On Commencement Addresses
Holland, MI
It is graduation season. On campuses across the country graduates will be subject to the last compulsory and least remarkable rite of passage:...
Tom Fleming Retires
Rockford, Illinois. After thirty-one years at Chronicles Magazine—thirty of them as editor—classicist, poet and polemicist Tom Fleming has retired.
During his tenure at this small...
The Soul of Facebook Venting: Empowered Alternatives to Ranting Online
In the old days, when you saw something in your morning newspaper that bothered you, you could vent your ballooning anger with a minute...
How Beauty Fits
The most fashionable and defensible position on aesthetics is to maintain that beauty is entirely subjective. Beauty doesn't exist, we are assured, at least...
Conversations with Bronze Age Warlords
Pop quiz: What ancient Greek legend begins with the kidnapping of Helen of Troy, and ends with Greeks sneaking into Troy inside a hollow...
The Low Standards of Norman Rockwell’s Critics
All too many people are entirely settled in their opinion that Norman Rockwell’s art presents a “falsification” of reality: in short, he is charged...
Saving Church for Adults
Grand Rapids, MI
Recently, in a posting entitled “A Culture of Millstones,” Katharine Dalton has lamented the too-colorful language her children are exposed to in church...
The Academy Awards as a Religious Experience
The stylish crowd that walked the red carpet to the Oscars likely had not donned their Sunday best earlier in the day for a...
On Dying Where You’re Planted: The Rooted Pastor
Manchester, CT
I am grudgingly accepting that you don’t choose the place; the place chooses you.
I’ve moved around a lot during my time on the planet,...
