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Oct 23, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Dorothy Fortenberry |Mary Gordon
I have been thinking a lot recently about what lasts and what is lost. Maybe this is what comes from spending a couple of years working on a television show about climate change in an imagined late twenty-first century. A person can’t spend her days flooding buildings on set to simulate sea-level rise or writing dialogue about endangered species without certain truths sinking in. Maybe it’s living through yet another election season where the risks seem enormous, but the daily content is absurd.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
theatlantic.com | Dorothy Fortenberry
It’s hard to hear the word of the Lord on Facebook Live. Of all the challenges my family faced in 2020—and there were many—online church was one of the worst. Corralling my children (then 4 and 9) to focus on my small laptop instead of their Legos could be more difficult than Zoom school or Zoom work or keeping enough hand sanitizer in the house.
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
slate.com | Dorothy Fortenberry
Skip to the content Politics If you are a normal person who did normal things this past weekend, perhaps going to the beach or seeing a baseball game, you no doubt missed the bizarre, short-lived, and fraudulent scandal of the J.D. Vance sperm cups. Good for you; you make excellent choices. But as one of the disordered mole people who watched the fiasco unfold on X in real time, I believe that this extremely online moment has two lessons to teach us.
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Apr 22, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Edward Tverdek |Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
Is it time to declare the party over? Are we ready to pronounce Earth Day an occasion for mourning rather than celebration? As we seem increasingly unable to address the climate crisis, who do we think we are honoring a planet we’re effectively trashing? We wouldn’t expect parents who neglect their daughter 364 days out of the year to throw an elaborate party for her on her birthday. Why do we celebrate Earth Day in a world seemingly on the irreversible slide toward catastrophe?
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Apr 20, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann |Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
The death of football phenom, advertising pitchman, movie actor, and accused murderer O. J. Simpson earlier this month brought forth an avalanche of commentary from those who remember the impact his trial and acquittal had on the country. Like many others, I remember exactly where I was when the verdict came down in 1995. I was in Commonweal’s offices on Dutch Street in lower Manhattan.
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Apr 9, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Jonathan Malesic |Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
You need those special glasses. This is true. It’s also true that “Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him,” as Annie Dillard writes in her essay, “Total Eclipse.” “Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it.” I had seen two partial eclipses of 70 percent or so in recent years. They impressed me at the time. But they were trifles compared to what I saw on April 8.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick |Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
Vinson Cunningham is one of the most dynamic critics working today. Best known as the New Yorker’s theater critic and co-host of the weekly podcast Critics at Large, he’s also the author of the novel Great Expectations, based on his experience working for the Obama campaign in 2008.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Lauren Kane |Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
A week or so before I was due to travel to Warsaw, my text messages were filled with photos of Poland’s Independence Day. They had all the elements of your typical national celebration: streets dense with people, flags aloft over the heads of the crowd, and what appeared to be detonated smoke bombs tinting the dusk with chalky red and white, the colors of Poland’s flag.
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Mar 28, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
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Mar 27, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Arvin Alaigh |Xavier M. Montecel |Dorothy Fortenberry
Context Is KeyThe article by Regina Munch (“‘Birth Doesn’t Wait,’” March) is correct that “Birth doesn’t wait. Pain doesn’t wait.” Her article accurately states that the only thing that will end the terrible suffering of all women and children in Gaza is to end the war there. We pray and hope that this will happen soon. We also pray that Hamas will release the prisoners they captured on October 7, and that all terrorists will be eradicated or retrained.
