For all the reasons man may feel constrained, it seems impossible to me that he could find himself without sufficient variety of attire to ...

So I'm teaching Petronius again and of course in teaching satire one always must broach the question of whether a character is self-awa...

New York is supposed to be a rough and tumultuous place. In my experience it has not been so and in these twenty eight years of Big Apple c...

Nothing stupefies the amateur so much as what liberties the experts take with impunity. The amateur toils away in obscurity, following the ...

Teacher, gardener, cat. A short time after my first year of teaching I discussed the upcoming term with another teacher, who intimated t...

It's always telling when people pounce on a piece news and promptly declare I told you so ! So it was with much amusement that I watche...

The worst part about graduation ceremonies is not the speechifying. Nor is it the seizure-inducing bursts of photographic flashes or the he...

Out and about today, your blogger-on-the-move stopped to observe a door. This may sound dull but it was such a fair, husky specimen of pine...

Lovers of the Latin Mass make various paths in justifying the traditional form of the Roman Liturgy. It is reverent, it is beautiful, it is...

Reflecting again on my recent Met excursion, I recall another telling moment which occurred upon entry. As the first of the party to arri...

In the great taxonomy of baffling statements a special place is reserved for those which guarantee that the author has no idea what he'...

At mass yesterday, after the post-communion drum solo, I saw one of the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion returning to the altar. N...

While teaching short poems, notably  Catullus 85 , I'm fond of saying that if you to put forth a mere two lines of poetry, they ought t...

Peevish, irritable, surly, ill-tempered. This is how we usually define grumpy, but to me it seems a more specific condition: a loss, usuall...

It's always amusing when someone makes a ridiculous statement and then quickly backpedals to a more sensible position. In person, a f...

Second presidential terms are fraught with speculation about potential lame-duck status. Does he have enough pull to push his agenda still ...

One of the graces of aging is the ability, in seeing the same thing over and over again, to reevaluate things. Now you can go ahead and ret...

It is often remarked by well-meaning folk of frustrating charity that we ought to get to know people before we judge them, especially if ou...

No form of debt is so fiercely loathed as student loans. I'm not perplexed as to why, there are many and good reasons, but I do wonder ...

The life of the mind is fraught with labor, not chiefly cogitation but rather searching, seeking after veritable examples of ideas. It'...