From time to time in my unorthodox career, I’ve found myself teaching a class—be it in ethics or literature or law—which includes a reading of Shirley Jackson’s horror story, The Lottery, first introduced in eighth grade English (or it was back in the day) and having the singular distinction of being the one story most retain memory of—even those who despise fiction. I can’t possibly spoil the story by telling the ending, as everyone must’ve read it. So it is... Read more
Underlying what’s wrong with this picture is where it resides. Not in a museum of racist caricatures. No, it’s on the popular Dentzel Carousel at Ontario Beach Park in my city: Rochester, New York. The carousel is a special treasure. Built in 1905, it’s now one of only fourteen operating antique menagerie carousels in the United States; it’s also one of only a few that remain in their original location. Dentzel Carousels, created by the Philadelphia firm G.A. Dentzel, were... Read more
By Caroline Langston I stood in the security line at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans wondering if I was going to be detained, and taken for dangerous. Hell, I didn’t know, was this something for which I could be arrested? Maybe I should’ve let my brother talk me into sending the glossy, fitted wood box on ahead via mail—though that would have been exorbitant. Plus, I didn’t want to let it out of my hands. I couldn’t... Read more
May you have the courage to let go of everything you know about yourselves—everything you have learned about yourselves up to this moment—that you may discover and create, invent and define new selves, a new braided Self. Like Sabbath candles that, at the start of Shabbat, stand side by side, each its own brilliance, its own accomplishment, may you move toward each other until you become like the braided Havdalah candle, its individual wicks joined to create of several a... Read more
The church may have begun as a non-spiritual entity, a business of some sort that was judged insufficiently profitable. Maybe it was one of those sprawling climate-controlled storage facilities, for example, the kind assembled from pre-fab insulated concrete forms, crafted not for enlivening souls but for storing up the treasures that have no place elsewhere. But likely it was intended as a church from the beginning, a box, yes, but a box whose utilitarianism is a testimony befitting the Horatio... Read more
By Bradford Winters No doubt it was one of the more truly mortifying episodes I have ever experienced. Right up there with the time my freshman year in college when, alone at a table in the quiet library, I thought I had successfully suppressed a particularly insistent bout of dorm-food gas; but so strained was the effort that when I relaxed prematurely there erupted what must have struck others in the library as the boldest fart in human history. At least... Read more
In his book Culture Making, Andy Crouch notes that the only way to change culture is to make more of it. You want a better communication device? Come up with something that will replace the iPhone. Hate your rolling pin or your lawn mower? Come up with a better one. Annoyance, in some ways, is the mother of invention. Each semester I teach a course in which Culture Making is a major text, so my students can repeat this dictum by heart—in fact,... Read more
Recently, I found myself in Texas. Driving mostly. Stopping here and there to eat, put more gas in the automobile, urinate. When you step out of an air-conditioned car in the middle of West Texas you aren’t just making a transition from inside the car to outside. You are stepping into a new atmosphere, like a spaceman emerging from a capsule onto the moon. Air, when it gets hot enough, has a flavor. It has a smell and a taste.... Read more
By Jeffrey Overstreet During a lecture last March [2011], I spoke fondly of a friend whom I had recently lost to cancer. Halfway through the anecdote, I suddenly recognized his wife, the mother of his two young children, in the audience, listening in rapt attention. She was far from home, a surprise visitor. I almost choked. And I suddenly began weighing my words with much greater care. Had I represented her husband well? Loss makes artists out of all of... Read more
It’s evening and I’m about to meet my older sister in baggage claim. Trained by years of overseas travel in my twenties—and having lost enough luggage along the way—I have taken very little with me on the trip: my carry-on, my diaper bag, and my nine-month-old baby. I regret to admit that I take some pride in meeting my family in baggage claim and hearing one of them say “this is all you brought?” But today, I’ve brought heavier baggage... Read more
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