All Purls. No Swine.
For those who don't know, guinea worm is a parasite which lives in contaminated water, and has long been a scourge of West African nations, a parasite which invades and infests its hosts via the digestive tract, and eventually migrates to extremities like the lower leg, blistering and bursting painfully before the worm gradually emerges--just… Continue reading Dracunculiasis–Guinea Worm
Of course, the title of this post is a misquotation of in hoc signo vinces, a motto dating back to Roman times, to an advisor to the Emperor Constantine, and a phrase which has--over the years--been attributed as the source of numerous miraculous visions prior to important battles, usually with Christians on the one side… Continue reading “In Hoc Signo Vincible”
I remember the day, on Church Lane in Handsworth, at a time very different, in the late 1950s. With my maternal grandparents and my mother. Early church service (the children's service) at St. Mary's. Sermon by the vicar, the Reverend James Charles Harrison Tompkins, he who my father suspected had always had a lifelong infatuation… Continue reading On This Easter Sunday
Well, it's twenty-three years ago today since President GW Bush announced it: https://youtu.be/FuwZSAmZ5G0 An unequivocal response to what was, at the time, thought to be a great evil which must be confronted. I'm not sure the reasons for it were wrong, and I wish that the West had dug in, had not lost its nerve,… Continue reading Operation Iraqi Freedom–Twenty-three Years On
On this day, 1009 years ago, November 30 1016, Cnut of Denmark (his name was anglicized to "Canute" somewhere along the way) claimed the throne of all of England following the death of King Edmund, known as "Ironside" for his valiant resistance against the Danes. Canute was 22 at the time, and a couple of… Continue reading Celebrating King Canute!
Around the beginning of the second decade of my life (for those of you in Rio Linda, that means I was eleven or so), I was told the story by Bronwyn Davies, my gifted English boarding school history teacher (The Abbey School, Malvern Wells), of “Emperor Frederick,” who–legend has it–had a nameless beggar entombed while… Continue reading Resolved: Lifelong Confusion Over Ginger Fredericks
What's becoming an annual tradition here, on November 18, not long before Thanksgiving in these United States. We all have our life-markers. This is one of mine. ...on November 18, 1978, I was sitting in the little snack bar in the base station of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington (a short mountain, comparatively speaking, but one… Continue reading 47 Years Ago Today, in Jonestown, Guyana….
Because, for some unfortunate reason, it seems sadly necessary. The Republican-majority United States House of Representatives passed a bill on September 19, 2025, to continue previously-voted-upon business as usual while negotiations about future budget changes went forward. That bill subsequently went to the Senate, where it failed to pass because it didn't get 60 votes… Continue reading Just Correcting the Record, on the So-Called US Government Shutdown…
I can take it from the Commentary podcast people, because they're unabashed Jews. That's who they are. That's what they do. And I listen to them almost every day because--in spite of their acknowledged bias--they often have really interesting things to say. I can take it from Dan Senor, because his podcast is incredibly even-handed… Continue reading Newsflash for Meandering or Ambivalent Gentiles: Yammering at Inordinate Length about Israel Doesn’t Usually End Well for You
I am amused by the meltdown among the Left and the legacy media (but I repeat myself) over the demolition of the White House East Wing, a building which–as far as I can see–had no particular historical or aesthetic merit, and seems to have consisted of cramped offices, the entrance and exit points for White… Continue reading Architectural Originalism