Poetry Friday: “Recovery”

Last updated on: August 16, 2016 at 11:50 am By Peggy Rosenthal

What I like about this poem is how it slides almost unnoticeably from a simple, upbeat view of life into increasing complexities and ambiguities. The title and opening stanza announce that this will be an unequivocally optimistic poem. But something a bit unnerving happens in the second stanza: that glorious golden sunflower’s head seems to start choking (“grasping / its cowled neck”)—because, the following single line stanza tells us, its head is “outweighing its stalk.” It’s an image of discomfort,... Read more

The Cost of Glory

Last updated on: August 17, 2016 at 4:23 pm By A. G. Harmon

Here I sit, watching the Olympics again; it hooks me every time. I always say I like the winter ones better because there aren’t so many sports to keep track of, but when I start watching the summer ones, they suck me in too. In the winter, the downhill racing and the extreme sports I can’t remember the name of (what do you call the thing where they fly down a slope and do flips in the air?) grab my... Read more

Florence Foster Jenkins, Holy Fool

Last updated on: August 16, 2016 at 1:36 pm By Guest Contributor

By Asher Gelzer-Govatos In many respects the new film Florence Foster Jenkins takes a paint by numbers approach to its genre—the classic biopic. It features a meaty role for a star (Meryl Streep), designed to play well to Oscar voters in the next awards cycle. It gets a lot of mileage—comic and dramatic—out of contemporary differences with its chosen time period (1940s New York). And of course it follows a well-worn dramatic arc: historical figure faces personal and professional tragedy,... Read more

The Neglected Garden, Part II

Last updated on: August 11, 2016 at 3:52 pm By Caroline Langston

Continued from yesterday. The dollhouse my father was building for me was still unfinished when he draped a boat tarpaulin over the top, to protect it against the summer rain. The doctor had told my parents that there was a tumor in his lung. He was being sent to the M.D. Anderson hospital in Houston, along with my mother. My oldest, married, sister was coming home to take care of me temporarily, along with my 22-year-older brother, who had bottomed... Read more

The Neglected Garden, Part I

Last updated on: August 15, 2016 at 6:52 am By Caroline Langston

When my father built the house where I was born, the land was flat and there was little vegetation on it. It had once been the Curran family’s cotton plantation, my mother later told me—sold and subdivided for a row of little Cape Cods and ranch houses, all arrayed in pastel asbestos siding. Including the one that, in late 1954, became my family’s home. I was born in 1968. There were no trees, I see in the silent drone of... Read more

Poetry Friday: “More Strange”

Last updated on: August 11, 2016 at 5:20 pm By Guest Contributor

This poem coaxes me to inhabit a story I’ve heard many times, and makes it astonishingly new, summoning me with the urgency of the second-person perspective and the half-answered question of the title. It’s a poem that asks a lot of its reader—nothing less than to experience a mother’s grief at the loss of her son—and yet offers so much in return, in the short space of five stanzas. Maybe because I am a mother, but certainly because of the... Read more

Eat

Last updated on: August 10, 2016 at 11:20 am By Guest Contributor

By Kelly Foster Lundquist Since birth, the rhythm of my week has been set by church. Both my parents have held leadership positions in the varied churches we have attended over the years. In one of the many commonplaces of the evangelical testimony, I could easily say that I was indeed trained to be in church “every time the doors were open.” In my adolescent years, that meant Sunday School, Morning Church, Sunday afternoon choir practice, Evening Church, Youth Group,... Read more

You Must Be Present to Learn

Last updated on: August 11, 2016 at 4:07 pm By Richard Chess

For the past five years, I’ve been experimenting with the use of contemplative practices in the classes I teach at UNC Asheville. For a quick overview of the range of contemplative practices being used in higher education today, see The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society’s Tree of Contemplative Practices. On the eve of a new academic year, today I offer you a list of some of the things I’ve observed as I explore the use of this powerful pedagogy... Read more

Fit for Immortality?

Last updated on: August 10, 2016 at 10:30 am By Peggy Rosenthal

“How’s your health?” my long-time friend asked me with concern. “The leukemia is creeping toward trouble zone,” I answered, “and I’m not sleeping much, so sometimes I’m pretty wiped. I don’t deal well with physical discomfort.” Then I added, laughing but serious, “I feel ready for eternal life.” (more…) Read more

When Ethics Conflict with the Law

Last updated on: August 10, 2016 at 10:32 am By A. G. Harmon

Among the courses that I teach is Professional Responsibility—Legal Ethics—which is a subject covered on every state bar exam in the country. The professional code of ethics—the Model Rules of Professional Conduct—sets out in statutory form a log of rules that cover such varied topics as candor to the tribunal and third parties, conflicts of interest between former, current, and prospective clients, the safekeeping of client property, and a list of deeds that amount to lawyerly misconduct. Falling afoul of... Read more