Thomas Turner is a Program Manager at International Justice Mission and blogs at EverydayLiturgy.com. He is happy to be living back below the Mason-Dixon line after a lengthy sojourn in the NYC metro area.
It was about six months before I realized I had stopped writing poetry. I was digging through my desk looking for a new journal and found a just-started journal, the one I needed. As I grabbed it and headed off for my little writing spot, it dawned on me that this was no longer normal. […]
Standing outside the Manassas Battlefield visitor’s center I began to photograph the open and lush countryside surrounding the battlefield monuments and the roads used for auto tours. It’s a new camera—a Canon SX40 HS—and I have fallen in love with it. It allows me to capture what I am truly seeing. The art seems to […]
It’s that time in the semester again when I do a little segment for my College Writing I students on poetry. We read poetry and write a little about it. Much groaning and head banging ensues. Students have been brainwashed into thinking they cannot understand poetry. Part of this is the falling away of the […]
Exit Through the Local Gift Shop
I’ve written about conspiracy theories and art here before. The notion that Sorina Higgins has about frauds in her recent piece “On the Validity of the Vogel Collection” is a valid one. Our culture teaches us to hold the truth and conspiracy hand in hand, like imagining that a document that makes its whole case […]
The Internet was just raining down gifts to us, and all we had to do was let someone download our music and then we could download theirs. It was a brilliant concept.
Help Us Curate: Good Country Music
After writing my eloquent and diplomatic piece rant about contemporary country music today (it’s just as bad as that other CCM!), I wondered how we could crowd source all the good country music into one spot. Since this webzine is The Curator, I thought to myself the most productive thing to do at this point […]
I miss country music. I really do. I used to love it. After moving to the New York City metro area almost seven years ago I went through withdrawal. There was no country music station. Top 40 was everywhere. It was awful. But then something started happening in country music shortly after I moved up […]
I had eleven days off for Christmas and New Years. No work to do. Just spending time with family, reading and writing. I also decided to take a stab at brewing my own beer. It was all and all relaxing time. What was different about this time, other than the hours I suddenly had to […]
Whole Foods is Cheaper than Fast Food?
Then I said it: “I bet I can come up with a menu for shopping at Whole Foods that comes out cheaper than eating fast food.”
Conspiracy Theories, Elitism and Eliot
In “The Bard of Our Time,” her compelling analysis of the new movie Anonymous, Sørina Higgins struggles to connect the message of the movie—elites are the holders of power and the creators of culture—with the today’s zietgeist—the 99% should take power away from the 1%. She opines: The message of Anonymous is essentially that a […]
Internet as a Form of Contemplation
Often, the general understanding of the Internet is that it is a collection of information that is so vast it leads to fragmentation. That is certainly what the Internet was making Laura Tokie feel like. But, in her essay “For Victoria Crawford,” after “trolling the internet at all hours of the night, grasping facts and […]
What is a Year Good For? Hobbies!
In her latest essay “Give It a Year,” L.L. Barkat talks about what a difference a year can make when it’s focused on one thing in particular. Having experienced a year fixed in one place, she looks forward to how she can do “more time”: One year for a visual art pilgrimage. A year exploring […]
How Attached Are We To Our Belongings?
