Sally Thomas

We start Monday, and not a moment too soon, in my view. I’ve spent the last two days scheduling everyone’s reading and other work from now till Christmas, using the lesson-plan feature at Homeschool Reporting, the record-keeping service to which we’ve subscribed since the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Anchoress writes that she has bought, by hook, crook, and little miracle, this beautiful crucifix which I’d featured last week in another eBaywatch. I am beyond delighted that something so beautiful has found such a good home. She’s promised to send me a photograph of it in her . . . . Continue Reading »

Joe asks whether I’m having the teenager read any of Richard Wilbur’s poetry as part of her American-literature course. Wilbur, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, is an elder statesman of American letters and may well represent, though I don’t know anything about his actual politics, one . . . . Continue Reading »

Forgot one item on the teenager’s reading list for this year: How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren. When I handed her the book, she took one look at the title, laughed, and said, “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” . . . . Continue Reading »

At Light on Dark Water, conversation about a luminous novel: Pilgrim’s Inn, by the mid-20th-century English writer Elizabeth Goudge. . . . . Continue Reading »

Over the summer, as you may remember, I posted lists of my household’s reading here and here. Well, now the last sun of summer has set over the gables here at the House of Curiosities. In actual point of fact, the sun set, as it does every day, over the Aspen Street viaduct to the west of us, . . . . Continue Reading »

The other day we visited Saint John the Baptist in Tryon, North Carolina, where renovations gallop apace. Here, today, you may tour — not for the sake of comparison; as we all know, comparisons are odious — my own parish church, inside and out. Now, I love it, but as you can see, this is . . . . Continue Reading »

At best, Brad Gooch’s Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor delivers a mixed cargo of goods. Gooch’s portrait of this major American writer, with its entertaining wealth of “Flannery” anecdotes from people who knew her in various capacities”family, neighbors, literary associates, spiritual advisors, admirers”depicts the kind of character for whom the phrase “an interesting person in her own right” was coined. And yet it’s a fragmented portrait, with a sour aftertaste… Continue Reading »

This is a blog concerned with the material culture of religion, and as a general rule, I don’t write about politics. I do, however, write about weirdness. And there’s something about the saga of my hometown mayor which attains to the level of — well, at least of the voodoo products . . . . Continue Reading »

My computer is moving at the speed of mud this morning. I type a sentence, then I go away and scrub the bathtub while I wait for my words to appear on the screen. This is one way, I suppose, to juggle the demands of work and household; in other circumstances, given the same list of tasks to . . . . Continue Reading »