March 24, 2023

That’s the Rub

In Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet the beleaguered prince is alone onstage reading. His tutor, Polonius, enters and they have this exchange: Polonius: What do you read, my lord?  Hamlet: Words, words, words.  Polonius: What is th...

March 1, 2023

Beating the Balrog

Time was when we could look at our political differences and see those differences as just a wrinkle in the cloth of society. We could look at our religious variances as mere quirks -- most people recognized God in one way or another. No more. Someth...

February 5, 2023

Ten Righteous Men

We check the news each day, our hearts filled with one part hope and ten parts fear and trepidation. Typical of a Marxist regime, none of our valued institutions are functioning in a reliable way. Our children are being abused by the very institution...

November 18, 2022

Counting on Votes

As we adjust to the results of this charade of an election, we must face the depths to which this nation has fallen. We are no longer in a place where simply voting can change things. Something terrible is at the bottom of this pit we’ve fallen...

November 2, 2022

The Cart Before the Horse

America has always been a nation of practical people; we know what we want and from the beginning we’ve used common sense and knowledge of history, both biblical and secular, to figure out how to get it. We knew from the get go that freedom was...

October 12, 2022

Binary or Not? That is the Question

My eldest grandson, being a very precocious two-year-old, once responded to his mother’s demand that he “either eat his supper or go to bed” by retorting, “I don’t want two choices; I want five.” Well, don’t ...

July 16, 2022

Surviving the News

I’ll confess -- I’m a news junkie, a dangerous addiction in the 21st century. I grew up with dinner discussions about politics. I remember Ike and Nixon and the Watergate mess. I lived through the Carter years and enjoyed Regan’s su...

February 3, 2022

Symbols of Shame

Two years ago when the news of COVID engulfed the nation we all donned whatever masky device we could rig and ventured forth to stock up on toilet paper. We heard, to our dismay, that some jobs were essential and some weren’t, but we bought int...

January 1, 2022

The Devil’s World

William Golding (of Lord of the Flies fame) wrote an essay titled “Thinking as a Hobby” in which he outlined what he saw as the three stages of human thought. The first stage, he pointed out, wasn’t really thinking at all, but rathe...

April 16, 2019

Mourning Notre Dame

The news that the Notre Dame Cathedral was on fire knocked the breath out of me. I was amazed at my emotional reaction to the destruction of a building I’ve never visited, a building created by the corrupt medieval Roman Catholic church, a buil...

March 19, 2019

How Do We Know What We Know?

As I sit here writing, a terrible thing is happening. It started mid-week, but there’s nothing being reported on the national news.  No TV cameras or on-the-street interviews. I saw blurbs on Drudge and Breitbart this morning (Sunday), but...

October 7, 2018

The Democratic Ten Commandments

The Kavanaugh-Ford hearing was excruciating to watch but nevertheless instructive.  The entire nation came face to face with the neon glare of the nastiness that is now the Democratic Party.  Decent Democrats still exist, but...

March 27, 2018

Not in Kansas Anymore

I have a 1956 Norman Rockwell print of a frumpy, sweet-faced teacher standing in front of a class of clean-scrubbed, straight-backed children.  They had just written "Happy Birthday, Miss Jones!" on the blackboard for her. ...

March 26, 2017

Chaos and the Everlasting Arms

Shakespeare’s play Othello showcases the most vile character in all of drama -- a man often referred to as “honest Iago.” He is especially horrifying because he is charming, efficient, and intelligent, but mostly because he often br...