When you’re poor for your entire life, it’s possible to become somewhat inured to misery. If you keep your line of vision low, keep from looking too far to the right or left, and manage your expectations properly, then—through practice—it might even be possible to control the thoroughly natural desire to possess more. “What you’ve never had, you never miss,” I’ve heard it said. But I wonder about the likelihood of such a thing when the poor grow old. For... Read more
Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong we are until we are pushing out our babies. -Louise Erdrich, The Bluejay’s Dance: A Birth Year Last November, I discovered that I was pregnant with my first child. And these past few months, I’ve done little but vomit, sleep, and try to find foods that will stay down. My mother predicted that this would happen. “When I was pregnant, all I could do was run to the bathroom,”... Read more
Guest Post by Christine A. Scheller “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.” These are the last words American journalist Daniel Pearl said before he was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan on the first day of February, 2002. They are also the words three-term New York City mayor Ed Koch had inscribed on his tombstone before he died on the same day in 2013. I’ve been thinking a lot about headstones lately and Koch’s gave me... Read more
“Inch your way through dead dreams to another land.” —“Box of Rain,” Robert Hunter, lyrics; Phil Lesh, music. As I write this, during an ice storm, we’ve just finished the second week of classes. A few nights ago, my class “Contemplation and Imagination,” a writing and mindfulness meditation workshop for honors students, met. That night’s exercise: Write down a list of three experiences that you regard as defining moments in your life. Choose one that you are willing to tell... Read more
For Katherine Diop Plod on, you Angels say, do better aspire higher And one day you may be like us, or those next below us, Or nearer the lowest, Or lowest, Doing their best —Stevie Smith, from “No Categories,” 1950 “The way up and the way down are one and the same.” —Heraclitus, Fragment 69 The last kid had barely walked out our front door when my husband popped the top off a Dogfish Head ale, the bottle cap pinging... Read more
“It’s a slippery slope when a companies don’t deliver what they promise.” Yes, “a companies.” That’s exactly how this garbled bit of wisdom, which comes from Stephen DeNittis, attorney for Burlington County in New Jersey, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. One doesn’t know whether it is the attorney who is inept at speaking, or the copywriter who has failed to proofread; schools of law and journalism long ago ceased to be loci of literacy and thought, which is a fitting... Read more
Since 2008, Image Journal’s Good Letters blog has amassed over a thousand posts. In our archives, you’ll find a diverse collection: reviews that go deep, searching personal essays, reflections on art, faith, and culture. On this week in 2009, you’ll find Jessica Mesman Griffith on separating her vocation as a creative nonfiction writer from the guilt of navel-gazing; Ann Conway on the brutal naivete on display in Generation Kill, a guest post from Annie Young Frisbee reflecting on “The Prisoner” and... Read more
When I taught Spanish in public school I projected Hispanic and Latino artwork on my pull-down screen and had students journal or make comments for a daily grade. Initially, the still worlds of painted color intimidated my media loving students, and they complained. “How am I going to use this painting in the real world?” “This isn’t art class.” “Can’t you just give us a worksheet?” “We’re going to study it silently for five minutes, then make three comments in... Read more
The current issue of Image (#75) is full of rich mini-essays on some of the key words we rely on when we speak about the intersection of faith and the arts. Among these words is beauty, which novelist Erin McGraw chooses to parse. McGraw’s main point is that beauty is ever-fleeting. We want to get a grip on it; yet by its very (transcendent) nature, we can’t. I see what she means, and I delight in her brilliant, breezy prose.... Read more
I was recently in an e-mail exchange with someone regarding my refusal to force my children to go to church. I do not go to church myself. I will probably go back someday, but for now I do not. I stay away from church for a number of reasons, but one of them is the fact that I desire my Sundays to be ones of actual Sabbath—days set apart for rest. The response I found in my inbox to this... Read more
Good Letters
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