At the risk of sounding like a nun insisting that the children wear clean plaid uniforms because they will study harder, I find myself thinking that we are all somehow a little better when we know there are ways we should behave. Not in robotic conformity, but by acknowledging the needs of those around us and the gravity of our responsibility to them.
Why the grotto will endure as a place to think, pray, worry about a diagnosis, ache for a loved one, savor their recovery, appreciate the healthcare workers’ sacrifices.
Maria Bakalova and Sacha Baron Cohen in the new Borat sequel. The Borat sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, was released last night on Amazon Prime, a few hours earlier than announced, to coincide…
I could not relax, walking the bike path today, among people blaring country music, the guy shouting at heaven, large unleashed dogs thinking heroic thoughts, and clouds of biting gnats in the sun. But what spiked my irritation was the group of five middle-aged guys on expensive…
Workwise, I find myself in an odd place. I have never been happier than I am now, working from home. Yet I am desperately sorry for young people who have to work from home. The fluffy sort of news—by which I mean anything that does not include death counts, death…
This culture has not trained us to lightly move in and out of categories, emotions, attachments. But all-or-nothing can be childish, and in many situations, it has ceased to be sustainable. Gradual, intermittent, partial, tempered, blended, some of each, a bit of both—these are the gray places waiting for us.
One of my old friend’s names is a synonym for king. I have known him since we were maybe eight, when his mother placed him in my mom’s Cub Scout den. We were all rascals, but he and I were fatherless and poor. Due to the authority of his size,…
Once you have done everything else you can think to do to shift the “molecular weight,” you have only three choices: resign yourself to the unbearable, lose your mind, or cast a spell.
Scholar Mark Edmundson says, “[Harold] Bloom once told a seminar I was in that he used to ask people he’d just met what was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Cuts to the chase, doesn’t it? I’m more inclined to ask about the best.” Why can’t we…
The morning that I woke—grateful all over again for the new ease in life, the new job, the reprieve from what I had expected to be a year of anguish and mourning—and decided my mother was a saint, an absurd and delightful thought came to me: I, the long-fallen-away Catholic, could pray to her!