Being back, a schism if you believe it, and World Cup fever

Happy Friday friends,

Here I am, back.

Let me begin by saying thank you, sincerely, and profoundly, for the countless messages of concern, prayers — even Mass intentions — you all sent me following last week’s newsletter.

I have been, as JD mentioned, dealing with an injury. In a perfect world I would still be “off games” this week and staying away from my desk.

But in no small part due to your prayers on my behalf, things have moved faster in the right direction than anticipated. And there was some big news this week, for which we needed all hands to the pumps. More on that in a moment.

Regards my absence and return, given the generosity of your response I most certainly owe everyone an explanation.

The short version of it is this: I badly, but badly, injured myself during a softball game by whipping around at very literally breakneck speed to dive for a line drive over second base.

I felt something snap in my neck as I did it, though it was more a “weird” feeling than out-and-out pain at the time, so I followed standard first aid protocols and held a cold beer to it in between every inning, and drank the