I only just saw that Ray Bradbury died on Tuesday. For a writer so associated with the 20th century's turn toward outer space, it is fitting that he died, like a legendary figure of old, during an astronomical event of some note: the transit of Venus across the sun. Would that the universe were consistently so emphatic in telling us who is worth ( Read more... )

There were two things I'd picked up at Easter from friends that I wanted to copy into my journal for memory's keeping. The first, a poem I saw on Professor Michel René Barnes's Facebook page. This appealed to a number of people, apparently, as I saw more people pick it up and reprint it:Make no mistake: if He rose at all ( Read more... )

I received an email from Dina the other day that was largely talking about the creation of a new song of hers. I was excited to discover that her Shipwrecked: From Birmingham to Jericho With No Prozac CD project with Nadina's Cube had finally come out, although I had missed that news. So my copy is in the mail. But the thing that really ( Read more... )

Every once in a while, I have a random thought and wonder, "Is that on the internet?" Remembering the early days of the internet where any particular information that you might want was pretty hit-or-miss, I kind of get a kick over the amount and variety of things people have made available over the years. Over dinner tonight, I found myself ( Read more... )

Down at Leslie and Jim's for the past few days, enjoying the outrageously LOUD company of my nieces, and the more modest company of my hosts, and even Mom and Dad. So, I'm continuing a several-days long stretch of being more-or-less out of touch, such as my amusing Jim (my brother-in-law and sister are huge sports fans) by being shocked by the ( Read more... )

One of the ideas which I was slow to understand as a student is this whole difference between "modernism" and "post-modernism." (Or "modern/post-modern" or "modernity/post-modernity": whichever form of the distinction came up. As an undergraduate studying the history of ideas, I had been much more concerned with the ancient world than with my ( Read more... )

This morning over breakfast I idly turned on the television, which I tend to leave tuned to Turner Classic Movies. I got wrapped up in The Three Comrades, which I had heard of somewhere. It's really quite striking for a 1938 movie and some of sensibilities and censorship of film at that time. The screenplay turns out to be an F. Scott Fitzgerald ( Read more... )

A number of people have been asking me for recommendations regarding reading Thomas Merton since I started reading strongly in him back in November, and posting quite a bit based on that reading. While I hope I've shared some reasonable thoughts on that point, it struck me that something else I've recently found might be worth posting for those ( Read more... )

Robert Giroux has died, I read in The New York Times. That's getting to be near the end of the associates of Thomas Merton from his Columbia generation, following on the loss of Robert Lax not too long ago, who I had once conceived of hunting down on Patmos with Erik.

Robert Giroux, Editor, Publisher and Nurturer of Literary Giants, Is Dead at ( Read more... )

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