I’m happy to have another piece appear in Plough, the wonderful magazine published by the Bruderhof community. I’ve had a few essays in Plough before, about travel and nature and spirituality. This time I’m writing about Black Friday. Last year, I blogged here about what a great holiday Thanksgiving is — expressing what is best in the American character. Black Friday, on the other hand, expresses just about what’s worst — and yet it’s the holiday that has been exported around the globe. Here’s the essay: What Religion Is Black Friday?
The essay begins, however, not with Black Friday itself, but by reflecting on the odd experience of arriving in Singapore on the day after Christmas a couple of years ago as I was on my way to Australia. The modern city-state was a delight to visit and my brief stop-over gave me plenty to think about. So check out the essay at Plough, and enjoy some pictures of the Singaporean sites mentioned here below.
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 
I read this in Plough and thought it is quite good. It also helped explain the architectural abandonment of traditional house forms and tree lined streets in my old Tampa neighborhood in lieu of huge 4000 SF boxes and no landscape. From car to pod with no interaction; even those with children and home workers are rarely seen outside and never interact with neighbors. I think -and this is an incomplete thought- it is part of the whole cloth.
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