I’ve been using Duolingo to revive my French (which I sadly hadn’t touched since high school) and now the bottom of my skill chart looks like this: That very happy owl (or cet hibou très heureux) means that I’ve come to the end of Duolingo’s lessons.* I can still review the words I’ve learned, but there’s nothing new in the offing. So, I’d like to find an easy French novel to take a crack at, and I was hoping some of you... Read more
Before he passed away, Pope John Paul II entrusted a number of his personal letters to Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, his secretary, and asked him to burn the letters after the pontiff was dead. Not only did Cardinal Dziwisz fail to carry out the pope’s wishes, he is now releasing the edited papers as a book. The Cardinal is releasing the private notes because he finds them spiritually lovely, not because there’s some very exciting secret or scandal contained within. But,... Read more
Yesterday, Calah Alexander, one of the bloggers here at Patheos, posted a wrenching personal update about her struggles with anxiety (“My Nervous Breakdown Was Totally Lame”). So the Ogre made some phone calls, made me make some phone calls, and then made me make an appointment for therapy and psychiatric care. I was willing but not enthusiastic, mostly because I felt like I was still being a big sissy and making a fuss for nothing, and if I would just shut up,... Read more
— 1 — This week, I had the pleasure of going to a talk at the Folger Shakespeare Library on the discovery of Richard III’s body. They had one of the archaeologists and one of the geneticists talk about how they knew where to look and how they verified the skeleton’s identity. I could probably fill most of the Quick Takes just with facts from their lecture and the Q&A, but here are some highlights: It turns out you unearth... Read more
At the end of January, Patheos blogger Joanne McPortland made a modest proposal that the Church should stop focusing so much on Sunday School and put most of its efforts into catechizing adults, instead. She wrote: The thing is, whatever method you use, from Latin recitation to puppet play, there is no way you can transmit adult faith to a child of 5 or 7 or 11 or 13 or (if you’re really, really lucky) 17. There is even less... Read more
Just to follow on from yesterday’s AmCon post about the importance of the liberal arts (and the ensuing discussion over here), I wanted to get a little more specific with a case study. Health classes and sex ed are usually taught in a just-the-facts style. Here’s some slides of various unpleasant diseases, here’s a poster assignment to make on various drug subtypes, here’s a guide to ways to decrease your chance of infection. These are certainly germane, but they’re hardly the... Read more
When I was watching the State of the Union last week, one of the lines in the education section rubbed me the wrong way, and I’m blogging on the topic at AmCon today: In his State of the Union last week, President Obama talked a little about how he wants to improve the education system, but his most revealing line might have been where he listed the subjects he thinks our schools should be teaching: Teachers and principals in schools from Tennessee to Washington,... Read more
In 2014, I’m reading and blogging through Pope Francis/Cardinal Bergoglio’s Open Mind, Faithful Heart: Reflections on Following Jesus. Every Monday, I’ll be writing about the next meditation in the book, so you’re welcome to peruse them all and/or read along. This week’s chapter was more difficult than those previous for me. By the time I got up to this summary in the final pages, I was still at sea: In summary, then, we are confronted with two rival projects. The first is the... Read more
Ok, before I share this news with you, I want to make sure we’ve all got the proper ambiance. So, before you scroll any farther, I want you to pause and click “play” on the video below: Via Hypable (and, yes, I spent a good long while checking if this was a hoax): J.K. Rowling questions Ron and Hermione’s relationship In a new interview conducted by Emma Watson, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling drops a bombshell: She’s not so... Read more
This month, Jen Fulwiler’s Saint Generator spun up Saint Zita of Lucca for me. She is apparently the patron saint of lost keys (and, lo, I’ve just gotten my keys to my DC apartment). But, a little more to the point, she was a servant and is particularly known for the way her holiness shown through at work for the people she served: Born to a very poor but pious family. At age twelve she became a domestic servant for the wealthy Fainelli... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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