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Most apparently non-addicted people define addiction in some way they can intellectually handle, and then file and dismiss it, bringing it out only to express pity or contempt for some apparently addicted person. Disgust covers the faces of those who must drive through homeless encampments, where sidewalks are littered by hypodermic needles. Shock or sorrow covers [...]
Literature is read and loved because it has that beautiful way of shining light on the mysterious ways of our being. It helps us to become reflective and thoughtful people as we glimpse the varied trials of humanity. These trials elicit from us compassion, sorrow, gratitude, admiration, and perhaps most importantly a sense of kinship. I [...]
It is worth noticing that Pope Benedict XVI died on Saint Sylvester’s Day. In German-speaking lands, it remains a custom for pastors to deliver a Silvesterpredigt, a sermon on Saint Sylvester’s Day that reflects on the old year and the new. One of Father Joseph Ratzinger’s Saint Sylvester’s Day reflections, “Meditation for New Year’s Eve,” appeared [...]
Of Michael Novak, no less an authority than George Weigel wrote, “Novak’s voluminous and often translated writings touch on virtually every aspect of the American experiment,” while playing “a seminal role in shaping neoconservative thought and bringing it to a wider audience.” Novak (1933-2017) was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and, as Weigel attested, became an influential [...]
If I want to become childlike this Advent, I think there is no better way than to spend time with someone who is already childlike. There are few characters in Ageless Children’s Literature who are more so than Winnie-the-Pooh. This bear of little brain is just the guide I want as I settle into an armchair [...]
Has anyone noticed that the woman is completely delusional? Apparently, Muriel Spark meant her fictional teacher Miss Jean Brodie to be an endearing yet tragic figure, but a character so ridiculously self-important would try anyone’s patience. “I am in my prime,” Brodie tells her students, all girls beginning adolescence, and explains, “You are benefiting by my [...]
In 1997, at the funeral of Princess Diana, and in 2021, at that of Prince Philip, the music included Sir Edward Elgar’s “Nimrod,” one of his Enigma Variations. Elgar composed it around 1898, and it has featured at numerous other funerals and at Britain’s annual Service of Remembrance held on Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday closest to [...]
In the film Gods and Monsters (1998), the character James Whale describes actor Boris Karloff as “the dullest fellow imaginable.” Historically, Whale directed Karloff in Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), making a struggling stage actor a movie star. In Gods and Monsters Whale comes across as a sadly self-absorbed figure, but by all [...]