Ten years ago my 21-year-old son died on the Sunday following Easter. The coupling of the tragedy with the celebration of Christ’s resurrection makes my questioning of the religious observance all the more acute. Do I really believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Is there life after the death of our bodies? Or if […]
Film Friday As this is Friday, I begin with a discussion of a film. But as it is also the tenth anniversary of the drowning death of my 21-year-old son Justin, I plan to digress. I trust you will allow me to embark on a bit of a ramble. The film I have chosen is […]
Yesterday we buried a long-time friend, 98-year-old Maurine Holbert Hogaboom, a New York actress who had retired to southern Maryland. Tomorrow we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of my oldest son Justin. April, a month of new beginnings, has too often proved cruel as well. Nature often works ironically. Justin, feeling joyous on a […]
Doctors debate while patient dies in Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress,” plate V I’ve talked several times about my friend Alan, who has been battling cancer for a while now. At present he is still alive, still working out at the gym, and still in the dark about what kind of cancer he has. He longs for […]
Lucille, daughters, and granddaughter On Saturday night St. Mary’s College held a memorial service for Lucille Clifton, the noted American poet who was also our teacher, colleague and friend for almost twenty years. For me, the most moving part of the ceremony was hearing Lucille’s remaining three daughters reading their favorite poems. Or rather, they chose […]
The ornamental cherry trees on St. Mary’s College campus are in full bloom at the moment. Few moments of the spring are more beautiful. I remember the shock a number of years ago when a beaver moved into the area and took them all down. The animal was deported, new trees were planted, and now […]
Yesterday a good friend died. Her name was Maurine Holbert Hogaboom and she was 98. If you want to read about her amazing life—how she journeyed to New York from rural Texas as a member of a burlesque troupe, how she found a living in the theatre, how she was called up before the House […]
William Wordsworth One day Robinson Crusoe, the next William Blake, the next William Wordsworth. Thanks to four or five classes cancelled due to snow, my Introduction to Literature class is careening through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But we still had time to stop and contemplate Wordsworth’s wondrous lyric “A slumber did my spirit […]
My wife Julia and I visited the National Geographic Museum to see the Terracotta Warriors this past Friday. Even though only a few statues and artifacts from the vast archaeological digs in China were on display, we saw enough to be very impressed. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, started constructing statues for […]
