I was first introduced to the Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard deChardin in 1985 while working as a press aide for the Culinary Institute of America(CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. This famous culinary school was founded on the site of a former Jesuit seminary, St. Andrews-on-the-Hudson, where Teilhard and other Jesuits had been interned.…
“By virtue of the world’s fundamental unity, once a phenomenon has been clearly observed, even only at a single point, its value and roots are simultaneously present everywhere.” —Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon “I am a pilgrim from the future,” Teilhard told his young friend Jean Houston, as they talked and walked around New York City’s Central…
On August 12, 2004, the Northeast power grid collapsed. After the lights came back on, the first question everyone asked was “why did this happen?” Hindsight now provides a reasonable answer: the decision, or more accurately, the indecision of an Ohio power plant operator to stay connected to the grid after his plant failed instead…
It is an oft-elusive yet elegant and paradoxical quality of human existence: We crave connection with others while simultaneously reveling in our fierce independence. Journalism historian Mitchell Stephens brilliantly describes this basic human need,the desire to ask and also to answer, “What’s new?” as a “hunger for awareness. ”More than specific information on specific events, the…
I first started writing news when I was a junior at Mother Seton Regional High School for girls in Clark, New Jersey. I was the editorial page editor of the Setonnaire and more than the mild celebrity, I enjoyed seeing my words in print and having a public place to think out loud and create news—that singularly powerful blend of events, ideas, thoughts, information, and yes, hopes and dreams, too. I was constantly in awe—and still am—of my friends, the visual thinkers: the cartoonists who cleverly and quickly sketched their ideas and powerfully captured the essence of an idea.…
The Writings of Christine M. Tracy 