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.”
ARTS
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.
AS THE WORLD TURNS
Catholicism for me is van Gogh saying, “I love my studio in the same way that a sailor loves his ship.” It’s Maria Callas saying, “I prepare myself for rehearsals the way I would for marriage”…
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.
WHEN WE WERE THE KENNEDYS
“Every few years, a memoir comes along that revitalizes the form, that takes us by the hand and leads us into the dream world of our collective past from which we emerge more wholly ourselves. With generous, precise, and unsentimental prose, Monica Wood brilliantly achieves this, bringing back to life the rural paper mill town of not only her youth but America’s, too”….
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.
CHEKHOV ON CULTURED PEOPLE
Anton Chekhov’s first order of the day: “[Cultured people] respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind, gentle, polite, and ready to give in to others.”
G.K. CHESTERTON ON THE COLOR WHITE
wrote G.K. Chesterton: “God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”
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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!
DARK WOOD TO WHITE ROSE
Helen M. Luke’s “Dark Wood to White Rose” is a Jungian-Christian take on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
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 […]
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.”
