The word brunch is utterly stupid, and New Yorkers self-consciously eschew stupid things, as if it’s their contribution to civilization. But if you ever move to New York, you’ll be standing at a party and a slightly tipsy someone will forcefully declare to you, bright-eyed, waving a rum and coke, that “New Yorkers love brunch.” You’ll think about how pretentious that statement is, and then you’ll start to notice that pretty much every restaurant in Manhattan and Brooklyn serves the same menu from ten o’clock to two o’clock, sometimes four, on weekends. The magical brunching hour. And soon you, too, will become a New Yorker, and you, too, will love brunch, with its unembarrassed menus of upscale hangover cures (ever-more-inventive upgrades on the spicy Bloody Mary, fluffy feta-stuffed omelets, french toast stuffed with mascarpone, big grilled cheese sandwiches with Parma ham) and its air of relaxation. For what could be more indulgent, more civilized, more lap-of-luxury than lazing at a sidewalk table with your sunglasses and your comfortably chic sweater dress and four friends laughing nearby, or your husband and a book and a bottomless cup of passably good coffee? Of course I knew the word brunch before I moved into Greenwich Village, the languid seat of haute civilization, but I grew up in the suburbs and then a plot of land out in the country, daughter of the working class, and we didn’t do brunch, except maybe on Christmas Day. We did breakfast (eggs and toast) and lunch (soup and grilled cheese) and dinner (chicken and potatoes), and sometimes a bedtime snack (popcorn). Brunch was a funny word for breakfast when you slept in really late. Or something at Grandma’s, in pajamas, after sleeping over with cousins: chocolate chip pancakes, sausages, hot chocolate. I can’t remember my first brunch that first summer in New York, but by early fall I’d fallen in with a rotating group of acquaintances and a core cast of friends: one with a gorgeous apartment and the rare, coveted commodity of a table to eat at, one who worked in commercial realty and had inexplicably been to cooking school, a student at a design school nearby, a filmmaker, and, somehow, me. The glorious lazy times we spent around that table, midday, with pear tarts, and roasted chickens and whole fishes, and buckwheat pancakes, and bottles of wine and good bread. We were grown-ups, all on equal footing despite the spread of age and education and experience between us. We could leave the scraps on the table and go down the street to Film Forum for a matinee. We could boldly start our meal with fresh orange-scented chocolate chip cookies, or watch through the north-facing wall of windows as the sun crossed from east to west, past the Chrysler Tower, behind the Empire State Building, and through the West Side’s trees. We let the day fade away, together, in glorious companionship, confident nothing could change our world. Ridiculous, really: a year later we’d all be headed in separate directions, one to Seattle to marry and settle down, one to DC to save other corners of the world, one home for the summer once classes ended, and then the two of us, just the filmmaker and me, moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn to make a life for ourselves together.   * * *   Planning our wedding reception, we chose brunch, with french toast and scrambled eggs and biscuits and gravy (a nod to my in-laws’ roots in backwoods Virginia) and apple crisp (a nod to my roots in Yankee country) and good coffee.  “Everyone loves brunch,” we said by way of explanation. Then Dad died, very suddenly, too soon, and we canceled the brunch. Sometimes I still think about all those eggs and the bread and the gallons of syrup, and I imagine that brunch and what it would have been like. If it would have been any good. If I, too clumsy to wear white, would have dripped syrup on my dress. If we had invited someone who was gluten intolerant and forgotten to put something wheat-free on the menu. If people would have gone away pleased. What we did, in the end, was transform the sandwich platters my in-laws had ordered for our rehearsal dinner into our wedding meal, laid out under a tent in the backyard where we married a couple days after we’d planned, and concluded it with cheesecakes. An awkward meal to celebrate the beginning of a marriage, which is, in turn, always a foolish proposition, no matter how you look at it. Check any New York restaurant’s weekend menu: lunch food is brunch, too.   * * *   Nobody seems to know where the foolish word came from—a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch, obviously, but we don’t say lupper or dunch. Someone claims a reporter for the New York Morning Sun coined it in the early twentieth century as a way to describe the way a morning newspaper man ate: frenzied, I suppose, too busy to eat breakfast. I gave up breakfast a long time ago, when I realized it just makes me hungry for lunch hours too early, but I think that portmanteau-inventing reporter and I, teaching college freshmen to wrangle words in the early mornings, are kindred souls. My students note on evaluations that I become more animated by the bottom of my coffee cup, and my midday classes pepper their evaluations with comments about my snacking choices. I gather their comments at the end of the semester and spend a happy hour laughing my way through them, seeing the shape of my semester through their eyes. This job of mine is a silly undertaking. It pays very little and requires too much work and more than a bit of hand-wringing, and it asks me to invest into kids who will sometimes break my heart and sometimes make me love them, but while they think college goes on forever, I know they’ll be gone in a few years anyhow. Like the newspaper man, I only eat brunch anymore, and sometimes linner, or maybe just a late-night snack.   * * *   Wall Street melted down while I stood in a pizza joint late one night on the Upper East Side with my husband, eating a slice and listening to the radio. We’d been at the Ninety-Second Street Y for a celebration of Maurice Sendak’s eightieth birthday, the sort of star-studded affair you start to take for granted here, and when we stopped to eat, we realized that Lehman Brothers had basically disappeared while we were inside. My husband was working in film and I had just quit my full-time job to work for two nonprofits and I was suddenly terrified that I’d be laid off and we’d be destitute, and as I choked my way through the rest of the pizza and then into the next two months, I worried endlessly. I had done a very silly thing, quitting a good job that paid my graduate school tuition to chase a dream. I was choosing to play with ideas and artists over the steady work I was trained to do. But for now, we had an income. Our friends: not so lucky. Each week, more became unemployed or underemployed. Sitting one day in church, praying to know how to help, I realized that there was at least one thing I could do: I could make a meal and invite everyone we knew. At least they’d get a square meal. The first month, a dozen people showed up. The next month, fifteen. A year later, the group had grown so large we could hardly cram everyone into our five hundred square feet of studio apartment; friends sat on the chairs and the edge of the bed and spilled onto the floors and into the hallway. Sheer idiocy, when you think about it. Figuring out how to feed a group of an unpredictable size requires time I don’t have, skills I never acquired, and a couple of extra pots and burners.   * * *   Our church meets at eleven in the morning, and our liturgy positions the Eucharist near the end, so each week we serve the bread and wine around twelve fifteen. I rarely eat before the service, and I am hungry by then, and I frequently remember Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians that folks ought not to partake in the most sacred of tables seeking to fill their stomachs. But the bite of pita bread and gulp of wine isn’t stomach filling. And it leaves me thinking—always, and often so soon it reminds me of my mortality—of brunch: both what we’ll have when the service concludes, and that this thing I do, this sacred meal in which I partake each week, like brunch, looks profoundly foolish from two paces away. I watch as people line up to partake, and I know I have little in common with these people, and they have little in common with me.  We’d never meet if we never came within these walls. The meal we’re about to share is not good: inexpensive wine, semi-stale pita from the corner grocery. And yet we return to it every week, in the middle of the day, on a Sunday, when the rest of the city sits at sidewalk cafes. We line up in celebration and solemnity and tell each other that this is Christ’s body, broken for you; this is Christ’s blood, shed for you, and we know we’re a bit mad. But two paces in, standing to receive this unlikely meal with this unlikely family, the foolishness is sweeter than whatever meatball sliders or panini or flapjacks await me, sweeter than the coffee I need, sweet enough to keep me from pushing away what looks foolish to the wondering world.

