The Narthex

In a low-rent Beacon Hill tenement where I once lived, I visited almost daily a disabled pensioner who was a former horse jockey, recently suffering from blackouts. He had had a metal plate embedded in his skull after a racing tumble, and it caused him unpredictable fainting spells. His merely…

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, met with Mahatma Gandhi to gain his support for her promotion of birth control devices versus using self-control of sexual desire. She was sorely disappointed, as he predicted rampant licentiousness would result from widespread use of such devices. In 1934, an Indian…

San Francisco was recently dubbed the "Poop Capital of America" due to the high number of poop complaints reported in 2017. Local channel KRON reports that while dogs play a part, at issue is the number of homeless people defecating in streets and parks. Could "privy demons" be a reason why down-and-outers…

The Roman Empire depended entirely on its slave culture. Back then, Spartacus, a former Thracian soldier who had deserted, was captured and enslaved. After being forced to perform as a gladiator, he rebelled. He was eventually followed by 70,000 slaves to the mountain caves near Vesuvius. The Empire, threatened after…

During the persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan England, Jesuit priests pretending to be family relatives or tutors hid in specially constructed ‘priest holes’ to avoid royal prosecutors. Surprise inspections and raids of family homes were not uncommon and if a priest was found, he would face torture and execution. Today,…

"When we see news clips of a shark swimming near a beach, it scares us into not going near that beach," says Liz Weinandy, a registered dietitian at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center. But "what we should be scared of is double cheeseburgers, french fries and large amounts of…

Legatus, a group of Catholic business leaders, announced it is withholding an $850,000 tithe to the Vatican until it gets adequate answers to questions raised by financial and sex-abuse scandals in the Church. Without stating as much, the group is acknowledging the presence of present-day "temple prostitutes" and is acting toward…

Can you guess what industry is among the fastest-growing in the U.S.? Self-storage. A self-storage industry newsletter reported in March 2018 that self-storage boasts an annual industry revenue of $38 billion. American storage facilities number between 44,000 and 52,000, offering around 2.3 billion square feet of rentable space. And when…