Definitely Not DWR

In 2018, after fifteen years together and six years of marriage, my wife told me that our relationship was no longer working for her and that she wanted to separate. I was left trying to decide what hurt more: the loss of the relationship itself or what felt like the betrayal of the vows we had made. In sickness and in health, for better or worse, until death parted us. Those promises had…

Private voice lessons can expose a peculiar conflict between learning and approval. I enter wanting to please my coach by doing everything correctly, yet that desire can produce the tension that prevents me from singing well. I anticipate correction, imagine the expected standard and begin consciously supervising every part of the instrument. Breath, placement, phrasing, resonance and tone become…

By the time we performed Mozart’s Missa brevis in F major, K. 192, most of the work had already been done. Learning the Mass required hours devoted to rhythm, phrasing and tone, active listening, regular rehearsals, instructions pencilled into the score, and conversations with the conductor about difficult passages. It became a nearly totalizing choral experience. During the performance, much of…

Culture wars are easy to dismiss when your side is winning one. The phrase suggests an artificial conflict manufactured by activists who cannot leave ordinary life alone. Yet every society teaches its members what is admirable, shameful, natural and just. The dispute begins when we ask who is doing the teaching—and what vision of society their institutions are working to produce. Ideas hostile to…

Governments and institutions that claim to speak for the Muslim world regularly invoke the ummah—the global Muslim community—as a source of political and moral authority. They demand solidarity across borders when Muslims suffer in Palestine, Kashmir or Myanmar. When China constructed a police state around the Uyghurs, however, many of those governments did more than remain quiet. They defended…

Before a government can persecute large numbers of people, it has to solve a political problem. It must persuade everyone else that the victims are not quite ordinary citizens—that their suffering is acceptable, deserved or simply too dangerous to oppose. Maoist China developed a brutally effective method for doing this. Society was divided into politically approved and politically contaminated…

“Handle with Care” has the loose warmth of friends making music together, but beneath its easy rhythm is a song about bruised trust and stubborn hope. George Harrison carries the verses with quiet weariness, while Roy Orbison’s soaring bridge opens the song into something almost operatic. Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne add texture without crowding it, giving the performance the feeling of…

Organ transplantation is one of medicine’s genuine miracles. A failing heart can be replaced. A patient whose kidneys no longer function can be freed from dialysis. An organ donated at the end of one life can preserve another for decades. Yet the legitimacy of transplantation depends upon a boundary that cannot be negotiated away. The person providing the organ is a human being, not a supply of…

  In a major step toward operational readiness, officials have confirmed that a garbage can has now been installed at the Great Canadian Space Launch Pad. The addition follows months of consultation, stakeholder engagement, environmental review, accessibility assessment and interdepartmental coordination. No rockets have launched. However, the facility is now better equipped to receive…

If you supported Mark Carney because you believed Canada needed steady economic leadership, that was not an irrational choice. He entered office during a serious trade conflict with the United States. Tariffs, threats and uncertainty weakened exports, discouraged investment and made long-term planning more difficult. Canada’s economic problems were not created by one prime minister, and they…

Editors Note : This essay is a summation of recent podcast interview between Peter Boghossian and Sarah McLaughin.  Free speech is often defended too narrowly, as if it were mainly a permission slip for rude people, a tolerance ritual for offensive opinions, or a legal loophole that allows unpleasant citizens to be unpleasant in public. That misses the deeper issue. Free speech matters least when…

The phrase “Judeo-Christian values” is often used loosely, so it is worth defining what it means in its strongest form. Judaism and Christianity are not identical. They differ profoundly on theology, covenant, salvation, scripture, and the person of Jesus. The term “Judeo-Christian” can also flatten real historical tensions, including centuries of Christian anti-Judaism. Nor did the West emerge…

For decades, the political Left told women it alone could be trusted to defend their rights. But the promise was narrower than advertised. In practice, women’s rights often meant abortion access, workplace rhetoric, and the expectation that women would keep voting for the party that claimed ownership over “women’s issues.” Then a harder test arrived. What happens when women ask for boundaries?…

offers devotion without theatrical excess. The music is warm, poised, and gently luminous, unfolding with the quiet confidence so characteristic of Fauré’s sacred writing. Rather than overwhelming the listener, it invites stillness: solo voice, chorus, and organ moving together in an atmosphere of reverence, restraint, and serene beauty. This is faith expressed not as spectacle, but as inward…

Zahra is fictional. The system that would erase her is not. I wrote The Girl Behind the Wall as a fictional composite because facts, while necessary, can become strangely weightless when they arrive only as numbers, reports, and policy summaries. “Girls banned from school” is true. “Women restricted from public life” is true. “Child marriage enabled by law and custom” is true. But those phrases…

Final installment of a fictional composite in three vignettes about a girl coming of age under Taliban rule. III. The Room Where They Discussed Me The men came after evening prayer, when the bread cloth had already been shaken clean and folded. My mother knew before they knocked. I could tell by the way she moved through the room, touching things that did not need touching: the cups, the kettle,…

A fictional composite in three vignettes about a girl coming of age under Taliban rule. II. The Road That Needed A Boy   My mother woke with one hand pressed beneath her ribs. She did not make a sound. I watched from my mat as the room brightened by slow degrees and my brother scratched himself awake for school. When he kicked off his blanket, his foot struck my ankle. “Move,” he said. I…