KtBlog
musings, news, events, and your letters to the editors
Getting Godly in Mysore
We’ve come to the hilltop where the Chamundeshwari Temple overlooks the city of Mysore, India, but we can’t pass up the free admission to the Godly Museum across the parking lot. It feels like the love child of a Hindu goddess and L. Ron Hubbard, midwifed by a Jehovah’s Witness. I’m a little frightened, but maybe…
Ann Rice’s Jesus
The new issue of the n+1 book review, N1BR, just came out, and it includes a lovely essay on Anne Rice: Four years ago after writing twenty-one books about vampires, witches, mummies, psychic humans, and pleasure slaves (there were five books of erotica, under pseudonyms), she progressed one step further on the ladder of heroes.…
Kiss This
Writes Stephen L. Carter, Yale church/state scholar and novelist: It is no accident that the great Western religions rely heavily on sacred texts—texts, moreover, that believers are able to touch and feel and carry about. The weight a Buy Cheap Cialis Soft nd heft of a Bible, its solidity, itself implies eternity. Matthew Brown of…
Galt Almighty
Bad news: Ayn Rand’s Alas Shrugged— sales of which are booming — is going to become a movie, starring Angelina Jolie, who will channel her father’s conservative politics and dip as deeply as she can into the shallows of her own politics of narcissism to portray the doorstopper’s protagonist Dagny Taggert, witness to the ubermensch…
You’re Doing What to the Buddha?
When you work on a publication whose title suggests the thought of doing violence to the benevolent founder of a major world religion, it isn’t uncommon to arouse well-meaning concern from time to time. Today we heard the following from “positive”: i think what ur sa Revive Her Drive click for more ying is wrong…
Not That Kind of Girl
Carlene Bauer does not care for the new biography of Flannery O’ Connor by Brad Gooch: Aquinas is described as having “lofty, lucent prose” — which is like saying Plato has a learned, witty style. And he is easily beguiled by trivia. In order to show how protected a child O’Connor was, he takes a…
Attention Friends and Neighbors!
Making my merry way to breakfast past Fulton Street in Brooklyn this morning, the LORD raised up a mighty crowd in my path. They bore yellow balloons, wide smiles, and full-color fliers at the ready. The occasion? To announce the Grand Inauguration of the Cathedral of Faith tomorrow at 1091 Fulton. On the flyer is…
The Diaries of the Late God
Last week a dear friend blessed me with a 1968 first edition paperback copy of a sleeping classic: Excerpts from the Diaries of the Late God by Anthony Towne. I love this. The dedication page sends a tingle down my spine. The poet Anthony Towne was, if you didn’t know, the extraordinary partner of the…
Religion & Revisionism
There may be no right way to talk about the Holocaust, but there are certainly wrong ways — and the Catholic Church keeps finding them. Last month, an excommunicated bishop was let back in the fold despite his record of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. The Vatican claimed it didn’t know the worst of it, but…
Ain’t No Party Like a …
Biking through Brooklyn. 10:30 pm on a Monday. You pass big hats—big ones. Music pumping from even more enormous vehicles. Hummers? No. Escalades? No again. Rented white RVs scattered through the streets, packed full of Hasidic boys dressed in sparkles? Oh, yes. Did I mention the children dressed up in costumes? And that the music…
KtB on Twitter
Break out the cheap champagne! We’ve jumped on the bandwagon and joined the annoyingly irresistible micro-mayhem of Twitter. Now you can keep abreast of all articles and blog posts by following our Twitter feed.
On Our Knees
Barack Obama evidently thought mega-pastor Rick Warren had words of wisdom for the nation worthy of Obama’s inauguration. But what would Warren say to the Obamas if they came to him for personal counseling? We don’t need to wonder, reports Kathryn Joyce in Mother Jones, because Warren is out about his belief in wifely submission.…
Blinded By Science
Remember Paul Shanley? He was said to be the worst of the pedophile priests, sentenced in 2005 to 12-15 years. But soon, he’ll get another day in court, as Massachusetts’ top tribunal takes up questions about the evidence used to achieve his conviction. The problem with the trial of Paul Shanley, says JoAnn Wypijewski, wasn’t…
Finallly. A New Bible.
Well it’s about time someone wrote a new Bible. Thank God – ehem – that it was this guy named Jeff. (NOT SHARLET). From the always dependable Onion: Thi Buy cialis soft online s Week, Let’s Try A Reading From The Bible I Wrote
Must One Describe?
The air here is always dry. Thin, but also thick. A white pipe the width of a soda can reaches from floor to ceiling, making the never-ending music of a rainstick. From it comes enough heat that even on the coldest days of winter I’ve had to keep the window open at least a crack…
25 Random Notes on Ash Wednesday
25 Random Notes on Ash Wednesday I woke up early to my roommate putting away the silverware in the kitchen, then fell back asleep. When I woke up the wooden rosary that I fell asleep with wrapped around my hand was lost in the sheets. Last night I was asked if I keep any symbolic…
Happy 5 Years, Bartholomew!
One of the best Buddha killers on the web, Richard Bartholomew, is celebrating 5 years of blogging at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion. We wish him the warmest congratulations! Little did I expect then what a great learning experience running a blog would be – I’ve become interested now in a whole list of topics I…
Who Are These Women?
Along the ramparts of the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center for Feminist Art, there is a small exhibition of ancient female figurines, among them the oldest sculpture in the museum’s collection. What strange forms! Where are the supermodels, where are the Barbie dolls? At the confluence of second-wave feminism and post-Freudian psychohistory, the mid-twentieth century saw…