The Assassin on the Porch
According to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, even six-month-old babies stress out when they see a spider or a snake.
By Jeannette Cooperman
An Award-Winning Documentary on Flannery O’Connor Premieres in St. Louis
Asked the overarching subject of her work, O’Connor replied, “The action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.” If the life and work are inseparable, her faith and her work are even tightly bound. Yet dogma never kept her from seeing things whole.
Saturday in the Park
I share our dog’s affection for Lakeview Park, its wide, smooth path rising and falling alongside three small lakes edged with reeds, a weeping willow, a dock, a steep hill. One Saturday morning in early October, as soon as the sun slanted through cold mist, we set off happily. By…
How Caliphate Fell Apart—and What That Means for the Rest of Us
Both journalism and academe hinge on free and open research, questioning, exploration, yet at the highest levels, it is rare to hear, “Go dig around and see what you come up with” or “If you’re not sure about this, stay with it until you are.” Instead, you have to pretend confidence, because often, those with established power want their own world view reinforced, their plans bolstered, their agendas fulfilled, their budgets closed.
The Big Three Seventy-Five Years Ago
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.
The Mysterious Case of the Grotto
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.
Office Space
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…
The Either/Ors That Box Us In
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.
How Trump Has Encouraged the Witches
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.
Everyday Saints
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!
Dropping Clues to Your Socioeconomic Class
It is obnoxious, ridiculous, and a waste of breath and semiotics. But we live in an invisible hierarchy of, if not class in the British sense, advantages, privileges, access, or the lack thereof. And they have shaped us.
How a Dog Would Want a Politician to Behave
Willie is part of our family, and we know he hates us to be gone, and leaving without acknowledging that feels as though we are brushing those feelings aside. I would rather he know that we know, plus give him a treat so he gets something that acknowledges his suffering. That feels more like a family: All of us aware that we treasure one another’s company, tender when we part, and thrilled when we return.