“She’s taking it to the chiropractor,” smirked one Newton Medical Center technician to another as my wife waited for them to hand over an x-ray scan of baby Isaiah’s arm. We were twenty hours into an ordeal, sparked the night before when he came wailing to his mother, his arm held tight to his side. She …
I couldn’t believe, when I first read it, that Harvard’s chaplain is an atheist. Then I felt stupid for being surprised. That die was likely cast when Harvard’s overseers struck Christo et Ecclesiae from its place surrounding Veritas on the university’s seal. What need Christ and Church, after all, when we can have unadulterated truth? Somewhere in …
I once heard Charles Murray say he was booed by faculty at an Ivy League school for announcing that half of Americans have below-median intelligence. Here he is in front of a friendlier audience, proving once again that it’s possible to be a thorough-going conservative without behaving like a mean-spirited tribal shaman: “We know from …
If only he’d come along when people had longer attention spans Read More »
This weekend I lived at beautiful St. Fidelis Church, situated unexpectedly on the Kansas plains. Oddly enough, I never went inside the church proper, but I’m told there’s a large mural behind the altar, of Fidelis being butchered by Calvinists. It made me wonder how many people have been dispatched to the merciful arms of God …
Amusement of the day: while flitting about the A.M. band, I happened upon Rush Limbaugh giving a speech, in which he declared that we don’t believe in grouping people, unlike them. And not surprisingly, all the Dittoheads in the audience agreed with Rush that they are individualists prone neither to tribalism nor to painting their opponents with …
We don’t believe in grouping people like they do Read More »
Isaiah is sitting on the floor surrounded by books. He opens one with a crinkle of its pages and says, “Shoo-chi-joo-sho-nay-nay-da.” He slaps it shut. “De end.” He picks up another, mutters out his own version of its narrative, and flips it closed. “De end.” This goes on for some time. “Joo-sho-nay-di-shoo-chi.” Slap. “De end.” …
The most lied-about book in England? Orwell’s 1984. For me it’s business books. The only thing worse, I think, than reading The Black Swan would be having an enthusiast recount it to me chapter by chapter. So what books do you lie about reading?
Something special about the Wife and Eli, aside from the fact that they are mine, is that they have the same birthday, which is today. Eli has turned a big seven years old. Tomorrow he will come to work with me, sit at a table in my office, and do his schoolwork until we both …
The sky is steely grey, with sunshine spilling through where it can, at odd angles. It always finds a way through, this sun. She would be thirteen today. I can’t imagine that little girl as a teenager. She has a house full of brothers who have never met her, who miss her all the same. They are …
Isaac wallows on the floor, cradling his Lamby and watching his mother cut my hair. “Dad.” “Yes?” “How can you sit so still?” “Because I’ve had a lot of practice at it. Do you want to practice sitting still?” “No. I’m going to practice being wiggly.”
