Category: ARTS

  • THREE GREAT CALIFORNIA MEMOIRS AND A BLESSED ADVENT

    THREE GREAT CALIFORNIA MEMOIRS AND A BLESSED ADVENT

    Blessed Advent to all!

    In this week’s Angelus News column, I consider three great California memoirs: God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine, by Victoria Sweet, MD; Dear Los Angeles: The City In Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018, edited by David Kipen: and Joan Didion’s Where I Was From.

    So many memoirs, so little time…I’ve already got the draft of a column called “Three MORE Great California Memoirs.”

    Meanwhile, I came across this essay from a book of Christmas readings that’s on my list to read and feature in 2026. “The Dangers of Advent,” by J.B. Phillips, the essay’s called, and the blurb runs: “No amount of familiarity with the trappings of Christmas should blind us to its quiet but explosive significance.” Check it out.

    I’m off to NYC December 22 for a week. This will be the second year in a row I’m on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for Christmas and I just may make it an annual ritual. Cannot wait to walk the frosty streets, see the lights, and mingle with the world’s hoi polloi as we await, whether we know/recognize it or not, the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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  • THE FABULOUS ART OF PHILADELPHIA’S BARNES FOUNDATION, THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, AND RADIO TAISO

    THE FABULOUS ART OF PHILADELPHIA’S BARNES FOUNDATION, THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, AND RADIO TAISO

    In this week’s Angelus News column, I give my take on a recent visit to Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, a world-class collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist paintings.

    So overwhelming was the bounty that I ended up collapsed on a bench, gazing mutely for several minutes at a tiny Cézanne of a white plate, a bunch of grapes, and a single peach.

    In other news, I am reading The Intellectual Life by Fr. Antonin Sertillanges, OP, first published in 1921–who says I’m out of step with contemporary culture?–boning up on Rembrandt and van Gogh for my Jan. trip to Amsterdam, ascertained from my airbnb host there that I can do a laundry at her place and put it on a drying rack, booked a shuttle bus from Tucson to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport for Dec 22 when I fly to NYC for Christmas, made a Walmart Superstore run for the Thanksgiving cookies and snacks I’ll bring to my friends in Santa Maria, CA, that week, watered the oleander out back, vacuumed the car, filled the birdfeeder for the finches, and on the advice of a friend from Maine just my age have started doing this Japanese exercise routine, only takes 3 or 4 minutes, called Radio Taiso.

    According to an article I read, the whole country performs these exercises every morning in synch and then they are all cheerful and limber and live to be 120.

    All together now!

  • AN ELIE WIESEL DOCUMENTARY, PHILADELPHIA GARDENS, AND SILENCE

    AN ELIE WIESEL DOCUMENTARY, PHILADELPHIA GARDENS, AND SILENCE

    This week’s Angelus News column is a reflection on a 2024 documentary, directed by Oren Rudavsky, called Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.

    Plus the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, art galore, and the glories of Philadelphia gardens over at Substack.

    And my take on Jane Brox’s Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives.

    If you’ve enjoyed my work for the last year or two, or 10, or 15, plase think about supporting it with a free or paid ($5/month) subscription at DESIRE LINES: BOOKS, CULTURE, ART.

  • THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG HOUSE MUSEUM, A TRIP TO PHILLY, AND A DAY IN THE LIFE

    THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG HOUSE MUSEUM, A TRIP TO PHILLY, AND A DAY IN THE LIFE

    This week’s Angelus News column: A pilgrimage to the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens.

    “He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone on the way,” eulogized Duke Ellington.

    I’m fascinated by the way we order our days. Ideally, one of mine includes a celebration of, and tending to, the spiritual, emotional mental and physical…

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 22, 2025: ONE SPOT REMAINING IN IRELAND WRITING WORKSHOP

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 22, 2025: ONE SPOT REMAINING IN IRELAND WRITING WORKSHOP

    MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP! IN CONNEMARA! COMING UP! NAB THAT LAST SPOT…

    FOR MORE INFO AND TO SIGN UP:

    CLICK LINK

    THIS WEEK’S ANGELUS COLUMN

    Boston native Nicole Treska has written a memoir to read with an ache in the throat: “Wonderland” (Simon & Schuster, $27.99).

    “How do you turn the province of drunks, sailors, and hookers into a dream of bright escape?” she asks in the opening paragraph. “You build Wonderland, one of America’s first amusement parks, located on the water right outside of Boston. Wonderland only operated for a few bright seasons, from 1906 to 1910, but its legacy shines on.”

    It’s one of the best books I’ve read in ages–I even wrote Nicole a fan letter–and if you love memoir, and especially if you grew up in New England, I urge you to buy and read it.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 15, 2025: OVERWHELMED WOMEN, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BVM, AND A MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 15, 2025: OVERWHELMED WOMEN, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BVM, AND A MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP

    This week’s Angelus News column is on a book called The Most Overwhelmed Women of the Bible by Mary DeMuth. Granted, they didn’t have e-mail and cell phones, BUT.

