Amy Frykholm
Shaking foundations
On my bike ride home from the train station, I see a church sign: "Shaking Foundations?...
Changing laws on trafficking
The faces in the photographs on the front page of the newspaper
startled me. They were laid out in rows. The first photo in the series was
invariably of a young girl, maybe with a mischievous smile or a rebellious
glare, but with a decided look of innocence. By the end of the series, that
same face was battered, bloated and bruised.
Gone to waste: Why is Safeway throwing out good produce?
I'm making my rounds at Safeway, shopping for my church's community meal. In the produce section—where I am forbidden to ask for donations—I see two heaping boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables headed to the trash.
Reform that works: The community schools movement
Some education reformers are trying to shift
the focus from test scores to the broader circumstances of children's
lives. One idea emphasizes schools as places where children connect with
the broader society.
Poems that speak to life
About ten years ago, I returned to church after a long
hiatus. What compelled me to the pews was a hunger for poetry shared
in community.
A time of grace for women clergy: Retreat leader Sister Mary Luke Jones
According to Sister Mary Luke Jones, Protestant clergywomen come to Our Lady of Grace Monastery's retreats "with a deep thirst for community."
Assembly-line justice
If federal policy met its goal of “zero tolerance” for people who
cross the border illegally, the caseload in the Tucson federal
courthouse would go from 200 a day to 1,000. Prisoners would need to be “processed” in groups of 40 instead of eight.
Summer reading list
Up until
now, my ideas about summer reading were driven largely by guilt. My bookshelf
is packed to the gills with books that I "should" read: books people have given me and I need
to return, or books that have been sitting there so long, I have given myself
ultimatums--either read this or get rid of it.
Obama and the Arab Spring: Historian Juan Cole
"Most Americans would like to see people take care of their own business.
On the other hand, most Americans
don't like to see tanks crush unarmed crowds."
Craig Goodwin's year off
Where I live at 10,200 feet, the
trees have not yet budded. May is still early, early spring in Leadville,
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The last day and the day after that
I first heard that the rapture would be
happening this Saturday via billboard outside Boston. I had no idea,
though I do try to stay informed.
Loose connections: What's happening to church membership?
Most churches still
approach membership the way they did in the 1960s. But if new modes of affiliation are
appearing, churches will need new ways of thinking about membership.
Books of consequence: Bookseller Warren Farha
"I wanted to open a bookstore that would contain the best of what had
been thought and written," says Warren Farha of Eighth Day Books. It's "an impossible goal, but that was the guiding
telos of the store."
Failure by the numbers
My son has just completed his first round of the Colorado
Student Assessment Program tests, Colorado's answer to No Child Left Behind. I
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Pain, prayer, poetry: An interview with Christian Wiman
“For decades there has been a premium on language as subject,” says poet Christian Wiman. But recently poets are “trying to find some way of speaking of ‘ultimate things’ with some sort of credibility.”
Higher education and unions
While I was finishing my Ph.D. I took a job as an adjunct
professor at a small, state-run college. The experience was a lesson in
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