Sex Miseducation: Abstinence Doesn’t Make Sense UPDATED
Calah Alexander has written a powerful essay about the psychological and spiritual violence that is often inflicted on women by abstinence-only sex education. Read it. Since I seem to be in a womanist mood these days, I'd like to fully endorse her argument and bolster it with a very simple addition: teaching fertile females and virile males to abstain from having sex is crazy. It is almost as crazy as instructing trees to abstain from growing leaves in the spring. A student once … [Read More...]
The Womb of Love: A Womanist Manifesto
The Ascension is a soft-spoken Catholic feast about dwelling in a prolonged and reoccurring Advent. More and more, I feel like all feasts eventually collapse on each other, but today the feast of the Ascension feels unique because of its peculiar absence, its anti-climatic and even surprising exit. Birth, Death, and Resurrection is much more straightforward. It covers all the bases and leaves no loose ends. But there's more? Yes, yes, there is. Salvation history is an … [Read More...]
Housekeeping, Announcements, Gratitude, Spring
Those who know me also know that I don't keep a calendar, although sometimes I do in one form or another. It's a defensive mechanism. The things I do forget, are simply that. The rest gets done at a regular pace without breathing too heavy down my neck. It's been a long, hard winter. Laura Ingalls Wilder comes to mind. There are no words to describe it properly --- what it does to you. North Dakotans tell me that I got to experience a real winter. I should feel proud or or lucky or something. … [Read More...]
Philosophy in a Trout Stream
Over the past two summers in rural Indiana, I rekindled my life-long love of fishing. Last summer, just before our trek up north, a student told me about a small river nearby where trout were released and could be caught by special permit. Having grown-up fishing for rainbow and brook trout in southwest Colorado, I jumped at the chance. He picked me up the next morning; I got my trout stamp, and we were off. We arrived and decided to work our way with the current through a section of water … [Read More...]
Constructivism and Its Discontents: An Interview
About a month ago, I was interviewed by one of my doctoral students, Emmanuel Mensah, for his qualitative social science research project on constructivism and teaching. I was shooting from the hip in a casual, coffee-shop environment, but I think I managed to think through some things, and make some distinctions, that I hadn't done before. My comments follow closely to a talk I gave at Wabash College in February, titled "The Teacher-Centered Classroom." For those who find the term … [Read More...]
(Un)Fashionable Nostalgia
I grew up wearing second-hand clothes. And hating it. Shopping was always ritual in humiliation. The psychology of used clothing, at least when you’re in high school, is all about branding. If I could buy a brand that was popular enough, Goodwill would always outdo Wal-Mart. When I didn’t find the right brand, when the cool clothes just weren’t there or didn’t fit, I'd go for the obscure names and console myself with the conviction that my obscure threads were actually cooler than … [Read More...]
Mercy for Gosnell, For Us All
I tend to ramble and write down all the details, leaving them fussily thrown about, in piles and pieces and mess, for you to make sense of. A lot of that is by choice, trying to copycat this or that brilliant writer who has true randomness in her prose, a trait that I fiercely envy. But some of it is just the way this stuff comes out. Editing is tough work, mainly because there is a lot of stuff that, even though it's not perfect, it is as good as it will get. On Friday I felt the way I tend … [Read More...]
Beyond Abortion: Gosnell and a New Dark Age
My sister delivered a healthy baby boy the day before yesterday. When I called to congratulate her, I asked to be spared from the details. When my wife gave birth to our second son, I was the one about pass out during the epidural. This past November, when I saw the headlines about Savita, I tried to ignore it because I have no stomach for delivery room gore. When I did read the stories a day later, my response was angry and indignant. I was pissed. Pissed, but hopeful. I thought we could … [Read More...]
Off Topic, Sometimes
It's been a while since I wrote about not writing. I've been trying to break some tics and habits, but this one might be worth holding on to. Periodically I hit something of a wall. For those of you haven't been reading me for very long, you should know that I don't believe in writer's block. I believe in writing when it doesn't feel good, when inspiration is a deadline or a weird sort of fear that, if you don't write, the magic, what little there is, will leave you with nothing. I've been … [Read More...]
Immigration Seen Through Catholic, Pastoral Eyes
No one, I think, wants to read a blog by a Texican all about present-day, US immigration debates. Too predictable, right? Not quite. Although I was born in a bordertown (Brownsville, Texas), I do not come from immigrant ancestors, in the recent immediate sense of the issue. My maternal and paternal Hispanic families pre-date the United States' aquisition of the southwest. To borrow Gloria Anzaldúa's expression: the border crossed us, literally. Nonetheless, the issue of immigration … [Read More...]
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