It was an unlikely friendship. I was a 30-something University of Michigan transplant, newly hired as the alumni editor for the Notre Dame Alumni Association. He was a 99-year-old, long-retired tax accountant and class secretary for the Class of 1930.
Deaths of Notre Dame alumni
You could see the ripples created by 9/11 on a Friday in early February if you happened to be in the Annadale section of Staten Island. Inside a funeral home there, an honor guard of the Fire Department of New York stood before the casket of Lieutenant Martin Fullam, 56, who had died a few days before of what one doctor said was “without doubt the worst case of World Trade Center lung disease ever seen.”
Michelle McNamara ’92 tracks down serial killers from home, investigating cold-case homicides and writing in her True Crime Diary.
Creative work by Notre Dame people
There might not be a more universally feared and derided form of communication than the commencement address. Every spring, individuals of various altitudes of notoriety and self-awareness have to stand in the heat talking to the legions of the sunburned and the hungover, charged with inspiring them in (preferably) 30 minutes or less.
It’s Commencement time at Notre Dame, several days of celebration, satisfaction and pride for graduates and their families. But how is it experienced by the faculty and staff, many of whom have seen a good number of these events come and go, year after year?
The temptation we have at Notre Dame, or in any community which nourishes us in faith, is to cling to it. We want to stay and have more and more of the good things. The sustenance is so great; why leave it behind?
It was six months away. Then two weeks away. And now, just days away. Each passing moment brings us closer to the day that perhaps all Notre Dame seniors simultaneously yearn for and dread: graduation day.
To those soon-to-be graduates, the class of 2013: because Notre Dame is the amazing place it is, when you leave, you may find a dark cloud overhead. It is a real, almost tangible loss, so of course it’s going to leave an ache. Probably more than you expected.
An introvert and loner for my first 26 years, I married into a big, Midwestern, Catholic family. There’s just no preparing yourself for that.
My father said the women in my mother’s family had wills so adamant and granitic that you could get a fire started by using flint against their wills to get the necessary spark.
When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, I was deeply disappointed. His reputation as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s “watchdog” agency, preceded him, and he received an icy reception in the press. But over time I came to respect this complicated and humble man whose views transcended American political categories.
Some years ago, before I was editor of this magazine, I wrote a shortish piece that the editor, Walt Collins ’51, rejected. I reworked it several times, and each version got a thumbs down from the bearded journalist I greatly admired.
Trying to park one’s car in the D2 lots east of Grace Hall is tricky at any time of year. But in December it calls to mind our human need for the Advent season — a time to slow down and hope for salvation, or at least promised relief from the world and its cares.
“How long have you had the mass in your breast?” I ask Natalie, a 43-year-old woman, in Creole. “Some time,” she replies, an indicator of the Haitian measurement of time. I prod and she eventually reveals that she has had the tumor for about a year. The first question to come to mind is simple and inevitable, but is so often tinged with judgment: Why did she wait so long?
The only marathons for which a runner has to qualify are the Olympics (every four years) and Boston (every year). Only the best worldwide marathons are Boston qualifiers. For long distance runners the Boston is both Mecca and Jerusalem and it’s the world’s oldest annual marathon. Yet into this environment came unspeakable evil. But through that evil, the world, and I, witnessed tremendous good.
At first, my guard is up, casting glances around every corner, suspicious of every man I pass on street. As he recounts the histories of the buildings we pass, many of them destroyed by the earthquake in 2010, he senses my taut body language. “Don’t worry. This is Jacmel, not Port-au-Prince. You are safe here.”
The middle ground vanishes as America goes to the poles. And that’s a dangerous thing.
This trip to Viengkham was my introduction to life outside the tourist mecca of Luang Prabang, and it didn’t take too long after leaving town before I started to see a little more of what the development statistics for Laos really mean when they make bland pronouncements, such as: 27 percent of the population here lives on less than $1 a day. Or, more than 40 percent of the rural children under age 5 are undernourished.
The world needs to cool it — before it’s too late
The light is on inside Susan Sheridan’s lab, a scene a photographer describes as “a fun place full of bones.” Human bones.
From the beginning the human race has scanned the heavens for the meaning of our existence and signs of creatures living far, far away. The search itself says a lot about who we are.
Twelve years ago, we had barely purchased our first bulky Dell, much less consider taking the morning news from a backlit screen. Twelve years ago, we still had dial-up Internet, woefully barren email inboxes and asked Jeeves instead of Googling. A lot has changed in 12 years. That’s why my mom recently sat my dad down at the kitchen table to bring up a two-word, volatile phrase in my household: digital subscription.
Hellmann says she thinks it is unfortunate that climate change has become politicized. Regardless of political orientation, we all inhabit the same planet.
I’m making a “healthy breakfast” recipe I pulled from the New York Times. I core the apples, slice them in thin circles, cover the slices in peanut butter, layer them on top of each other, sprinkle them with brown sugar and cut the apple slices in half. The coffee is brewing, the dog has been out and fed and he is now asleep in the front room, the heat works and I’m happy. I’m having a good time, until my kids show up.
The deluxe supermarket represents the new Haiti, perhaps even the coming Haiti, but not the economy of the real Port-au-Prince, which is found on the streets, alleys, tap taps and sidewalk markets. Economists might label it the black market or underground economy, but in a country with seventy percent official unemployment, the underground drives the commerce engine that keeps the city alive.
Mother’s Day is supposed to be about me, so I’m not supposed to do anything. My family tries to do the stuff I would normally do: make dinner, clean the house, pick up the dog poop in the backyard.
“How long have you had the mass in your breast?” I ask Natalie, a 43-year-old woman, in Creole. “Some time,” she replies, an indicator of the Haitian measurement of time. I prod and she eventually reveals that she has had the tumor for about a year. The first question to come to mind is simple and inevitable, but is so often tinged with judgment: Why did she wait so long?
My kids think a great vacation is staying anywhere that has a pool, a vending machine and a television. But we decided to super-size that idea and instead of just taking them to the Holiday Inn Express on the back side of Phoenix, we went to an all-inclusive family resort in Mexico.