WILL VOUCHERS BALKANIZE AMERICA?: First in a brief series of replies to anti-school-voucher arguments. The basic claim here is that public schools transform atomized individuals, or alienated minorities/immigrants, into civic-minded American citizens. Public schooling means that Americans come to hold basic values in common, and so public schooling holds our country together, forging unity from our diversity. Problems with this claim: 1) Uh, this isn’t what actually happens in lots and lots of public schools. My public elementary school was... Read more

ROMANTIC DIVORCE: THE EARLY YEARS: “We declare and affirm, by the tenour of these presents, that love cannot extend its rights over two married persons. For indeed lovers grant one another all things mutually and freely, without being impelled by any motive of necessity, whereas husband and wife are held by their duty to submit their wills to each other and to refuse each other nothing. “May this judgement, which we have delivered with extreme caution, and after consulting with... Read more

CONFIDENTIAL TO THE BOSTON PHOENIX: If you write an article about how the Catholic Church is totally out of touch with the desires and beliefs of the laity, try not to choose Padre Pio’s canonization as your main example. You know, the guy whose canonization ceremony drew huge, enthusiastic crowds; the guy who was often in the doghouse with the Vatican but was loved by the layfolk. There were many other problems with the article, but that was the weirdest…. Read more

POETRY WEDNESDAY: Wednesday on Saturday–like Christmas in July, only not as exciting. Here, have an Anglo-Saxon riddle: Ic þa wiht geseah on weg feran; heo wæs wrætlice wundrum gegierwed. Wundor wearð on wege; wæter wearð to bane. I saw a creature wandering the way: She was devastating-beautifully adorned. On the wave a miracle: water turned to bone. Click here for the solution. Read more

THE YALE HERALD FRESHMAN ISSUE is online. Most telling headline: “Practicing religion at Yale need not be difficult.” Wow, such enthusiasm! The article itself is more or less accurate about the state of religious life at Yale. I was lucky enough to get ensconced in a small, vibrant Catholic subculture centered around the fat and funny Dominicans of St. Mary’s. I can’t really complain about the “Catholicism makes life easy!” flavor of the comments praising the college chapel’s 5 PM... Read more

“When I first came to this town I was gonna be — oh, there were a lot of things I was gonna do. Become famous. But Chicago’s the big melting pot, and I got melted, but good.” –Mala Powers, “City That Never Sleeps” Read more

THIS IS REALLY FUNNY. For media junkies, that is. Read more

DAVID MORRISON, AUTHOR OF BEYOND GAY, has a blog. Link via Mike Hardy, who has moved. (I liked his old URL better.) Read more

WHERE’S THE SOUTH? RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT IT…: I got back last night from an exhausting gust of traveling, and didn’t have the energy to read any of the big fat articles in the new First Things. But I was able to get through James Nuechterlein’s quick and easy “Dixie, USA.” (Sorry, not online yet.) Nuechterlein offers a brief description of his journey through the Deep South, in which he tried to find the South of his imagination and discovered... Read more

BLACK AND WHITE AND WED ALL OVER: Verrrry interesting article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Black female/white male intermarriage, after remaining at the same low level for decades, recently has begun to rise. Mickey Kaus, of course, suggests that welfare reform may be part of the cause. (Black women now realize that they need husbands, and there just aren’t enough marriageable–employed, non-jailed, etc.–black men to go around, plus black men don’t have many incentives to treat black women well unless they... Read more