One early summer evening shortly after the end of the school term my Dad rather solemnly mdash so it seemed to me mdash took the training wheels off my bike Then while he mowed the lawn my Mom and I slowly walked my two-wheeled test to the school playground at the end of our block I was go

Twenty-eight years of preaching Mother rsquo s Day sermons will seriously deplete one rsquo s supply of stories This year not having recently read anything useful that featured a mother I did what I always do when desperate nbsp I called home nbsp nbsp nbsp ldquo Hello rdquo my mom said

Robert Bolt rsquo s play about the martyrdom of Saint Thomas More A Man for All Seasons has seen a lot of them come and go since its premiere in 1960 perhaps because so much of its dialogue is worth the remembering Consider this scene Richard Rich the man who will betray him has just left Mor

Strange where generations divide I rsquo m an earlier version of humanity one without the opposable thumbs needed for texting When a younger colleague taught me to text I asked why I would want to do it ldquo Wouldn rsquo t it be easier to telephone rdquo ldquo Easier for the thumbs harde

Nothing better illustrates the radical novelty of the resurrection and its implications for religious life then to juxtapose a famous sardonic quote from the dying Socrates and a seemingly insignificant act of the resurrected Jesus nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbs

Do you remember this scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry discovers that the diary he rsquo s found ldquo writes back to him rdquo Harry sat on his four-poster and flicked through the blank pages not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it Then he pulled a new bottle

Grandma and Grandpa Herrman had a storm cellar The small limestone-lined space was dug-out beneath their house but one entered it through a door in the backyard just as Dorothy tried unsuccessfully to do in The Wizard of Oz My numerous cousins and I spent a lot of time in our grandparents rsquo

From Rachel Aviv rsquo s January 2nd 2012 New Yorker article ldquo No Remorse rdquo Shortly after midnight on March 6 2010 Dakotah Eliason sat in a chair in his bedroom with a 38-calibre pistol in his hands thinking about what the world would be like if he didn rsquo t exist One of his fri

In grading college essays there are certain phrases that I pen so frequently in red ink that I rsquo ve considered having them put onto a rubber stamp to save myself from writing them repeatedly For example ldquo The relative pronoun for people is lsquo who rsquo or lsquo whom rsquo lsq