Let's Explore What Others Ignore
Resurrection, published in 1899, was Tolstoy’s last novel and the cause of his being excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. It’s powerful and depressing and thought-provoking in the extreme. Resurrection fully embodies Tolstoy’s method of writing after his religious awakening;…
One cannot read Christopher Dawson’s The Crisis of Western Education without feeling a tremendous sense of loss – the loss of purpose, the loss of a full life, the loss of the future. I’ll quote Dawson at length here, because…
The Hound of Distributism, A Solution for Our Social and Economic Crisis, Edited by Richard Aleman. I picked up this gem at the 2023 Chesterton Conference in Minneapolis. If you want to quickly and (relatively) easily get the gist of…
“For the new paganism has nothing in common with the poetical idealization of Hellenic myth by the humanists and classicists of recent centuries: it is the unloosing of the powers of the abyss — the dark forces that have been…
THE GAME On low-lying ground the children started a game With the vaguest of rules but a very clear aim. The object was simply to find the way home, So with a bagful of clues they set off to roam.…
INFINITY Does the Realm of Infinity Belong to Science or Divinity? Was its cause Physical laws, Or was it made by God With a casual nod? Of what does it consist … Or does it even exist? To answer these…
The Lord as Their Portion, The Story of Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World, by Elizabeth Rapley. Elizabeth Rapley takes on the monumental task of presenting a comprehensive overview of Catholic religious orders from their roots in Christian…
A BLACK HOLE A black hole is a matter of some gravity, Darker than coal, an infinite cavity. An astronomical phenomenon that’s out of sight, A tunnel at the end of the light. (Artwork by Everett)
Many additions in this update of my exploration of classical music. Grading is purely subjective; my top picks are in bold. Music listed below is about 95% Baroque. Abel, Carl Friedrich (1723-1787),Symphonies, Opp. 1 & 4, Die Kolner Akademie &…
With God in America, The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit, Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., Compiled and edited by John M. DeJak and Marc Lindeijer, S.J. When Fr. Walter Ciszek came back to the United States after 23 years captivity…
Empire of Ice and Stone, The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk, by Buddy Levy. It’s a very suspenseful, rather complicated Arctic exploration story that all started in 1913. The author’s angle on the adventure is a tale of…
“On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had…
In 1939, an American Jesuit priest, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, slipped into the Soviet Union in hopes of ministering to Catholics who had been deprived of their priests by the communist government. In short order he was arrested, mercilessly interrogated…
News flash: The Apple Music Classical app is now available. I was playing around with it last night and all in all, the app is off to a great start. Overview The database of music is HUGE. Sound quality is…
We hear a lot about progress. We hear about progressive policies and progressive attitudes. But how often do we stop and think, what does progress mean? What is the end toward which we are progressing? We tend to think about…
Amundsen. Shackleton. Peary. Nansen. The pantheon of Arctic exploration is full of legends, but one you probably never heard of who belongs there is Valerian Albanov. Although a big fan of Arctic exploration books, I had never heard of Albanov…
With God in Russia, by Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, with Daniel L. Flaherty, SJ. In 1939, an American Jesuit priest named Walter J. Ciszek (born in 1904) slipped into the Soviet Union using a false identity, in the hope of…
Few things in this world are more culturally unpopular than abstaining from alcohol. Just about everywhere on earth people are conditioned to associate alcoholic beverages with fun, and even to believe it’s impossible to have fun without alcohol. And this…
The Shallows, What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, originally published in 2010, with an updated afterword (2020). “Of all the sacrifices we make when we devote ourselves to the Internet as our universal medium, the…
I cannot stop thinking about the painting below, What Is Truth, by Nikolai Ge. The fact I use this image as my phone’s lock screen undoubtedly contributes to my obsession, but it goes much deeper than that. Take a look:…