Before he was elected Speaker of the House on 25 Oct. 2023, Mike Johnson seems to have eluded the spotlight with the fancy footwork of a ballerina dancing into it. Then, suddenly, people cared about his opinions on the issues most dividing Americans today. In a recent Fox News interview, Johnson explained his worldview only…
Tag: renaissance
Walking Steadily Once Again: Miracles, Biblical Epic, and the Heroics of Healing
A man who isn’t simply blind but speechless and possessed (Matt. 12.22-3); a paralytic who’s prostrate by an inaccessible fountain (John 1-15); someone who’s sightless, his eyes spat on and caked with mud (John 9.1-12): all three walk not into a bar but back to their homes, to tell of a healer named Jesus. I…
The Head of a Dog or Horn of a Rhino: Meaning, Milton, and Me
THE HEAD OF A DOG OR HORN OF A RHINO: MEANING, MILTON, & ME [H]e reproaches me with want of beauty and loss of sight: “A monster huge and hideous, void of sight.” … [B]ut he immediately corrects himself, and says, “though not indeed huge, for there cannot be a more spare, shrivelled and bloodless…
“Let Be Assigned Some Narrow Place Enclosed”: Requesting Accommodations Has Always Been Tricky Business
Pasquale S. Toscano // I often reflect that since many days of darkness are destined to everyone, as the wise man warns, mine thus far, by the signal kindness of Providence, between leisure and study, and the voices and visits of friends, are much more mild than those lethal ones. John Milton, “To Leonard Philaras”…
Flayed Animal Bodies: Cats and Pregnancy from 16th Century—Present
Alicia Andrzejewski // “If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.”—Douglas Adams In The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008), Derrida writes of “seeing oneself seen naked under a gaze”—his female cat’s gaze, in particular—“behind which there remains a bottomlessness, at…
The Myth of Miscarriage: An Early Modern Legacy
If a medical school student or resident looked up “miscarriage” in the index of Blueprints Obstetrics & Gynecology (2013), they would be directed to “spontaneous abortion.” Denoting a pregnancy that ends before 20 weeks, spontaneous abortion occurs in 15% to 25% of all pregnancies, and this “number may be even higher because losses that occur…