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Ubuntu
As we drove home from a lovely two-day celebration of our twenty-fifth anniversary, Jeanne and I were listening to NPR, as is our frequent custom when in the car. It was Nelson Mandela’s ninety-fifth...
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Being Uncomfortable
One of the things I learned shortly after becoming a college professor twenty years ago was that there is a certain sort of black humor that teachers find particularly entertaining. Contributions used...
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Haunted by Humans
Christmas break is the time for reading fiction. I have very little time to read fiction during the semester, unless a work of fiction is involved in one of the courses I am teaching (as it always is)....
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Magical Thinking
I am a huge college basketball fan. Actually, I am a huge Providence College Friars fan, not surprising since I have taught at Providence College and lived in Providence for nineteen years and...
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Celebrating St. Bridget’s Day
My brother and I seldom see each other. He is a medical doctor in rural Wyoming, and I am a real doctor in Rhode Island. But we frequently have brief Facebook conversations of the same high quality...
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Come In, and Come In
Once many years ago, a couple I was close friends with was having marital problems. For the first (and only) time in my life, I found myself frequently playing the role of telephone confessor and...
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The Easter Mouse
At the end of last year, just in time for the holiday season, a new book by Sarah Palin was published. Entitled Good Tidings and Great Joy, with the subtitle A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas, the...
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Clean Hands
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully....
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How to be Good
A Polish Franciscan priest. A Lutheran pastor and theologian. A French, Jewish social activist attracted to Marxism. A French novelist and philosopher. A group of young German college students. The...
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Is Democracy Overrated?
Jeanne and I just finished binge-watching the second season of Netflix’s House of Cards, an undoubtedly appropriate activity to complete just before our nation’s birthday on the Fourth of July. In...
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Gentle Drizzle
In the interdisciplinary program I teach in and direct, the first semester faculty have to make many tough choices. Iliad or Odyssey? What texts from the Hebrew Scriptures? The New Testament? What to...
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Academics in No-Man’s Land
This is the second in a projected series of occasional Friday reflections on what I have learned as a faculty member who has frequently had to play administrator over the past three-plus years. Men are...
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I Am Not Your Friend
If it’s Friday, it’s time to think once again about interactions between various constituencies in academia. Today I am not thinking about faculty-administration relations. I’m wondering instead about...
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The World’s Most Interesting Man
In one of my interdisciplinary classes we are in the transition between Ancient Greece and Rome. Which means we’re in the world of Alexander the Great. As I listened to my history colleague’s excellent...
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Being Uncomfortable
Final exams begin next week, so I’m getting ready for the next round of reading surprising things that my students have learned. One of the things I learned shortly after becoming a college professor...
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Magical Thinking
There must be something about the end of January and named snowstorms. This year it is Juno–exactly a year ago it was Janus. I’m making plans for another mega shoveling event (Jupiter, Jorge,...
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Deflategate and the Nazis
As I write this on the morning of this evening’s Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, I am unfortunately thinking about deflated balls. The other day Jerry Rice, an NFL Hall of Famer and wearer of several...
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Wolf Hall
Jeanne’s and my evenings are often organized around which of our favorite television series’ latest episode is on, bemoaning the end of a series’ current season, and anxiously awaiting something new...
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Haunted by Humans
A bit over a year ago I read Herman Koch’s novel The Dinner during Christmas break. I picked it up at the college bookstore, where it was sitting amongst a bunch of other books I had never heard of....
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Home for Each Other
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, but in their infinite wisdom both the College’s Alumni office as well as the Office of Admission have planned big Saturday events on campus. This means that I will be...
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