Original poetry, essays, and cultural reflections.
In 1939, an American Jesuit priest, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, slipped into the Soviet Union in hopes of ministering to Catholics who had been deprived of their priests by the communist government. In short order he was arrested, mercilessly interrogated…
Amundsen. Shackleton. Peary. Nansen. The pantheon of Arctic exploration is full of legends, but one you probably never heard of who belongs there is Valerian Albanov. Although a big fan of Arctic exploration books, I had never heard of Albanov…
With God in Russia, by Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, with Daniel L. Flaherty, SJ. In 1939, an American Jesuit priest named Walter J. Ciszek (born in 1904) slipped into the Soviet Union using a false identity, in the hope of…
Few things in this world are more culturally unpopular than abstaining from alcohol. Just about everywhere on earth people are conditioned to associate alcoholic beverages with fun, and even to believe it’s impossible to have fun without alcohol. And this…
The Shallows, What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, originally published in 2010, with an updated afterword (2020). “Of all the sacrifices we make when we devote ourselves to the Internet as our universal medium, the…