It can cure backache. And asthma. And obesity, writer’s block, alcoholism, schizophrenia, prejudice, heart disease, drug addiction, headaches, and aids. It makes bread rise better and improves the taste of beer. It can even make you smarter—so smart that in Florida it’s now the law that . . . . Continue Reading »
Sacred Music of the 20th Century LAL-2001, Life Art, Ltd. 129 Frandview Terrace, Box 300, Lakeside, MT 59922 The most unexpected classical music recording I’ve run across recently is Sacred Music of the 20th Century, a compact disc chiefly devoted to a cantata by John Boyle called Requiem for the . . . . Continue Reading »
There! He’s one of the first onstage! A less disheveled crowd than usual . . . Under those lights he probably can’t see us. His son took his place on the top row of risers. . . . sheepishly enduring the scattered applause until the other choristers had filed on. The conductor is grey-haired. A . . . . Continue Reading »
In a moment of exasperation, the novelist Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend that the motto of the Catholic Church could be: We Guarantee to Corrupt Nothing But Your Taste. O'Connor's remark was penned before the impact of the Second Vatican Council was felt by American Catholics, and anyone alert . . . . Continue Reading »
Lately I’ve been noting an interesting linguistic phenomenon: the all-purpose word. You come across it most often in slang, especially the slang of children and adolescents. Take “narly,” for instance—a word which, in my limited acquaintance, seems capable of an almost infinite range of . . . . Continue Reading »
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