Hospital reflections

In the hospital. That’s where I spent the greater part of a week approaching Lent 2019. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It was one of those things where I brushed it off, but the spouse wouldn’t let it go. “You’re going

Winter musings

Four items plus one in search of a late-winter column: 1. Plasma therapy: Ambrosia Health offers “young plasma treatments.” These are “intravenous infusions of plasma from young donors, who are in the age range of 16 to 25.” According to its home

Heaven in a basement

“There are places I’ll remember / All my life though some have changed. / Some forever not for better / Some have gone and some remain.” That’s from “In My Life,” an old Beatles song. Though I have to remember that there

Hope in the ordinary

I always think of the opening line to Snoopy’s first novel in the old “Peanuts” cartoon: “It was a dark and stormy night.” On Dec. 26, at 12:01 a.m., the lights go out in Indiana. The Christmas trees are out in the

True courage in red

“Atheists.” That’s what the pagan world considered Christians. With good reason. To the Christians, the pagan universe of gods and goddesses was all bunk. There was only one God. Not a God superior to the other gods. The only God. The Roman

Christmas carols

  I still can wake up at 2:30 a.m. in mid-July with “Joy to the World” whispering to me, and not the “Three Dog Night” song. Back in the day, the nuns drilled us on Christmas carols like they drilled us on

A courageous story

There is an early, defining moment in Joyce Duriga’s biography of Father Augustus Tolton. Father Tolton was the first native-born American of African descent ordained for the Catholic Church in America. He was born a slave to a Catholic family in pre-Civil

Honorary lifers

It’s getting to the point where I hate anything that has to do with a phone other than talking and listening. I can’t get a slice of pizza without somebody trying to get me to download an app to order from on

The reality of hatred

I grew up Jewish. Not really, but it seemed that way. At least to a kid back in the 1950s and early ’60s, Catholic and Jewish life in the old North Yonkers, New York, were part of each other. The first girl

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