Culture change is a procession of small moments; a series of individual decisions that lead to silent, collective determinations. There is no single moment when societies declare "we have changed our point of view on this issue." And then, with the force of an intellectual hammer, the recognition of how profoundly we have changed hits you square in the forehead while, of all things, watching the NHL draft. Most of the names of the young men selected have escaped me now, but two stick in my mind. It isn't their faults or credits I remember, but rather the presuppositions of the media questions which juxtaposed these young men as a commentary on our social condition. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was chosen first overall in this draft and received more coverage than most. Commentators talked about his maturity and composure as they debated whether he was ready to step into the NHL next season. Quite matter-of-factly, and with considerably more detail than seemed normal, they discussed the impact of his parents' separation while he was very young as a contributing factor to his character. Rocco Grimaldi was a novelty because of his size. At five foot six and 165 pounds, he was the shortest player ever drafted when the Florida Panthers made him the 33rd pick overall. Grimaldi is also well-known for his faith, as are a great many professional athletes. The interviewer asked him about his faith and whether being openly religious could be a divisive matter in an NHL dressing room. On the face of it, there was nothing wrong with a line of inquiry designed to help viewers learn something of the young man's character and, in his response, Grimaldi acknowledged that a number of interested teams had similarly inquired about whether he could "fit in." No one noted that such a line of questioning violates just about every employment code going. No one wondered if faith -Muslim, Jewish, Christian, etc. -could make a positive contribution to the strength of a young man's character. No one considered that Grimaldi has spent the better part of his life hanging out in locker rooms and managed despite his apparent intellectual disability to "fit in." No one realized just how horrifying and offensive such a line of inquiry is revealed to be if the words of the faith are substituted so that the question reads "So, you are a Jew; do you think you'll be able to fit in?" Character shaped by having to deal with family breakup is so routine that it is self-evident how it helps a kid mature. Character that comes from religious education and commitment is so out of the ordinary, it needs to be questioned for its potential divisiveness. More than providing insight into these two young men and their hockey potential, the commentary provided insight on the character of our society. We "get" family breakdown and experiential learning; we don't "get" religious commitment and faith. The first is regrettable but normal, and something that ideally we learn from; the second is divisive and to be handled with care. It would be more comfortable not to be so public about this faith stuff. I was watching as a sports fan, not amateur sociologist. I don't want to read too much into sportscasters' interviews. However, my sense is that TSN graphically captured our present moment in terms of how we think about character building. That which comes from dealing with adversity is normal and good; that which comes from religion is suspect and divisive. What seemed lost on the interviewer and, I fear, in common perception, is the overwhelming evidence that as a general social rule, the lack of a healthy parental relationship is destructive to children, while the inculcation of faith is a benefit to children. Without knowing anything about these young men, the evidence suggests that the positive developments in Nugent-Hopkins' character took place in spite of his household circumstance, while those of Grimaldi likely took place because of his faith. Of course, there are exceptions, but they don't negate these basic rules. This may disappoint some who would like to believe that entering into and ending marriage is a matter of choice without public consequence, or that religion is totally a private matter not to be discussed in polite company, but wishing these things to be true doesn't make them that way.

