Joseph Bottum

Visiting friends, at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, N.Y.: and at the Jesuit cemetery in Auriesville, N.Y.: . . . . Continue Reading »

Something to watch, when considering fame: a Jeopardy category titled “Economists.” The look on the leading woman’s face is priceless. (Via Megan Mcardle ) . . . . Continue Reading »

. . . picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been. / Lives in a dream, / wearing a face that he keeps just for Vanity Fair. Ah, me. Christopher is an old acquaintance, and the most fluid writer around today, but some years ago he oddly decided to take the hackneyed pose of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Does anyone—anybody? somebody?—have back issues of This World ? You remember This World : It was the journal from which Richard John Neuhaus was fired, in the infamous Rockford Raid —which led him to found First Things in 1990. We seem to be missing two copies, here in our office . . . . Continue Reading »

The two most enjoyable activities of mankind are gossip and metaphysics”the sparkles on the shallows of conversation about people, and the vast ocean of thought about reality, where the deeper you dive, the greater the darkness and the pressure grow. I suppose there’s a way to make this . . . . Continue Reading »

On Wednesday, November 18, Grammy winning choral conductor Jerry Blackwell will conduct the Chamber Singers of the University of Michigan in the premiere performance of Michael Linton ‘s “Memorial.” The work was inspired by Pope John Paul II’s requiem mass and is dedicated . . . . Continue Reading »

A pure bleg , as a beg for information from blog readers seems now to be called: I know there’s a theological tradition of considering what might have been had Adam not fallen. Russell Hittinger has written of it, and it extends in the tradition from the patristical era all the way down to . . . . Continue Reading »

The talented Matthew Alderman made a comment on my post about redesigning the layout of First Things . He had some good ideas, but along the way, he mentioned one of the all-time great designs for a magazine: the art-nouveau journal Ver Sacrum from the late 1890s: And it reminded me of an idea . . . . Continue Reading »

OK, so First Things is an ugly magazine. I mean, nobody is going to say, “Wow, that’s a beautiful design!” about the pages we print. Of course, there’s something coolly uncompromising in its ugliness: We’re about text , man, and here’s the text, and if you want pretty pictures, then go . . . . Continue Reading »

So the rabbis came. Or, at least, a thousand of them went to their telephones to listen to a conference call with President Obama about healthcare reform. And they learned, in the fifteen-minute briefing on a Wednesday morning, August 19, that “we are God’s partners in matters of life and . . . . Continue Reading »