The Narthex

Late on a Sunday morning I walked into the nursing home to visit Della. I peeked into her double-occupancy room. Her bed was closest to the hall door, and she lay there with her eyes closed. But she somehow knew when to open them and look at me. Though her…

It was a Thursday afternoon. I was working from home and had just finished a coffee break with my wife when one of the neighbors called through my front screen door, “Come quickly. There’s been an emergency.” I rushed to her house, where another of our neighbors from the block,…

Three houses over from mine, Wanda, a 72-year-old woman, lived with Marsha, her 47-year-old daughter, and Devan, her 17-year-old granddaughter. The teen got pregnant, and not long after baby Gary was born, the kid’s father was knifed to death in a gang fight. His lifeblood pooled in front of my…

Two of my old friends are in the same nursing home, so visiting them each month is a two-for-one event for me. As I walked into the entryway, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair sat with his head hung low. My friends often complain of my coming and going like…

I handed out clothing and served food at a Boston Catholic Worker House during the 1960s. Homeless veterans in army jackets lined up for hot meals and warm clothing during the winter. Day after day, the same dour faces came, ate, and left. They slept in vacant buildings at night…

The city built a small neighborhood park around the corner from me. Half-a-dozen homeless people congregate there. I seem to be one of their kind with my close-cut beard, Goodwill clothing, and droopy shade hat. They’ve been waving and greeting me with “Como esta?” “Muy bien,” I respond with a…

Professors Heather Erb and Steve Bertucci, tutors at Angelicum Academy, are engaging and persuasive exponents of “Great Books Education.” And just what is a Great Book? It is one of enduring significance and a lever, as it were, for the human enterprise. It is a tool that helps take us…

Sure, some professors are boring. Blimey, some of us remember Harvard’s eminent Professor Boring, Edwin Boring, a leading psychologist of the 20th century. Some blogs, maybe, are also boring. Not to mention a weekly podcast I host. A good friend, reviewing this humble effort, said that he found some of…

In 2014, I was in discussion with the principal of St. Joseph Academy about my teaching a finance course there. When I happened to mention my brother owned and operated a successful gold mine, that led to an eager invitation for a Power Point presentation at the school. Since Bill…

My wife and I were sitting in Pann’s, a local eatery. Filmmakers use it to get “real life” footage. Service at Pann’s is also real life, as in slow. Rena, in her mid-90’s, stopped by our table, sequins shining, to schmooze. With her husband, decades ago she’d started the place.…

I’ve lived in my lower class neighborhood since 1973 when I bought a four-bedroom house and rented rooms to other youths hoping to start a commune. California’s Prop 13 keeps my property tax low, whereas new buyers nowadays pay eight times as much. Sometimes it pays to be old. But…

What are we doing? When philosophers ask that question, they’re looking for an act-description. An act-description involves an agent, an act, and (implicitly) the intention in so acting. We can take some act-descriptions at face value. Others we can't. Consider two presidential examples. Harry S Truman, pressed to declare a…

The other day I had a chance, via Skype, to have a conversation about what people really want. The conversation was with some friends from the American Solidarity Party and a young socialist working on his Ph.D. If one “average” question leads to another, our question—what do people really want?—led…

Yesterday in the public library I had a challenging conversation with a Protestant evangelical friend who holds the firm belief that the Bible is all she needs to live a holy life (Sola Scriptura). Her private interpretations of Scripture are the result of inward counsel and the Sunday preaching of…

Mother had a collection of vinyl records that I would listen to on a cold wintry day. Some of her vinyl had the interesting RCA Victor trademark label of a Jack Russell Terrier listening to an Edison bell-cylinder wind-up gramophone. The caption underneath read “His Master’s Voice,” with the cute…