"The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness." Proverbs 16:21 "Hatred is just a failure of the imagination." Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory Teaching first-year college students to write is dull: lots of circling comma splices and reminding them to keep verb tenses consistent and cite sources properly. But at the college where I teach, the mission statement includes having graduates who are ready to "influence strategic institutions." In other words, we're trying to make public intellectuals. It's a hilariously high-minded goal, but colleges are in the business of inspiring, and it's left to the faculty to translate that into calculus and American politics and, yes, English grammar. So I wonder: should my first-year students be expressing well-formed opinions in a public forum by the end of the term, or should I settle for just getting complete English sentences? Ten years ago, I could have easily gone only for the latter, reasoning that my colleagues would handle the "thinking" part before we unleashed the gowned-and-mortar-boarded throng on society. Today, I'm less certain because today's students have the Internet, and they're not afraid to use it. My students and I had a conversation about this last semester. One day we discussed Zadie Smith's New York Review of Books essay about The Social Network and the challenges facing millennials, digital natives like my students, who start their online lives early. Smith cites a scene in the movie, where after being excoriated (unjustly) by college sophomore Mark Zuckerberg on his blog, his ex-girlfriend Erica tells him, "The internet's not written in pencil, Mark. It's written in ink." Nothing really goes away on the internet, I told my students. I explained how the Wayback Machine makes it possible to see what, say, the New York Times looked like in 1996, or what my blog looked like when I was in college. A student slowly raised her hand and asked, "Wait. Does this mean the comments I left on pictures in junior high school will still be there when I have kids, if I don't delete them?" Well, yes. It does. And maybe even if you delete them. As does the uncharitable comments you left on an article about a political candidate, and the blog you kept that detailed your unhappiness with your roommate. Someone could cache the page or take a screenshot. And let's hope you didn't "accidentally" send an unsavory Tweet if you're planning to hold public office. Ostensibly, I teach for my students' future public lives. But the Internet is a dangerous place for those who have not formed good communication habits. And if they are winsome in the future, but not now, the permanency of the new digital public square will come back to haunt them. The challenge is this: How can an eighteen-year-old learn this lesson? In her wonderful little book Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre exhorts her reader to love language, to pursue both truthful and playful speech: creativity in communication makes us better conversationalists, she says, and "conversation is a form of activism"—a way to effect change in the world winsomely. So around the sixth week of the semester, I assign two essays. In the first, my students persuade a chosen audience of the rightness of an opinion. I keep the second week's topic quiet until they've handed in the first. As they turn in their papers, I pass out the next assignment: argue the opposite position. Some complain. To do so, they say, would be to tell lies. But I tell them to use their imaginations. I tell them to use this as an opportunity to play grown-up make-believe - to walk around inside someone else's head and see what it would be like to think their way. I tell them to imagine the assignment as a conversation. Afterwards, I ask them what they've learned. Some discovered their original position was not black and white. Others, echoing Aristotle, realized that appeals to human emotion can be just as effective as appeals to cold, hard facts. Some still hate the exercise. But I have a responsibility to help them learn to listen and converse, to think through what their opponents and conversation partners are saying, and not to shout at one another. And they have a place to practice that now.

'Though the 400-page [Canadian] budget document emphasizes stability, a think tank concerned about a flourishing civil society says the Conservative government is “preparing for a coming storm in Canadian politics: one which they intend to shape and survive.”' Read full story here.

Graduates of Christian schools are more likely to be generous, grateful, and optimistic and less likely to divorce compared to public school graduates, according to a recent study. Read the full news story.

The old New England Primer, used to educate schoolchildren in colonial America, started much the same way as that other foundational textbook, the Bible: "In Adam's Fall, We Sinned All." The little sentence was assigned to the letter A, but it was a lot bigger than that. There's plenty about colonial America I wouldn't want to replicate, but I kind of like this stark beginning to an education. It reminds me that children can handle the tricky stuff just as well as they handle the animals on the ark and Jesus telling the little children to come to him. Good storytellers know this: Pixar, for instance, starts their films with tragedy - something they inherited from Disney - and the fairy tales of old involve princesses trapped in towers and children being fattened up by witches. Certainly children need affirmation. But kids aren't dumb. They know from a young age that they're not perfect, that the world is not perfect, and this line about the fall of man is a pretty good place to start: a longing for a lost Eden. Read the rest at Qideas.org.

