Last night I gathered with my English as a Second Language students for our final class of the semester. Before digging into another dry reading comprehension exercise, we just sat and talked, which, to be honest, is the main reason that Thursday night is often the highlight of my week.
After describing the administration’s push for the American Services Members Protection Act, Lawrence concludes with this fun little anecdote (and by “fun” I mean horrifying).
Within the strange confines of my personal experience, many of the “Regular Joes” who support President Bush and his agenda seem to do so because he is pro-life and because he evidences publicly the recognizable signs of a “committed walk with God.” Within this community — this large, evangelical sub-culture — voting Republican is a “moral” act, a single gesture by which evangelicals hope to restore America to its Christian foundations.
I never buy eight dollar magazines. Ever. On principle. Even the really tempting ones like Paste that come with those nifty CD samplers. Which is why it’s so odd that, tonight, I bought an eight dollar magazine.
Pass the pie, please.
Tonight, I listened to Shane Claiborne tell stories about Baghdad. He’s taller than I expected (6′ 3″, maybe) and skinnier and younger. I mean, I knew he was young, but after reading his diaries for the last few weeks I somehow expected him to carry the weight of his experience in his skin.
With more than one hundred html documents, nearly three hundred images, and thousands upon thousands of words, Long Pauses was getting a bit unwieldy.
Tony Kushner on President Bush and military intervention in Iraq.
I watched a fantastic installment of Frontline last night called, The Long Road to War. The first half hour was devoted to a political biography of Saddam, the second segment dealt mostly with the ’91 Gulf War, and the final bit addressed the Clinton and Dubya years.
Less than an hour until President Bush’s national address, and I’m too tired, too frustrated, and too stunned to think. I know that there’s not much lower on the blog food chain than posting a poem without comment, but, well, a friend sent this to me today, and it’s been a source of welcomed comfort.
With war now only days away (I assume), parts of the anti-war movement seem to be — and I say this with some hesitation — relishing the prospect of disaster.
I’ve been a champion of Mailer’s political commentary since first reading Armies of the Night and gasping at his prescient analysis of the Cold War. Sure, he can be as subtle as a sledgehammer, but the combined weight of his experience, intelligence, and confidence strike me with a welcomed force.
I so want Bush to be the Christian President that many of my friends claim him to be, but then I read articles like this, in which he makes such ridiculous comments.
In Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer calls himself a member of the “Conservative Left,” which makes more and more sense to me as I spend more and more time arguing with friends about this unnecessary, but apparently inevitable, war.
It’s a small blogoshpere after all. Thanks to this week’s cover story in the Metro Pulse, I’ve discovered that Instapundit (a.k.a. Glenn Reynolds), one of the world’s pioneer and most heavily-trafficed bloggers, spends his days in an office just a few yards from my own.
I had planned to post a rambling personal narrative today, describing in minute detail my particular experiences in Saturday’s anti-war demonstrations. But when I sat down to it, the idea seemed a bit too self-indulgent, even by blog standards.
I’ve heard the soundbite hundreds of times over the years, memorizing subconsciously its particular pauses and inflections. Not until the weeks following September 11, though, did FDR’s most memorable message resonate in any meaningful ways for me.
I’ve never been one to miss high school, but I do occasionally find myself longing for something from those days, something lacking in the day to day management of adult life.
So, it turns out that Laura Bush just cancelled a planned poetry celebration after learning that one of the invited speakers had encouraged his colleagues to use the event as an opportunity to publicly denounce war on Iraq.
A few words on Bush’s speech.
A transcript of Nixon discussing foreign films and modern art.
I spent my lunch hour (and then some) sitting around a table with the senior pastor of a Presbyterian church, the priest of a local Orthodox congregation, and three other laymen, discussing Andrei Rublev.
And by “preparing,” of course, I mean giving practice tests and working systematically (and in mind-numbing detail) through past reading samples — or, in a nutshell, equipping my students not with knowledge or repeatable skills but with the tricks of test-taking.
Working from the assumption that someone out there might actually care, here is my first shot at a rough dissertation outline.
After listening to me ramble incessantly, a professor recently pointed me toward Stanley Hauerwas. I now see why.
In the same way that postmodernism has always been a really problematic and contentious term, post-secular is just another attempt to fix a label on the questions that plague a particular era.
We spent the next 45 minutes discussing the growing interest (academic interest no less) in post-secularism, one of the many -isms vying for a prominent position in our post-postmodern age (if such jargon is even worth using)
A friend from Canada wrote, asking what friends and neighbors in the States are feeling and saying to each other. This is how I responded.
“A new day.” Hurrah. And I get this piece of crap in my mail on the same day that Paul Wellstone is killed in a plane crash.
Snippets from church statements in opposition to the war in Iraq.