Author Archive

Check out the new online Mormon-themed narrative arts magazine at popcornpopping.net. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

My song is love unknown, My Saviour’s love to me, Love to the loveless shown, That they might lovely be. O who am I, That for my sake, My Lord should take Frail flesh and die. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Yes, really. Actual fun–even laughing. With feminists! 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

For Boston-based Naclers: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will be speaking this Sunday in a panel discussion addressing the question “Where Have All the Mormon Feminists Gone?” Other panelists are Maxine Hanks, Kate Holbrook, and me. The event will be at Quincy House at Harvard University at 7:30 p.m. ... Read More »

One of the most distressing things about being a parent is the realization that you cannot control your children’s world forever. Inevitably, the institutions in which you allow or encourage them to participate will introduce ideas with which you do not agree, and which, in some instances, are contrary to the gospel of... Read More »

The weather in Boston is positively balmy–sunny and 45 degrees. This, of course, reminds me of a poem: 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

This is the text of a talk I gave in Sacrament Meeting around this time last year. Warning: it’s LONG, and it quite predictably incorporates the John Donne quote I force upon everyone every Thanksgiving. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

For months now, I’ve been contemplating a series of posts on the possibility of a Mormon aesthetic. I’ve been rereading Kant and Rousseau and Augustine, arguing with Michael Hicks in my head, and contemplating my illustrious career as the great one who definitively articulated the theoretical framework of a Mormon (musical) aesthetic. ... Read More »

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur get all the press around here, but one of my favorite Jewish holidays usually sneaks in just before or just after the high holidays. This year in particular, with news of floods and earthquakes filling my heart and head, the festival of Sukkot seems especially worthy of... Read More »

Boston area Bloggernackers, save the date: you and your families are invited to a beach party/barbecue at my house Saturday, July 30 from mid-afternoon (2-3ish) until whenever. Dinner around 6. We have room for weekend guests, too, if anybody wants to drive up from NYC or down from Montreal, or... Read More »

My children have been taking swimming lessons. Naturally, this provides me with both motive and opportunity for asking self-indulgently angsty existential questions. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

As a child, I loathed Mother’s Day. This was because I spent most of the other days of the year resenting my mother, and tormenting her in the peculiarly horrid ways that bright children can torment their parents. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

NOTE: I wrote most of this yesterday, but thought perhaps it was too sentimental. This morning it seems horribly appropriate, as I’m praying (and crying) for Geoff’s little boy. Kaimi’s post puts me in mind of a favorite poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (”golly,” you say, “it doesn’t take much to get her... Read More »

Today is my son Peter’s birthday. He is named for Peter in the New Testament, because, while Jesus may have loved John the most, I love Peter best of all. I love him because he is so willing to get wet. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Sheri Lynn’s plaintive comment has me thinking about the difficulties of teaching Primary with today’s stimulus-saturated kids. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

NOTE: I started this a few days ago, then decided it was dumb and put it aside. It may still be dumb, but it does seem relevant to how I think about the issues raised by Frank’s posting of Elder Eyring’s talk, and, I think it’s tangentially related to Nate’s... Read More »

I just found out that my children will be home from school again tomorrow. Turns out that there’s no place to put the 3 feet of snow that fell on Saturday and Sunday. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

We interrupt this week’s sparring match on gender roles to alert you to something truly momentous in the bloggernacle–get on over to The Impossible-to-Spell Blog to cast your votes in the 2004 Blogscar Awards! 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Despite our neverending discussions of various sorts of marriage, I don’t think we’ve had an extended conversation about divorce. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

On an earlier thread, someone opined that I am precisely the sort of snob for whom it is impossible to select a musical gift that will be appreciated. I want to report that two brilliant, generous and very thoughtful friends have actually done it, even without reference to an Amazon wish list.... Read More »

My first two posts were mostly devoted to large-scale pieces; this one is for miniatures, carol collections, and other minor or miscellaneous loveliness. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Check your 72-hour kits, everyone. Over the weekend I bought and started reading a book because Adam linked to a positive review of it in the National Review. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Yesterday I mentioned Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘Hodie’, but did not rhapsodize about it. Allow me to rhapsodize: 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

So, umm, I sort of dimly know what Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby sound like, but the voice that means Christmas for me is John Shirley-Quirks’s. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

In our house, we have a box full of picture books that comes out on the first Sunday in Advent, and I’m always on the lookout for new Christmas books. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Aaargh–’tis the season for those yuletide roundups of the activities of everyone’s perfect families and overachieving children. A couple of years ago, I decided to fight back with this parody, which I mailed on April Fools’ Day: 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

When I was younger, I used to entertain fantasies of forcing my children to listen to all of Milton’s Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity before letting them open their presents. I’ve never done it, but I do make them listen to a paragraph of a John Donne sermon before Thanksgiving dinner: ... Read More »

(As if there weren’t already enough navel-gazing around here today…) Boston area Bloggernaclites should come see the New England Latter-day Saint Choir (from the Cambridge YSA Wards) concert of Wilbergiana on Sunday night, featuring ME playing 2nd fiddle (not being modest, I really am playing Violin II). The concert is at First... Read More »

About 10 minutes after my first positive pregnancy test, I was at the bookstore, perusing the shelves of parenting titles, a pastime I’ve continued with some regularity for nearly a decade now. One of my favorite of these books is called 10 Principles of Spiritual Parenting. 0 people like this post.Like  Read More »

Nate’s post on the Sabbath returns me to some thoughts on the Sabbath I’ve been kicking around for a while. Earlier this fall, as I was looking for music for my ward choir to do, I considered Healey Willan’s setting of “O Quanta Qualia.” The text is as follows: Oh, what their... Read More »