Watching the inauguration, remembering that freezing, heart-warming day four years ago when my sons and I were together on the National Mall watching Obama make history. Here is a double portrait of inaugural poet Richard Blanco with Walt Whitman, my hero and, undoubtedly, given his cataloguing of life’s daily wonders, Blanco’s too. One [...]
Congratulations to Karen, Linda, Michelle, Ralph and Rose, who won copies of Full of Grace! Thanks, everyone, for participating. I loved doing this, and will have another giveaway soon.
I grew up in Providence on Lennon Street. It was a street of families, each contributing four, five, six children to the tumble — the backbone of the American dream, ’60s style. Ours were endless days of four-square, red rover and hide-and-go-seek. We swam in the summer, burned leaves in the fall, starred in Mr. [...]
Lately, I’ve been seeing Our Lady of Guadalupe everywhere—on hubcaps, T-shirts, and bumper stickers that read “In Guad We Trust.” Driving on Los Angeles’ Hollywood Freeway recently, I spotted her again—this time as a 12-foot-high sculpture projecting from the highway barrier wall. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Virgin Mary leaves her fingerprints, as Patty [...]
Lounging this morning with the Sunday New York Times has already provided considerable food for thought, and I’m not even into the Week in Review yet. The front page of the Style section features a story about the lengths to which people will go in order to bask momentarily in the marketing-glow supersonic jet fuel [...]
Building a bridge is a monumental undertaking, and there is something inherent in projects of this size and scope that makes people want to participate in their creation. In the case of the sleek, new I-35W crossing over the Mississippi that opened in Minneapolis this week, Twin City residents engaged in a day-long discussion that [...]
