All Purls. No Swine.
Chinggis is my (by this time) rather elderly rooster, he who once was lost (as have been a startling number of others in my life) and was one of two whom I tripped over on a walk down the road, on a day towards the end of January 2021. His lucky day. After a frantic call… Continue reading Chinggis Makes His Move
And today, I (can't really sustain the Bob Dole mannerism of talking about myself in the third-person for more than the headline) heartily recommend an odd little movie from 19 years ago, one which celebrates the life of American composer and songwriter Cole Porter, born 131 years ago today, on June 9, 1891. De-Lovely is… Continue reading It’s “De-Lovely:” RWKJ Goes to the Movies
Today, the seventy-ninth anniversary of the D-Day invasion, I can't but think of one of my most iconic conversations with my late, great, darling Auntie Pat. It was in 2019, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the day. Pat was approaching her ninety-sixth birthday, Donald Trump was the President of the United States, and the specter… Continue reading Operation Overlord: Seventy-Nine Years On
Nigel Biggar is an Anglican priest and theologian who was--until his retirement in 2022--the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. He's recently made headlines with his book (which I'm currently in the middle of reading), Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. It's a (rare in this day and age) remarkably even-handed… Continue reading “The Truth About Colonialism” with Nigel Biggar
Seventy-nine years ago today, on June 4, 1944, my father marched into Rome, his British Army regiment having been seconded alongside Mark Clark's Fifth Army. (What Dad had to say, from a personal standpoint, about General Mark Clark doesn't bear thinking about.) My mother always pooh-poohed the whole thing (not unusual for Mum to do… Continue reading “His Holiness Will Receive You in a Few Moments–I could Have Dropped Dead!”