January 2010
21 posts
3 tags
Bryce Taylor on J. D. Salinger →
While his roommate Gabriel Ellsworth is fast asleep, Bryce Taylor taps away at his Macbook writing a regular column titled ‘Untimely Meditations’ for the Yale Daily News. (To know Bryce is to get the inside joke of ‘untimely’.) This column was published September 18, 2009. My one reading of The Catcher in the Rye was compulsory and charmless. A little bit of Holden...
Jan 31st
“The will of the Father is the yoke he would have us take, and bear also with...”
– George MacDonald, referring to Matthew 11: 25 - 30
Jan 31st
unmodern: Thought I was meeting with an orthopedist, turned out to be an orthoepist. Am articulate now, but my foot still hurts.
Jan 31st
1 note
WatchWatch
Single malt scotch is a treat. I don’t drink blended whiskies; but Robert Carlisle narrating the history behind the Johnnie Walker brand and doing it in one take? Walk with pride man.
Jan 30th
2 tags
Jan 29th
1 tag
And Oxygen is Just a Gas
In a WSJ article published January 15, David Biderman writes: “Football fans everywhere are preparing to settle in for the NFL’s biggest and most electric weekend of the season—a four-game playoff marathon that will swallow up at least 12 hours of broadcast time over two days. But here’s something even dedicated students of the game may not fully appreciate: There’s very...
Jan 27th
2 tags
Jan 27th
1 tag
WatchWatch
Taylor Mali’s Speak With Conviction typographically.
Jan 26th
2 tags
Gabriel is here with twenty of his Choose Life at Yale friends, all of them at the mall and the Supreme Court for today's March for Life. One of them, Sarah Landers, told us she had this exchange with a Yale Daily News reporter who asked her a few questions.
YDN Reporter: Does your religion ever cloud your judgment?
Sarah: I'd like to think it's shaped it!
Jan 23rd
KING LEAR Prithee, go in thyself: seek thine own ease: This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in. To the Fool In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty,— Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep. Fool goes in Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your...
Jan 21st
1 tag
“In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no...”
–  G. K. Chesterton, Heretics
Jan 21st
6 tags
Jesus' First Miracle
For the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 17, 2010 at Saint Francis Episcopal Church, Potomac, Maryland. Based on the Gospel according to John, 2: 1 – 11. [PDF] et lui dit: Tout homme sert d’abord le bon vin, puis le moins bon après qu’on s’est enivré; toi, tu as gardé le bon vin jusqu’à présent. Tel fut, à Cana en Galilée, le premier des miracles que fit Jésus. Il...
Jan 18th
4 tags
May he rest in peace, and rise in glory
From Billy Shand — Word was received early this month of the death on December 30 of Lyttleton B. P. Gould, Jr, most recently living in Essex, New Jersey. With his death another chapter closes in the earliest history of St Francis, and in the educational communities of three fine independent schools in the mid-Atlantic. Lytt and his wife, Sis, were among the founders of this parish. In 1955, the...
Jan 16th
1 tag
Quodlibet
Green Bay - Arizona Cardinals end Bertrand Berry was fined $5,000 by the National Football League for his helmet-to-helmet hit on quarterback Aaron Rodgers in overtime — a play that did not draw a flag during the Packers’ wild-card loss.
Jan 15th
2 tags
WatchWatch
Arbor tremendum. Arbor fascinans. What is it about trees? I can’t escape them. I can’t resist them. I pass an unusual amount of time thinking and reading and writing about them. Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring. Colin Tudge’s The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Cross. The Dream of the...
Jan 14th
1 tag
from the Inbox
Hat tip to my sister, Cynthia Bader. ———Original Message——— From: Chip Watkins To: Lawson R. Bader Subject: FW: Terror alerts around the world Sent: Jan 13, 2010 2:53 PM TERRORIST ALERTS AROUND THE WORLD The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to...
Jan 14th
1 note
3 tags
Réquiem ætérnam dona ei Dómine
On Sunday, November 22, a beloved priest of the Diocese, the Rev. Craig Eder died at the age of 90. In an interview published in Washington Window and available online here, Father Eder told this story. Recently, I had a powerful religious experience. I knew a woman named Gracie, a fellow patient in the nursing part of the Methodist Home here, who cried out constantly, “Help me! Somebody...
Jan 12th
2 tags
WatchWatch
Jan 11th
2 tags
Currently reading Robinson
“I think that a sort of marketing decision has been made by many churches to present Christianity in forms of faith assumed to be more palatable. And I think that’s a terrible condescension to people in general. I mean, I think that religion at its best is not pandering. It’s actually one place in the world where you might reasonably expect someone to tell you the truth even if...
Jan 8th
5 tags
Samuel Johnson, Man of Sorrows
Alan Jacobs’ meditation on Samuel Johnson, published for the three hundredth anniversary of his birth (18 September 1709), is now available online. An excerpt: Through all Johnson’s writing—his verse, his essays, his biographies, even his literary criticism—there echoes this deep recognition of the varieties of human suffering and its intransigence. Writing about King Lear, he...
Jan 7th
2 tags
Goose-bumps
Roger and Karen Welser are my son Evan’s godparents. They have three children; Andrew (11), Evan (7), and Jenya (3). From the Welser’s Christmas letter: Karen: Jenya, you must be cold! You have goose-bumps all over! Jenya: Maybe I got bumped by a goose!
Jan 6th