Saturday, July 20, 2019

Venetian Harvey @ Eleven: In Praise Of The Guilty Pleasure

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As a pastor is wrapping up his service, he tells his congregation "Next week I will deliver a sermon on the evils of lying. To prepare for it, I would like you all to read Mark chapter 17." The next week in service he asks how many parishioners read the 17th chapter of Mark. Every hand in the congregation goes up. "Mark has only 16 chapters," the pastor continues with a grin. "I will now proceed with the sermon on lying."

All good things come to an end, and all bad things, too, one supposes, and, as a matter of course, the noncommittal and the inconsequential… The More Things Change, 

Jim Murdoch 
feel I should leave you with some profundity, something to remember me by, but I’m drawing a blank. I’ve just got this picture in my head of a guy lying on his deathbed running his last words in his head over and over again to make sure he gets them word perfect because he knows he’ll only get one shot at it. He’s ready and realises the end is nigh—although not exactly how nigh—but decides it’s probably safe to take a wee kip and maybe things’ll be clearer when he wakes up but—you’re already ahead of me—he never does. 
The Truth About Lies

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Holes in the shape of stars
punched in gray tin, dented,
cheap, beaten by each
of her children with a wooden spoon.

Noodle catcher, spaghetti stopper,
pouring cloudy rain into the sink,
swirling counter clockwise
down the drain, starch slime
on the backside, caught
in the piercings.

Scrubbed for sixty years, packed
and unpacked, the baby’s
helmet during the cold war,
a sinking ship in the bathtub,
little boat of holes.

Dirt scooped in with a plastic
shovel, sifted to make cakes
and castles. Wrestled
from each other’s hands,
its tin feet bent and re-bent.

Bowl daylight fell through
onto freckled faces, noon stars
on the pavement, the universe
we circled aiming jagged stones,
rung bells it caught and held.



“My Mother’s Colander” by Dorianne Laux from Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems. © W. W. Norton and company, 2019. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)












MASSIMO FAGGIOLI. Massimo Faggioli explores how conflicting memories of Nazi-Fascism on two continents is impacting global Catholicism. The European and American Catholic divide


This year marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when the Allied troops invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944. Just two days earlier the Allies had carried out the Liberation of Rome, making the Eternal City the first capital to be freed from Nazi German occupation. … Continue reading 

The customer is always right: ‘Even the couple who had sex in our laundry room’ 

In Praise Of The Guilty Pleasure


Because it’s often used in a winking way, the term “guilty pleasure” feels innocent, like a joke we’re proving we’re in on. But if that joke is about something that brings us genuine joy and isn’t harming anyone, then what’s the punch line? – The New York Times