holidays

An RD holiday sampler of stories & viewpoints we would have liked to read in 2012.

Israel celebrates its second annual anti-immigrant rally.

We rely on a journalist to just stand by—it’s a practical act of witness: while you report the story you stand in the presence, neither blinking nor stepping up.

So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a sobering and a saddening experience. All of this has made me think more squarely about how inured we have become to screens as the mediator of our imaginative lives. Without electricity, we have no escape. Without Playstations and Xboxes, we have no other-worlds. Without fully charged mobile devices, we have no social media. Without our screens, we have lost our spaces of order, our promised places of reliable rules, our escape from reality. Whereas some New Yorkers contented themselves with flashlights and novels during Sandy’s aftermath, others felt compelled to trudge up to the gaudy power-lit mega-screens of Times Square, where at least you could see commercials and fight for seats at Starbucks.

The highway that leads from the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza back to the resort-lined coast of the Yucatan Peninsula runs straight through several small towns. And there beside the Virgin of Guadalupe and San Judas Tadeo a gargantuan lawn statue of La Santa Muerte—Mexico’s patroness saint of death—looms over the rest.

How the religious right wants you to spend Halloween.

Now that the Convention’s over, time to ask the real questions about Romney’s faith and politics.

What Akin says about the state of the GOP on abortion and contraception.

Jesus may be looking beyond the candidate’s faults, but we’re not.

Sorting it all out.