Tom Howard

Tom Howard is retired from 40 years of teaching English in private schools, college, and seminary in England and America.

recent articles

Look at Me!

The local Community House in Moorestown, New Jersey, where I grew up, used to sponsor a little parade on their grounds each year at Halloween. We would all line up in our costumes and file past a table on the lawn where the judges sat deciding which costume was the best. The great thing was … Read more

Isabella and Angelo

A very tangled situation arises in one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, Measure for Measure. This is to say nothing particularly arresting; after all, what do we come upon in any of his plays but tangled situations? We all know the agonies and cross-currents in Hamlet and Macbeth, of course. (To my own mind, King Lear … Read more

Songs of Absurdity

To worship God at all is to find oneself on a very odd frontier. Here we are, addressing all sorts of fervid sentiments into the ether — or so it might seem to a chance observer. A passerby might ask, “To whom are you talking, pray? God? But you have never once seen him nor … Read more

What about Din?

About 30 years ago I organized (or found it to be organizing itself) a peculiar Friday afternoon group that came to be called Beer ‘n’ Bull. Despite its rather rackety sound, it is a surprisingly sober conclave, mostly of my college students and (now) former students. Obviously the (very loose) membership has changed over 38 … Read more

A Diva’s Sentiments

  Some time ago, I happened to hear a recital by one of the great Metropolitan Opera mezzo-sopranos. Opera lovers will know her name well. When my wife and I lived in New York, she was one of our favorites at the Met.   The nice thing about a recital like this is that you … Read more

The Italian Concerto

  Very often, if my wife is out doing errands in the middle of the day, I will make up my lunch on a tray and carry it into my study. There I can put a CD on my portable player — it is the only system I have, and it sits in a shelf … Read more

An Odd Reminder

  Well brought-up children are taught to say thank you, along with all of the other greetings and responses that attend polite life. Such responses must be imposed at first, of course, and learned by rote, but soon enough they become habitual, and virtually unconscious. This does not, however, mean that they are fraudulent. Somehow … Read more

What about the Day of Wrath?

My thoughts today may have particular import during Lent, but they touch on a subject that is much more far-reaching. Indeed, it is a topic that ought to be inscribed along the horizon of one’s imagination in some permanent form, if one is at all serious about his mortal (and, let’s face it, his eternal) … Read more

A Note on the Dark Night

For a time last fall, the press, and therefore to some extent the public, was briefly yet intensely occupied with the publication of some letters of Mother Teresa. Readers of this column will know of these letters, of course. The small Albanian nun had never supposed that they would be made public, since they had … Read more

A Photo in Transylvania

  A sumptuous travel magazine — to which, I need scarcely add, we do not subscribe — arrived in our letter box the other day. Things are so beautifully laid-out these days that one cannot always tell whether a given item is actually just a piece of advertising.   In any case, the cover shows … Read more

An Advent Note on Ikhnaton

One’s thoughts don’t ordinarily run much to the pharaohs in connection with Advent. Insofar as Egypt might crop up at all, it would seem more fitting to hold it for the Flight into Egypt after the Nativity.   In any case, I received a card this past week from a Discalced Carmelite nun friend of … Read more

Of Abbots and Actresses

It is recorded of the Abbot Pambo, of whom I know nothing at all except the following anecdote, that, upon a visit to St. Athanasius, he came upon an actress — not, I would suppose, inside the good saint’s cell. (I have only very dim notions as to what sort of women these Egyptian actresses … Read more

What About the Dragons Now?

A topic arose recently in a group discussion relating to the vexed matter of “intelligent design.” My impression is that, in its broadest outlines, the question at stake asks whether science, at the end of the day, is obliged to acknowledge a Designer at the root of things, and that, at least as matters stand … Read more

Ecce Quam Bonum

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”   We hear this bracing sentiment often enough in musical and liturgical settings, most notably in the seraphic motet by Tomás Luis de Victoria, or in the spare sequence of chant. When it is conveyed to us under these modalities, … Read more

The Three Monkeys

  Trinket shops at roadside tourist spots used to sell items like shellacked coasters cut from cross sections of white pine or birch logs, or faux-bark mottoes inscribed with uplifting sentiments, or bawdy farmyard postcards. That sort of thing. Perhaps they still do.   Among the trinkets, one could always find the three monkeys telling … Read more

Ashes to Ashes: The Three Monkeys

Trinket shops at roadside tourist spots used to sell items like shellacked coasters cut from cross sections of white pine or birch logs, or faux-bark mottoes inscribed with uplifting sentiments, or bawdy farmyard postcards. That sort of thing. Perhaps they still do. Among the trinkets, one could always find the three monkeys telling us to … Read more

Ashes to Ashes: The Desert Fathers and an Old Question

The other day, I pulled from my shelf a copy of Helen Waddell’s little book The Desert Fathers. In her introduction, she tells how various unsympathetic commentators have taxed these fathers with having fled the world to seek their own salvation, when what they ought to have done was to lend a hand to make … Read more

Ashes to Ashes: A Note on the Isenheim Altarpiece

Most of us will have seen, if only in reproductions, Matthias Grunewald’s terrible (I say that circumspectly) painting of the crucifixion that is commonly known now as the Isenbeim Altarpiece. It is as much as one can do to look at it at all. Benedict XVI calls it “perhaps the most moving painting of the … Read more

‘But, Monseigneur…’

Several months ago, I came across an anecdote in the life of Madame de Maintenon who, readers will recall, became the wife of Louis XIV in his latter years. This devout lady had refused to be his mistress, and was apparently instrumental in bundling him along toward some rag of authenticity in his practice of … Read more

Ashes to Ashes: ‘But, Monseigneur. . .’

Several months ago, I came across an anecdote in the life of Madame de Maintenon who, readers will recall, became the wife of Louis XIV in his latter years. This devout lady had refused to be his mistress, and was apparently instrumental in bundling him along toward some rag of authenticity in his practice of … Read more

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