Susan Reynolds

Atlanta

Contributing Writer at Commonweal Magazine

scholar, writer, mom, antique store ghost, messy gardener, garage artist

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Articles

The Apocalypse Machine

1 month ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Susan Reynolds |Stephen Pope |George Scialabba |Helen Rouner

Every morning on the way to preschool, my daughter Julia and I drive past a Tesla dealership. Late last year, the sporty red and white electric sedans that once lined the lot were replaced by a convoy of gunmetal Cybertrucks. It looked like the dealership had been seized in a military coup. Julia calls them “diamond-shaped cars” and, sensing my disdain, wryly insists they are beautiful and she loves them.
Sustaining Vocations

Jul 3, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Susan Reynolds |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin

Last month, at the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) in Baltimore, University of Notre Dame theology professor Mary Catherine Hilkert, OP, accepted the society’s John Courtney Murray Award. The honor, bestowed annually upon a distinguished scholar for their contributions to Catholic theology, is akin to a lifetime-achievement award. For Catholic theologians, especially women, Cathy Hilkert is a legend.
Airway disease decreases the therapeutic potential of epithelial stem cells - Respiratory Research

Jan 12, 2024 | respiratory-research.biomedcentral.com | Lisa Zhang |Natalie Kelly |Cynthia Hill |Jazmin Calyeca |Laura A. Matrka |Audrey Miller | +4 more

This study was approved by the institutional review boards of two tertiary-level pediatric and adult hospitals (Nationwide Children’s Hospital IRB STUDY00000847, Ohio State University 2021N0027). Pediatric and adult patients undergoing scheduled direct laryngoscopy and bronchoscopy (DLB) were voluntarily recruited. Demographics of the patients recruited were recorded. Our methods are similar to those previously described [16, 18].
Portrait of the Scholar as a Young Governess

Jan 2, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Susan Reynolds |Cathleen Kaveny |Alexander Stern

Facing the looming weight of an academic year filled with consequential deadlines and the imminent submission of my tenure file, in August I did what any anxious scholar in my position would do: I auditioned for a play. It wasn’t just any play. It was, as far as I was concerned, the greatest play of all: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.
Poem | Adam's Lament

Nov 1, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Alexander Stern |Susan Reynolds |Xiao Situ

Like many fathers God had no patiencefor infants. So he made us olderbut naïve. We never neededto crawl, bruise bone on stoneor feel the sting of his rod. We lacked experience with failure. Unlucky that way, our lost childhoodwas like a death from the opposite end. He may have been bored as hellin heaven, alone with his stars, emptyspace and that initial Word yet undefined. He had little to do but playwith the things he’d made.
Poem | Pebble

Nov 1, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Brian Swann |Alexander Stern |Susan Reynolds |Xiao Situ

milkweed so it speaks monarchs, and the windsings stones with voices from where there are none,from even before there was anything to give voice,calling in that gull’s shadow angling in then gonesumptuous as this pebble balanced on my palm.
A Note From the Synod Fathers…

Nov 1, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Mollie Wilson O’Reilly |Alexander Stern |Susan Reynolds |Xiao Situ

In our preparatory document outlining broad guidelines for the Synod on Synodality, we wrote that the synodal process would require “remaining open to the surprises that the Spirit will certainly prepare for us along the way.” This was right and just. However, it is also crucial for Catholics to remain open to the possibility that nothing will surprise us at all. Many delicate issues were raised in our discussions during this month-long Synod, and many areas of divergence were identified.
Democracy in Poland?

Oct 31, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Regina Munch |Alexander Stern |Susan Reynolds |Xiao Situ

In Poland’s October 15 parliamentary elections, the governing Law and Justice Party (known by its Polish acronym PiS) faced a challenge from the centrist Civic Coalition. Almost three-quarters of the Polish population cast their votes, the highest voter turnout since the country won its independence from the Soviet Union more than thirty years ago. Ultimately, PiS won more votes than any other single party but could not form a parliamentary coalition.
Supreme Chutzpah

Oct 28, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Miles Doyle |Alexander Stern |Susan Reynolds |Xiao Situ

On May 4, 1969, Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas resigned following revelations that he had accepted $20,000 in payment from a foundation controlled by Louis E. Wolfson, a friend and former client then under federal investigation for violating securities laws. Though Fortas had previously returned the money to avoid the appearance of impropriety, he ultimately decided to step down amid intense political pressure and increasing public concern.
The Other Side of the Border

Oct 24, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Evan Bednarz |Alexander Stern |Susan Reynolds |Xiao Situ

“You have picked a bad night to cross,” the man tells the shivering couple in the kitchen, as they watch snow falling outside the window. The other man replies, “Every night is bad.” This observation, recounted in Octavio Solis’s Retablos, a coming-of-age memoir set in El Paso during the sixties and seventies, still applies in the borderland.