Saturday Good Reads

Over the past decade, I spent more than a few days in “the canyon,” the Laity Lodge complex in the hill country of Texas. It is a starkly beautiful place, evoking a sense of how landscape and geography often have an inherent sacredness.

One of the more indulgent aspects of Laity Lodge is the food, and one of the best-tasting aspects of the food is the graham cracker cookies. They will probably never taste like they taste in the canyon, but Laity Lodge posted the recipe. 

Speaking of food, growing up in the South meant growing up with grits. My mother frequently made them; my grandmothers made them; and they were usually a staple on hotel and restaurant breakfast menus. Some of the best grits I’ve ever eaten were at Tujaque’s Restaurant on Decatur Strreet in the New Orleans French Quarter, right cross from Café du Monde (the coffee and doughnuts or beignets place). They were a side dish to barbequed shrimp, and I would have been content to have eaten the grits as the appetizer, main course, side dish, and dessert. 

Grits were born in poverty, says a report by Kristen Hartke at National Public Radio, and now they’re showing up on fine-dining menus everywhere.

More Good Reads

Faith

Why We Need the Apostles Creed in 2019 – Michele Morin at The Gospel Coalition.

When Is the First Time We See a New Testament Book Used as Scripture? – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

Silencing the Scream – Chris Castaldo at Tabletalk.

Life and Culture

Making Middlebury safe for speakers – a modest proposal – Charles Murray at AEI.

Is This ‘Common’ Language? A College’s Misguided Guide – Rand Richards Cooper at Commonweal.

News Media

The Press Will Learn Nothing from the Russiagate Fiasco – Matt Taibbi at The Rolling Stone.

Writing and Literature

Salvaging: Boat Trailers, T.S. Eliot, and Resurrection – Jeff Bilbro at Front Porch Republic.

Is Anybody Out There? One Writer on the Purgatory of Submission – Glen Cadigan at The Millions.

The Magic of Ed McBain’s 87^thPrecinct – Paul Abbott at CrimeReads.

The Protestant World of Shakespeare – E.J. Hutchinson at Mere Orthodoxy.

Poetry

Light and Fear – Joe Spring.

Auction – William Baer at The Agonist.

American History

What was So Wrong with Slavery? – Stewart Henderson at Emerging Civil War.

Art

Notre Dame: experts explain why Macron's five-year restoration deadline is impossible – Hannah McGivern and Nancy Kenney at The Art Newspaper.

Greenland – Land of Unending Ice – Stefan Forster

Painting: Woman Reading a Book, oil on canvas by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875).