In the introduction to my book Skeptics and True Believers, I defined two frames of mind.
Articles from March 2023
Photo by Vinicius "amnx" Amano on Unsplash
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Hurry, hurry, step right up…
When P. T Barnum said “There’s a sucker born every minute,” he got it wrong.
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A sense of place: a conversation
It would be hard to find two writers more different than Eudora Welty and Edward Abbey.
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O, never, never! And yet — and yet—
Childhood has two seasons: anticipation and summer.
“Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus” by Andrea di Bonaiuto (1366)
The Angelic Doctor
A half-century ago, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, Thomas Aquinas ruled the roost.
Buttons recovered from the Daily homestead • Image © Stonehill College Archives and Special Collections
Buttons and bowls
Yesterday it was my pleasure (with the able assistance of local historian Ed Hands) to lead a group of fellow citizens from the Easton Historical Society deep into the woods of the Stonehill College campus, to a place where no trail goes — the late-18th-century foundation of the Daily homestead.
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That cottage of darkness
In many ways my mother’s funeral was a joyous occasion — a time to celebrate her life, to celebrate family. A time, too, to think about death.
Detail from "Great Piece of Turf" by Albrecht Dürer (1503)
When God is gone, everything is holy
In a blog posting a week or so ago, I stated that the central contribution of 20th-century science was the shattering of absolutes. There is a corollary: The importance of everything.
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On prayer
The earliest prayer I can remember is “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
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A hinge of history
In two week’s time [in 2006] I will be in Istanbul, on my way to view a total solar eclipse. It will be my second visit to that great city, and my second TSE.