A zest for living
By Sister Ann Astell
My colleagues on the Notre Dame faculty were amazed when they heard I had signed up to travel with students on the “Short Trip” to the Jan. 22 March for Life in Washington, D.C
My colleagues on the Notre Dame faculty were amazed when they heard I had signed up to travel with students on the “Short Trip” to the Jan. 22 March for Life in Washington, D.C
Demonstrators gathered in bitterly cold lunchtime temperatures at Notre Dame’s main gate Wednesday, January 27, to advocate for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the University’s non-discrimination policy.
I predict that the pro-life movement will one day be viewed by a broad consensus of people as a bright segment of what Dr. Martin Luther King called the long moral arc of the universe that bends towards justice.
President Obama and others have criticized the January 21 Supreme Court decision, which overturns certain restrictions on corporations contributing to political campaigns.
Three members of Notre Dame’s Haiti Program, a public health effort to eliminate the disease lymphatic filariasis, were attending a meeting in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck on January 12.
My mother hung up the phone one afternoon in 1969, sick with the news shared by a mutual friend about an old roommate. The woman, once so proud of her pregnancy, had flown to the Caribbean for an abortion.
Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, offers the inspirational story of Notre Dame Law School alumnus John Crowley’s determined fight to advance the medical research needed to save the two youngest of his three children.
The historical situation in Haiti has long been dire.
Maurice Antoine’s feet are too bloated and misshapen to fit into socks. Wrapped in white muslin cloths, they look like canvas potato sacks on the floor of his shack in Haiti.
Notre Dame Magazine has through the years run a number of articles about Haiti. We offer these background pieces for those wishing to learn more about the country and Notre Dame’s work there.
At Notre Dame, education is not an ivory tower enterprise.
Welcome to the premiere episode of Molarity Redux, the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends.

It was a noontime ritual virtually everyone engaged in during the late 1970s and early ’80s at Notre Dame. Whether you were a student, professor, administrator or janitor, it’s likely the first thing you did at lunch each weekday was flip through The Observer…
The Molarity gang will continue its adventures from this website.
The staff of Notre Dame Magazine here offers some gems we’ve discovered of blogs, essays and stories by and about Notre Dame graduates and ND events.

Damian Kulash is absolutely right.
“There are not many people in the world who have the good fortune to be in a position where they can call Dr. Ken Dye and be like, hey, would it be cool if several hundred of your kids came out and made a video with us?”
Chasing down crazy ideas like calling the director of Notre Dame’s marching band and then trying to shoot a coherent short film in one take with the band and a small army of children is the kind of thing he likes to do when the moment presents itself, say Kulash, the OK Go frontman, while attacking a burrito in the Ricci Band Rehearsal Hall.…
“Say something more,” the burly taxi driver demanded after I told him the name of the Dublin hotel where I planned to stay. “Don’t you know where it is?” I inquired, wondering what he meant. “You’re that Yank on the radio,” he responded.
National Public Radio’s Car Talk guys, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, asked listeners to vote for “the worst cars of the millennium.”
After years of letting myself down I resolved this January to ban from my New Year’s forecast any resolutions to change my ways, to improve my life, to make myself better in any way.
Perhaps Faulkner was mistaken and the past really is past — bigotry little more than a rusty whip handle unearthed at the site of a Mississippi plantation.
A digest of Brian Kelly links
A father and son find they are not fallen-away Domers after all.
Last week, right after my boss had asked me whether I’d be willing to go to Pakistan this summer if need be and I’d said yes, the latest Humanitarian Policy Group report on providing aid in insecure environments crossed my desk.
It made for sobering reading.
The relative rates of attacks upon aid workers has increased more than 60 percent in the last three years, with a particular upswing in kidnapping, which has increased by more than 350 percent. The most dangerous location for aid workers remains the road, with vehicle-based attacks by far the most common context for violence. And the 2008 fatality rate for international aid workers exceeded that of U.N. peacekeepers.…
“Don’t you realize you’re just sacrificing your children to your political ideology?” My father-in-law hunched forward.
The Spirit campaign has reached its lofty goal, but here’s where things really stand.

For many, the weekend of October 17 was unlike any other. The USC Trojans were in town, and Notre Dame fans soaked up the unseasonably warm weather as the sun beat down on hundreds of tailgates. For my lacrosse teammates and me, the weekend meant even more as we participated in the dedication of Arlotta Stadium, the new home to Notre Dame’s men’s and women’s lacrosse teams.…
Letters to the editor
Ask actress Emily Liu ’94 how she knows she’s in the right business after nine years struggling to establish herself in Hollywood, and she’ll tell you about an audition she had a few years back.
Scott Mitsui, Notre Dame class of 1992, is upfront about what’s involved in making a movie trailer. “We cheat a lot,” he says.
When Alane Rivera speaks at elementary schools, she starts each presentation by asking the students what they think engineers do