The New Pheidippides

Martin Richard bleeds like Boston

Blood red socks strewn on the ground

Massacred like Crispus Attucks

Hardly time to hear the sound

Bombs, ball-bearings, flying razors

Slashed the crowd on Boylston Street

Police, officials, random strangers

Drank death’s whiskey served up neat

Missing teeth at First Communion

Martin’s smile on my TV

Tears from neighbors missing Martin

Wordless, senseless tragedy

Too young to have seen the Towers

Crumble that September blue

Not too young to take, a victim,

Shrapnel meant for me and you

Now a family’s torn asunder

Flags half staff, as Ashmont weeps,

Face the Pesky Pole at Fenway,

Silently...READ MORE

“Redefining” is a very modern term. One can read hundreds of articles about how things are being redefined, marriage being the hottest button issue of them all. But what does redefining something mean? What does it imply?

In the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, Juliet utters that famous remark, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Yes, if we were to call a rose by another name, it would still be what it is. But what if we were also to group, under the name “rose,” other things?

What if what we now call “ragweed” were also to be called “rose”? Then we would have essentially redefined “rose,” not merely renamed it. Its definition...READ MORE

I saw the cinematic adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables recently (months after the rest of the world, I know.) I wasn’t looking forward to it, since I am in love with the book, the unabridged version, and I just knew that a two-hour movie-musical could not do it justice.

It was an entertaining film, but two hours cannot get close to fleshing out the characters of Hugo’s masterpiece. And the one that gets shortchanged the most is Monseigneur Myriel, in the novel the bishop of the unnamed diocese (which Hugo calls simply “D----.”)

In the pivotal scene when the bishop agrees with Jean Valjean’s story that he had not stolen but had been given the purloined candlesticks, thus...READ MORE

Among the many reflections that may come out of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy is how at risk children are more at risk without a father to guide them.

My two oldest boys are teenagers now. I bought them The Dangerous Book for Boys some years back. I wondered what a good follow-up book could be. I was disappointed that Brad Miner’s The Compleat Gentleman, which I should have bought when it came out, isn’t easy to find and is now a pretty expensive book. I want my boys to be warriors for the good, and respectful and protective toward women, and scholars and, — why not dream big — great saints for the Church. I try to give example, and fail, and pray and try again. I cannot imagine raising...READ MORE