Do you have the first book you ever owned? I kind of doubt that I do, because none of the books I own were of the Little Golden Books variety, and I know I read some of those when I was very young. But it may be possible I have the first real book I …
‘”Slaves developed sequels that in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefits.” Who knew chattel slavery was such a good thing? Guidelines in Florida for teaching America history to middle-school students say children need to learn that their ancestors who owned black slaves cared so much about seeing that those slaves had good …
It was January 1972 and it was a song unlike anything we had ever heard before. Most of us were still listening to AM radio, unless we had eight-track tape players in our cars so that we could hear what we wanted when we wanted to hear it. We were just past the end of …
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 »
