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Columns

  • Reading is right the thing to do

    The author Tracy Gayle uttered some frightening words the other day: Nobody reads anymore, she said. They have their phones in front of them. She is in position to see this literary loss far more clearly than most of us: She teaches kids to read for her living and tries to sell the novels she writes for her soul.

    As reality-pounding as that assessment was, it was only the last of a series of jackhammers that have cracked my soul in recent days.

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  • SOUDER: A trip to the farm and the ‘good old days’

    On an early October day a few years ago, my wife and I loaded the kids up in the old front- wheel-drive sleigh and headed to the country for what we hoped might be the start of a long-standing, old-fashioned family tradition – picking apples.

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  • This ridiculous shutdown hits close to home

    There is uncertainty in the land today. Our mighty government has struck out.

    That means different things to each of you. It means something entirely different to me today than it did in 1995, when such stupidity ruled.

    That’s because I realized that a shutdown could have meant my son wouldn’t get paid this week.

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  • CHARLTON: There’s lots to like about Pope Francis

    I have found, like many others, much to admire in Pope Francis. I believe that Francis can set an agenda that will affect change not only within the Christian world but in the larger world as well, where there are certainly many changes that need to be made.

    One of the most important agenda items for Francis is his emphasis on caring for the poor. From the first moments of his papacy, Francis made a point to eschew many of the regal trappings of the papacy and, in doing so, made a powerful statement about his very real concern for the poor of the world.

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  • The real question about football

    It’s a question that first resonated in my life 40 years ago and now has roared back with full force:

    Why do people allow their children to play football?

    It’s a question I asked myself when I first became a father, and now that the game has grown far more powerful than its rules and equipment can manage, I hear it amplify from a whisper to a shout:

    Why do parents allow their precious children to play tackle football?

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  • SOUDER: Enemies…or possible future teammates?

    Sometimes our enemies are chosen for us. For example, growing up in Indiana as a huge Indiana University college basketball fan, it was just accepted that our primary “enemies” were Purdue and Kentucky. In fact, it was not unusual to see people wearing t-shirts that said, “My two favorite teams are Indiana and whoever is playing Kentucky” or a similar one with “Purdue” substituted for “Kentucky.”

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  • Crotchety may in fact be an apt description

    Let’s begin with a cliche: Age is simply a number. Or another: You’re only as old as you feel.

    Or, as Mitch Albom suggested in his quirky The Time Keeper: If we didn’t measure time, would we know that it was passing?

    Those are thoughts at the top of my quickly crowding cranium because I recently had one of those landmark birthdays that give us pause and has us studying the mirror and dreading the horizon – and chanting it’s only a number, it’s only a number.

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  • CHARLTON: Jesus’ message of love in face of war

    For several years I taught a class on St. Augustine’s classic book, the City of God. It is a weighty and sometimes impenetrable tome, and one I continue to struggle to understand. Though not widely read today, it remains one of the most enduring classics in the history of Western society and has, often unbeknownst to us, shaped our thinking in powerful ways.

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  • SOUDER: God’s ‘Dream Team’ is an Unlikely Bunch

    Mention the words, “Dream Team,” and different people may think of different things. My first thought takes me back to my college days when three of my best friends and I referred to ourselves by that description. Though we shared many exploits and experiences together that in our minds merited the “Dream Team” designation, our fame was on a pretty localized level, and we didn’t gain much national exposure.

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  • Celebrating a true labor of love

    On Friday a friend and former colleague posted these warm but ironic words on his Facebook page:

    “Happy Labor Day weekend everyone. Let’s hope we still have jobs on Monday.”

    His twist, you should know, comes from having been through the start-up, layoff pattern that so besets journalism in the digital age. You hear the bulletins of print operations lopping jobs, but so many of those we know and love years ago leaped to new ventures on the Web only to find themselves unwanted before the ink was dry on their paychecks.

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