Amy Frykholm
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
...
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
...
Varieties of revolution
When Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth studied revolutions that
had occurred over a period of more than 100 years and across the globe, they found
that nonviolent revolutions are twice as likely as violent ones to succeed.
Chenoweth explains
that nonviolent revolutions attract a greater range of the population and
create a higher likelihood of defection among supporters of a particular
regime.
More on fasting and self-help
I cringed when I read Jeffrey MacDonald's accusation, quoted
...
Imagination and hope
Olga Grushin is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Dream Life of Sukhanov and The Line. Both grapple with the legacy of the Soviet Union and the depth...
Turning down the volume
The
urge for Lent started for me several weeks ago. I was out on a cross-country
ski with a friend when a small herd of elk ran in front of our path, kicking up
...
Waiting for Selinsky
Olga Grushin offers her characters the dignity of their dreams. She is not impatient with their restless searching, and she does not dictate an outcome.
Illuminating the ordinary
Learning to see in new ways is one of the most difficult tasks of the transformed life. Old habits of selective vision, old choices about what to leave out and what to focus on tend to dominate us, even as we search for new ways of living that are in closer communion with the life of the Spirit. Transfiguration--that mysterious transformation of vision that is narrated in today's readings--is a radical, if brief, way of illumination.
No way out
In the opening scene of this new novel, the protagonist,
Golden Richards, comes home from work to one of the three houses where his four
...
On a chocolate mission: A socially conscious entrepreneur
While producing award-winning chocolate, Shawn Askinosie seeks to create a business in which everyone involved—from farmer to factory worker to buyer—thrives.
Muslim-Christian cooperation in Egypt
I have become a BBC Middle East addict.
I check in every few hours to see updated reports of what is happening in
...
One step back
The community meal our church hosts--a modest operation that
serves four free meals a week to about 50 guests--has recently lost its main
...
Double belonging: One person, two faiths
Americans have become accustomed to picking and choosing among religious traditions and practices. But some have taken religious pluralism in a deeper and more radical direction.
Bill Donohue, art promoter
As is so often
the case in these situations, the only part of the National Portrait Gallery's
show "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" that I have
...
From prisoner to activist shareholder
Last week Marian Wright Edelman chronicled the work of Strength to Love, a prisoner reentry...
Freelance theologian: Anna Madsen sets up shop
Anna Madsen has regular clients she sees on a freelance basis. One woman "is so hungry for theological conversation that she has booked every Friday until kingdom come."
