This past weekend, I was at Doxacon, “The Geek Orthodox Convention.”
Ideas
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Did the Erie Canal help put an end to slavery?
The story of Austin Steward, a former slave who fought against slavery in northwest New York
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Pope Benedict XV and the forgotten campaign to end World War I
Overshadowed in his lifetime, Pope Benedict provided lessons for the world’s peoples and policymakers, then and now.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
A new museum in Chicago honors writers with scents, mementos and manuscripts
Rather than simply showing artifacts and manuscripts, the American Writers Museum presents a number of screens and displays, many of them interactive, to engage visitors with the rich heritage of American writers.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Depression can’t be explained, but it must be reckoned with.
Is there something in the very nature of sin and narcissism that wounds us, that makes us sad?
Posted inIdeas, Politics & Society
Your vote isn’t enough. It will take a lot more to change deep American values
Affecting the outcome of specific elections, however, is not the only way Catholics can influence the social and political direction of the nation.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Wimbledon contains all that I have ever loved and loathed about tennis
The Queue is part of the mythology that makes the Wimbledon experience an experience at all; it goes hand in hand with the strawberries and cream and the all-white attire.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
How the hipster can save the monk (and vice versa)
By a bizarre twist of fate, the taste of the age, “hipster taste,” runs parallel to monastic notions of work, prayer and what we might call the monastic aesthetic.
Posted inIdeas, Politics & Society
What comedian-turned-senator Al Franken can teach us about President Trump
Who better to combat the absurd, dark joke at the heart of the rise of Trumpism than someone like Al Franken?
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Disability without sentimentality: a stage actor’s journey
Well crafted stories about the “disabled experience” are still new, and too few-and-far between.