I've started a newsletter on Substack, called Tiny Book Club. Every month, I pick a good essay or article, invite in a special guest for a dialogue, and then host a discussion with all of the subscribers. It's a book club for readings much much shorter than a book. We kicked off in August with… Read More
Keeping Vaclav Benda’s Door Open
At Mere Orthodoxy, I laid out my problems with some of Rod Dreher's recent writing on race and soft totalitarianism, drawing on his own Live Not By Lies for an alternate model of witness. The most serious danger Woke Capital poses isn’t to the people forced to adopt nonsensical cant or take implicit bias tests… Read More
Will the Real Mrs. America Please Stand Up
I reviewed Hulu/FX's Mrs. America for The American Interest. The show turns on one question: Who gets to claim the mantle of a women’s movement? In episode four, Schlafly and Friedan square off in a debate. Both women relish the fight—Friedan more obviously, exclaiming “God, I’d like to burn you at the stake,” just as… Read More
Vulnerability and Visibility with the ASP
The American Solidarity Party invited me to be one of the featured speakers at their 2020 convention, and I spoke on vulnerability and visibility (in a speech that was an extension of my piece, "Locating Our Invisible Wounds" at Comment). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZVIZ2xmzg0 One way I went beyond the original article was weaving in Lewis Hyde's discussion… Read More
Recommending Playborhood
Philanthropy Daily is collecting reading suggestions for coronatide. I was obviously tempted to suggest The Ghost Map or Microbe Hunters, both of which I love. But I decided to go with something more focused on how we can gather again. We're still a long way from being able to gather, but, even after a vaccine, many streets will be… Read More
Careers and Coronavirus
Yale offers a series of ongoing fireside chats, where students and recent graduates can hear other graduates' advice about their given field. I joined in recently for a panel that wasn't focused on any particular career path, but rather on how to approach careers during the coronavirus pandemic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V-Wr3RRk6o Obviously, I have no special expertise… Read More
All the Screen’s a Stage
When the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA had to close its playhouse due to the pandemic, I audited their online classes as a reporter for The American Interest. During a discussion of alliteration, one smaller girl, attending the class with her big sister, stumbles on Bottom’s tongue-twister of a line, “I trust to take of truest… Read More
Discernment in Plague-Times
I wrote at First Things on Kristen Lavransdatter as a primer for living a life of Christian service and witness in a pandemic. It was intended, among other things, as a rejoinder to the idea that sheltering in place was cowardice. Someday when our children ask us “What did you do during the coronavirus pandemic?,” it won’t… Read More
Children Are a Rebuke to Our Schedules
After our baby, Beatrice, was born, I wrote a piece for the Institute for Family Studies on children as natural born interruptors, including of some of our culture's mistaken expectations about time. We can deceive ourselves (at least for a little while) about our limits and our control—by staying up too late to finish something… Read More
Locating Our Invisible Wounds
At Comment I wrote about how the coronavirus links us in a solidarity of suffering. But we'll have to work to retain that solidarity with the more everyday kinds of suffering when the pandemic passes. This piece was published in partnership with the Breaking Ground project, which asks how we can use this time of disruption… Read More
Read More