This week, we took some looks at stories of tragedy leading to hope: Tim O’Brien’s attention was caught by a radio story of a survivor of the Bosnian genocide, whose life may have become better off broken. Responding to a NYTimes story about descendants of Holocaust survivors so determined never to forget that they’re having concentration camp numbers tattooed on their own arms, Sam Sawyer, with an assist from the Art Institute of Chicago, thinks there may be something more going on with the way memory works. And Perry Petrich’s weekly You Can’t Take It With You bid goodbye, among others, to a poet of the Vietnamese resistance to Communism.
But fear not! It’s not all so serious, of course:
- Eric Sundrup, always on the watch for the deeper significance — or just a chance to write a post about — pop music, runs down the top 10 foreign language songs.
- “Un-fortunate” cookies? Brendan Busse’s going to keep looking for his fortune…
- Matt Dunch borrows a line from Dante to pay a compliment (even in Hell) to an atheist philosopher
- And in the more important news for the week:
- Vinny Marchionni kicks off the 50th anniversary celebration of Vatican II with … wait for it … power ballads.
- Ever think about what you’d really like to hear a politician say? Michael Rozier has.
If we do hear a presidential candidate giving a speech like that, you can be sure it’ll be covered here. Until the next Week in Review, then, we’ll do our best to give you something a little more hopeful to read instead.
