This coming Sunday my on-and-off opportunities to play the organ at the Episcopal church Jeanne and I attend will come to what appears to be an end. A new music minister has been hired, and the organist/choirmaster emeritus and I, who have been sharing duties all summer, will get to sit in the back and critique the new guy like Statler and Waldorf in The Muppet Show. I am reminded of a post from about a year ago in which... Read more
Last July, in the middle of an interminable stretch of high-90s heat (very unusual for Rhode Island), I found out that I am a snob. Actually, I already knew that but appreciated the confirmation. This produced the essay below, in which I invite everyone to join with me in celebrating what makes each of us special (and also better than everyone else!). A few days ago a Facebook acquaintance, who apparently lives in San Francisco, posted a link to an... Read more
Last Sunday, Jeanne and I stumbled across Oliver Stone’s 1995 movie “Nixon” as we were surfing through the channels. In the last few minutes of the movie, on the same evening that he signed his letter of resignation from the Presidency, Richard Nixon (played by the always-brilliant Anthony Hopkins) gets a reluctant Henry Kissinger to kneel with him to pray in the Oval Office. A jarringly out-of-place activity, it would seem, for the disgraced and apparently unrepentant Nixon–but then prayer... Read more
Classes begin soon and I am coming slowly to the conclusion that my summer reading needs to shift from the Scandinavian-authored mysteries I have been immersed in since late May (thirteen down and counting) slowly toward books related to upcoming courses. In the spring I will be team-teaching a colloquium with a colleague from the history department entitled “Markets and Morality.” As is always the case when teaching with someone from another discipline, I have a ton of books to... Read more
Last Sunday’s gospel focused on one of Jesus’ signature miracles–the feeding of the five thousand. Here is a reflection on that story and its implications that I first posted about a year ago. My youngest son was always the inquisitive sort, the kind of kid who, from the moment he began to speak, fashioned most of his communication into questions starting with the word “Why?” The setting for one of his favorite stories is the beat up car I was... Read more
My sons learned early on that although I was generally a laid back and flexible parent, I do have some rules that are not to be violated. Rule number one is no Budweiser, Miller or Coors product is allowed in the house. We start with Samuel Adams’ Boston Lager as our bottom line libation below which we will not descend. My sons learned the rules and carried them with them to college. My youngest son Justin reports that he would... Read more
Picture the favorite vehicle that you have ever owned. Did it look like this? Or this? Or this? Mine looked something like this. (Not exactly, but close. Amazingly enough, I have no actual full pictures of the vehicle in question). On a very sad morning five years ago, the morning that my favorite vehicle ever was towed out of my driveway, I wrote the following reminiscence of how this candidate for the world’s ugliest station wagon played an important role in... Read more
In a world of partial color blindness, I have to make do with the colors I can experience clearly, without confusion, and in the same way that normal people apparently do. That rules out lots of different combinations, but leaves most of the primary colors intact. I’ve always said that blue is my favorite color, which indicates that I am more similar to normal human beings than I might think—people most often identify blue as their favorite color. But yellow does... Read more
To what extent can clear thinking and logical analysis help untangle the complexities of trying to live a life of faith? Let’s try a test case. In his later years, as he continued to discard the grave-clothes from his religious past, my father was fond of saying that “Not every mystic is a Christian, but every good Christian is a mystic.” The philosopher in me immediately wants to analyze this truth claim logically. Actually, there are two truth claims in... Read more
Unlike many academics, I greatly enjoy commencement exercises. After experiencing three of my own (BA, MA, and PhD) spread over thirteen years, I have participated in twenty-one such ceremonies at various ranks of professorship, every year since 1992 with the exception of two missed during sabbatical semesters. Generally at least two-and-a-half hours in length, adding extra half hours depending on how many honorary degrees are conferred and the length of the keynote address, most academics place commencement on the same... Read more
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