Book review: “Photobooth” by Babbette Hines
I want to talk about eyes. But, first, I want to thank Babbette Hines for the way she’s put together this quirky look into human nature, her 2002 book Photobooth. [...]
Book review: The African Trilogy: “Things Fall Apart,” “No Longer At Ease,” and “Arrow of God” by Chinua Achebe
Midway through Chinua Achebe’s 1959 novel Things Fall Apart, the central character Okonkwo is getting a dressing-down from his aged uncle Uchendu. Okonkwo has been sulking in deep despair because [...]
What is a parish? Woven lives
The baby crawled along the carpet in open area in the back of church. She was dressed in a celebration of white and red horizontal stripes, and she was happy. [...]
Book review: “The Lovers” by Thomas McEvilley, Marina Abramovic and Ulay
As originally conceived in 1983, The Lovers, The Great Wall Walk was probably a bit too cute. Performance art runs that risk — that risk of coming across as a [...]
Book review: “War in Heaven” by Charles Williams
If you’re a teacher, you never know how something you do or say is going to affect one of your students — how a phrase or an idea may embed [...]
When things go right
Years ago, when I was maybe 14, I ended up in a 16-inch softball game on a big field behind Austin High School on the Far West Side. It was [...]
An Easter meditation
Aunt Julia lived a counter-cultural life. That’s her in the 1985 photo above, walking on a wood plank over a small stream far up north in Minnesota. Hard to believe [...]
Book review: “V.” by Thomas Pynchon
Oh, this was a frustrating book for me — V. by Thomas Pynchon. Frustrating because I couldn’t take it all in. I got — understood — enough of V. to [...]
A meditation on Sunday’s readings
In the first reading at mass on Sunday (Isaiah 43: 16-21), Isaiah says: Remember not the events of the past. The things of long ago consider not. See, I am [...]
Book review: “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” by William Cronon
Chicago exploded onto the world in the mid-19th century, rising in a few decades from a lonely frontier outpost to an economic behemoth that, except for New York, exerted more [...]