For my first piece in Deseret News, I'm analyzing a line of argument in Dobbs, claiming that that the question of when life begins is beyond what government can answer. But this question isn't uniquely the domain of religion—everyone needs to be able to furnish and defend an answer. Where a loose consensus prevails, it… Read More
Month: January 2022
Encanto and the Benedict Option
Encanto doesn't have a conventional Disney villain, because the musical is about learning to live in safety, putting aside the bad habits that come from fear and scarcity. I covered the musical for First Things, with a particular emphasis on the parallel dangers for Christians. The village is not so different from a Benedict Option… Read More
Sacrifice Is Not a Therapy
As the Omicron wave crested in January, many institutions tried to do more and seemed to assume that the more intrusive or inconvenient a restriction, the more powerful it was. I talk about why this is the wrong way to think about medicine at The New Atlantis. They assume that our safety is proportional to… Read More
Covid, Vulnerability, and a Miasma Mindset
The New Atlantis convened a slate of writers for a symposium on lessons to learn from covid. My contribution to the "Beyond the State of Exception" symposium is "Bad Air," a mediation on aerosols, ventilation, and vulnerability. We’re used to starting with a premise of safety and sterility. The goal of our policy and our… Read More
The Green Knight and the Elderly Gunman
First Things asked contributors for the best film they saw in 2021, and my husband and I both picked films by David Lowery. My choice was The Green Knight, and (once I had dibsed it) Alexi chose The Old Man and the Gun. Here's an excerpt from my reflection: To call it an adaptation of… Read More
Books I Hope to Read in 2022
I wrapped up 2021 with 10/11 of the books on my reading list finished. (I had ambitions of at least starting to read Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy on December 31st, but instead I took a third trimester nap). I can live with that. Past my official list, I read 117 books in… Read More