As we head into the summer, it’s time to run down the last month at TJP. (Yes, we know — it’s been a whole month! What can we say? Most of us here are grad students of one sort or another, and it’s been exam season.)
But other milestones than exams were marked as well — we had our ten-thousandth “Like” on the TJP Facebook page. We’re on the lookout for our next ten thousand readers, and we’d like your help.
Four to Read Right Now
If you’ve missed these, you can fix that now.
- American Idol — Brian Konzman asks whether our relationship with liberty might be a bit too worshipful
- Medical Missions, Defining the Relationship — Michael Rozier on medical missions and the people they help (hint: perhaps not whom you think)
- Don’t Replace Good Faith with Bad — Keith Maczkiewicz realizing what’s really going on in a question about religion in a Facebook message
- Spring and Other Stuff — Brendan Busse, remembering and re-learning that spring requires gratitude more than effort
Word Watch
Some simple words, worth thinking about more deeply
- Alleluia — returned to us in the Easter season, and meaning, for Keith Maczkiewicz, “God redeems this.”
- Pride — and protectiveness, that leads to compassion. Joe Simmons tells us how.
- Justice — Nate Romano on making room for “restorative justice” in our legal system
- See also Nate’s pointer to a story about a program for youthful offenders in New York
- Slash — as in the punctuation mark, which Tim O’Brien tells us deserves a second thought.
- Equal — Paul Lickteig points us at a photography project, “Created Equal,” worth a careful look.
- Love — Perry Petrich, reflecting on how it was revealed in Jason Collins’s coming out and Macklemore’s “Same Love”
- Practice — as the NBA and NHL playoffs revved up (a month ago, and still going strong), Jeff Sullivan was thinking about the “sweat equity” of practice
- Devil — the one Ignatius called “the enemy of our human nature,” the one Pope Francis seems to talk about a lot. Quang Tran explains what’s up.
A Few Farewells
Some things we said goodbye to in the last month
- Kris Kross — You Can’t Take It With You bid goodbye, among others, to one of the artists who brought us “Jump”
- Osama bin Laden — marking one year since his death, #tbt (Throwback Thursday) on whether or not we should rejoice in it
- The Office — #tbt, reflecting on series finales and closure (or lack thereof: we’re looking at you, Sopranos)
On What’s Due to Whom
Making good on things owed, in one sense or another
- The truth, even to late night TV hosts — Vinny Marchionni on why people are lying to Jimmy Kimmel
- More than $1.50 a day, to everyone — but a bunch of people tried it, Quang Tran points out, in the “Live Below the Line” challenge
- Basic fact-checking, for Garry Wills’s Why Priests? — Jay Hooks points us at Fr. Robert Barron’s devastating YouTube breakdown of what Wills missed
- Tears, memory, and justice, to garment workers — after the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, #tbt reminded us that it wasn’t so long ago that the U.S. saw similar tragedies
- Thanks, love, and poetry, to our mothers — Tim O’Brien celebrated Mother’s Day with a Billy Collins poem about lanyards (and love)
Binding Us Together
Some very different forms of life together
- All Greek to Me — Vinny Marchionni on what he learned about community working with fraternities and sororities
- The Corporate Man — Chris Schroeder looks at the questions raised by a man’s decision to sell shares in himself
As we celebrate Memorial Day, we’re gearing up to spend a good chunk of the summer south of the Equator (have we mentioned we’re going to Rio?) — but we’ll keep up with happenings back at home too. We hope you get a chance to break out the backyard barbecues and beach towels — after, of course, you take some time to catch up on TJP.
