“So, could you not watch with me for one hour?” asked Christ of Peter in the Garden at Gethsemane. It’s one of the most poignant lines in the Gospels.
ANGELUS NEWS
NATIONAL BIRD: THE TRAUMA OF DRONE WARFARE
Seconds after the strike, the shooters realize “something is weird”: they weren’t able to PID (positively identify) a single weapon among those they’d just blown to smithereens.
THE THEATER IS BACK! PATRICK KERR IN MY FAIR LADY
“My first acting teacher made the point that two things are required for theater: actor and audience. If a tree falls alone in the forest and no-one hears it, that’s not theater. That’s rehearsal.”
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 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.”
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
WE LIVE ON: STUDS TERKEL’S HARD TIMES REVISITED
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hard Times. Terkel, famously, travelled around the country talking to, among others, itinerant farmers, seamstresses, field workers, burlesque queens, con men, speculators, and union organizers.
PAOLO VENEZIANO: ALTARPIECES AT THE GETTY
Venice was an important center for the pigment trade. The best ultramarine, or lapis lazuli, came from Afghanistan. This deep, brilliantly saturated blue was much more expensive than gold at the time and was typically reserved for very important commissions: the robe of the Virgin in the Getty’s “Annunciation,” for example.
LOURDES, A DOCUMENTARY
“Lourdes is a place for everyone, not just well-mannered religious people. You have firefighters, gypsies, the motorcyclists’ pilgrimage. The prostitutes of Paris make an annual pilgrimage and it’s the highlight of their year.”
SKID ROW MARATHON
LA Superior Court Judge Craig J. Mitchell on the Skid Row Running Club he started in 2012:
“As Catholics, we all have to figure out how we are going to live the Gospel. How are we going to take it out of the church and into the world?”
“My witness for lack of a better word as a practicing Catholic is what I do on Skid Row. I don’t have to wear a rosary around my neck.”
SANTA MARIA NOVELLA: THE WORLD’S OLDEST APOTHECARY
There are deep burgundy bags of potpourri, fragrance diffusers, and cleansing sprays–a different scent and mood for each season of the year. You can buy Iris Toothpaste (20 bucks a tube), Crema de Barba (shaving cream) at 71 dollars a pop, and Sapone allo Zolfo—sulphur soap—with which to scrub off after, say, an exorcism.