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Keywords: Brian Doyle

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Giving stick to incipient police violence

    • Brian Doyle
    • 01 May 2013
    5 Comments

    A nightstick doesn't sound fearsome, but when you see one up close you respect the inherent violence of the thing. I stared at it for a while, contemplating how a burly policeman with his feet set could deliver a cracking blow to a head or a shoulder or an arm flung across your face to protect your eyes and brains.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A wild new pope

    • Barry Gittins, Brian Doyle and B. A. Breen
    • 12 March 2013
    8 Comments

    Man, yeah, I would be pope, if the phone rang, late at night, collect from the Vatican. Yes, I would, if I could do it right. I'd call a meeting of the Curia and say boys, we are letting women run everything for the next five years. Each of you gets a new boss in high heels.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The extraordinary sandwiches of Sister Cook

    • Brian Doyle
    • 27 February 2013
    12 Comments

    Many a man has written elegiacally or bitterly of his education under the firm hands of the Sisters, but not so many have sung the quiet corners where perhaps we were better educated than we were in our classrooms. I learned more about communion at the epic timbered table in Sister Cook's golden kitchen than I did in religion class. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A fine teacher's urination solution

    • Brian Doyle
    • 30 January 2013
    11 Comments

    Sister Marie realised that Linda had been robbed of her lunch, and had not eaten at all, and had been humiliated by the theft, and was more humiliated now by public revelation. She straightened up and stared at the older kids, but just as she began to speak, Linda sobbed even harder, and a rill of urine trickled from the back of her seat.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An infinite number of Tasmanias

    • Brian Doyle
    • 15 January 2013
    9 Comments

    If you are like me, you have on your wall a map, or perhaps several, of places you know you will never be; not in this life, anyway. It's just not going to happen. For me: Tasmania. It's as far away as you can get from where I exist.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2012: The many sins of Brian Doyle

    • Brian Doyle
    • 07 January 2013
    1 Comment

    I missed my cousin's funeral because I had weekend plans with a girlfriend that I was not man enough to break; and this beloved cousin was a nun. Wednesday 16 May 

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  • RELIGION

    Blindsided by a saint at the Catholic Worker

    • Brian Doyle
    • 07 November 2012
    8 Comments

    I showed up on First Street one day, when I was about twenty, thinking that I would perhaps magnanimously volunteer for the day, or get into a long cool intense conversation with Dorothy Day, or be instantly hired as genius-writer-in-residence, or something like that.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The archbishop's last day

    • Brian Doyle
    • 10 October 2012
    13 Comments

    She admires him more than any other man she ever met, not because of his position but because of the way he handled the rapes and lies and bankruptcy hearings, he never shirked a moment, he never was anything but blunt about sin and responsibility, and even in the darkest hours he managed some thorny flinty tough cheerfulness and humour.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    September 11 shudder

    • Brian Doyle
    • 11 September 2012
    7 Comments

    Just before the first plane hit the north face of the north tower there was a flickering of power, a brown-out, just for an instant. Maybe all the people in the tower at the exact same moment thought, did I say that I loved her or just think to say it? ... Maybe that's what happened when the building shivered.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fourth grade Jesus envy

    • Brian Doyle
    • 29 August 2012
    7 Comments

    I remember Maureen McArdle's neck in front of me in the third row, that smug smarmy neck gloating and preening as she bested me in maths and social studies and science, receiving one gold Jesus after another, whereas I earned a series of silver Jesuses as long as your arm. 'At least it is not a bronze Jesus,' my mum actually said once.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    POW priest and the sacrament of sport

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 July 2012
    3 Comments

    The Japanese had taken the island and the priest was imprisoned with many other residents. One Sunday, the POWs set up stumps in the morning, dressed in the best clothes they had left, and assigned teams. One captain was a minister, the other a teacher. The priest opened the bowling. The guards were angry.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Church's preferential option for kids

    • Brian Doyle
    • 05 June 2012
    5 Comments

    'No matter what we say it's about, it's about kids,' says the archbishop. 'If it's not about kids then it's not first priority. The worst sins ever committed are against kids. That will never occur again, not here, not if I have anything to do with it.'

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