Uncle Frank’s Candy Store

    The inside of the place was rinsed in shadow, dust particles swirling in the opaque light. Newspapers were stacked on the counter; a local rag trumpeting rape and murder and a smudged racetrack tip sheet lay nearby. On the wall, a mounted cigarette rack housed...
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To Change the World

    “The future belongs to people with children, not with things,” wrote Charles Chaput in First Things a few months ago. If you are young and you want to change the world, counsels the Catholic archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia, then “get married, stay faithful to one...
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Henry James and the Ties of Family

Recently, we have heard a good deal about the family during our national discontents. Those sworn to the progressive ideology blame the family for perpetuating what the Soviets used to call “dissidence”; they even go so far as to insist that children denounce parents if they fail...
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The Economics of Abortion

  In the days following the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft of the Dobbs case, which threatens Roe v Wade, Amazon announced it would contribute up to $4000 to any employee who must travel to get an abortion.  Abortion as economics.  A court decision may not affect overmuch...
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On What We Inherit—and What We Pass On

My mother grew up in Rego Park, Queens, New York. She said the developer who named the town got “Rego” from a contraction of “Real Good.” The daughter of strict German immigrants, being raised in the shadow of World War II, she embodied the first-generation ethos of dreams...
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Dreams in a Pandemic

  I am the proud owner of a coffee mug that displays wisely worded encouragement from Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. I got it at a high-end “Second Time Around” sale at a well-heeled Episcopal Church in New York City—for...
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With New Eyes

I am rarely left speechless. Snappy retorts are part of my native language, and those few times when my mother’s instructions for what to do when I cannot say anything nice dominate my response, the conversation in question is likely a memorable one. Oddly enough, these...
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Lessons from a Foster Family

  It was two in the morning when a little round face popped up from the mattress, looked right and left, and then asked, “Umma?” He was ten months old and had already mastered the intonation of a question. It was two in the morning when I patted my little son on the back and...
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Mega Family Planning Conference Brings Thousands to Rwanda

  Kigali, capital of one of the poorest countries of Africa, recently hosted the fifth International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP), sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health (which is based at the Johns Hopkins University...
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The Business of Family Planning

  The global contraceptives market was estimated to be $22 billion in 2016  and projected to rise to $37 billion by 2025.1 To promote contraceptive use, especially among youth, manufacturers and other familyplanning advocates commemorate World Contraceptive Day on September...
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