Heading into my read of an advance review copy of John Crowley's forthcoming Four Freedoms, I was unsure what to expect. The publisher's blurb told me that it was a book about "a disabled man...among a crowd of women" at "the height of World War II." It didn't seem obvious that this scenario would be a setting suited to the artful exploration of ( Read more... )

During this election's Democratic primaries, Clinton surrogate Geraldine Ferraro trotted out the ridiculous claim that Obama was "lucky to be black." She suggested that racial minority status of itself gave Obama an advantage with the electorate. That was and is false on its face: racism is alive and well throughout the US in varying degrees, and ( Read more... )

Texas polygamist sect is accused of indoctrinating girls

Meanwhile, Pope accused of Catholicism during US visit and Bear accused by Interior Dept. of shitting in woods.

Care to name a religion that doesn't indoctrinate its members?
Gah.

Siegler's study was anthologized in God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture (eds. Mazur & McCarthy). I read and critiqued it for a seminar I'm just finishing ( Read more... )

Another day, another reason to be glad I don't carry a cell phone.

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As I arrived home, I was climbing the dimly-lit back stairs to the apartment and saw something dark and shapeless at my feet. Picking it up, I saw it was a black t-shirt. I have a few black t-shirts of my own, and this path is one my laundry travels, so I brought it inside to better light in order to determine if it was mine. By the time I was ( Read more... )

Months before Rowling's fans were able to blog their disappointment or outrage over the terminal Harry Potter book, my wife was expressing some rue and quiet lamentation over Endless Things, the fourth and final volume of John Crowley's Aegypt. These books have been published over a twenty-year period, and I read the first volume myself in the late ( Read more... )

Constantine's Sword looks pretty interesting. Word is, its documentation of contemporary US theocracy puts Jesus Camp in the shade.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to get the fear that's been prescribed to me.

Choicest comments from my teacher evaluation returns this spring ( Read more... )