Just a few days back, I arrived home to find a mound of muddy clothes …at my front entrance and the sounds of children scampering from bath to bedroom (all of which meant, of course, mud downstairs, water upstairs, cleaning
R. J. Snell
If you follow college “culture” at all, you’ll find little new or surprising… in the recent discussions of the abusive hazing rituals at Dartmouth, or that the college and its alumni so cheerfully abandon any pretense of caring. Or that
I’m struck at the vanity of those impious folks infatuated with their ability to improve the situation… without having first served a long apprenticeship under the tutelage of the old. Proudly ignorant—they believe freedom from apprenticeship guarantees spontaneity, relevance, creativity—they
Well, if drive-through Ash Wednesday services weren’t enough,… the Dutch have finally invented mobile euthanasia units to do house calls when your own doctor won’t. A town in Wisconsin I once lived in had drive-through liquor stores, but that seems
In The Supper of the Lamb, a delightfully odd book, Robert Farrar Capon suggests as an exercise in reality an extended session with an onion. “Once you are seated,” he suggests, “the first order of business is to address yourself…
In Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the character Tomas is an inveterate womanizer, a man who takes notes on the particular physical differences, however minute, of the women he seduces. He is light, and free, and must find…
I think Walker Percy uses the following to illustrate contemporary life,… although I don’t remember where. But it goes something like this: When his grandfather walked down the street, everyone knew who he was, and he knew who he was;
Some friends and I are celebrating the good news… that one of our company was expecting another child. None of us are the Duggars, and the offspring of the three families combined wouldn’t add up to their number, yet all
One pernicious aspect of our age is its commitment to techne…, the quasi-religious belief that all manner of things shall be made well with the right tool, expertise, specialist, or method. All that is, is to be controlled, subdued,
The Spring 2011 issue of The City includes an insightful piece by Wilfred McClay on “The Illusion of Mastery” in public policy.
When the “will of God” no longer suffices as an explanation for death and suffering, the unfortunate realities…
Like so many others, I spent too much time hoodwinked by the story of liberation, emancipation, and autonomy. What it meant to be free, I supposed, was to be free from limits and entanglements, duties and responsibilities; freedom was self-sufficiency, and a major goal in life was to maintain and extend the range of sovereignty.
