“For me, she represents my culture. She represents cultural and social pride, my upbringing.”
WATCH, LOOK AND LISTEN
I have recently come across David Attenborough rendition of The Peregrine, J.A. Baker’s 1967 masterpiece of “nature writing” though it’s infinitely more and other and higher than mere nature writing.
ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD: THE MEMOIR OF A MET MUSEUM GUARD
There’s a wonderful chapter, called “Days’ Work,” on the drawings of Michelangelo and the Gee’s Bend quilters from rural Alabama, specifically Loretta Pettway who, like Michelangelo, found her work almost unbearably burdensome and did not especially enjoy it. And made quilts that were almost preternaturally beautiful.
EMPTINESS/FULLNESS
This longing for life to continue is one reason why the teachings of the Church on marriage and family make total sense. Those of us without children support–in a sense, lay down our lives–for other people’s families and children.
SERVANT OF GOD KIRSTEN BERT
So on All Souls, I honor Kirsten Bert, whose life touched mine ever so briefly, but on my part ever so deeply.
LOOK: HOW TO PAY ATTENTION IN A DISTRACTED WORLD
The beauty in such strange and singular little clubs, the delight in the face-to-face human encounter, the social aspect, the person-to-person sharing, the fun of the collective search: All this is lost on Madsbjerg.
A PATH IN THE WOODS
“[b] I still want to remain faithful
to my first astonishments
to recognize as wisdom the child’s wonder”…
THE CAPACITY FOR LITURGY
When I come across someone who is also hungry, searching, and soul-sick, and who also desperately wants to order his or her life to the highest possible plane, I need something way more solid than my own self-styled “spiritual” frolic.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION
That is one thing I missed beyond belief—constant birdsong. The dawn and vesper choruses.
SIR ALEC GUINNESS: CATHOLIC CONVERT
Guinness played a priest in another, lesser-known film, “The Prisoner” (1955).
Adapted from a play by Bridget Boland and directed by Peter Glenville, the film considers such contemporary issues as public shaming, the surveillance state, and anti-Church sentiment.
PARTING SHOTS
So large does Gerard Manley Hopkins loom in my heart that it took me forever to find his grave because I assumed he would have a giant oh say winged statue or maye even a mausoleum all to himself.
GEORGE SAUNDERS’ A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN
“[Nineteenth-century Russian novelists] seemed to regard fiction not as something decorative but as a vital moral-ethical tool. They changed you when you read them, made the world seem to be telling a different, more interesting story, a story in which you might play a meaningful part, and in which you had responsibilities.”
THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM OF LOS ANGELES
Even after firmly establishing themselves geographically, economically, socially, and culturally, Italians in Los Angeles faced formidable obstacles.