Gotta Have More Cowbell

Last updated on: March 18, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. Bruce Dickinson This evening the Providence College Friars men’s hockey team plays in the semifinals of their league’s playoffs, hopefully yet another successful step in their defense of the national championship that they unexpectedly won last spring. We Are the Champions! Although basketball still trumps hockey on my list of sports preferences, I bought a hockey season ticket this year for the first time. The Friars were... Read more

Back in the Saddle Again

Last updated on: March 11, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

We in southern New England have been spared a tough winter. Shit can still happen, but this winter has been a breeze compared to last year’s two-month cycle of weekly snow storms. A few mid-fifties temperature teases thrown in here and there in February have been a harbinger of an early spring—furthermore, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow.Then two days ago, we broke a temperature record and hit 70 degrees. This is all good news for everyone, but especially for... Read more

Accept the Anchor

Last updated on: March 9, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

Is it ever right to hold a grudge? Is resentment or unforgiveness ever justified? These questions were front and center in a seminar with a bunch of freshmen not long ago; their answers revealed one of the most important and ubiquitous moral divides of all—the divide between what we think we should believe and what we actually believe. And behind the discussion loomed an even larger moral issue: Where does a person’s moral compass come from, and is there any way... Read more

The Ghosts of Jesus Past

Last updated on: March 2, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

My birthday is in four days (the big 6-0), so I’m doing a bit of thinking about where I’ve been and where I might be going . . . Toward the end of a particularly lively and deep seminar with my “Living Stones” adult Christian education group after church a few Sundays ago, I asked the group “so what makes us think that we are anything special, that Episcopalians have a better angle on God than anyone else? What makes... Read more

Inquiring Minds

Last updated on: February 26, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

Not long ago I had the chance to read a novel by Ian McEwan that I somehow missed when it was published a year and a half ago. The Children Act is the story of Fiona Maye, an experienced and highly respected family court judge in London. The story centers on how a particular case impacts both her professional and personal life. A seventeen-year-old boy is hospitalized with leukemia; his regimen of treatment requires a cluster of powerful medicines, including... Read more

Academics in No-Man’s Land

Last updated on: February 24, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

Last week my academic department had an important and contentious meeting, the latest skirmish in a nasty internal struggle that has been going on for months. It reminded me of something I wrote a bit over a year ago about just how heated and overwrought academic politics can get, even when the topic seems innocuous and benign. I have had the opportunity over the past four years to spend time occasionally in the no-man’s land between faculty and administration—simply writing... Read more

Bored with Thinking

Last updated on: February 22, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

Many years ago I read a paragraph in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth that was the single most helpful piece of advice I ever received concerning teaching. Brittain writes that There is still, I think, not enough recognition by teachers of the fact that the desire to think–which is fundamentally a moral problem–must be awakened before learning can occur. Most people wish above all else to be comfortable, and thought is a pre-eminently uncomfortable process. The idea of thinking and... Read more

Stranger in a Strange Land

Last updated on: February 17, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

I am not Catholic. I have been firmly ensconced in Catholic higher education for close to thirty years. This occasionally leads to some cognitive dissonance, as I observed a bit over a year ago . . . As I stood in line at the campus Dunkin’ Donuts, I was truly thanking God that it was 9:15 on Friday morning. Not because of the usual TGIF thing, although Fridays are generally fine. In my life, 9:15 on Friday morning is a great... Read more

A Lenten Valentine

Last updated on: February 12, 2018 at 12:33 pm By Vance Morgan

I don’t know whose idea it was for Valentine’s Day to fall on the first Sunday of Lent this year, but in a way it makes sense. I’m currently reading Rachel Kadish’s novel Tolstoy Lied; I started reading it because the main character, Tracy Farber, is a professor in a large academic department who is close to her tenure review. Kadish is an academic herself—in my experience only those who have lived in the insanity and pettiness of the academic... Read more

Robbed by the Kiss Cam

Last updated on: February 5, 2016 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

“Wow, Vance!” my colleague exclaimed as he saw my office in our new philosophy department building several years ago. “Feng Shui!” In my twenty-five years in academia I have found that most faculty offices look like two or three reams of paper have exploded in it or like the bottom of a birdcage—we moved into this building ten years ago and my colleague’s office across the hall still has unpacked boxes piled in the corner. But I love my philosophy... Read more

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