The Pale Lady of the Well

May 9, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall …when outside at dusk with poetry and pipe / And a whisper of single-malt offered to the earth / Sometimes I seem to see visions proper to a Celt / And hear soft songs from the dawn of time

Spring 2023: An Issue of Liberty

May 6, 2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Join us as we explore the issues of Life! In this issue you will find thoughts on history, Jesus, the prison system, motherhood, and plenty more!

The Saturday Morning Tee-Ball Hero

April 25, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A little moppet scampers around the tee / Waving her plastic bat as a warrior’s sword / Or as a fairy-wand to magic the day / Her first-ever tee-ball lesson with Dad…

Who Has Been Eating My Chair?

April 18, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Lawn chairs are for lawn-sitting quite at our ease / Soft summer evenings with a book and a glass / With birds and squirrels chittering away / Merrily over their supper of chicken scratch

Send Them Your Dawn, O Lord

April 11, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … We repudiate Putin and all his works / And all his pomps and all his engines of death / And all his malignant servile orcs / Who crucify humanity with lies

The Shape of a Poem, the Shape of a Life

April 4, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Yes, they are awkward, those poems written in shapes / But if God writes our lives as poetry / Limned and formed for our continuation / We ask that He shape us with clarity and charity

Everybody Writes a Poem About the Moon

March 28, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

Everybody writes about the moon / Often trying to force a balky rhyme / Along the continuum of spoon and croon / Which just won’t fill the bill, the quill, or the time

Wake Up, Back Yard!

March 21, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Brave seedlings from last year’s sunflowers arise / Among the tiny wings of zinnia buds / And the pushy skunk cabbages who hang around / Like playground bullies who ought to go find jobs

On the Consumption of Art

March 14, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

But we do not consume a work of art / Sometimes we almost seem to marry it / Joining art in a sacrament of love / Beyond the velvet ropes of ownership

Don’t Follow the Science

March 11, 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

“Follow the science” is itself an unscientific expression, personifying science as a sort of cosmic Boy Scout troop leader or perhaps a soldier taking the point. It suggests that we should not follow our hearts (which is just as illogical), our music, our dreams, or anything else except science personified almost as a deity.

All Intelligence is Artificial

March 7, 2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

No, no, we are not banks of blinking lights / And random teletype-type taps and beeps / Like Patrick McGoohan’s educational General / Or George Jetson’s mainframe at Spacely Sprockets

Treadmills, Exercise, Open Cars, Champagne, and Cigars

March 4, 2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

The panther-like litheness of my youth (cough) long ago expanded into the, oh, prosperous look of Chaucer’s merchant, and so I have gotten into the excellent but Calvinistic habit of, well, treading along a treadmill every day.

People of the Book

February 28, 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

The Thought became Incarnate in Judaea / And thoughts become incarnate in the books we read / For thoughts are tabernacles of our hopes / Tents in the deserts of our wanderings

For Jack On His Birthday

February 14, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

In the long ago I was reading a book / (And doubtless thinking many brilliant thoughts) / Sitting in my car outside Our Lady’s Church / Waiting for some old-lady meeting to end

Civilization Begins at the Barn

February 9, 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

Barns are good. In our times of destruction and violence, the idea of raising a barn is a vote for civilization…

Memphian Lamentation

February 7, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Let us instead look within our fatal selves / With every resentment validating the Fall of Man / With every snub murdering Abel again / With every lie sentencing Christ to death

Winter 2023: An Issue of Life

February 4, 2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Join us as we explore the issues of Life! In this issue you will find poetry, two new stories, discussions of human dignity, and plenty more! Also, check out our photo contest entries on page six!

Destry Rides Yet Again

February 2, 2023.Reading time 9 minutes.

One of the satellite channels programmed a weekend of Audie Murphy cowboy movies. In my youth these were a Saturday afternoon staple down at the Palace Theatre, of happy memory, and I was pleased to revisit Destry (1954).

Tolkien’s Shelob the Spider

January 31, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose / Her lair all befouled with scraps of souls / In life sought out with her multiplex eyes / Her Sauron-eyes – it was the hopes that died first

A Very Brief Review of When Books Went to War

January 26, 2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

…tyrants don’t want people thinking for themselves. Books are dangerous to bullies, whether they are Hitler, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Vlad the Bad Putin, Chairman Xi, or the Ms. Grundy down the street.