On the town square this morning I watched them wrap a chain around the stem of the massive Christmas tree and hitch it to the back of a tractor. They then dragged it away, down along the main street. People stopped along the sidewalks and watched it passing by.
Tweet Tweet ~
"If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey."
On September eleven
when it happened
while we watched
we could not help thinking about
our own thin brick walls
left standing around us
here, in the heartland.
Walled in between
panic and gratitude
we sat gaping,
not noticing
how our helpless tears
would not stop falling.
When the end is near, a monk who had really been a monk all his life ends up asking if he had not been deluded the whole time, and if what he believed was all made up.
Two major American sports teams have announced that they will stop playing Kate Smith's rendition of the Irving Berlin patriotic
classic God Bless America because of racist views she supposedly had.
And Daniel Barenboim would rather not perform Johann Sebastian Bach's St. John Passion with the Berlin Philhormoniker because of the antisemitic passages in it.
I had taught them for years and they were obviously frightened. Written and oral exams tomorrow. I told them to relax now and forget the books. They had learned a lot of German in four years. . . Go downtown this evening and go for a quiet walk. No drinking, no horsing around. Turn in early for a good night's sleep. Come in tomorrow alert and looking sharp: boys in jacket, shirt and tie, the girls wearing their neat dresses. Have happy thoughts and be confident. If you let it, everything will meld and fall into place, but you must be calm and receptive.
" . . . this ability he has to sense our darkest instincts and call to them, coax them out of hiding, when we'd prefer not to see them at all."
Nancy Gibbs Time
And then this at Christmas time:
More than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse . . . public list of Chicago-area priests with credible allegation of abuse to grow . . .
Chicago Tribune