HERMAN GOODDEN
  • BLOG
  • Home
  • BOOKS
  • PLAYS
  • FEATURES
  • JOURNALISM
    • COLUMNS
    • INTERVIEWS
  • COMMERCE

Our Summer on the Old Catholic Road

31/7/2018

1 Comment

 
PictureMartyrs' Shrine, Midland Ontario
LONDON, ONTARIO – Hermaneutics is still on holidays this week but here is a piece from two summers ago about our discovery of the glories of Catholic tourism . . . .

IN THE LAST DAYS of July my wife and I elected to take our place among 49 other pilgrims on a chartered bus of the incongruously named Badder line out of St. Thomas that took us to St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal (stomping ground of the newly canonized Brother Andre); Our Lady of the Cape in Cap-de-la-Madelaine near Trois-Rivieres (the most thoroughly Catholic town I’ve ever visited on this continent); the Basilica of Ste. Anne de Beaupre (a magnificent cathedral dedicated to Our Lady’s mother and the oldest pilgrimage site in North America); Notre Dame Basilica-Cathedral in old Quebec City (our first visit to that exquisite burg since our honeymoon in 1977) and the touchingly modest Shrine to the even more recently canonized Kateri Tekakwitha in Kahnawake.


Read More
1 Comment

Into the Zone of the Woke

23/7/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
SALT SPRING ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA – You were promised a field report this week from our continent’s west coast, otherwise known as the zone of the woke, where I suppose the politically correct might say we’re having ourselves an endangered whale of a time. I’ve had my very own I Ching hexagram thrown on Hornby Island with a change line in the fifth place which means that I am proudly transitioning from ‘#33 Retreat’ to ‘#56 The Wanderer’. I’ve wolfed down a gluten-free muffin on Salt Spring Island while standing outside a public washroom designated “Universal” and have charted the transit of Venus (she was perched right on the lower tip of a waxing crescent moon) from an observation tower in the northern Washington seaport of Westport while chugging a can of sugar-free Fanta Orange.


Read More
1 Comment

Once More - with Religious Feeling

15/7/2018

1 Comment

 
PictureShort minutes after tying the knot
LONDON, ONTARIO - Hermaneutics is on the road this week, sampling the progressive fleshpots and political flashpoints of our continent’s west coast. In place of the customary up-to-the-minute commentary which has made this blog such an internet phenomenon, I offer you this essay from precisely one year ago in which I announced my reckless decision to get married for the second time:


Read More
1 Comment

The More Human Side of Orwell

8/7/2018

3 Comments

 
PictureGeorge Orwell
LONDON, ONTARIO – The single book with which George Orwell (1903-50) is most identified – Nineteen Eighty-Four - was published 69 years ago this fall. An oppressively dark vision of social manipulation and political tyranny in late 20th century Britain, few books have so completely worked their way into the popular imagination and vocabulary. Borrowing from Orwell’s dystopian novel, we call euphemistic or neutered language ‘newspeak’. Politically incorrect ideas are ‘thought crimes’. An epidemic of surveillance cameras monitoring public and private spheres makes us no strangers to the concept of an all-seeing ‘Big Brother’.


Read More
3 Comments

Whatcha Gonna Do with a Drunken Sailor?

2/7/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
LONDON, ONTARIO –
Here’s an essay I wrote 29 summers ago:

I stepped out our front door at one p.m. to sample the humours of the new day I’d risen to, when my five-year-old son came running up to me with an amazing bit of news. “Did you know old people bleed?” he asked. He’d been riding his bike on the sidewalk with his friend when they saw an old lady keel over and smash her face against some concrete steps across the road. “That’s her over there?”


Read More
2 Comments
    HERMANEUTICS
    If you would like to contribute to the ongoing operations of Hermaneutics, there are now a few options available.
    support
    Picture

    THE AQUINAS LECTURE
    G.K. CHESTERTON AND THE GIFT OF GRATITUDE
    HEAR THE LECTURE ON G.K. CHESTERTON

    ALL LIFE IS A GIFT :

    THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION :

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018

    Categories

    All
    Book Reviews

    RSS Feed

© 1975 - 2023 HERMAN GOODDEN  All Rights Reserved
  • BLOG
  • Home
  • BOOKS
  • PLAYS
  • FEATURES
  • JOURNALISM
    • COLUMNS
    • INTERVIEWS
  • COMMERCE