went to the grocery store.

My Taco Bell son was appalled — though near the end of the summer, he seemed more appreciative, especially of the fruit salads. When we weren’t eating salads and Brie, Lauren and I were sneaking off to restaurants. We spent way too much money. But I couldn’t resist her company and, often, the company of her friends and their mothers.

Of course, there were difficult times, too. Many nights I lay awake wondering when she would get home. She had a serving job out of town and often liked to go out with her coworkers afterwards. I worried about her driving the country roads late at night. I instructed her to call first and tell me which route she was taking, so that I could time precisely when she should get home. But she didn’t always “remember to call.” On those nights, I reached over to my nightstand and grabbed my rosary.

Then there was the makeup and brush issue. She commandeered all my stuff and I always had to go looking for it. Plus my bathroom counter was always a mess with her curling iron and blow dryer, which she invariably left out. But this morning, she is gone, and everything is in its place. So sad.

We had nice talks, though, while she dressed for work. I would often iron her uniform while she put on her makeup and put her hair up. A few times she even showed me text messages from a couple of boys to ask me how she should respond to them. I tried to act wise, but, truthfully, I usually had no clue.

I should be glad she’s gone. It was difficult to work while she was around. She was such a pleasant distraction. I certainly neglected my son, Kitch. But I don’t think he minded too much. Seventeen-year-old boys have places to go and things to do. They rarely include Mom. He did seem appreciative, though, when I mentioned that I was going to try to keep more food in the fridge and cook a little more now that Lauren is back in school. I also plan to catch up on eating at our favorite Mexican restaurant (not Taco Bell) with him. Lauren never wanted to go, as it wasn’t gourmet enough for her palate.

Kitch is going to be a freshman at our local state college this year. He’s going to live at home and commute. I am so glad he’s not flying the coop just yet. I don’t think I could bear it.

You know, she took every single gel pen. You would think she could have left me just one. Such a greedy girl.

Katherine Andes is the co-author with Matt Pinto of Friendly Defenders Catholic Flash Cards. She is also a freelance commercial, proposal, and grant writer. You can write her at katherineandes@hotmail.com or visit her web site at KatherineAndes.com.

This article was originally published in the Fresno Bee and is used by permission of the author.