Posted on February 1, 2011
The youth choir Christina Green belonged to performs just once a month, on the second Sunday at the 9 o’clock Mass. And sure enough, the day after the 9-year-old was killed in Tucson, Ariz., the youngest victim of the shooting targeting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, St. Odilia’s youth choir sang. It was Jan. 9, the feast […]
Posted on January 1, 2011
Nothing feels like a better bargain than a one-cent book, so I always click on Amazon’s used category. Not only does it save me money, it comes with the added benefit of footprints from a previous reader – marks flagging the sentences that struck someone somewhere, a person who can unknowingly offer me a flashlight […]
Posted on December 1, 2010
Funny how a single picture can change everything. In the tiny town of Bovey, Minn., four years into World War I, an old man peddling foot scrapers knocked on Eric Enstrom’s door. Eric was 43, a Swedish immigrant who had bought land, opened a photography studio and raised his kids to speak perfect English. He […]
Posted on November 1, 2010
The question on the cover of the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, caught my eye: “What’s your true calling?” It appears beside a pared-down Oprah Winfrey – which is to say her fake eyelashes are less dramatic. The cosmetics are softer: brown eye shadow, peach lipstick. Wrapped in an ivory sweater, Oprah’s hands […]
Posted on October 10, 2010
In the face of the unknown, Christopher Columbus counted. “On the 33rd day after I departed from Cadiz, I came to the Indian sea,” he wrote King Ferdinand’s treasurer. “There are in the island Juana seven or eight kinds of palm trees. In all these islands, each man is content with only one wife, except […]
Posted on September 1, 2010
I had relegated shepherds to the unicorn file, somewhere near the hunch-backed blacksmith and the whistling milk man. They were the stuff of Mother Goose lore. So it was surprising to discover actual shepherds when I visited the Holy Land. I was riveted by the sloping landscape of Jesus’ ministry. Two tones checkered our vistas: […]
Posted on August 1, 2010
It was 4 p.m., and hesitance was creeping in. “Ten-year high-school reunion,” she tweeted. “To go or not to go?” A single mom who had just been let go was facing a chance to prove she had not let herself go – and seeking a little courage online. She played punk rock, applied extra blush […]
Posted on July 1, 2010
“Are you tweeting from Palestine?” It was a harmless question popping up in my inbox, and I had already begun typing my Twitter handle, eager to pick up a few more followers, when I paused to consider the offer I was about to make. Did I really want to chronicle my Holy Land trip via […]