Left Behind, pp. 87-89 The last we saw of Hattie Durham she had just left Rayford's steely lap after their helicopter ride home to the Chicago suburbs. Hattie is the Pan Continental flight attendant who has been strung along by the older, married Rayford Steele. The book begins with a description of their non-affair affair: They had spent time together, chatting for hours over drinks or dinner, sometimes with coworkers, sometimes not. He had not returned so much as one... Read more
Les Miserables was a success. The kids from VFMA were great onstage and a real privilege and pleasure to work with. One of the highlights of the show was our Thenardier, who borrowed a bit of shtick from Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow. His scenes got even funnier for me, though, once I started mentally substituting "Thetomdelay" for "Thenardier." And you don't even need to change any of the other words: Master of the house / Keeper of the zoo Ready... Read more
A few weeks ago, it was a beluga whale swimming 60 miles up the Delaware River to, of all places, Trenton, N.J. Yesterday, it was a bunch of buffalo on a tennis court in Maryland. I love these stories. This is a whole category of news: the Large Animals Where They Don't Belong story. Yes, yes, news as infotainment is a terrible thing. And the shrinking news hole in most newspapers really can't afford to sacrifice more column space for... Read more
The discussion in comments here last week about attempts to read the entire Bible raised the question of English translations. One of my favorite discussions of this comes from a Kathleen Norris piece written for The Christian Century in 1997. Norris argues for what she calls "incarnational language": Incarnational language might be defined as ordinary words that resonate with the senses as they aim for the stars. This language goes against the modern tendency toward abstraction. For example, in Isaiah... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 80-87 Investigative reporter Buck Williams, we learn here, was headed to London to meet with his old college friend Dirk Burton. (For those keeping score at home, our list of male porn names thus far: Buck, Steele, Plank, Dirk.) Dirk is "a former Princeton classmate" of Buck's, "a Welshman who had been working in the London financial district since graduate school." That much makes him sound like a sane, respectable fellow. But then we read this: "Dirk... Read more
I've started Left Behind Fridays because: A) we need to make steadier progress in our ongoing journey through the Worst Books Ever Written, and B) I don't have a cat, or a digital camera. What's that? Today is Friday? Ahem. Well, yes, about that … This week, I'm afraid, will feature an installment of Left Behind Saturdays (a hopefully only occasional feature during particularly busy weeks). Much of my week, oddly, has been spent at Holden Caulfield's alma mater, helping... Read more
I hadn't encountered John Lukacs before reading the excerpt from his latest book, of many, in the April Harper's. A bit of Googling turns up a related essay from December in The Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled "The Triumph and Collapse of Liberalism." That essay contains, in a slightly different context, a version of the same paragraph quoted in the previous post. It also includes Lukacs' description of himself as "a historian who has never been a liberal," along with... Read more
In its predominant sense democracy is the rule of the majority, but here liberalism must enter. (It did not and does not always.) Majority rule must be tempered by legal assurances of the rule of minorities, and of individual men and women. And when this temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing more than populism. — John Lukacs, from "Democracy and Populism" (excerpted in Harper's) In November, schoolchildren trace their hands to draw turkeys while learning... Read more
And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. — Matthew 6:5-6 The above photographs by Scott... Read more
It is not possible to endorse the work of charitable agencies — including "faith-based" agencies — while simultaneously working to eliminate the estate tax. President Bush claims he wants to expand the capacity and effectiveness of "faith-based" nonprofits. If he succeeds in eliminating the estate tax, however, his legacy will be that of the president who crippled the nonprofit sector and drove many of those faith-based charities out of business. The Congressional Budget Office has completed a new study on... Read more
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