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Holy Name Cathedral is on fire. Having grown up in the Chicago Archdiocese, I've visited the church many a time, both as a patron and a fan of Chicago architecture. It's a beautiful place. I hate to think about that gorgeous ceiling being burned away.

Today, wanderingaengus talks about the feeling of pride African-Americans are experiencing right now, and ponders what his grandmother (an Irish Catholic) thought and felt when JFK was elected. It reminded me of what my mom told me. She said that when Kennedy won, my grandfather said, "We're no longer of Irish descent. We're Irish decent now ( Read more... )

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I don't know which I find more disturbing: that they're going after kids because they know they can shake down their parents, or the fact that they're trying to "teach" the next generation about their role in consumer culture (you only buy, you do not own and you cannot share). Kick it old school by burning CDs, kids, the way we did with cassettes ( Read more... )

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I'm a bit of a disaster aficionado, and the disasters that most hold my attention are Chicago ones. We've had some dandy fires: a little conflagration in 1871 that you might have heard about and the horrifying Iroquois Theater Fire which crisped hundreds of kids and their guardians. The Eastland Disaster ( Read more... )

I'm rerunning an article that I forgot all about on my MySpace blog. It's about Gary Wills and a talk he gave on Catholicism a few years ago. Wills is the old-fashioned kind of conservative; meaning he is intelligent, willing to parley, and not bat-shit insane, so give him a fair hearing. Check it out, and get your MySpace pals to subscribe to my ( Read more... )