Book Review: Altar Boy by Andrew Madden

(ed. Another review from our English friend, who adds: you can still read the intro on Amazon’s British site, don’t know if the American side has the same;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Altar-Story-Homosexual-Catholic-church/dp/1844880397/ref=pd_ys_iyr3) Though we’ve read and watched a lot of newspaper and documentary reports on the subject, I find it hard to relate to religiously organised, systematic child abuse…

Leaving Behind Beauty

Something in Douglas Welch’s latest Career Opportunities column about Ugliness and Beauty struck a chord with me. In it Douglas urges his readers to consider their daily actions and whether they are creating beauty in them or ugliness. Recently I have had reason to communicate with a few folks at work that I normally don’t…

A week’s worth of photos took me a week to post

  Yes, it’s true, I finally have worked my way through all the photos from last week’s vacation and have them posted to Flickr. You can see the week on the Archives over there. Not only are there a bunch from DC but also from Old Town Alexandria, HarpersFerry, WV, and the Antietam and Gettysburg…

Disenfranchised Grief

This afternoon, one of the folks I follow on Twitter regularly, Jennifer Leggio, wrote a blog post about the loss of her father. Even though she hadn’t seen him in 30 years, his death was hard on her: Because over the last year I’ve had one too many people say to me, “If you hadn’t…