Tag: friendship

As someone who squirms every time I see a couple or family all quietly tapping their cell phones, a room of twenty people talking is a beautiful sight. It is easy to despair at our polarized and atomized society, but I appreciate Gray’s book for giving a clear, achievable step for building community and making friends.

I guess that paradox is what intrigues me about Carry and Dale’s differing personal constitutions and methodologies. I see them appealing to all of us in different ways—whether we have many friends or few, whether our influence is recognized or not—to embark upon the truly influential gift of friendship.

There is a significant difference between staring at a computer screen and seeing the world through a porch screen. Hailey emphasizes the benefits of seeing from the “threshold between stability and precariousness,” which is nothing like viewing the world from the comfort of a couch in an air-conditioned room, even if the porch is also comfortable.

Immortality might not last forever. But I contend that Ed will—through his words and through the lives of those he touched with his generosity and his grace. All of which leads, to a simple blessing, a benediction. “Oh, wow.”

As the late historian John Lukacs would insist, all stories as we know them and retell them are remembered. This means they are, inherently, personal. John Berryman and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Friendship is no exception.

When I became a Washington, D.C. newsroom intern, Twitter usage was mandatory (primarily so that we could help run the magazine’s Twitter account). I...

During a class I was teaching at our parish last fall, a woman pulled me aside afterwards to ask a question. The woman was...

My piece at Ethika Politika: Aristotle's Key to Christmas

“Surely he should keep a remembrance of their former intimacy…” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Sometimes it feels like Aristotle foresaw all the vicissitudes of my life....

This is what we all need now: a deep belly-laugh.