Rebecca Tirrell Talbot raises this question in her essay “A Trail of Belongings.” One of the great ironies of our culture is that we are both a highly mobile culture and a highly consumeristic culture, which often means we need to move a lot of stuff and move it quickly (hence PODS). Rebecca writes: Downsizing, […]
Sørina Higgins writes an outstanding synthesis of three pieces of art in her recent piece “Three Sorrows.” Her discussion of Of Gods & Men, the award winning French film, is particularly astute: Of Gods and Men is such an amazing film that it does even more than bridge the gap between the arts and faith. […]
In “Weathering the Books,” her survey of personal reading history, Rebecca Martin surmises that for her “reading is seasonal…intensely seasonal.” She goes on: Don’t you know December is for dark fantasy and Victorian novels? The likes of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Jane Eyre, Bleak House. Fall is for The Fellowship of the Ring — […]
Once, when I had filled every page of a journal I wrote in, I decided to make the leap into keeping a journal on my computer. I thought that it would be equal to the paper journal, and I wouldn’t have to worry about losing it if the new electronic journal stayed tucked away safely […]
In her essay “Stealing Norton: Do You Work at Your Art?“, L.L. Barkat confesses: My girl is a middle-schooler. I am not. She is working hard at poetry. I am not. So I steal away and work to change the situation. For L.L. Barkat, her motivation to work hard at her art was the dedication […]
Juxtaposition: Blank Slate and William Gay
The first stanza of W.M. Rivera’s “Blank Slate” is: I hate to see that evening Sun bite down one ruler for another, one America for the next, the race starts over, fresh forgetfulness. Blank slate. The first line immediately reminded me of William Gay’s short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go […]
Megan DeVere shrewdly comments on the drudgery of modern air travel in her piece “Enjoy Your Flight.” Almost all of us have experienced passengers who pack their “suitcase to roughly 15% beyond capacity,” “wear lace-up shoes that are difficult to remove, “keep “small metal objects in pockets” and “bring several large, hard-back books in order […]
Rob Hays makes a case for sincerity and emotion in art in his article “With Feeling.” He writes: Yet we are often loath to approach the heights of real emotion in art, so we put on a protective cloak of irony, a distancing that allows us to laugh off any real sincerity…. Irony allows us […]
The Power of Singer-Songwriters
Meaghan Ritchey discusses the power of singer/songwriters in her article “The Power Lies in the Performance“: In a very sincere way, they’ve figured out how to make their work habit forming. Every performance and song is imbued with personality. This labor of love, habit forming “personality” is something Matthew Miller explores in his piece “A […]
Should Churches Use Public Schools?
Josh Cacopardo brings up the recent US Court of Appeals case Bronx Household of Faith, Robert Hall and Jack Roberts v. Board of Eduction of the City of New York and Community School District No. 10 as a potentially landmark case that changes the way faith groups can use public facilities in his article “Taking […]
Cultivating A Life Less of Ourselves
“Continuing to cultivate a life less of myself and lived more for others includes the resumption of hand-writing letters, notes, and cards.” – Jenni Simmons, “An Epistolary Confession” What types of activities do you do to cultivate a life less of yourself?
How do you respond to Abby Farson Pratt‘s questions in her article “You Write Like a Girl“: “Is there something about men on an inherent and fundamental level that keeps men from valuing” women’s writing? “Have men been subtly cultured to devalue women’s writing?” Share your thoughts in the comments.
“One of the great tools of art is that it helps us slow down and reflect. It’s a rarity in our culture to be able to stand, mouth agape, and take in beauty for long periods of time.” -Brian Watkins, “The Quiet Film” When is the last time you stood agape and took in beauty […]
“I am a magnet to the strong, powerful poses because I wish to be a magnet to a strong, powerful life.” -Kira Marshall-Mckelvey, “A Yogic Journey” Using Kira’s wonderful description of yoga as a metaphor for art, let’s ask the question: Is your art a projection of who you want to be? Or, should your […]
You said take a hike so I took one.
If there were so many books of poor quality, of dubious claims, of frivolous titles and rows of books I found no interest in, it would not be that hard at all to get a book of my own up onto the shelves. Surely there was a place for my own creation, and it wouldn’t even be that hard.
The cubicle is both cell and kingdom– a place of entrapment and a place to claim as yours alone.
Suburbs and Sprawl and Sidewalks! Oh My!
We have seen the end of the world, and the end of the world is when all the earth has become suburbia.
Is Laughter the Best Medicine?
Laughing at the news every few days is an act of cultural catharsis, removing the stench of our world’s stupidity by laughing it away. But is a medicine that causes you to purge and forget really the best medicine?
WebMD for the Soul says I have acedia. Kathleen Norris concurs.
Recovering some not-so-ancient wisdom.
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