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‘Logan’ and the Cult of the Eternal Present
I remember the first time I experienced the death of a hero in a comic book. It was Cypher. I was all of 8 years old or so. And my comic was The New Mutants. It was a few months after I picked up my first issue, just in time for “The Fall of the…
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What You Probably Misunderstand About the Culture War
A culture war? You and I have our political-church landscape wrong. And we’re making it worse. Here’s how we fix it: we speak the truth.
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I don’t recall
I hate lies. But for me, it doesn’t end there. I hate when we encourage lies over honesty. How easy it is to conveniently forget. To ignore the truth. To misremember on purpose. Or just happen to not remember at a critical moment. “I don’t recall,” we say. Our brains are funny things, really. While…
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What a talk about pensions taught me about making change
A room full of clergy learning about changes to their pension fund is the last place I’d look for inspiration. And it’s a pretty safe guess you wouldn’t look there, either. But a funny thing happened. You don’t need to know anything more about the situation than that. It’s the sort of place which suffocates…
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‘Moonlight’ is 2016
I have not been as affected by a movie in years as I was by Moonlight. How it performs at the Oscars won’t change the truth that it is not only a great film, it’s transcendent. Zach Hoag’s review is top shelf and far more thoughtful than the review I never wrote. Except this one simple…
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Who actually thinks you can believe everything on the internet?
Seriously. Who? Because I’ve never actually met such a person. At the beginning, in the ’90s, there was a lot of trust. It was new. People were just learning to express themselves. Then there was little trust. It quickly filled with swamp and opinion. And then people started to do amazing things. Like Wikipedia and…
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Agreeing to Disagree
The teacher writes the numbers on the board. 2 + 2 = She turns to the class. Silent. Eyes creep to the corners to see their neighbors. “We’ve gone over this. What does two plus two equal?” A girl in the back, braids clicking, raises her hand. “4” The teacher smiles. “Thank you. Any other…
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Why we don’t really want an accurate count of homelessness.
When I was a teenager, I was part of Youth Volunteer Corps; a non-profit geared toward teaching youth about community service. For me, it was visionary, collaborative, and remarkably effective. And it always struggled to get funding. As part of a national organization with a common mission to both revitalize communities and build up young…