Most Christmas songs are cheery, but not all. (Think, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” for a moment.) The song with which I decided to start our Advent series on Unlikely Christmas Carols is one of those songs: Pearl Jam’s “Let Me Sleep.” Except that it’s not so much sad as kind of tragic. Unlike Dave Matthews “Christmas Song,” which tells a full story, Pearl Jam tends to be more suggestive, evoking a feeling more than sharing a story. The song speaks of someone who is down and out…and cold…at Christmastime. Maybe a homeless person or drifter, but someone who is exposed to the elements. And, while shivering in the cold,...

Fifth Friday Film Forum: Catching Fire Spoiler alerts: If you haven’t read Catching Fire or seen the film, you may not want to read this. I have to admit that when I first read Catching Fire and realized that Suzanne Collins was going to send Katniss and Peeta back into the arena to compete in another Hunger Games, I was disappointed. What seemed such a brilliant plot element in the last book suddenly seemed tired, as if Collins was a one-trick pony. But that feeling soon disappeared. Although there is indeed a second round of the Hunger Games competition in Catching Fire, the plot both inside and outside of the arena was different enough...

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered a remarkably brief speech of just 269 words as part of the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, just over four months after the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. We call that battle “decisive,” and in the larger picture it was, but at this time the war was hardly over. Though later called the “turning point” of the war, that effort could have been forgotten were there not other monumental victories and, for that matter, Lincoln’s own re-election in 1864. For this reason, he was conscious of the need to remind those in attendance of the...

When most of us hear the name Chernobyl, we immediately think of nuclear catastrophe, uncontrolled outpourings of radiation, and mass exodus. Yet when some people hear that name, they think of something different – they think of home. In this fascinating eight-minute TED Talk, Holly Morris tells the story of a community of around 200 persons, mostly elderly women, who elected to stay in Chernobyl and have lived there the last 27 years. Why stay there when it is considered one of the most hazardous places on earth? Because it’s home. It’s the place they were raised and in turn raised their children. It’s the place their parents and...

This month’s Fourth Friday Film Forum: Gravity. From the very start of the film Gravity you are aware of two elements of space that we probably know but don’t often think about: 1) the sheer size of outer space and, by extension, the universe, and 2) the utter silence of space. Both of these elements are brought to vivid expression by filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and serve to elicit one emotional reaction in particular: loneliness. That sense that you are so small as to be insignificant; so absolutely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things; so tiny and powerless in the face of the monumental challenges of life; so utterly...