“A shaded bench marked the end of the trail. I sat there for a while, feeling my heart beat. I thought about how the adrenaline of constant texts and links and tweets and bad news, bad news, bad news, is both toxic and addictive…Does anyone even read anymore?”
ANGELUS NEWS
BUILDING ON THE CORNERSTONE
From a friend today: “I think of Psalm 127, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders build in vain.’ Isn’t this the truth! Much of it, perhaps most of it we did build with Him, but there are foundational errors that need correcting.”
VISIO DIVINA: ARTIST MEL AHLBORN’S MADONNA ICONS
Artist Mel Ahlborn has painted a series of Madonna icons, each associated with a contemporary disease: Addiction, Dementia, B.C….and now Pandemic Madonna.
USE LESS, SHARE MORE
“[M]ost of the want and suffering we see in our world today originates not from earth’s inability to provide but from our own inability to share….It is because so many of us consume far beyond our needs that a great many of us are left with almost nothing.”
From award-winning geobiologist Hope Moore’s “The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go From Here.”
THIS SEEMS A HOME
Santa Monica’s ROSEGALLERY is currently featuring a thought-provoking online exhibition called “This Seems A Home.” “Where does it come from, this longing for home?” we’re invited to consider.
AN OPERA SINGER’S JOURNEY
Every artist has mentors, benefactors, guides. Opera singer Julia Rolwing, whose specialty is Wagner, talks about some of hers who helped along the way.
BACK TO THE BUSINESS OF LIFE: RESURRECTION CEMETERY
As the world emerges slowly from lockdown, the first public place I visited was a cemetery. Ah–people!
- ANGELUS NEWS
- ...
MOVIES GALORE: QUARANTINE TIMES FUN
I have finally been given the chance to say in print that “The Seventh Seal” is a giant bore. Give me Joan Crawford, Richard Widmark, and Constance Towers!
POPE JOHN XXIII’S DAILY DECALOGUE
You may know it as the Al-Anon” Just for Today” bookmark. Turns out Pope John XXIII was thinking along the same lines…
BRIAN DOYLE: ONE LONG RIVER OF SONG
Why do the good die young? A tribute to one of the best editors and writers we had in the Catholic world–and in the world, period.
VANITY FAIR: HOLLYWOOD CALLING
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: Remember the carefree days when we could leave our homes, gather in public places maskless, and take in a museum exhibit of a Sunday afternoon? I did that, way back on February 23. It was right after the Annenberg Space for Photography mounted a presentation, now […]
SPREADING THE GOSPEL FROM MY DESK!
Christ told us to spread the Gospels to the end of the earth. How lockdown has actually helped!
WERNER HERZOG’S “ECSTATIC TRUTH”
“Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossed hand grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination.”
MARY GANDSEY, RESTORER OF WOOD
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Native Angelena Mary Gandsey was born in Long Beach and moved to Altadena in 1984. She earned a BA in Psychology from UCLA in 1968, did a few odd jobs, had a child, and needed to go back to work shortly afterward. “As a kid, I […]