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In the summer, in Manhattan, giant storm systems sweep through and create havoc—they rip off tree branches in front of your eyes, send trash flying through the air, turn every umbrella the wrong way out, and turn the gutters into rivers. They are violent and powerful, but they stay for only a fraction of an…

The truth is, presidents are small potatoes in history’s larder. —Andrea Long Chu All his life he had been peering into the distance over the heads of those around him when all he had to do was stop straining his eyes and look down right in front of him. — War and Peace, Volume IV,…

Throughout Sarah Bessey’s luminous Miracles and Other Reasonable things: a Story of Unlearning and Relearning God, she uses the phrase “shalom.” Shalom is language that is fairly uncommon in liturgical Christian denominations, certainly in Catholicism, and I kept getting caught up on what Bessey meant by it. Popularized in American Christian discourse by my adored…

“Isaac Babel put it, “If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” The New Yorker, November 2007 I am currently nearing the end (which means I have a full novel’s length to go!) of War and Peace and, after lifelong indifference towards the author of Anna Karenina, I have slowly fallen…

Today, I went to Mass for the first time since March 21st. It seems both like a laughably long time, incomprehensible to have lived an entire liturgical season without the usual communal Eucharistic celebrations. But also so short! It has only been three months, I suppose. And in comparison to other sacrifices or time that…

Slow scales at 6pm, up and down,scattering up window panescabinets, sink edges slicked withdish soap scum and water droplets,winding woodwind notes drop one long wailinto the dragging, humiddusk of kitchen dark.Each day I crush a new one on the green tile backsplash,as the clarinet empties its last breath

There’s a reason, I think, that American history lessons end with World War II. We are too afraid to teach children what comes after that. The glowing portrait of the USA as cowboys of the world who saved the West from Nazis was exploded by the atomic bombs we dropped on a broken island empire.…

The stars make a picture in the skyof places that you’ve beenthat you can no longer see. You look for the aurora borealis,but no one sees it. No one sees it in the dark. It’s the small genius inside the head of the man whose mind works the square root of galaxiesin a matter of…

I was thinking about Jainism as I undocked my CitiBike. I wondered if Jains would support abortion? It seemed like they would be my one ally on the progressive left. I felt like a Jain with the mask on my face. No bugs being swallowed with this make meant to ward off a fiercer bug.…