Geoffrey Sheehy considers teaching high school students a privilege and hopes to remain an English teacher until he retires at age 85. He and his wife have four children and live in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
When a Fool Is More than a Fool
A useful word for a time that needs it
I wish ass were not a four letter word. I wish I could reapply the cultural context that let C.S. Lewis use the word in four of the seven Narnia Chronicles books: “‘Shut up and don’t be an ass, Scrubb,’ said Jill hastily” in The Silver Chair. “You were only an ass, but I was […]
Punching My Adult Card: 10 Stamps in 10 Years
10 for 2020
As I reflect upon a decade of life, I feel like it should involve large-scale changes or shifts; but, as I think back to 2010, I am mostly struck by how much of my life is precisely the same now as it was ten years ago. I have the same job; I live in the […]
Pushing the Continuum: A Review of The Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield
I was first intimidated by Ron Sider as a freshman in college when I read Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Sider crafts his assessment of the economic world so uncompromisingly I felt trapped. I was rich, clearly, with a standard of living far above most of the world, and, though only a student, […]
There’s a New Door to Narnia, and the Children Want In
No Narnia book requires another story, yet no Narnia book excludes another, either. Lewis always left the door open, seemingly so he could invent another excuse for himself to enter.
I often share some detail or story from my day early in the family’s dinner conversation. I’ll just announce it to see if the kids find it intriguing. “I heard something funny today,” I’ll say, and if they quiet down, I know they’re ready. Often they quiet out of politeness, Big Sister nudging Little Brother […]
Growing a Fuller Portrait of Marat
“But the art as well as the man is a finished product, now left for me to interpret”
My familiarity of Marat has always arisen completely from the painting, “The Death of Marat.” To me, Marat has been a figure murdered, an image of vulnerability and pain. Here, the brush of Jacques-Louis David has told me, is a man of letters, violated in the privacy of his warm bath. When did the death […]
These libraries were each community’s jewel
I have a love affair with libraries. Growing up in a small New Hampshire town, our library was more artifact than lending institution, but I liked it anyway. It shared the property line with my school, so our classes visited the library every week and checked out books from Peggy Ward, the librarian who had […]
Was John Adams a Vain Little Man?
He opened himself up and revealed what was truly swirling in his soul.
In an attempt to come alongside my daughter’s schoolwork, I have been reading Robert Middlekauff’s The Glorious Cause, a survey of the American Revolution published in the Oxford History of the United States. I thought I knew a thing or two about American history, but perhaps growing up in New England and attending a school […]
Controlled by Those Who Hate You: A review of Hitler’s Pawn
What he needed was the help of people—lots of people—who would choose not to hate him, but to help.
A Jew in Europe in the 1930s was a person without a home. A Jewish Pole, for example, might have left for Germany in the 1920s to avoid Poland’s anti-Semitic mood; but when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, he was no longer welcome. Where might he go to flee these Nazis? Not […]
The penalty for murder in Exodus is death. Am I suggesting we administer the death cocktail to the people who share spoilers?
Authorized Personnel Only: You must know the endings to Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men to read beyond this sentence. As a teacher I am fairly patient with students’ misbehavior. A mentor of mine once suggested that we view students’ actions with detachment—they’re making choices, and our job is to apply the […]
When the Least of These Speak: A review of Jesse Ball’s Census
...beautiful in ways I cannot quite express...
Jesse Ball’s novels are odd. In The Way Through Doors, for example, the various storylines layer so deeply I lose track of which is the core line. In The Curfew, my favorite, a puppet show serves as a vehicle for telling the characters’ history, but it continues into the present, revealing events the puppeteers have […]
I desire for my students a Wright brothers experience—where they can pursue real work, in relative isolation. Where they can seek the public’s attention after they’ve managed to get their plane in the air.
Growing up, my family began every day under the radio’s spell—Bob Edwards on Morning Edition, Ed at Joy 105.5, Charlie on WZID. These magicians charmed their way into our home and made themselves a part of the family. Back as far as I can remember, I wanted to be like them, and I practiced the […]
What really matters is that I choose a team and commit to rooting for someone, because that is how I become part of the story.
On Sherman Alexie, C.S. Lewis, and the shortcomings of the “customized” life lived at the expense of tradition and community
A Review of Barton Swaim's Memoir, The Speechwriter
Barton Swaim imitates Mark Twain, the American master of satirical humor. His insights can give us the perspective we need during an election where humorists are straining to parody an already exaggerated reality.
As ridiculous as it may feel to interpret a small happening as providential, it can feel similarly ridiculous to declare every circumstance coincidental.
Geoffrey Sheehy on what it means to trust in a story’s payoff.
One couple’s understanding of the biblical metaphor of adoption changed through the reality of their open adoption.
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