So I tracked the guy down outside, hobbling on my injured leg, and literally brayed, “Do you have a COFFEE MAKER!!??” And when he said No, I brayed even louder, “Well then, do you have a CONE????” LIterally like a crazed banshee. Like I even wanted or needed coffee right that minute, or obviously, ever.
OUR COMMON HOME
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.
SORROW’S SPRINGS
“It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.”
–Gerard Manley Hopkins
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.”
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 […]
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.
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.”
SEND ME A POSTCARD
The mailperson, almost inevitably a man in my experience, is right up there in my mind with the local librarian and the priest as a consoler, a bringer of sustenance, a conduit between my cloistered little world and the world at large. I have come close to tears in my occasional outbursts of gratitude and wonder that the guy reallly does show up, mostly, rain, shine and here in Tucson, almost dangerous heat.
THE GLOBAL GARAGE SALE
“Before the 1960s, Japanese had a feeling of mottainai, a difficult-to-translate Japanese word that expresses a sense of regret over waste, as well as a desire to conserve,” reports Rina Hamada, editor of Japan’s Reuse Business Journal. But that was before the living standard in Japan shot sky-high. Now people are way more acquisitive, though they’ll buy second-hand if it’s of high quality.
SPIKY, HAIRY, SHINY: INSECTS OF LA
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: “Meet your neighbors!” invites the Natural History Museum, but they’re not talking about the people next door. The exhibit “Spiky, Hairy, Shiny: Insects of LA,” runs through April 1, 2022. All over the city, for the last 10 years people have gathered insects to help the […]
CLOISTERED
“A particularly severe form of asceticism within Christianity is that of anchorites, who typically allowed themselves to be immured, and subsisting on minimal food. For example, in the 4th century AD, one nun named Alexandra immured herself in a tomb for ten years with a tiny aperture enabling her to receive meager provisions. Saint Jerome (c. 340–420) spoke of one follower who spent his entire life in a cistern, consuming no more than five figs a day.”