Last winter, I wrote an essay about returning to Notre Dame for the first time in decades to attend my 25th reunion. “The Reluctant Domer” put to words my ambivalence about returning to a place where I hadn’t always felt at ease.
Christmas Mass in our large and affluent parish has a buzz, an energy to it. And I hate it. Like the grinchiest grinch who ever grinched off to Mass, I hate it.
We hope for gifts and — more — the meaning behind them. We hope for the good times and comforts of family. We hope for peace and well-being. We hope for Jesus Christ to come to earth, to come into our lives.
The Great Nativity Question, in any conscientious Catholic household, is whether baby Jesus takes up his position in the stable with the rest of the figurines or stays in the box until 12:01 on Christmas morning.
“Mom, where do flies live?” “Flies live outside.” “I know that, but where do they go night-night?”
As the scale of the military intervention has increased in Afghanistan, so has the armed violence and influence of the Taliban. Reversing this deadly dynamic will require an approach that pursues demilitarization through the gradual disengagement of U.S. and NATO military forces.
My Notre Dame spectator experience has been teaching me a lot about being a fan. Recent lesson: You wanna be a hockey fan? Toughen up.
When I finished writing the Joseph Brennan obituary for our winter print edition, I knew I had more to say. It has gone unsaid for decades, and it’s too late now.
Hardly anybody dies on the field anymore. After 18 college football players were killed in the 1905 season, Teddy Roosevelt helped resuscitate a sport on a grim slog to the grave. He convened Ivy League leaders and the resulting rules changes saved lives.
Google employees can now have personal odd jobs done at company expense. If Pope Benedict XVI knows about the perk, doubtless he would give his blessing.
Strips 43-47 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977.
I was so tired of baking cookies and frosting cupcakes and listening to my kids fight over nutcrackers that I opened the fridge, took out some bottle we opened for dinner who-knows-when and had a cold glass of not-that-great wine.
“That? That’s just a picture of Mary,” Sister Antoinette said. “That picture can’t help you, but she will, always.”
The verbal assault from the back seat is loud. “You’re mean. I don’t love you anymore. You are the worst mommy ever.” My daughter punctuates herself by throwing a doughnut at my head.
Sentry duty is what the Advent season is all about. Paying attention and keeping a weather eye, because as the days of Noah were before the flood, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.
The killing frost had not come yet and everything was still holding on. While I was at the park that day with the children, I noticed a tree. I stared at the tree because it was beautiful and fleeting and I wanted it to stay.
Welcome to Molarity Redux, the 12th strip in the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends.
Strips 38-42 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977.
My walking partner is deathly afraid of dogs. If a dog is anywhere nearby, she’ll position herself so I am between her and the threat. What? Better that I be attacked than her?
A number of the Tea Party candidates elected on Nov. 2 see themselves following in the footsteps of the father of economics, Adam Smith. However, Smith has more in common with the Catholic social thought of Pope Benedict XVI than with the philosophy of Tea Party devotees of the free market.
I am one of the reigning queens of angst. But I can host a great Thanksgiving dinner.
‘The scientific goal of the Large Hadron Collider research program is no less than to understand the nature and origin of the universe itself.’
Welcome to Molarity Redux, the 11th strip in the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends.
We are playing with coloring books with lots of dinosaurs and lots of dinosaur stickers. I can’t identify all of them so we, the kids and I, decide to go on the Internet to do some dinosaur research.
The varied viewpoints about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear are indicative of what prompted the rally in the first place: divided experiences are leading to intractably divided viewpoints.
No bikinis, no sunny skies, no sand. Already the Notre Dame volleyball team is at a disadvantage in terms of drawing spectators. But don’ t tell their fans that.
When I was young, Halloween was serious business. It had nothing to do with community, costumes, martyrs, saints or the souls of dead people. Halloween was about candy.
Myles Brand had to spell out the finer points of amateurism for me, all but sighing, “Do I have to spell it out for you?” During a 2006 South Bend Tribune interview, we got to talking about Tom Zbikowski ’07 and his NCAA-approved professional boxing debut that summer.
A spectator needs comfort as much as excitement, and I had a great plan for watching the ND rowing team compete against Tulsa. Arrive at Farmer’s Market before the racing start. Buy a sweet treat, then head for the bridge and cheer as the boats passed by.
My grandmother died not long ago, and because she led a thoroughly generous and kindly life, I feel compelled to sing a few lines in loving memory of Alberta Mary Van Thiel Taylor.