A half century after its publication in 1961, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” is a complex document to read. I approached the Jane Jacobs masterpiece with a [...]
Jesus was a carpenter, and the people in Nazareth knew him as one of the village’s young men. Then he heard the “still, small voice” of his Father and began [...]
I’m Catholic, and I vote. But I don’t get my sample ballot from the Vatican. Don’t get me wrong. I listen to what official church leaders have to say about [...]
I walk out the door of my suburban newspaper office, out to the parking lot, in the harsh sunlight of dusk on an early Friday evening. It’s been a long [...]
“Cloud Atlas,” the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, is a daring book. And, more than three-quarters of the way through its pages, Mitchell includes a daring passage. One of his [...]
In May, 1912, the St. Gertrude parish, where I am now a member, was just five months old, and Sunday mass was being celebrated in a temporary wood-and-steel structure [...]
Abramin and his two confederates are bandits. Although they’re not exactly Robin Hoods, they live by burglary, not by violence. Abramin and his wife Susanna have a beautiful baby son [...]
I’m not sure how to think about miracles. I mean, about what the story of a miracle may mean in my life. But here’s a miracle I can relate to: [...]
Terry Pratchett’s new novel “Dodger” strikes me as his most personal book. He calls it “a historical fantasy…simply for the fun of it.” Yet, it’s much different from the 51 [...]
There is a photo on page 224 of “Measuring America” that, I suspect, anyone who has ever flown across the continental United States west of the Alleghenies will recognize. It’s [...]
