for America: Last week was the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, and in his homily, the priest exhorted us to imagine our own mother suffering. “Who wouldn’t long to console their mother?” he asked. And I thought of my mom and did in fact agree that I’d want terribly to console her if she were suffering. But I also thought, You know, homilies like this are why some people dread going to church on Mother’s Day. And then I... Read more
I recently got to live out a childhood dream. My best friend sent me to the South Salem Wolf Conservation Center, where I got up close and personal with Canis lupus (and sort of far-off and WASPily reticent with Canis rufus). We heard tales of wolves battling for dominance (and super losing–the wolf who had failed to become alpha was still skulking around in the back, and didn’t get to eat his venison sausages until the alpha and his sister... Read more
watching a Spanish buddy-cop film that’s also about life after Franco: Marshland, the 2014 film from Spanish director Alberto Rodríguez which is still making the festival circuits here in the States, is a haunting combination of detective tale and truth-and-reconciliation case study. The film takes place in 1980, five years after the death of Gen. Francisco Franco. It’s got a classic buddy-cop setup, with a mismatched pair of homicide investigators—but our odd couple, Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) and Pedro (Raúl Arévalo),... Read more
I’m watching Flashpoint, a Canadian show about a sort of SWAT alternative team. They do high-stakes situations: The team includes crack-shot snipers and expert negotiators. I got into it because somebody said it was a cop show about talking people down instead of shooting them. It’s very CBS-y (I said that to a friend even before I found out that it in fact aired in the US on CBS). The dialogue can be pat, the cops’ personal drama can feel... Read more
Films first. Poltergeist: The last movie I saw before my (successful, thank you St Lucy) cataract surgery. Despite the blurriness, this Tobe Hooper (but apparently really Steven Spielberg) joint had a terrific front half. For quite some time we’re in the world of Elm Street/Arachnophobia/The ‘Burbs, that world where you yell at your neighbors over the fence and your pot-smoking parental cuddling is interrupted by your kid’s bad dream. The pet funeral is both touching and ridiculous. I wanted to... Read more
Hey! I am excited to announce that Gregory Coles’s book is coming out. Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity is a short book, basically a memoir. I think I blurbed it as “raw and endearing” or something like that. It’s very honest about the pain he went through coming out within the evangelical world and trying to figure out what a future of love rather than despairing isolation might look like. It’s a painful read... Read more
Fires on the Plain, Shohei Ooka’s 1951 novel of the Japanese defeat in the Philippines, lets you know what it’s like from the start. In the very first scene a tubercular private returns to his unit, having been kicked out of the field hospital because he doesn’t have enough rations to pay the doctors. His commanding officer slaps his face, gives him iirc six small potatoes (maybe fewer) and says to go back with those, and if they still won’t... Read more
at First Things: A few years ago, the website You Had One Job posted a Disney cartoon in which children with headkerchiefs and parrot cavort above the legend, “A good pirate never takes another person’s property!” “Disney,” the website’s caption read, “doesn’t get . . . the concept of what a pirate is.” The pirates in Carmen Boullosa’s 1991 novel They’re Cows, We’re Pigs (translated from Spanish in 1997 by Leland H. Chambers) have a firmer grasp on their business... Read more
So for reasons best known to my confessor, I decided to watch the premiere of Snowfall (a new drama on FX, set in 1983 LA, about “how crack began”) right after watching the premiere of Miami Vice (an NBC procedural, do I need to tell you guys this?, made and set in 1984 Miami). This viewing strategy is not flattering to the new show. I don’t mean to beat up on Snowfall too badly. It’s adequate and I’ll watch more... Read more
Hello all. I’m working on a piece for America magazine that will share people’s stories and reflections on going to church while homeless. I’m looking for honesty: what was beautiful, what was really difficult, what you wish had been done differently. How have your experiences shaped your faith? What would you tell your church if they asked you to preach about your experiences going to church while living on the streets, in shelters etc? I’ve talked to both currently- and... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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