    Today of course is a beautiful Solemnity and a Holy Day of Obligation: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary body and soul into heaven. A few years ago, I went to a Mass at a women’s retreat place and the “progressive” priest man-splained the whole homily about how of course we women didn’t believe such nonsense, and all but apologized on behalf of the Church for having to celebrate the feast. I can’t bear playng “the woman card,” but give me a break–he didn’t even get how insufferably obnoxious it was to be forced to sit and listen to a guy tell me what I was supposed to believe and feel…especially because I was in fact trembling with joy at the thought of Our Lady’s special way of being welcomed into Paradise, there to be crowned QUEEN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.

    I felt exactly like the hungering and thirsting send-off crowd in Titian’s painting–

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 8, 2025: AGAINST EASE, SUMMER IN THE DESERT, AND IRELAND AHEAD

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 8, 2025: AGAINST EASE, SUMMER IN THE DESERT, AND IRELAND AHEAD

    This week’s Angelus News column is called “Against Ease” (or was, before they changed the title to “How Much Failure and Suffering Must One Endure for a Good Life”).

    Anyway, as Flannery O’Connor observed: “We are all rather blessed in our deprivations if we allow ourselves to be.”

    Here in the Sonoran Desert, the high yesterday was 113. The whole last two weeks it’s been well above 100 every day. The effect is kind of like an extended snow day back East. You’re excused from just about all activity. Noon Mass is fun cause the thermometer in the car will say like 121 degrees when you come out afterwards and till the A/C kicks in you have to handle the steering wheel like a hot potato.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 16, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 16, 2025

    In this week’s Angelus News column, I write about Father Donald Haggerty’s new book: The Hour of Testing:: Spiritual Depth and Insight in a Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty. Interesting that the book’s publication coincided almost exactly with the election of our new Pope. Let’s all pray for him!

    Meanwhile, head over to my Substack: DESIRE LINES: Books, Culture, Art where I post 2-3 times weekly.

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  • NEW!!! READ IT OUT LOUD 8-WEEK ZOOM WRITING WORKSHOP FROM MEMOIRIST HEATHER KING—

  • NEWSLETTER APRIL 25, 2025

    NEWSLETTER APRIL 25, 2025

    Blessed Friday in the Octave of Easter!

    Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was a Jewish author from Austria who, having emigrated to London, was in his day one of the most popular and translated writers in Europe.

    His 1939 novel, “Beware of Pity,” tells the story of a twisted psychological “romance” grounded in a deeply disordered concept of compassion. It’s been called frightening, gripping, intoxicating, and Zweig’s single greatest work.

    Anyone who has ever been the victim — from either end — of unrequited love will squirm, it must be said deliciously (if with horror), throughout.

    An aristocratic invalid in a wheelchair, a dashing but callow cavalry officer, a doting but judgment-beclouded father, a faux-martyr doctor: there’s an over-the-top 1946 movie starring Lilli Palmer, too.

    Read all about it in my Angelus News column this week.

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  • COME OVER TO MY NEW SUBSTACK, AND WELCOME!

    COME OVER TO MY NEW SUBSTACK, AND WELCOME!

    I’ve been writing here for a long time, and swiitching over to post mainly on SUBSTACK is a huge change.

    It’s a change for me, and I know it’s a change for many of you.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER APRIL 5, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER APRIL 5, 2025

    This week’s Angelus News column is about the C.S. Lewis essay, “The Abolition of Man.”

    If you’ve been following along, you know I have launched a new Substack: DESIRE LINES: BOOKS I LOVE.

    Here’s a complimentary post, free to all, called Bring Back Betty MacDonald!

    From hereon in, most posts will be available to paid subscribers only.

    I’m very excited about sharing my love of books, and hope you’ll come along for the ride!

    GOD AND MAMMON

    “You remember some of the “harsh” sayings of our Lord: Let the dead bury their dead, Unless a man hate his father and his mother, Sell all thou hast: what are they telling you if not the same thing: you cannot serve God and Mammon, you cannot be at the same time a Christian and a self-complacent egoist, you cannot claim to follow Christ if you give only half of yourself to Christ. There is no way to life except through death and re-birth: that re-birth in the Spirit means a full surrender of will, through love, to the will of the Spirit.”

    –Gerald Vann, OP, The Pain of Christ

  • INTRODUCING MY NEW SUBSTACK–BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS!

    INTRODUCING MY NEW SUBSTACK–BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS!

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    DESIRE LINES: BOOKS I LOVE. Memoir, eccentric travel, family dysfunction, pilgrimage, prayer, biography, the vocation of art, sinners, saints. I write myself.

    HERE’S MY WELCOME PAGE.

    READ MY OPENING POST HERE!

    If you love books, you’re going to love this Substack. Many of you have followed me for years–subscribing would be a beautiful way to support my efforts. THANK YOU!!

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  • WHY WRITE A MEMOIR?

    WHY WRITE A MEMOIR?

    “Those of us who have been true readers all our lives seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.”   

    –C.S.Lewis

    Steeped as I am in books, story, and memoir, I’m sometimes taken aback to come upon people who don’t much know what a memoir even is.

    When they find out, they narrow their eyes and ask with a barely-disguised sneer so you just know they’re thinking: “Has your life really been that interesting?”

    What’s so great about you that we need to know about it?

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