Christmas is almost here, and with the last week of Advent comes the frantic rush to finish buying and making Christmas gifts. Despite my best efforts, it seems like there are always one or two people (at least) who still have me stumped right into the week before Christmas. Usually, it’s not the kids who […]

First of all, if you live in Lafayette Parish, please go vote “yes” for the library millage. If you’re wondering why, my own reasons are in this post and this post. Don’t worry – we’ll wait. Now that you’ve done you civic duty, I have a couple of thoughts for you on the topic of […]

Last week, I spent some time exploring the situation our local libraries are in and how we got here. This week, I’d like to continue the discussion by looking at some of the benefits a strong library system brings to our community — in other words, what we risk losing if the millage ultimately fails […]

I think everyone who knows us knows one thing about us: our family loves books. The bookshelves line the walls to the point that there’s no room to hang art. There are stacks by everyone’s desk, on everyone’s nightstand, and (often) in the van. Naturally, something else comes with our love of books: a love […]

I’ve read a good bit of Wendell Berry’s writing in the past, but most of my focus was on his essays. The Unsettling of America, which I think I could still find blindfolded in the Jones Creek Library in Baton Rouge, formed the way I think about culture and the land. On the other hand, […]

I came across this passage in one of Dorothy Day’s monthly columns for the Catholic Worker paper the other day, written when she was staying with her daughter before the birth of her third grandchild: “It has been a month of ‘ice, rains, snow and stormy winds,’ and every morning after the routine of fires, […]

This happened at our dinner table this week. The twelve-year-old wandered off. (Usually not a cause for concern – usually she would be in search of more water, or a condiment, or the bathroom.) After a few minutes I said, “Where’s Samantha?” Not in the kitchen. No one was sure where she had gone. Shortly […]

I heard a homily recently centered around the idea of the “next right thing,” or “one small change.” When I got home and turned to the reflection book I’ve been praying with at night, I found this: “The solution proposed in the Gospels is that of voluntary poverty and the works of mercy. It is […]

Here, for your laughter and enjoyment, is my Completely Unreasonable Summer Reading List. I really do want to read all these books, not necessarily in this order. Preferably soon. Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) (the second half) The Iliad (Homer) The Making of a Poem (Mark Strand, Eavan Boland) Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire (Susan Tan) […]

We did a silly thing. We went to a violin rehearsal, despite the flash flood warnings, with the thought that if the weather was really that bad, surely it would have been canceled. Trying to get home, and circling helplessly with all the other soggy cars on the south-west side of Lafayette, I was at […]