But it is important for me, I think, to be responsible about my use of this time as an opportunity to demonstrate my general psychological, moral, and spiritual superiority over other people.
(Very religious. Pretty raw. And kinda hopeful.) A guest post by Julianne Bruce I admit that I’m secretly wishing some not-so-nice things to befall Christmas revelers this year. I literally can’t look at personal Facebook pages right now. On top of this being my mom’s first year in memory care, my whole family has some […]
Well, kiddies, don’t say I didn’t warn ya! I suppose this was bound to happen, but I’ll reiterate what I said in more detail in a recent two-part post on Notre Dame. Long story short: be VERY, VERY suspicious of appeals to make the cathedral look “like it did before,” or making it “authentically medieval.” […]
I was raised in a quite-conservative Evangelical church. Honestly, I loved it. I felt loved. I felt nurtured. I felt community. I had friends. There were picnics and socials and summer camps. I could walk around knowing that everyone I passed cared about me. It felt like family. When I was very small, most of […]
I admit it, I’m a naughty blogger. Don’t feed the beast frequently enough, don’t interact with other bloggers enough, too Minnesotan to engage in flagrant self-promotion (guilt-free, anyway), and prone to posting when I fancy, about whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. That said, I do try to keep my posts […]
Academia. Is. Dying. And we’re all watching helplessly, as though its malady is like a case of Alzheimer’s, and there’s nothing we can do but watch it deteriorate, wait until it forgets us, and welcome death as nothing other than a release from pain and grief. It is dying because it is at war with […]
It’s fitting, I think, to be writing this particular essay on the morning of Easter Sunday, which, for Christians worldwide, is never about a return to the way things were, but about resurrection, the creation of something new, not reversion but rebirth. Easter is not about making anything great again. It’s about making all things […]
Lemme hit you with a story: A few years ago I was in Scotland for research. On a free Sunday, I took myself on an expedition to explore Linlithgow Palace, about a half-hour’s train ride north of Edinburgh. The palace is a ruin, though a majestic and fascinating one. Right next to the ruined palace, […]
[Note: Surfingedges has lain fallow for quite a while now, as life has not been kind to the kind of free time that allows for blogging, especially in the essayistic style I’ve been going for most of the time. The problem with that is that, with a blog, you’ve gotta keep “feeding the beast” to […]
This is the time of year in which I find myself continually reminding my students–not to mention myself–not to neglect self-care, even when there’s only time for small breaks. In that spirit, here’s a “review” of sorts of one of my favorite coffee-break timeouts. One of the themes of the “Tech” thread of this blog is […]
surfingedges 