Introduction This is Cardus' analysis of the Government of Canada's budget for the fiscal year 2011-2012, released by the Hon. James M. Flaherty, Minister of Finance on Monday, June 6, 2011. There aren't many surprises left in this federal budget, with its mirror released only a few months ago in a minority environment. The potpourri of targeted initiatives to help families (caregivers tax credit), seniors (increase to GIS), employment (targeted tax incentives), trade (significant investment in "gateway projects"), and cities ($2 billion of gas tax transfers made permanent) are intended to provide stimulus in the midst of an overall tone of caution and restraint. Throw in a few election platform commitments, most notably the scrapping of the party vote subsidy and the booking of the $2.2 billion for Quebec tax harmonization, and the story of the 2011 budget seems told. Or is it? True, the political uncertainty of its passage has been removed, and the rhetoric of stability dominates, but there is good reason to believe underneath this rhetoric the government is preparing for a coming storm in Canadian politics: one which they intend to shape and survive. The increased emphasis on expenditure review and the advanced targets for returning to surplus are just two indicators that this budget is really about battening down the hatches and rolling out the foundations for shaping tomorrow's social architecture. The New Normal The political subsidy change provides a compelling case study about how relatively small numbers can have disproportionate architectural implications. The $27 million saved on a $280 billion budget amounts to federal pocket change—but represents a fundamental change to the way political parties operate. The debate about whether this promotes corporate and union influence is a red herring; the average donation to the Conservative Party (who are hailed as being the best prepared for the new system) was less than $200 last year. What it means is that political parties will need to work to cultivate a more diffuse support base, limiting the influence of establishment elite. This is a strike at the heart of politics as usual. This change, combined with the post-election realities of 2011, means the internal politics of parties are about to get less, not more, stable. Liberal, New Democratic, Bloc, and Green parties will need to build the same kind of coalitions to fund, sustain, and project their influence into the Canadian parliament. The Conservatives, meanwhile, will have to figure out how to keep their newly empowered but divergent base united. The very different ideals which motivate poles of the Conservative support base will find ways to express themselves as expectations are disappointed. Changes to the political subsidy will change the internal pressures to which political parties respond. Ultimately, it will reshape them. And that is prompted by just $27 million. Consider what the impacts will be of coming changes with much bigger numbers. You could rhyme off a list: how will the economy and federal treasury adjust to the realities of 2.5 workers per retiree, especially considering that we are not coping overly well with the current reality of 4.7 workers? The throne speech last week announced an aggressive free trade agenda. Free trade almost always implies concentrated adjustments for particular industries. Even if the end net result is positive, there are specific sectors for which new trading realities will hurt. Foreign and international identity are live, important questions as key obligations expire. Throw into the mix the health care conundrum for which no viable answers have been tabled in the mainstream debate. The current health accord with the provinces expires in 2014, and the frame for federal-provincial controversy, not to mention voter frustration at continuing wait times for most procedures, provides political and economic fuel for the fire. These are just the known and certain challenges. Governments are often made and unmade on their response to the unexpected, like 9/11 or the economic recession of 2008. There are long-term budget implications to all of this. The government's focus on maintaining federal involvement in a wide variety of areas, including those under provincial jurisdiction, will allow for the continued use of political mechanisms, like tax credits and incentives rather than direct subsidy. The reduction in federal revenue will make for smaller government. The reduction in federal capacity will mean a deferral to other institutions, a significant change coming to our social architecture. This budget is a first step of recalibrating for a new normal in fiscal balance. Measuring Impact across Four Sectors How will this work itself out and impact the everyday life of Canadians? Start with families. The promised income splitting as well as the various tax credits (fitness, the arts, etc.) give some hints. The government will incentivize behaviours through tax programs rather than provide services with comprehensive programs. But the foundation for Canada's success is the continued growth of the for-profit sector. Infrastructure supporting trade (such as the gateways project announced in this budget) will be a high priority. Policies like the expected Perimeter Security Agreement with the United States, workforce training issues and incorporating environmental standards into energy production are complex but incremental measures. The strategy is balancing the negative fallout of incrementalism with tax rewards. Absent is a provision for the role of the not-for-profit and charitable sector. Opportunities for collaboration exist as this sector makes use of market-sensitive approaches to deliver and fund its programs, rather than government transfers. This is innovation driven by necessity, as governments increasingly rely on—and must therefore work to enlarge—the capacity of the charitable sector. What all of this sets up in the government sector is not stability but dissent. In a majority context, that debate will be more within than between parties. We've been here before. In both prior majority governments, the challenges that destroyed the party came from within. Conclusion A majority Conservative parliament holds all the cards for framing this dissent. Nestled in this budget are early hints of how they intend to shape it. But the privilege of framing the question is not always a sure recipe for building consensus around an answer. These questions are enormous, and the pragmatic whip of minority fragility is gone. What is certain is that the outcome of these questions will build a social architecture very different than today's. Don't let the rhetoric fool you: this is not a budget for today's stability, it's a prelude to tomorrow's dissent.

