Category: THE CREATIVE LIFE

  • 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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  • JOIN ME AT ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IN VALYERMO, CALIFORNIA FOR A MEMOIR-WRITING WORKSHOP!!

    JOIN ME AT ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IN VALYERMO, CALIFORNIA FOR A MEMOIR-WRITING WORKSHOP!!

    THE FLAME WITHIN: WRITING YOUR LIFE

    JOIN ME AT ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IN VALYERMO, CALIFORNIA JULY 6-10, 2026 FOR A WEEK-LONG MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP!!

    This week-long memoir writing workshop with award-winning author Heather King offers a unique opportunity to reflect, write, and grow. Designed for writers at any stage, the workshop emphasizes the value of the creative process, while the peaceful rhythms of St. Andrew’s Abbey will afford space for silence, self-inquiry, and honest expression.

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  • BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES

    BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES

    I’m quite proud of this week’s Angelus News column, in which I make a connection between David Cronenberg’s 1987 body-horror movie The Fly and today’s horrifying movement toward “designer babies.” Happy Halloween.

    I’ve been in Philadelphia most of the week, drinking in the art, the grand old buildings of brick and stone, the autumn foliage and a whole bunch else that will time to process.

    One highlight was a trip to Maple Farm in Chestnut Hill, which was flowing over with pumpkins, squash, Indian corn, apple cider doughnuts, home-made jams, jellies, pickles, and candies, bright bouquets, fresh produce…my friend and I took advantage of the pick-your-own zinnias feature which, because it’s late in the season, were 10 bucks for a hundred blooms!

    Head over to DESIRE LINES: BOOKS, CULTURE AND ART for my Substack and please subscribe!

  • 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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  • GARDENS OF EARTHLY DELIGHT

    GARDENS OF EARTHLY DELIGHT

    Churches and gardens are one way to order travel. I visited lots of both during a recent trip to Ireland, then NYC.

    This and the three below are of the Victorian Walled Garden at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland.

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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 1, 2025: THE JOYS OF ROAD TRIPS, AGING, AND THE LORD TAKING HIS OWN SWEET TIME

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 1, 2025: THE JOYS OF ROAD TRIPS, AGING, AND THE LORD TAKING HIS OWN SWEET TIME

    This week’s Angelus News column is about Georgia folk artist Nellie Mae Rowe, her vibrant drawings, installations, sculptures, and paintings, and the phantasmagorical “playhouse” she created from, in, and around her modest bungalow.

    The link leads to a guided tour of the current exhibit at the California African American Museum called Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe.

    Plus, check out the free preview of my latest Substack post: The Joys of Road Trips, Jane Eyre, and Aging:

    “Write only if you must, but, if you must, do not let yourself be discouraged by either youth or age. For ‘of making books there is no end’.”

    –From Iris Irigo’s Images and Shadows: Part of a Life

    Check it out and consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Desire Lines: Books, Culture, Art...two or three times a week, you’ll receive the same kind of posts I’ve featured on my blog for the past 15 years! Come on over! Subscribing is a beautiful way to support my life and work.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 25, 2025: THE CHILDLIKE HEART, A ROSE GARDEN, AND BE PREPARED TO WITNESS TO YOUR HOPE!

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 25, 2025: THE CHILDLIKE HEART, A ROSE GARDEN, AND BE PREPARED TO WITNESS TO YOUR HOPE!

    This week’s Angelus News column is about a chance encounter with a fellow random, gloriously joyful loner, in a rose garden, on the 4th of July. It’s also a paean to LA, and a tribute to the child-like heart.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 11, 2025: OUR FATHER WHO ART IN AN IRON LUNG

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 11, 2025: OUR FATHER WHO ART IN AN IRON LUNG

    This week’s arts and culture column is a review of a memoir (his first book, at 75!) by my college friend Dougie Dodd.

    Our Father Who Art in an Iron Lung is a memoir about growing up with a father who was stricken with polio in his early 30s and lived 21 more years.

