Subscribe to Jasper. Song of the Day: “Lord, Who at Cana’s Wedding Feast” “The kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus, “may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son.” He doesn’t say it was a birthday party, or a feast to celebrate his son’s first triumph in battle. It’s a wedding...

In recent weeks, as the pandemic has unfolded and our academic community has been dispersed, C.S. Lewis’ classic essay “Learning in Wartime” has come to mind many times. One of the key insights that he offers is that no matter what the circumstance, we men will create and delight in culture. We must have culture...

Subscribe to Jasper. Word of the Day: WOMAN Language can reveal to us a lot about human nature, everywhere in the world. A friend of mine once asked people to imagine a very strange sign on the side of a road. It’s one of those signs with a picture on it and no words. So,...

Subscribe to Jasper. Story of the Day: Bleak House by Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was in love with goodness. If you have never read one of his books, you are in for a great treat. You’ll meet characters that will stay with you all your life long: Mr. Quilp, the evil dwarf who lies on...

Subscribe to Jasper. Woman of the Day: Saint Margaret of Scotland A long time ago, I saw a professional company in Providence put on Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. That was a mistake. Shakespeare was a Christian playwright, and Macbeth is a deeply Christian play. Who do you think Macbeth most resembles, in the Christian faith? Let...

Subscribe to Jasper. Women of the Day: Rose Hawthorne and Elizabeth Browning Come with me to Rome, in 1859. Why not? Everybody went to Italy then. You could hear plenty of English on the streets of Rome. It didn’t mean that they were Roman Catholics from England. They were writers, artists, scholars, travelers, and a...

Subscribe to Jasper. Painting of the Day: The Holy Family by Bartolome Esteban Murillo I’m an Italian American, and happy to be so. If you go to Italy and turn to spit, you’ll hit some great work of art – that is how common the works of art in Italy are. But we Italians sometimes...

Subscribe to Jasper. Man of the Day: Christy Mathewson “What are you doing, you crazy Indian!” yelled the shortstop. “Pull me up!” “Ain’t nothing to worry about,” says his teammate. “You’re so skinny, I could hold you with two fingers.” “Don’t you try it, Jim. Just get me back up in the room. Hey, you...

Subscribe to Jasper. Word of the Day: Virtue Have you ever seen an old picture of men working on the Brooklyn Bridge, eating their lunch while they sit on a girder hanging in mid-air, two hundred feet off the ground? How were they able to do that? They had VIRTUE. I’ll explain, but first let...

Subscribe to Jasper. Story of the Day: Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling Once upon a time there was a rich kid who mouthed off too often. We’re on a schooner off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, far into the Atlantic Ocean. There are two teenage boys, Dan and Harvey. Harvey is lying against the side...