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
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
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
It's an idiom mostly associated with--or so I understand--life in these United States, and it generally means that one gambles on a matter on which one isn't sure of the outcome, but which might return well on an investment, if things work out. Over the course of my life, I've generally taken "fliers" only as… Continue reading Taking a Flier. As it were.
No, I've not quite lost my mind, and I do have a calendar app on my phone. I know it's April 13, not November 5. (November 5 this year will be doubly memorable, as it's the date of the 2024 US Presidential election.) What today actually is, though, is the likely birthday, four-hundred fifty-four years… Continue reading Remembering Guy Fawkes
Yesterday's Telegraph article, about the latest children's book to be given the "trigger warning" treatment, put me in mind of a post from several years in which I held forth on the usefulness of the books which we are now--apparently--too frightened to let our children read without first blighting their minds and prejudging their responses… Continue reading The Nattering Ninnies Come for Hillaire Belloc
My maternal Great Granny was a fearsome old bat. She was born in 1869, just four short years after the US Civil War ended and (only five days subsequently) Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. She died a few months before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. What a lifespan. I was fourteen when she died, and… Continue reading Easter 2024: On Silk Purses, Sow’s Ears, and Horse’s Asses
So, there I was, yesterday, out and about in my nearest small town, leaving the local Tractor Supply (chicken, sheep, and bird feed) and pulling out onto the closest major highway (State Route 19 which runs North to South the entire length of Western Pennsylvania, from the West Virginia Border to Erie, just south of… Continue reading Karma Delivery–If Only
Matthew 5:44. We are instructed to pray for these appalling people. This Easter week, I can't help reflecting that it's one of the hardest things to do in all of Christianity. Because my own Christian charity extends only so far, I resolve the dilemma in my own mind, thus: "You have to live with yourselves… Continue reading A Prayer for “them which despitefully use [us] and persecute [us]”
A man who is often dubbed "America's favorite poet," Robert Lee Frost, was born 150 years ago today, on March 26, 1874.* Those who've stuck with me for a bit may know that modern American poetry isn't really my wheelhouse, but Robert Frost has some merit, never more so than with his poem, "The Road… Continue reading Plain Speaking: Robert Frost