Nothing like a trip-and-fall while traveling…
BELOW THE EDGE OF DARKNESS
The saber-toothed viperfish has fearsome curved fangs so long and sharp that if they closed within its mouth would impale the fish’s brain: instead, they slide into grooves in the upper lip. A long fin grows out of its back and curves forward, “dangling a luminescent lure in front of its fearsome maw.”
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
What with the general desert landscape and color palette in Tucson, many many objects lying on or by the street could be dead animals–or they could be rocks, twigs, branches, palm tree refuse, or clods of dirt, mud or dust.
THE MARTYRS OF MAGADAN
“I follow the God of the Impossible,” says Fr. Michael. “He’s done so many amazing things in my life that I’m not even concerned.”
A SHORT WALK
Speaking of travel, I myself am setting off next Tuesday for a two-week jaunt to the East Coast! A bit of a working holiday as I’ll be visiting lots of museums, gardens, and suchnot, but I’d do that anyway.
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LA’S ACADEMY MUSEUM OF MOTION PICTURES
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: At last, LA is poised to have the museum it has long deserved: the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, opening Sept. 30. I love that they’ve named it the Museum of Motion Pictures: not the Museum of Film, which would have skewed hoity-toity and auteurish; not […]
THE MYSTICAL BODY
The other day I went to noon Mass, Confession before. Around the responsorial Psalm, a woman arrived late, sat in the pew behind me, and immediately started rummaging through her purse, crackling, unzipping, dumping, rearranging. My God, I thought in my usually humble and contrite way, Shut UP already!
POULENC’S OPERA: “DIALOGUE OF THE CARMELITES”
The opera was worth every minute of the 3 hours. The acting was superb; French maestro Manuel Rosenthal conducted. But it wasn’t the music that stayed with me. It was the Reverend Mother’s death—so excruciating as almost to be unworthy of her; so NOT a traditional martyrdom.
THE FEMININE GENIUS
Simone Rizkallah interviews Heather King on avoiding ideologies, the many aspects of the feminine genius, and how the spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux is one response to our personal and cultural ills.
OUR DAILY TSETSE FLIES
But the shot that really got to me was of a little baby nursing. There he or she was, guzzling happily away, and the kid’s face was simply swarming: grotesque clusters of flies had settled in its nose, its ears, its mouth. Its little hand ineffectively tried swatting them away but already you could see the kid was resigned to the lifelong, no doubt constant presence of these unbearably annoying, ruinous, pests.
SEEKING WITH GROANS
“I condemn equally those who choose to praise men, those who choose to condemn him, and those who choose to divert themselves. And I can approve only those who seek with groans.” –Blaise Pascal, “Pensées” Welp, I have been privately praising certain men, condemning certain men, and choosing on many occasions to divert myself. Then […]
IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE: ABIGAIL SHRIER ON TEEN TRANSGENDERISM
Asking questions about such a sudden and startling phenomenon is responsible, reasonable and sane. A sense of bewilderment—how? why?—is he cry of the heart of any marginally sensitive human being.
WHY DO YOU STAND HERE IDLE ALL DAY?
Am I that frightened of standing “naked,” without possessions, gifts, virtues, before God? I was taught to be able to give a good account of myself at the end of the day, but giving a good account before God and before the world, it is ever more borne in, are two very different things.