With the academic year wrapping up, academics are emerging from their grading foxholes and hitting the conference trail. A little more than a week ago the annual Canadian Political Science Association met, notable for its attimes unnatural bridging of policy jocks and political nerds in one space and time. Few things unite this disparate group, other than a general topical interest and, as I found out, a near universal disregard for religion as a practical force in national politics. The first thinly attended session I sat through (two other people and myself filled the audience) was on provincial politics. Promisingly, one paper by a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia promised to show the role of religion in Albertan politics. His aim was to show that religion in Alberta should be characterized by more than social conservatism. His argument met with resistance not so much because people didn't believe religion could be more complicated, refined and subtle than the social conservatism stereotype, but because the study of religion in Canada seemed somehow quaint, cute even. There was a limited intrigue on something as arcane as religion in Canadian politics, but general disbelief and skepticism that a serious link could be drawn. Alberta, one discussant even had the temerity to suggest, was the Quebec of this generation: full of mysterious motivations, rural and religious and -not said but implied -an imported conservatism from another culture and time. Possibly American. What does it say when our political scientists better comprehend the secularist malaise of Central Canada than the robust, possibly religiously inspired, politics of Alberta? Religion in Pakistan, sure. But religion in Canada as a potent political force? Not now please, I'm eating breakfast. It offends the secular sentiments of liberal Canada to imagine that the global resurgence of religion has come home from abroad. This strikes most Americans (or really anyone outside of Europe) as bizarre. The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs just launched The God Vote, a collaboration between the Washington Post and Newsweek to track the role of faith in this year's American election. Even globally, Timothy Shah, Daniel Philpott and Monica Toft -three of the world's leading political scientists -have just published a book called God's Century, arguing -hold your breath -that the 21st century will not be China's, America's or even Canada's but will be the stage for a spectacular comeback of God; la revanche de Dieu as frightened French secularists call it. They write, "The view of global politics taught by political scientists is the poorest possible preparation for the era of global politics in which we now live. As we address central geopolitical challenges, we must delve into the details of religion and religious actors." So what if these arguments are right? What if the UBC doctoral student struck academic oil arguing that a religion bigger than social conservatism is having an increasingly significant effect on Alberta politics? Better yet: if the pundits are right and this past federal election was a win for Alberta, driving key western players into the halls of federal power, does that mean that religion might be even bigger than superstitious Albertan farmhands? Doesn't that mean that our political scientists have a huge hole in their analysis of Canadian politics going forward? And shouldn't that embarrass someone at the Canadian Political Science Association? It all feels eerily reminiscent of the sub-prime crisis, when experts sat dumbly at a loss to explain how the bubble burst and why. Our ivory towers are hot boxed with thinkers high off the myth of secularization, giving us answers to questions no one is asking and looking on in perplexity at the data that suggests otherwise. Only academic tenure means no one will get sacked; or -conversely -make a big bonus out of it. There's not much to be said for Marci McDonald's factually light hearted dalliance into the power of religion in Canadian politics, The Armageddon Factor. But she has this over the CPSA: at least she's noticed that something is afoot. For good or bad, religion is back and our political scientists might be the last to notice. When we trot out McDonald for deft sociological analysis, you know we've reached a bad place.