When I was growing up in the Catholic Church, November 1st was a Holy Day. All Saints Day, they called it. Aside from the obligatory Mass I attended, it was a day to stop, to take time out of our busy lives to remember, to pray for, and to be thankful for all the saints…

My sister died on a day when I was in Nashville. She went to be home, and I was five hundred miles from home, and another two thousand miles from my sister. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A one-to-three-months-to-live death sentence wasn’t supposed to only last two weeks, and vacations—taken in part as…

I am between flights. It’s a four-day wait in this case, and I can spend it at home, so it probably doesn’t constitute a proper layover. But it feels like a layover, and I have a difficult time concentrating on anything but my connecting flight, the one that will unite me with my sister. I’m…

For the third time this week I’ve encountered someone who wants to talk about music. And I’m delighted. I love to talk about music. He’s just found out that I write about music for one of my paychecks, and he’s eager to engage in a spirited conversation. “So,” he says, “do you think there’s ever…

When I heard about the death of pop singer Amy Winehouse, age 27, I immediately had two reactions. The first was great sadness. You can see the train wreck coming, but that doesn’t make the resulting smashup any less tragic or senseless. It is always sobering to witness great talent and the waste of great…

My wife and I have seven college degrees between us. We share more layoffs than that. All those degrees, minus the dubious M.B.A. I earned a few years back, are in liberal arts fields. This may also help to explain those layoffs, although I suppose that sheer workplace incompetence can never be ruled out entirely.…

In IT terms, I am an asynchronous reader. I frequently read two or three books simultaneously, and that can sometimes lead to strange juxtapositions. I’m currently reading Kathleen Norris’s Acedia and Me and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. It’s the monastic tradition and seedy L.A. detective grit. And it’s creating some fairly bizarre cognitive dissonance…

There is no more divisive topic in Christendom than the music we employ to worship the creator of the universe. We may co-exist in uneasy unity in the midst of our differing views of the Eucharist, or baptism, or Rob Bell, but nothing predicts a surefire church schism more accurately than a preening church organist…

Back when garage bands actually used to practice in garages, my local swimming pool sponsored Battle of the Bands nights. Sixteen-year-old boys with hair hanging down in their eyes used to flail away on their guitars, spurred on by visions of appearing on Shindig or American Bandstand, or, failing that, winning the adulation of a…

I don’t know who came up with the idea; probably some urban hipster. Figure out those goods and services you need to survive, ditch your car, and then see how far you have to walk to arrive at those places that meet your basic needs. Put it all together, divide by the unsquare root of…