Light On Dark Water

February 17, 2015

Dear brothers and sisters, how greatly I desire that all those places where the Church is present, especially our parishes and our communities, may become islands of mercy in the midst of the sea of indifference! –Pope Francis
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February 15, 2015

52 Authors, Week 7: P.G. Wodehouse

The most difficult thing about reading P.G. Wodehouse is the attempt to fix in one's mind that it's Woodhouse, “wood” as in “wood,” and not, as it plainly should be, Wodehouse, as in “We wode the twain.” After many years of reading him, this still bothers me. It would be easier if his name were
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February 11, 2015

Alabama Jubilee

For, as the course goes on, the movement turns centrifugal; we rejoice in our abandon and are never so full of the sense of accomplishment as when we have struck some bulwark of our culture a deadly blow. –Richard Weaver It's been obvious for some time that traditionalists, or realists, or whatever you want to
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February 8, 2015

52 Authors, Week 6: Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley, who died a few years ago in 2005, was an author of (mostly) science fiction, very prolific with short stories, very snarky and tongue-in-cheek. In my experience short story collections tend to be hit and miss with most authors, and Sheckley wasn't an exception; but if the author's good, it's worth the misses
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February 6, 2015

A Further Note On That Last Post

It's odd that white liberals so often use "white" as a pejorative: "Old, white, wrinkled, and angry." There's some sort of cultural self-hatred involved there. I suppose that sneering at white people is a way of separating themselves from what they dislike so much, and establishing their superiority to it. And maybe it's also a
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February 4, 2015

Schadenfreude Is Not Nice

But for anyone who's tried to raise children as Christians in the face of a hostile and ubiquitous liberal/progressive media complex, I think it's excusable to feel a bit of satisfaction at hearing someone in that complex complain about a family member being seduced by the right-wing media. One day last week someone posted on Facebook
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February 1, 2015

52 Authors, Week 5: Henri de Lubac

Having spent over five years of my life on a close reading of de Lubac, it is going to be hard for me to keep this post to a reasonable size. There is so much I can say! Because it seems that part of the point of this series is to elicit in others a
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January 31, 2015

Lyle Lovett: Pontiac

Lyle Lovett has made some fine music over the years, and I haven't heard all of it, but I'm doubtful that he's produced another album as consistently good as this one, his first second. I had forgotten how good it is until yesterday, when I listened to it on the way over and back to
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January 28, 2015

52 Authors: A Nudge

I'd like to draw your attention to the schedule, which is in its entirety: January 5: D'Anna – Percy O'Connor January 12: Janet – Howard January 19: El Gaucho – Rushdie January 26: Rob G – Helprin February 2: Robert Gotcher – de Lubac You'll observe immediately that only one of those dates is in
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January 25, 2015

52 Authors, Week 4: Mark Helprin

I first became acquainted with Mark Helprin’s fiction in the late 90s, when for some unrecalled reason I picked up a copy of his novel Memoir From Antproof Case. I absolutely loved the mix of humor and pathos, delivered in a fairly madcap but very well-drawn narrative, and to top it all off, I thought
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