"Here today, gone tomorrow.” That familiar saying can apply to many things, including buildings and rare architectural artifacts. In a city like New York, buildings are torn down and replaced in a matter of months, their original accompanying artifacts lost. With this destruction of older

Last week I had the opportunity to see the newest Broadway production of the musical “Sweeney Todd.” First performed in 1979, “Todd” unwinds the grisly tale of a barber in 19th-century England who returns to London after 20 years trapped in a prison colony on trumped-up charg

Migration is a word heard with ever greater frequency, and I heard a lot about its many aspects—mostly painful ones—during a three-day conference last June at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Representatives from Fairfield and some 20 other Jesuit institutions, including several from

Have you ever returned to a book that you enjoyed as a younger reader? The experience can be enjoyable, disappointing and surprising, all at once. Last month, in a book club at a local Jesuit parish, I reminded the group that our next selection would be Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly. Mr. Blue! exclaimed one woman. I read that when I was in high school and loved it!

"A tamale, please, and a cup of atole,” I said to the Mexican woman on East 116th Street, in the heart of Spanish Harlem. It was 7:45 a.m. on a weekday morning, and people were headed toward the subway to get to work. The woman was standing beneath a blue and white umbrella that shielded

A subway ride marks the beginning of my work days at America, and given the diversity of the nearly four million passengers who use New York City’s subway system each day, it offers an ever-varying picture of humanity. For commuters like me, the actual ride does not begin on the subway car its