Author: Mark J. Chmiel

30 Years Ago Today…

Mev died. I received a beautiful correspondence from Peggy Mosher this evening. She shared about reading The Book of Mev second time. Her son Pete studied with me at SLU in 2001; years later I…

Getting to Know New York

Although I was poor, it never bothered me. I went to the library and I could read. I liked to go on the Fifth Avenue bus, which had an upper level, just to sit there…

Today’s One-Liner (#327)

We always love to discuss and reveal character because human character is to us the greatest puzzle. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, in Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer, interviews by Richard Burgin, p. 47

Simplify

For there are only three kinds of good. So if a thing is not virtuous, useful, or pleasant, it’s not really good. So fagetaboutit! Simplify your life by throwing out all the things you have…

Walking Wonders

 Man is Homo ambulans. This is part of his natural law, the law of reason. This endowment enables him to get to places about his home or to the top of Mount Ranier. Walking is…

Today’s One-Liner (#325)

I believe in Buddha kindness and nothing else, I believe in Heaven, in Angels, I eschew all Marxism and allied horseshit and psychoanalysis, and offshoot therefrom. –Jack Kerouac, Letter to Allen Ginsberg, January 1958

Keep at It

If there is one thing I have learned from Mother Angelica and Father Fessio, two of the brightest stars in the Church today, it is that good ideas ought to be pursued, and then one…

Today’s One-Liner (#324)

The great authors, those to whom we go back again and again throughout our lives, Shakespeare and Dante, for example, are inexhaustible.  –Ralph McInerny, I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You:  My Life and Pastimes,…

Learn from the Saints

Look at the example given by saints in every walk of life. There is nothing that they have not done in order to love God and be his devoted followers.  –Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to…