Where’s the Guilt?
I’ve had the experience of dealing with renters from time to time, though more in the capacity of property manager than as landlord. It has been one of the ugliest, most unpleasant things a person can...
View ArticleTale of the Lucky and the Star-Crossed
They say that luck is where hard work meets opportunity. But often the ones who say that are those who are the greatest beneficiaries of luck. It seems a way by which the fortunate can reclaim a...
View ArticleA Good Fight: Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night)
If a pair of writer/directors exists that can rival Joel and Ethan Coen for a body of work with profound depictions of humanity, it is another set of brothers. The films of the Dardennes, Jean-Pierre...
View ArticleThe Greater Evil: Proscription or Compulsion?
There’s a new law in China, and it’s aimed at weakening a faith. As the Chinese government is not one to bother with currying world opinion, those who speak for the authorities are quite aboveboard...
View ArticleGod is Sacrificial Love
If God is love, as we’re told, then what kind of love is he? In the quest to know that which is beyond all knowing—another one of those oxymorons so characteristic of religion—we find a set of pictures...
View ArticleEden’s Border: Where Objects Have Stories
We’ll have to go back to the gun shop today. There’s no way around it. It seems that the barrel with the modified choke got left there when my mother placed the twenty-gauge up for sale sometime before...
View ArticleBrooklyn: A Drama of Discernment
One of the hardest things in life is having two good choices that are completely exclusive of each other. It’s not a matter of picking a major in college, regretting it, and changing to another track;...
View ArticleGood Enough to Tweet
If you go to any restaurant nowadays, you’ll likely see something that at one time would’ve been considered absurd: People whipping out their smartphones, taking pictures of their food, then forwarding...
View ArticleBetter Call Saul
Better Call Saul, a prequel to AMC’s milestone series, Breaking Bad, further establishes co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould to be among the most intricate moral thinkers working in the dramatic...
View ArticleThere Must Be a Word for This
Now spring has come again, the season that’s best for hope. Post-Lenten promises are fresh as a baby’s breathing, and the failures that eventually spoil them are as far away as the height of summer’s...
View ArticleEvil’s Share
It has been said that one of the most effective means by which evil can have its way is to convince us that we are too abominable to love. It’s not a bad tactic. When our faults are catalogued back to...
View ArticleThe World Beyond the Room
The most obvious analysis of Emma Donoghue’s Room, one of last year’s most heralded films, is on the basis of what it says about imagination. In the film version of the novel, five-year-old Jack is...
View ArticleGod Ponders the Heart
In Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, the writers frame the story in such a way that the common motivations are nested within, or are born from, a new one: the story opens upon a Scottish heath—damp, cold, and...
View ArticleRisen
In a well-written and well-acted scene from Kevin Reynolds and Paul Aiello’s recent film, Risen, the Roman tribune, Clavius (played by Joseph Fiennes), questions one of the guards left to watch the...
View ArticleWhen Ethics Conflict with the Law
Among the courses that I teach is Professional Responsibility—Legal Ethics—which is a subject covered on every state bar exam in the country. The professional code of ethics—the Model Rules of...
View ArticleThe Cost of Glory
Here I sit, watching the Olympics again; it hooks me every time. I always say I like the winter ones better because there aren’t so many sports to keep track of, but when I start watching the summer...
View ArticleThe Power of Names
A few weeks back, the news related a story that a confederate veteran killed at Shiloh and buried under the wrong name for one hundred fifty-four years will now have that mistake rectified. Augustus...
View ArticleElegy for My Father
My father: Roy Franklin Harmon, Jr., M.D., passed away on September 22, 2016 at the age of eighty-seven. He was the best man I will ever know. Difficult as it was, my mother wanted me to say something...
View ArticleAn Interview with Newbery Medal-Winning Author Clare Vanderpool, Part 1
Clare Vanderpool, Newbery-Medal winning author of the novels Moon over Manifest (Delacorte, 2010) and Navigating Early (Delacorte, 2013), got her start by attending a writing workshop at The Milton...
View ArticleAn Interview with Newbery Medal-Winning Author Clare Vanderpool, Part 2
Clare Vanderpool, Newbery-Medal winning author of the novels Moon over Manifest (Delacorte, 2010) and Navigating Early (Delacorte, 2013), got her start by attending a writing workshop at The Milton...
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