writes: …Why has America gone lunatic on the subject of unattended children? Parents hover over their kids as if every step might be their last. If they don’t hover, strangers do, calling the police to report any parent who leaves their child to run into the store for a few minutes. What’s truly strange is that the parents who are doing this were themselves left to their own devices in cars, allowed to ride their bikes and walk to the store... Read more
I’ve already introduced you to the singleton’s brownie. A brownie in a mug is autonomous, independent, in control… but wouldn’t you rather have interdependent brownies? Brownies you’ve gotta share? Today I made this recipe twice, with some minor variations. These are brownies to form a community around. My variations and notes: I used Hershey’s dark cocoa, which makes the brownies look burnt. They’re not burnt. They’re awesome. I used salted butter because life’s too short to buy unsalted. I did... Read more
Oh so much more on this book from me coming soon! First, Wes is interviewed by Jonathan Merritt for RNS: RNS: Let’s start with the foundation. How do you define friendship in a sentence or two? WH: According to Christian writers of the past, spiritual or Christ-centered friendship—the kind of friendship I’m writing about—is a bond between two (or more) people who feel affection for each other. But it’s also a bond that has a trajectory. It’s a relationship that’s... Read more
I’M A SUCKER FOR YOUR LOVE via Kindertrauma Read more
One reason I love the Weakerthans is that their songs are set in their hometown. The louder you yell “I Hate Winnipeg” the more I know which city holds your heart. So let’s listen to “Reunion Tour” and get emotional. Welcome to Washington, DC! The local time is 1987. Like every other week I meet somebody who says, “Oh, wow, I’ve never met anybody from DC before.” Guess these people’s race! I meet people from DC all the time; you... Read more
exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land. more (via Mockingbird) Read more
with a short post: This is just a quick post to note that we don’t use sibling metaphors a lot on this site, and maybe we should. They played an important role in articulating the meaning of vowed friendship in both Eastern and Western Christianity (the terms adelphopoeisis and “wedded brotherhood” both use this metaphor) and they reflect an understanding of friendship as a form of kinship. Wesley Hill quotes me talking about the way that certain friendships, over time,... Read more
from 2014, but well worth your time now: …For people like Loftus, it’s not coffee shops or home values drawing them to places like Sandtown. It’s Jesus. Shortly after Loftus started medical school in Baltimore in 2007, he began worshipping at New Song Community Church, a racially diverse congregation in Sandtown. New Song is part of the same Presbyterian denomination as the church Loftus and his 14 siblings attended as children in Harford County, Maryland, 40 minutes outside the city.... Read more
Let’s start with this. “Bringing Mothers in Prison Closer to Their Children, Through Music”: Mothers in prison rarely get to see their children, let alone touch them or sing them a lullaby. But female inmates in New York City are getting a little help with the singing, thanks to Carnegie Hall. For the last few years, Carnegie has sponsored the Lullaby Project, which pairs professional musicians with women in jails, homeless shelters and city hospitals, to help them write lullabies... Read more
Blonde Venus: This is a severely odd movie. Dir. Josef von Sternberg. Cabaret star Marlene Dietrich is wooed, won, and whisked off to America by Herbert Marshall… but when she has to return to her nightclub job and Cary Grant starts tiptoeing around, all bets are off. Going in I only knew this as “the one where Dietrich sings in a gorilla suit” but maybe the most memorable part of it is the extended passage in which she tries to... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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