Book review sidebar: “Life” by Keith Richards
In the review I posted a few days ago, I mentioned that the best part of “Life,” the autobiography of Keith Richards, is his description in musical terms of the [...]
Book review: “Life” by Keith Richards
Keith Richards’s autobiography “Life” is irritating, frustrating, disappointing and, at times, revealing. When I say “revealing,” I’m not talking about his tales of extensive drug use which, at a guess, [...]
Book review: “An Irrepressible Hope: Notes from Chicago Catholics,” edited by Claire Bushey
There is a great deal of yearning in the newly published “An Irrepressible Hope: Notes from Chicago Catholics.” And some bitterness, too. But that is to be expected. Edited by [...]
A kind of martyrdom
In 2010, Janine Denomme died of cancer. We were members of the St. Gertrude parish in Edgewater. We served on the parish council together. Janine was one of the pillars [...]
Book review: “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs
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 [...]
Katey Feit: Listening to the voice inside
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 [...]
No sample ballot from the Vatican
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 [...]
Like setting fire to a $50 bill
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 [...]
Book review: “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell
“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 [...]
What do saints do?
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 [...]