Nathaniel Peters

In today’s New York Times food section there’s a recipe for the good life. I know that’s a tacky opening sentence, but I couldn’t resist. John T. Edge reports from Hemingway, South Carolina on a family that makes old fashioned BBQ. As in: Ten butterflied pig . . . . Continue Reading »

In the Wall Street Journal today , Canadian physician David Gratzer warns Americans of the long waiting periods that come from state-sponsored health care: The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a . . . . Continue Reading »

Sean Curnyn and David Goldman both note the perils of a speech directed to “the Muslim world.” But at Public Discourse, Jennifer S. Bryson , director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project, notes that despite the characterization of the press, Obama . . . . Continue Reading »

The Baptist minister at Real Live Preacher went to an Orthodox church during his sabbatical for an ecclesiastical safari. It surprised him more than expected: Pews? We don’t need no stinking pews! Providing seats for worshipers is SO 14th century. Gorgeous Byzantine art, commissioned from a . . . . Continue Reading »

In today’s Wall Street Journal Jonathan Last reviews Judith Walzer Leavitt’s Make Room for Daddy , a history of how men went from being unwelcome to expected in the delivery room. But Last notes that as men became more involved in childbirth, they became less involved in what came . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times has a story on the Cistercian monks of Our Lady of Spring Bank and the women who run their online business, LaserMonks: The Rev. Bernard McCoy, the monastery’s superior, had the idea for LaserMonks.com. But the enterprise really took off when the monks turned it over to two . . . . Continue Reading »

The thing about gay marriage, Sam Schulman says in the Weekly Standard , is not that it’s wrong, but that it just won’t work. Most people who object to it, he says, aren’t caught up with religious objections about what the Bible says or sexual acts being “open to . . . . Continue Reading »

At Roll Call, Mort Kondracke argues that we need to shift the focus of federal spending from the old to the young so that the young can better pay for the babyboomers’ retirement. But Kondracke overlooks one problem: More government spending on kids can’t solve the problem if there . . . . Continue Reading »

In honor of the feast of the Ascension, here is Gerald Finzi’s “God Is Gone Up,” sung by the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge. The words are taken from Edward Taylor’s Sacramental Meditations The piece begins around 3:20 into the video. God is gone up with a . . . . Continue Reading »

Five years ago same-sex marriages were recognized by Massachusetts state courts after such recognition was voted down by citizens in a referendum. In March the National Organization for Marriage and the Massachusetts Family Initiative joined forces to poll the state’s residents on their . . . . Continue Reading »