All Purls. No Swine.
I don't write headlines, or epitaphs, for a living. Too short. (They, not I.) Still, were I to attempt one of either (or perhaps both) over the ghastly matter of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's shooting of the fourteen-month old Cricket two decades ago, that would be it. For those not in the know, Noem… Continue reading Irresponsible, Out-of-Control Woman Shoots Dog She’d Set Up To Fail
Arnold George Dorsey must have thought quite deeply about the answer to Shakespeare’s question, one which seems, at least in his case, to have boiled down to, “quite a lot, really.” Born eighty-eight years ago today in Madras, India (the date is sometimes given as May 2), young Mr. Dorsey riffled through several options before… Continue reading Quote of the Day: What’s in a Name?”
Or maybe the better term is LARPing (which isn’t so easy to fit into a succinct and clever title). In either case, it’s people with privilege (talking about actual, personal, individual privilege, such as students (whatever their background) who’ve been accepted into some of the most elite educational institutions in the world and who, as… Continue reading The State of (Cos)Play
He died, 159 years ago today. Twelve days before he died, on April 14, 1865, Booth shot US President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head: Lincoln died the next morning. An intensive manhunt discovered Booth hiding in a barn on a Virginia tobacco farm, and--under threat from the detectives that they would torch… Continue reading John Wilkes Booth: Twenty-Something
Tradition has it that, on April 23 in AD 303, a young and promising Roman soldier in the army of the Emperor Diocletian was beheaded after gruesome torture, and died professing his Christian faith to the end. Very little is known of his life, but it’s believed he was born into a devout Christian family,… Continue reading A Bloody Cross–April 23, 2024, A Day for England
I've used this phrase, which is Latin for "the history of [my] calamities," facetiously before, in a post which describes a turbulent period in my life--some forty years ago now Today, though, I reference the work by twelfth century scholar Peter Abelard, who died 882 years ago, on April 21, 1142. Although a brilliant scholar… Continue reading Historia Calamitatum–Remembering Peter Abelard
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Three years ago tomorrow, I wrote a post about the "three snowmen," the last cold-weather intervals of Spring before it's safe to begin serious planting and garden work outside. April 21, 2021 heralded the arrival of the last one for the year. Fast forward three… Continue reading The Snowman Cometh
Ernie Pyle died 79 years ago today, on April 18, 1945 in the Iejima Okinawa Prefecture of the Empire of Japan, killed in action while doing what he loved. Having missed out on his first ambition–to serve in World War I–he undertook the study of journalism at Indiana University, and eventually found a career at… Continue reading “War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth”–Ernie Pyle
The title of this post is a slight misquotation of the original, which stems from April 14, 1970 and--in the words of Jack Swigert, Apollo 13's Command Module Pilot--was actually, "Okay, Houston...we've had a problem here." The post title comes from the 1995 film, Apollo 13, and has passed into the vernacular as the authentic… Continue reading “Houston, We Have A Problem”
A recent conversation on Ricochet brought to mind a post I wrote in the Dark Ages of social media, in this case, in 2012. Twelve years ago. And it's still there and available to the members, although it can't be viewed on the public Internet. I'm about to fix that. I wrote it just after… Continue reading Why I’ll Always Have a Soft Spot for Bill Clinton, No Matter What