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The Playroom: Normal boy stuff
BYWhen my son was 3, I signed him up for skating lessons at the local ice rink. Somehow now, four years later, I’m a hockey mom. And I spend a lot of time lacing up skates in boys’ locker rooms.
Read full articleHomily for Sister Jean Lenz, OSF
BYThese are sad days for those of us who have such fresh memories of Jean Lenz, a woman who inspired us, taught us, changed us, and loved us — and whom we deeply loved in return. Indeed, there is a hole in our hearts and a hole in the congregation tonight.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Sound and fury
BYI am sitting on cement bleachers at an ice rink southeast of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, our home ice. The kids and I are nearing the end of our day, I am tired and my butt is cold. I would like for the women seated near me to stop talking. Endless, mindless chatter about nothing. What merit is left to silence?
Read full articleThe Playroom: A perfect morning
BYA friend recently asked me for advice on how to manage mornings better. Evidently in her house, mornings were stressful, with much yelling and nagging and conflict.
Read full articleThe Sweet Sixteen Solution
BYEvery year the Bowl Championship Series recycles one or two of the controversies that illustrate its inherent contradictions. But there is a simple solution to the BCS nonsense.
Read full articleND monogram winners serving at Pearl Harbor, 1945
BYJohn Hickey Jr. ’69, son of John Hickey ’44, found the attached photo in his father’s scrapbook recently. “He told me that someone had gathered all the ND monogram winners they could find serving in Pearl Harbor some time in 1945,” Hickey wrote.
Read full articleBelieving: Amazement
BYIt appears early each Advent season, the massive crèche mounted on a platform of hay bales at the eastern edge of Notre Dame’s Grotto.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Christmas dilemma
BYThe trouble with gift-giving is that for it to be a good gift it’s got to be something someone else wants and not what I want to buy them.
Read full articleThe Playroom: The prodigal mom
BYOn the great big long list of things I’m really good at, just underneath donating money to solicitations with baby polar bears on the front, is overpaying for everything.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Time to believe
BY“Believe you can and you are halfway there,” said Theodore Roosevelt. That may be good advice if you are running for president or you’re a little engine trying to bring toys to the good little boys and girls on the other side of the mountain, but children’s stories don’t always work out that way.
Read full articleBelieving: A peculiar feast
BYThis annual holiday is as unsettled as America itself, an utterly secular feast during which we celebrate an indistinct gratitude, expressing our thanks, if we are believers, to God, and if we are not believers, to Whomever or Whatever might receive them … as a castaway might toss a message-bearing bottle into an expressionless ocean.
Read full article@nd.edu: A Black Friday survival guide
BYTis the season to be competitive. The season to push and shove. The season to be greedy. ’Tis the season for Black Friday.
Read full articleThe Playroom: A dip into the tween years
BYThis past summer, the summer of my daughter’s entry into tweenhood, I rediscovered something I had almost forgotten, french onion dip.
Read full articleBelieving: A reassurance of purgatory
BYNotre Dame theologian Gary Anderson, an Old Testament scholar, recently wrote about purgatory. I read it late last Saturday night, after a day spent raking up the first autumnal deposit of dead leaves from our front and back yards.
Read full articleWhere Steve Jobs left us
BYEven as we mourn the death of Steve Jobs and laud his enormous contributions, we must be mindful of the power of his innovations and ensure that, by using them, our humanity is not compromised.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Smartphone diaries
BYMy iPhone is broken and I am eating nonstop, a bona fide bender. Contemplating driving to the nearest Krispy Kreme donut store, but it’s 30 miles away.
Read full article@nd.edu: Thoreau wouldn’t own a smartphone
BYLong before technology wrapped its gnarled fingers around man and became its master, Henry David Thoreau wisely said, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Decades and now five iPhone versions later, we have entered an age where instead of holding our smartphones, our smartphones have a chokehold on us.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Sunlight souvenirs
BYA skinned knee, a skinned elbow, a 4-inch scar, a bee sting in your foot and mosquito bites on your forehead, your neck and your legs. Your father pulled two ticks out of your head yesterday.
Read full articleFar Afield: Taunt is cheap
BYHow do you know when the vapors have overcome college football? When an official pulls out a yellow handkerchief, not to fan himself over the affront to his sensibilities, but to call a taunting penalty on . . . Navy.
Read full articleBelieving: The Feast of Saint Francis
BYAn exaltation of larks whirled and sang above the hut where he lay dying nearly a millennium ago. That’s only one of the countless stories told of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose October 4 feast will be celebrated here at Notre Dame.
Read full articleReluctant Domer: Lincoln and God
BYLast summer, my 6-year-old son Lincoln and I gazed up at a giant oak tree in our yard in Indiana. “Who invented man?” Lincoln suddenly asked me. “What?” I said, trying to stall a few seconds for time.
Read full articleThe Playroom: The beer equation
BYI have kids and they knock over everything, including my beer. There seems to be some direct proportional relationship to the amount I spend on a beer and how fast it ends up in my shoe. Beer at the ball park, two sips and yup, I’ve got soggy socks.
Read full articleJourneys of a Class Ring
BYI lost my Notre Dame class ring in 1987, somewhere on the grounds of the Ireland Army Community Hospital at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Although I ’ve since replaced it, I always wonder: Where is my first ND ring?
Read full articleThe Playroom: Stroller miles
BYMy daughter and I took a walk to the park today. An ordinary day and ordinary walk, except that today is the last day of our summer vacation. Her hair bleached by the sun and chlorine from the pool, days at the lake and afternoons at the park.
Read full articleFar Afield: The NFL’s David Bruton goes back to school
BYDavid Bruton, ND class of 2009, couldn’t disguise himself for long. As a substitute teacher last spring during the NFL lockout, the Denver Broncos free safety tried to keep his football career a secret. A bunch of second-graders found him out.
Read full articleBelieving: Inflammatory forgiveness
BYIn addition to its being the 10th anniversary of that terrible day, this September 11th is, according to the Catholic liturgical calendar, the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Mass readings for the day are from the Book of Sirach (“Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. . . . If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins?”).
Read full articleThe Playroom: Lemonade
BYIt’s late summer so we are doing summer things, like going to art fairs when its 90 degrees outside. There is no dad in America who thinks this is a good idea.
Read full articleFar Afield: My wild ND guesses
BYApparently some “scientist” has “proven” that predictions, no matter how informed the prognosticators, are no better than wild guesses. So I guess that makes me the equivalent of an expert. Remember that as you read my wild guesses about how the 2011 Notre Dame football season will unfold.
Read full articleBelieving: Keeping good company
BYOngoing scandals in the Catholic Church, along with noises recently being made by several presidential candidates and their supporters, bring to mind George Orwell’s grumpy observation that “as with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for socialism is its adherents.”
Read full articleBelieving: Cicada prayers
BYIn late summer, the bicycle commute between home and work is nothing less than an honor, requiring, as it does, a passage through the groves of oak and sycamore on the north bank of Saint Joseph’s Lake. Invisible choirs of cicadas thrum from their bark and branches, enveloping those woods in an ancient sound.
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