bluemonkeyreview

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Tricksters

The opening chapters of Genesis show an activist God. Creation. Punishment. The destruction of the flood. And then, at the end of chapter 11,  almost everything changes. In the earlier chapters we inhabit cosmic time, and everything affects the entire world and all of humanity. But, at the end of chapter 11 we read about the family of Terah, moving with its flocks from the region of Ur into the…

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The great exchange

Language is powerful in Genesis. Already in v. 3 of chapter 1 God speaks and the acts of creation begin, bringing order from the tohu wa bohu of the primal waters. Their use of language continues, either in creation or in making remarks to other, associate Gods. They do not engage in conversation. We have only the words of God until the story of the second creation of man, in chapter 2. This time…

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God

We all tell stories, all the time and in many varieties. We love stories so much that we consume them constantly, whether in novels or movies or the airy persiflage of politicians. Each story we find becomes part of our library. Some stories overlap with the ones that we have about ourselves, and some become guides for our lives. The stories we tell serve the purpose that William James assigned…

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Studying the Bible

Almost a year ago the pastor of the church I’d just begun attending announced that he would begin an adult Bible study after church on Sundays. So, I thought, “Sure, why not? Let’s see how this goes.” But at the very same time I thought, “How do I do this?” Because there is no way that someone with my childhood spent dodging shards of brimstone and hearing about “Jee-zus” and praying for the…

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The Trials of Madame Restell

Syrett, Nicholas L. The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime. New York: The New Press, 2023. In The Trials of Madame Restell Nicholas Syrett offers both historians and general readers their best chance to make the acquaintance of one of the most famous (and infamous) women of 19th century America. Anyone…

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Ministering to men in battle

Piehler, G. Kurt. A Religious History of the American GI in World War II. Studies in War, Society, and the Military. Lincoln (Neb.): University of Nebraska Press, 2021. In A Religious History of The American GI in World War II G. Kurt Piehler offers a tour of the ways that the U.S. provided for the religious needs of men and women mobilized for war. But he gives us much more. Kurt brings to life…

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The Modern Marriage Complex

While you wait for the latest sex panic (open marriage this time) to unfold, I show that modern marriage is in permanent crisis.

Okay folks, time to turn to the latest sex panic. During the Covid years, the only notable erotic anxiety could be characterized as the “no-sex” regime, though as far as I could tell from my quarantine bunker no one hit the panic button.  Now though, the Atlantic has reviewed Molly Roden Winter’s More and our collective concern about how we relate to one another begins to take shape. More…

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Mass destruction

Rhodes, Richard, ed. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. 25th anniversary ed. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012. Like many people this past year, I was overwhelmed by the three hours of Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer. At the heart of the film we find J. Robert Oppenheimer’s psychic struggles, his ambivalence about the weapon-building he oversaw. The film impressed me enough that…

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La nuit vient, ma rare, Et ton corps encore, Plus beau qu'au soleil.

Maurice Regnaut

Ph. Crina Prida

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La blouse roumaine

Ioana - 2015

by Crina Prida

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Jusant by Andrey Surnov #2

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“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”

— Fernando Pessoa

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Remembering War the American Way

Piehler, Guenter Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Paperback reissue. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1995. Sometime in the first decade of the 21st century I was on a phone call with a young academic in the field of communication. He told me his area of research was in the rhetoric of memorials. I asked if he knew the work by Kurt Piehler. He did indeed know that work. That’s a…

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The Rediscovery of America

Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. Professor Ned Blackhawk is an American historian who foregrounds the history of North America’s indigenous peoples. In Rediscovery of America he takes on a monumental task, re-telling the history that contains the colonial era and then the rise of the United…

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Holocaust Education

Dara Horn begins her article in the current Atlantic Is Holocaust education making Anti-Semitism worse?  by contrasting the persistence and even growth of Anti-Semitism in a period when Holocaust education has grown in resources and pervasiveness. More than 20 states mandate Holocaust education, and many others make room for it in the basic education curriculum.  Other resources, such as…

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Way finding