More than a century after its destruction, a historic statue of the Virgin Mary was returned to Prague’s Old Town Square yesterday.
Author: Jorge I. Dominguez-Lopez
One Hundred Thousand Deaths … and Then One More
Last week, the tally of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. reached 100,000. It is almost impossible to grasp the number of personal losses and the sum of the suffering of the victims, their families, and friends.
We Are All Responsible Now
In the midst of this dark spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has already killed more than 95,000 Americans and left 39 million without a job.
The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery
On a rainy afternoon in July 2009, the police department in Long Branch, New Jersey, received a call from a concerned citizen who said he saw a weird-looking guy, wearing a hoodie, walking through the quiet neighborhood in the rain. The strange man suddenly crossed the street and started peering into the windows of a house that was for sale.
Reading in the Times of Pandemic
During this painful spring, we have been unexpectedly forced to stay indoors. We have been dealing with the shelter-in-place spring season by cooking more elaorate meals, spending more time with the family — and watching TV. According to Nielsen, the average viewer spent 40 hours in front of a TV during the week of March 16, compared to 33 hours during
the same week a year before.
Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay Laid to Rest in Mexico
While his parents and siblings sang in Spanish the words of St. Paul — “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” — the casket containing Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay was lowered into the ground in Mexico City.
Back to the Future of the Pandemic
There is nothing older than yesterday’s newspapers — we know pretty much all that was said, and there is not much to discover there. But a newspaper from a century ago could be full of ‘breaking news’ for today’s readers. It allows us to access not just the events of yesteryear, but the way those events were perceived by the people living through them.
‘Your Rod and Your Staff Give Me Courage’
There is a poem by Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges that was one of my favorites since my youth. It says: “There
is a street nearby that is widowed of my footsteps, / there is a mirror that has seen me for the last time, / there is a door that I have closed until the end of the world.”
Grieving Family of Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay, Brooklyn Priest Who Died of COVID-19, Say They Can’t Get His Body Home to Mexico
“If not for our faith, I don’t know how we could have been able to go through the last weeks,” Socorro Ortiz-Garay told The Tablet from Mexico during a recent interview. Socorro is the eldest sibling of Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay, the pastor of St. Brigid’s parish in Brooklyn, who died March 27 at the age of 49 due to complications from COVID-19.
Then They Came for Us
In August 2018, a case of African porcine fever was reported in China. One year later, 40% of the pigs in China had disappeared. That epidemic killed one-quarter of the world’s pigs. It was an epidemiological debacle that disrupted the food industry in a country with 1.4 billion people.