I love The Atlantic, and I sometimes neglect it, like others I love. Only recently have I waded through the November 2007 issue, which has the heft of a novella, due to the fact that it is the 150th anniversary issue, and has therefore crammed into its early pages a host of short essays by …
I’ve come a long way from my days as a graduate student, immersed in thoughts and discussions about politics. Now I avoid political discussions like Michael Moore avoids vegetables. I even let my newspaper subscription lapse, so I could have more time to read what matters. Political news is unavoidable, however, and so I thought …
The CEO of Yahoo got a much-deserved tongue-lashing by Congressional Democrats yesterday, for his company’s complicity in the jailing of Chinese dissidents. It’s at once fascinating and sickening to see a phalanx of corporate hacks and their attorneys, mumbling coached statements about their obligation to obey the law in a totalitarian state, and their ignorance …
After my recent whining about church I felt like I left more unexplained than explained, and that on the whole I shouldn’t have written it without the explanations — things like: there is a profound difference between worship and sermonizing, and most modern churches conflate the two; and, almost all of our best friends go …
The wife and smallest whelp are away this weekend, so it’s just me and the boys. The house has seen more orderly times. On the other hand, I’m whipping up my delectable spaghetti, we’ve got the Allman Brothers blasting, and there’s a cold Smithwick’s in my hand. Having grown tired of waiting for the spaghetti …
We’re going to the Kansas State Fair today. Corn dogs, steaming hot buttered ears of corn, steak sandwiches, elephant ears. . . What happened? I think I blacked out for a second. There are also the rides, not to mention animals. The boys are beside themselves. I’m trying to keep them calm, but did I …
Check out my latest essay in The Wall Street Journal, which includes, among other things, an homage to Thomas Sowell, a swipe at utopian parenting, and proof that Dr. Spock was in favor of, as the famed childrearing expert Barney Fife called it, “bud nipping.”
I’m so very glad that Triple-T is back on the Web.
As we got the boys packed up yesterday evening for our run to the E.R., the wife’s sickly pallor only slightly less frightening than her 104 temperature, I realized that I haven’t had a day this bad in quite a while. It’s comforting, in a way, to realize it’s on you, kind of like when …
From a blistering article by Army Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling: “While the physical courage of America’s generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty regarding their moral courage. In almost surreal language, professional military men blame their recent lack of candor on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters. Now that the public …
I know everybody else in the world has already seen this, but I get goosebumps every time I watch it. I’m sentimental that way.
Tonight is the night my little girl died. Soon we’ll be on the hour, and then it will have been six years, yet sometimes it feels like it has only just happened. If I concentrate I can still see her, and smell her, and hear her voice. But I can’t hold her. How I wish …
Caleb: “Let’s read that book. It’ll be cool.” Me: “‘Cool?’ Where did you learn that word? Did you learn that from Nana?” (Note to reader: Nana is Caleb’s grandmother on his mother’s side.) Caleb: “I don’t know.” Me: “Are you covering for your Nana?” Caleb (sheepishly): “Yeah.”
I didn’t write much last week because I took the wife to San Francisco. I’m back to report that I don’t think George W. Bush will be winning that city. By way of illustration, how many of you remember Dennis Kucinich ( D Socialist, OH)? Many San Franciscans seem to remember him fondly, having enshrined …
I want to share something that I think is just the most beautiful passage: “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that …
Several days ago I was eating with my family in one of our favorite little restaurants, when I noticed from our table by the window a man in an electric wheelchair rolling slowly toward the entrance. After several seconds I realized that he had not come through the door. It occurred to me that he …
Click on this link, turn up your speakers, and listen to the late and dearly missed Red Skelton explain the meaning of the words in the Pledge of Allegiance. Have a happy Fourth of July, and remember your freedom was bought with somebody’s blood. It always is.
I started out to make a simple point, and then it got bigger, and soon butted up against an issue that I plan to lay out here in clearer form at a later date. But in deference to the patriarchal, eurocentric linear time concept, let’s start at the beginning, shall we? The New York Times …
