I learned at church yesterday morning of the horrific massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando during the early hours of Sunday morning. I had a new blog post queued up as usual for this morning, but bumped it to tomorrow. I am saddened and disheartened this morning in the wake of what tragically is the latest in a never-ending string of violent events. Three and a half years ago, upon hearing about the massacre at Newtown Elementary, I briefly reflected on... Read more
Upon hearing a week ago that Muhammad Ali had passed away, I posted something very simple on Facebook and Twitter: “Muhammad Ali’s sports nickname says it all. He was simply The Greatest.” Jeanne and I left shortly afterwards for a weekend trip to Pennsylvania, so I did not get to see or hear the dozens of tributes from across the globe both mourning the champ’s passing and celebrating his remarkable life until returning home. Ali won the heavyweight boxing championship... Read more
Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. This, promises the obscure prophet Joel in the Hebrew Scriptures, will be one of the signs that God has “poured out [his] Spirit upon all flesh.” Exactly what I would expect a prophet to say. Unsaid, however, is that in the meantime “your old women, your young women, and your middle-aged men and women will roll up their sleeves and get shit done.” The tension between visionaries... Read more
Somebody put a drop of his blood under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses. George Eliot, Middlemarch My sons have never thought that I look like a philosopher. This has been an issue for more than twenty-five years, ever since the late summer of 1988 when they arrived with Jeanne and me in Milwaukee, where I began my PhD studies at Marquette University. They were nine and six at the time—I’m pretty sure they didn’t know what... Read more
My past several reading weeks have been spent, for the most part, with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the homicide division of the Sûreté du Québec, Québec’s provincial police force. He’s just about my age (maybe four or five years younger), loves solving puzzles, poetry, good food, his wife, and the many inspectors and police officers who work for him. I wish I had met Armand before I spent four years directing a large academic program, since I could... Read more
Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache mystery series has everything a lover of mysteries could want. Fascinating characters developed from book to book, psychological insights into the best and worst of human nature, a bit of humor, a lot of creativity, a quaint setting where nothing ever happens (other than a murder every few months), and plenty of dead bodies. One of the additional selling points is usually an exotic and unfamiliar setting, but here Penny’s books are different from the... Read more
There is no greatness where there is no goodness, simplicity, or truth Leo Tolstoy Although Jeanne and I have lived in our house since 1996, there has never been a time when some portion of the house hasn’t been under revision, ranging in seriousness from furniture arrangement through a new coat of paint to knocking down walls and starting over again. Our largest project, transforming the basement into livable space, a three-year process that turned out to be about ten... Read more
Long security lines at O’Hare airport. A plane falls out of the sky flying from Paris to Cairo, possibly the result of a terrorist attack. What do we want–freedom or security? I wrote about this last December . . . Last Monday a segment of one of the NPR shows I listen to frequently was dedicated to the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, particularly focused on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous “day that will live in infamy”... Read more
As I was cleaning out files last week, I came across an essay from a few years ago, a pre-blog world when I was just beginning to write short pieces. This one is about a dog who had an uncanny ability to mess my world up just by being herself. Amazing how such challenges just show up uninvited! I live with a dog who is “special” (as in “special child”). My son and daughter-in-law, who are responsible for this, have... Read more
For those who read this blog regularly, it will come as no surprise that I believe I have the greatest job in the world. So great, in fact, that I don’t consider it to be a job at all. It is a vocation, a calling, what I was made to do—pick your favorite description. But every commencement season I am reminded that there is one teaching related thing that I have never had the opportunity to do, something that I... Read more
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