Monthly Archives: October 2014

A Writer Walks into a Starbucks…

By Robin Bates | Published: October 22, 2014

Literary Starbucks is an entertain blog that imagines different authors and characters ordering coffee.

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What Defoe Would Say about Ebola

By Robin Bates | Published: October 21, 2014

Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year” has good advice for dealing with outbreaks, such as not to react with overly harsh and fearful measures.

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Making the Invisible Visible

By Robin Bates | Published: October 20, 2014

Tuajuanda Jordan, our college’s newest president, turned to Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” to articulate her vision for the future.

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Enthralled by Anglicanism’s Theatricality

By Robin Bates | Published: October 19, 2014

Spiritual Sunday Last month I posted on a wonderful Alice Munro short story, “The Age of Faith,” about a girl wrestling with issues of faith. In today’s post I look specifically at the protagonist’s experience with the town’s Anglican church since I myself am Anglican (or, as we call it in America, Episcopalian). Most of […]

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KC Royals Storm into World Series

By Robin Bates | Published: October 18, 2014

The way the Kansas City Royals upended conventional wisdom in making it to the World Series is not unlike the chaos caused by Ariel in “The Tempest” to restore another royal to power.

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And a Woman Said, “Tell Us of Pain”

By Robin Bates | Published: October 17, 2014

Is Kahlil Gibran right in seeing pain as a road to enlightenment. Or is this just wish fulfillment?

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Finding Hope in a Captured Fish

By Robin Bates | Published: October 16, 2014

Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” works as a powerful meditation on hope.

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What Does It Mean to Hope against Hope?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 15, 2014

What does it mean to hope against hope? Emily Dickinson and an analytic philosopher weigh in.

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How Do You LIke to Go Up in a Swing?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 14, 2014

In “Child’s Garden of Verses,” Stevenson captures the complex inner lives of children.

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