No Straight Lines In Nature
That commonplace of art instruction is true:
From the rainbow to the tomato worm
And in the rhythms of our chambered hearts
Creation curves itself around our lives
Tag: Lawrence Hall
Random Thoughts about the First Day of School
For the past month there has not been a newspaper, radio station, or television station in this great land of saints and scholars that refrained from employing the cringe-making wheeze, “School is gearing up.” No, school is not gearing up. It has never geared up. It will never gear up, except maybe in Cousin Les’ auto shop class.
Read MoreA Saturday Morning in the Bookstore
Why are there now so many books of lists of ten things we must do before we die? Why not nine, or eleven? And why should pay someone for a list of experiences he says you and I must fulfill before we shuffle off what Shakespeare is pleased to call this mortal coil?
Read MoreBrandeis University Promulgates an Edict Against Thinking
Addict homeless person prostitute you guys
Rule of thumb picnic wife-beater trigger
Warning disabled victim survivor
Lame freshman spirit animal insane
Mysterious Jellyfish Gathering
That jellyfish gathering is no mystery
Like everyone they want to go to the beach
To play in the water, soak up some rays
Picnic, show off, buy some souvenir mugs
Coffee and Cookies after Mass
Only there is no coffee after Mass
No cookies or Kool-Aid for the kidlets
The parish hall has been locked up for months
And you know, there’s just something wrong with that
When I was on the Faculty at Notre Dame…
“The Oasis Within” can be read solely as a story, and it would be both diverting and useful, but the thinking reader will also consider the many questions about the meanings in one’s life and the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Read MoreA Child of God and of Long Summer Afternoons
Do you remember lying on the grassy bank
On a summer afternoon, holding very still…
The Theory and Practice of Summer
A curious fact about Midsummer is that it does not fall in the middle of our calendar summer. However, Midsummer does fall in the middle of true summer, around the time of the solstice and of St. John’s Day. In the context of trees and grasses and flowers and agriculture, summer began months ago and is now at its peak, now declining with the sun towards Michaelmas and autumn.
Read MoreThe Writer, the Reader, and the Synapse Between Them
Like a 16-year-old crossing a field at noon
A little word has a lot of ground to cover in the heat
A mile of open ground to a wall and some trees
Where confusion does not want it to arrive
Midsummer Mysteries
One of the merry mysteries of midsummer
Is that midsummer isn’t midsummer at all
Maybe it was, back in the shadows of time
When Tolkien’s fairies blessed a happier world
Graduation Speech Soup – Simply Stir and Serve
Have you noticed that despite all speakers’ efforts, graduation speeches sound very much alike? “Keep the torch alive to pass to a new generation with the key that unlocks the road to the future…”
Read MoreThe 7th of June, 1944 and 1970
My father beached at Normandy on the second day
(He was okay with having missed the first)
From there through France to Belgium in the mud
For a bloody Christmas in the icy Bulge
Memorial Day 2021
Memorial Day is when we remember our friends
As they were…
A Brief Review of Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers
If today you find yourself in the company of Texas Rangers, no matter who you are, you know that truth and justice will prevail. But it was not always so, and that is the thesis of Doug J. Swanson’s disturbing but well-documented book, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.
Read MoreDaddyPaw’s Letters from the CCC Camp
He found his DaddyPaw’s young adulthood
In a box of letters from New Mexico
About fighting forest fires and building fence
To the stockyards at Magdalena
To God, Who Gives Joy
You still approach the Altar as a child
As you once were, and are, and will be forever
For God will have it so, will have you so –
Enchanted by His magic – a little boy
Squirrels Without End, Amen
Whenever I take my book to the front-yard oak
The squirrel stretched from the feeder to the trunk
Flees in a seed-strewn panic across the lawn
To a farther tree, free of human menace
This Side of the Covid
Infections are up and deaths are ‘way down
Or is it that infections are down and deaths are up?
Schools must be closed and the restaurants open
Or schools must be open and restaurants closed…
Barney Fife! Thou Shouldst be Living at this Hour
Police chiefs are costumed as admirals these days
Or as generals, with medals and eagles and stars
Peaked caps and polished boots, more Patton than Patton
In stern command of parking-lot plywood lecterns
