Character actor William Schallert found something he loved to do, he got good at it, and he never retired, even after nearly 70 years. May you be so blessed. Also: Nature is really strange; a searchable database of the sleazy rich; and Bartolo's shot heard 'round the world. Read more
Elias Chacour, Barack Obama, Liz Plank, Rebecca Solnit and 111 United Methodist clergy and candidates discuss friends and enemies, truth and fiction, hope and cynicism. There may be a theme here. Read more
Rod Dreher's story never happened. The Bad Jackie of the tough Texas suburbs -- if any such person really exists -- is making stuff up. And she's so focused on making her story shocking that she forgot to make any of it plausible. But the question isn't whether Dreher is deliberately lying or just credulously bearing false witness against his neighbors. The question is WHY Rod Dreher so desperately wishes that fantasies like this story were true. Read more
Verna and Buck work together at a weekly news magazine, and their entire conversation here is premised on the idea that the international manhunt for renegade rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah is the top story in world news for the past week. That would seem absurd even if the past week had been a slow affair, news-wise, but that week actually has included things like the Global Potentate's all-out nuclear war against his own Global Community, with the ensuing destruction of New York, London and Chicago. Read more
This weekend we went to a wedding at the Lazaretto Ballroom, a lovely site adjacent to a remarkable bit of American history. Essington, it turns out, isn't just the site of long-term parking for the Philadelphia Airport. It's also where Ellis Island was before there was ever such a thing as Ellis Island. Read more
"The Lord is good, a stronghold on a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him." Read more
"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets." Read more
At some point I'm sure you've sat alone in a room reading a better book than Left Behind and you've read something that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, something that made you look up from the page and glance around the room because you were no longer quite so sure you were alone. Whether you were reading Stephen King or Julian of Norwich, the physical sensation is the same. Read more
Today is not Mexican Independence Day, but it is the anniversary of the day I met my wife. Also: Donald Trump doesn't need therapy, he needs to repent; fearing refugees makes as much sense as fearing wildfire evacuees; and the racist idea that people of color are distinct from the "working class." Read more
You might not think that a South Jersey slumlord would be only one step removed from a kleptocratic tyrant like Mobutu Sese Seko, but connections like that are woven throughout Franklin Foer's long report on Paul Manafort. The article reads like an episode guide to "The Blacklist" -- an endless parade of rogues, criminals, tyrants, oligarchs, Watergate ratf--kers, arms dealers, and almost anyone you've ever written an Amnesty International letter to on behalf of some political prisoner. And the man connecting all those figures is now running Donald Trump's campaign. Read more
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