Monthly Archives: December 2011

College on a Boat

By Robin Bates | Published: December 20, 2011

The Sea Voyager, temporary home to St. Mary’s students after we were hit with a bad mold problem, left campus on Sunday, bringing to mind an Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem.

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Hitchens: A Life Lived in Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: December 19, 2011

Even in his final days, Christopher Hitchens was having active discussions about novels, poems and plays. He understood how much was at stake in literature.

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Mary’s Irrational Decision to Have Jesus

By Robin Bates | Published: December 18, 2011

As Madeleine L’Engle writes, “Had Mary been filled with reason/There’d been no room for the child.”

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Christmas Life in the Face of Death

By Robin Bates | Published: December 16, 2011

Comparing the Japanese film “Departures” with “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” give special insight into the meaning of Christmas.

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If Jane Austen Used Facebook . . .

By Robin Bates | Published: December 15, 2011

To update Jane Austen, my class took eight of her characters from “Sense and Sensibility” and put them in Facebook conversation with each other.

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Deficit Plan: No Food Stamps for the Rich

By Robin Bates | Published: December 14, 2011

The “New Yorker’s” Hendrik Herzberg has a perfect Anatole France quotation for Republican plans to pay for extending the payroll tax exemption.

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The Healing Power of Talking about Race

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2011

Race, as we learned from watching a play based on student experiences with the subject, is more painful when we avoid it than we we confront it head-on.

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Move with the Wind, Sleep under the Snow

By Robin Bates | Published: December 12, 2011

Here’s a non-Christmas tree poem by Scott Bates for friends of the environment.

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Reaching Out for the Anchoring Pole

By Robin Bates | Published: December 11, 2011

In “Vineyard Stories” poet Anne Higgins combines three of Jesus’s parables to imagine a vineyard where all can come and feast.

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