It was the fall of 2009, the evening before my son Virgile was getting married. We were sitting in a Chinese restaurant in La Crescenta, California, and Virgile was standing to toast his mother and me. He thanked us for everything we had done and called us the “best parents in the world.” I don’t …
THE END In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. I would never call myself an unselfish person. It took me long enough even to be able to think of myself as a good man, to find a way to define myself as someone other than a person who …
“Every age is the same. It’s only love that makes any of them bearable.” When “Time After Time” came out in late September of 1979, my life was falling apart. I was six months into a 10-month period when I saw that no matter what I tried, no matter how much I wanted to fix …
AMAZING TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T MAKE OUR LIVES BEARABLE Read More »
We have been hearing a great deal about Original Intent, the idea that the beliefs of the men who founded the United States of America nearly 250 years ago should govern the way we live in a completely different world. We’re told that men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the others should …
CAN WE JUST REALIZE HOW AWFUL ORIGINAL INTENT IS? Read More »
From 2009, the story of one of the truly outstanding people in our class. LET TIME GO LIGHTLY For class president and naval officer Mike McCuddin, old friends are the best kind of friends, because they knew him then and they know him now. To any casual observer, Mike McCuddin would come across as one …
The late Dan Jenkins, one of America’s greatest sportswriters, passed along a humorous adage once. “The only thing worse than track is field.” That actually has very little to do with today’s topic, but I wanted to use the line to set up my premise. The only thing worse than nationalism is religious nationalism. The …
Sometimes memories come from the strangest places. It has been many years — maybe even half a century — since I have given any thought to Uncle Wiggily. There aren’t a whole lot of cultural things still around that I would honestly say were before my time. In 1910, a writer named Howard R. Garis published the …
‘UNCLE WIGGILY’ A FUN VARIATION ON OLD CHILDREN’S GAMES Read More »
When W.T. Woodson’s Class of 1967 graduated, America was all about youth. Very few of the graduates were even imagining a world in which they might grow old and die. The rented gowns were heavy and more than a little scratchy. Royal blue for the boys, white for the girls and gold sashes for members …
Let’s try something just for fun. If you were a teenager in the 1960s and listened to AM radio, you are doubtless aware that most major stations had very tight playlists. As bizarre as it may sound now. until the mid 1970s, after the movie “American Graffiti” made oldies a big deal, songs on most …
One of the saddest things about aging is remembering the things you used to love doing but for one reason or another you don’t do anymore. Very high on that list for me is golf, and even a little higher is playing golf with close friends. Playing golf was a big part of my life …
