Vietnam’s Wars
Review of Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam At War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 1. In our history books we refer to “the Vietnam War,” which fixated American attention for a decade, if not more….
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Friends in Cairo en route to Gaza
My friend Pat Geier from Louisville sent this update from her friends in Cairo… Friends, Mid-afternoon (Louisville time) I spoke with Sharon, Ibrahim, Russ and Ira. I tried but was unable to reach Mateo and…
Dharma Song
While reading Jospeh Goldstein’s One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, I came across this “Dharma Song” by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. I think of so many friends at SLU who’ve done mindful walking, breathing, smiling, sitting,…
Upon Finishing The Book of Mev by Sandra Tamari
Am I deserving of that kind of love? Would she have been my friend? Would she have had kids by now? What happened to the cats? Waiting for Jad’s Tae Kwon Do to let out…
Accuplacer Prep
Reading Overview (9:30 minutes) 1. Information and Ideas Reading Closely Determining Central Ideas and Themes Understanding Relationships 2. Rhetoric Analyzing Text Structure Analyzing Point of View Analyzing Arguments 3. Synthesis Analyzing Multiple Texts 4….
Our Teachers
I came across the following passage on mothers of the disappeared from Daniel Berrigan’s Steadfastness of The Saints: A Journal of Peace and War in Central and North America, in which he writes about his visits…
Questions for Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, author of Night, 1986 Nobel Peace laureate, adviser to American presidents, acclaimed humanitarian—is speaking at Saint Louis University on Tuesday 1 December 2009 at 7:00 p.m.. What follows are some questions students and…
Two Faces of Elie Wiesel
1. “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy,…
An Appreciation of Roy Bourgeois
This was written in 2005 and I am sharing it here for friends who may be headed this weekend to Fort Benning. For some of us, the story of Father Roy Bourgeois is familiar. We…
The Gospel according to Marcel
Neeta and I were happily shopping for books in Left Bank Books this afternoon, and she ended up with Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and I left with Days of Reading by Proust. As for the inner book of…