Posts Tagged ‘Brad Fruhauff’
Brunelleschi’s Balancing Act
April 27, 2017
The story goes that one day Filippo Brunelleschi, the goldsmith who would go on to become the most important architect in Europe and arguably the originator of the Renaissance, devises a practical joke he and his buddies play on their mutual friend, Manetto the woodworker. The gist of it is that they contrive to convince…
Read MoreMysteries Sherlock Holmes Can’t Solve
March 28, 2017
“No, you should definitely major in English,” I told our babysitter, a high-school senior from our church who is considering an English or Communications degree. “Fiction is just like faith,” I said, “it’s its own kind of knowledge that makes our lives richer.” I really believe that, though I have to renew my conviction from…
Read MoreNow is the Time to Read The Man in the High Castle
January 19, 2017
Imagine an alternate history in which a regime arose in the United States that believed in power over equality, profit over values, the privilege of the few over the good of the many, and appearance over truth. Imagine these powers infiltrated the highest offices of our government, and that they began to institute anti-democratic policies,…
Read MoreListening to Beautiful Darkness
November 21, 2016
Waking from the Nightmare A little girl awakens in an autumn wood. She stands, looks up through the red-orange fire of the leaves to see a small patch of white sky. Then she brushes the leaves from her cardigan and walks out of the frame. Someone screams. The idyll is broken. We’re back in the…
Read MoreThe Best Words: Selections from the Sex Tapes of Tremendous Male Poets
November 2, 2016
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! —Theodore Roethke, “I Knew a Woman” I know a woman who feels injustice in her lungs. A therapist, all…
Read MoreCreative Tension in the White Imagination
October 18, 2016
Tension Isn’t Usually Pretty A Facebook video shows a deputy sheriff getting in the face of a young black protester attempting to access the courthouse lawn in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The young man keeps his cool, insisting their intentions are merely to pray peacefully, but the deputy isn’t interested. He just wants them to…
Read MoreWhat My Kid Knew about Kubo
September 14, 2016
[Spoiler alert: This post is about the end of the movie, Kubo and the Two Strings. However, since, I believe, the ending nearly spoils the film itself, you can read this and still enjoy the other, real pleasures of the movie.] In the dramatic climax of Kubo and the Two Strings, our young hero defies…
Read MoreLaura Ingalls Wilder and Me
August 29, 2016
At night at the Ingalls Homestead in DeSmet, SD, we can see the pale, translucent arm of the Milky Way divide a sky of a million stars. The small bright point of a satellite zips across to our left with striking speed and intention. We can’t see the same sky from Evanston, IL. Down the…
Read MoreC.S. Lewis, Less Than Magical
July 14, 2016
I first encountered C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, then quickly consumed The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Abolition of Man before feeling like we’d hit a good place in our relationship. I tend to be cautious like that with authors. I don’t want to lose the (perhaps childish) affection that first obsessed me.…
Read MoreBoyhood and the Incarnation of Time
July 6, 2016
The hardest part of watching Boyhood for me wasn’t the film itself but going back to the main menu. You’ve just been immersed in this family’s life for twelve years, and now suddenly you see select moments of that life assembled together in a collage of stills as that soft, wistful song, “Hero,” plays: So…
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