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The Company of the Saints
Monday February 8, 2010
As I write this, two events are fast approaching: a major winter storm and the Saints-Colts Superbowl. I’m not sure which is making me more nervous. Snowstorms were par for the course when we lived in Pittsburgh and Northern Indiana, but in rural Virginia, even a few inches....
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Imagining Sorrow
Friday February 5, 2010
In West Africa, Haiti seems as far away as the moon. Present, distant, it rises every evening to hang in a balance with the glowing Harmattan sun. A few hours later it shows a bright white face against the night. Then the clouds take it back again. A shyster prophet called....
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If You Love Something...
Thursday February 4, 2010
Last month, on the first night of winter, my nephew came home for Christmas break. For the past five years, since my dad (my nephew’s previous legal guardian) died, my nephew (now nineteen) has lived with me. He’s been away at school—a boarding high school, then university—so “living with me” has meant summers and vacations....
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Through the Dark
Wednesday February 3, 2010
Most of the time, I don’t feel like a brave person. This has been true since I was a child, a child plagued by strange and vivid fears. I remember lying in bed at night listening to the drone of airplanes passing by overhead—I would imagine a change in the tenor of the engine, and felt certain....
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Hell, Noun
Tuesday February 2, 2010
I’ve just seen a hell of a film. Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective—hailed as the latest masterpiece of the Romanian New Wave—is likely to convince American moviegoers that they should avoid the Romanian New Wave. The movie moves at a snail’s pace. (The most energetic scene in the film is....













