“A DARFUR TREE IS HER NEWSSTAND”: Nearly a decade ago, at 14, Isshag started publishing a handwritten community newsletter about local events, arts and religion. Once a month she’d paste decorated pages to a large piece of wood and hang it from a tree outside her family’s home for passersby to read. But after western Sudan plunged into bloodshed and suffering in 2003, Isshag’s publication took on a decidedly sharper edge, tackling issues such as the plight of refugees, water... Read more

Once I knew a girl who looked so much like Judy Garlandthat people would stop and give her blogwatch… Hit & Run: Radley Balko comments on a Georgia bill to restrict “no-knock” raids. And an article I haven’t read on private education in the Third World. Sean Collins gets the last word on Eyes Wide Shut. I agree with him on some points and disagree on others, but honestly, if you care about the movie I suspect you will be... Read more

And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man, and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men; but they look like trees, walking.” Then again he laid his hands upon his... Read more

…He was leashed (a detail omitted in the log but recorded by investigators) and made to “stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to a dog.” He was told to bark like a happy dog at photographs of 9/11 victims and growl at pictures of terrorists. …The interrogators quizzed him on passages from a book entitled, “What makes a Terrorist and Why?,” that asserted that people joined terrorist groups for a sense of belonging and that terrorists... Read more

THE LOVE STORY OF GOD AND MAN: …One way of looking at the Old Testament is as a simple story: God makes man (Genesis 1-2), God loses man (Genesis 3), God tries to woo man back (Genesis 4-Malachi 3). more and: …The first human words quoted in Genesis are of a man’s delight at his wife. The last human words quoted in Revelation are of a woman’s delight at her husband. Christ’s marriage with the Church restores the unity intended... Read more

“LIKE A PIECE OF FURNITURE”: Via Balkinization. Read more

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.–Matt. 14:25 Read more

THREE LINKS: 1. 101 projects for artists and illustrators. I’m having a lot of fun recasting these as writing exercises–designing a magazine cover on a current news event would become writing a New York Post headline…. Basically, what exercises like this train you to do, I think, is to notice things you’d otherwise overlook–to consider every kind of art a possible source of inspiration. Via Journalista. 2. Nat Hentoff writes: …In 2002, Arar, a software engineer and citizen of Canada,... Read more

…Regular celebration of this sacrament [of Penance and Reconciliation, alias “Confession”] will help you form your conscience; it will give you strength in your daily fight against sin; and it will help you to gain the full freedom that is yours as children of God. … Let us remind our culture of people like Blessed Luis Magna Servin, one of our newest American blesseds, a devoted husband and father, martyred in Mexico in 1928. Facing a firing squad, he was... Read more

The struggle between Japan and China was always a fight between brothers within the “Asian Family.” …It had been my belief during all these days that we must regard this struggle as a method of making the Chinese undergo self reflection. We do not do this because we hate them, but on the contrary we love them too much.–General Matsui Iwane, quoted in Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II The Rat gave me... Read more