    I visited the Norton Simon Museum today, home of Van Gogh’s “The Mulberry Tree,” Zurburán’s “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose,” about which the Pultizer Prize- winning food critic Jonathan Gold once wrote an iconic essay, and Cézanne’s “Tulips in a Vase.”

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 4, 2026: FOUR GREAT CALIFORNIA FOOD WRITERS

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 4, 2026: FOUR GREAT CALIFORNIA FOOD WRITERS

    This week’s Angelus News column profiles four stellar California food writers: Jonathan Gold, MFK Fisher, Alice Waters, and the lesser-but-should-be-better-known Helen Evans Brown, the mother of them all…

    Desire Lines won second place from the Catholic Media Association this year in the category Best Column, Arts, Culture, Food and Leisure.

    Leisure! Who has time for that?!

    I do! Sort of…

    My plan for the day is to motor down to the California African American Museum, stroll about the Exposition Rose Garden, and hit Immacuate Heart of Mary in East Hollywood for the 5:30 Mass.

    Speaking of Immaculate Heart of Mary–a little tribute, and a reflection on the ever-ridiculed, ever valuable virtue of purity.

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 27, 2025: THE CHURCH OF CHRIST WITHOUT CHRIST

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 27, 2025: THE CHURCH OF CHRIST WITHOUT CHRIST

    This week’s Angelus News column riffs on the concept of The Church of Christ Without Christ that Flannery O’Connor’s Hazel Motes attepted to establish, with predictably tragicomic results, in Wise Blood.

    i had a lovely drive from Tucson to LA on Monday–all went off without a h.itch. I packed pretty well, only forgot a few items easily remedied by a short run to Rite-Aid. Stocked upon groceries at the Vermont Ave. branch of my beloved Jon’s Grocery. Picked up some library books at the Los Feliz branch. Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel and, today, for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, downtown at the Cathedral.

    I went to start my car yesterday morning and the battery had died. How good of God to wait to let it happen here, on a safe residential street, rather than, say, on the 10 West in the blazing heart of summer. Thank you, AAA Plus.

    My time here will go quickly. Prayers, walks, work, museums, friends…

    Feel free to drop in to my Substack at DESIRE LINES: BOOKS, CULTURE, ART, where I post 2-3 times a week.

    And happy, happy summer.

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 13, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 13, 2025

    This week’s Angelus News column is about a 1963 film called A Child is Waiting, directed by John Cassavetes. Burt Lancaster plays the psychiatrist director of Crawthorne, a state institution for children with mental and emotional disabilities, and Judy Garland is a new teacher who challenges his methods.

    Over on Substack you’ll find a review of Tove Jansson’s A Summer Book and another of Rose-Lynn Fisher’s A Topography of Tears.

    June is the hottlest month of the year here in Tucson, but I sort of like the long afternoons inside with my films and books and then Evening Prayer and Mass at Newman Center (I have other options as well).

    Still one slot left in my next Writing Workshop–it starts a week from tomorrow, so last call!

    PART OF THE BRIEF, GLORIOUS CACTI BLOOM FROM EARLIER THIS WEEK

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 6, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 6, 2025

    My Angelus arts and culture column this week is on one of my (many) soul-mates: the very strange Hans Christian Andersen:

    The truly brutal summer heat hasn’t yet quite kicked in here in the Sonoran Desert…though my front yard is overgrown with trees and agaves and is actually cooler than outside the “enclosure” as I’ve come to think of it, leading my monastic little life as I do.

    I’ve taken to having my morning prayer outside, on the glider, with my candle and incense, accompanied by the dawn chorus of my beloved birds. There are a pair of resident cardinals, tons of mourning doves, house finches, goldfinches, and white-throated sparrows, I spotted a vermilion flycatcher in the back yard last week–oh, hummingbirds, of course–and a Gila woodpecker (these also abound, very comforting to hear them hammering away at the telephone pole) recently performed his ablutions in the birdbath…

    Anyway, this, to me, is the “abundance” and “prosperity” people natter on about.

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