Thomas J. McCarthy

Flags are ubiquitous, and patriotism is in full flower. It puts me in mind of Operation Desert Storm, when the country was awash in flags, yellow ribbons and tough talk. I felt disconnected and isolated from the mass of my fellow citizens, a disgusted and impotent voice of dissent. Then I met Dan La

Feeling wooed? You should be, at least according to pundits and Washington insiders. It seems that 2001 has been the year for courting the Catholic vote. The term burst on the scene shortly after the inauguration and has consistently shown up in news stories ever since, particularly with respect to

My wife asked me the other day what I considered the time in my life when I felt most spiritually rich. She knew the answer, because I’ve talked about it many times: senior year in high school. But she wanted to deepen an ongoing discussion we’ve been having about the lackluster state of

Being a health nut has its price, but I never bargained for anything like the most recent development. My local organic food co-op stopped stocking one of my favorite items, so I went searching on the Internet under the name of its distributor, Delicious Foods. The moment I typed in “delicious

Awake now! So goes my two-year-old’s announcement every morning around 6. She wakes up, crawls out of bed, walks down the hall into our room and, putting her face as close to mine as she possibly can, declares the entire truth as she sees it at that moment. It is a microcosm of her every actio

Having scaled the steep rock mass to gain a panorama of the canyon, I stood facing an expanse of parched earth that seemed to be without end. My heart pounded, not because of the climb but because, from my precipitous perch on the edge of this overhanging slab, I could not afford the slightest misst

‘Newt Gingrich, in a speech delivered during what President Bush dubbed “Education Week,” declared that if every four-year-old in America had her own computer and was on the Internet, we’d see an enormous difference in the quality of thinking and learning of our young people.

Knock, knock.

Everyone knows Christmas is about giving, and who could have any problem with an annual holiday centered on gifts? In a booming economy when consumers are spending, there are no losers; everyone gives, receives and feels good. The atmosphere saturated with preternaturally familiar sights and sounds,

He travels on, and in his face, his step,