Wednesdays with JMo
Pack the snow. Build up the ramp. Race down the hill. Catch the ramp. Fly. Flip. Come back to earth. Snap. After the accident, JMo rarely says no to an adventure. He’s up for anything, willing to go anywhere;...
Bobby
There is a great deal of chatter out there about our divided dysfunctional political system which now includes a growing incidence of references to impending civil war. While the folks who study these things see it as unlikely that...
Tucking Myself in With Stephen King
I spent several weeks this fall on the road pulling a small camper behind my pickup. While traveling this way, I sometimes visit state parks and commercial RV campsites that provide electric and water hookups, ice and firewood, and...
A Great Change is Upon Us
One of the most enduring legacies of the presidency of Donald Trump will most certainly be the ideological transformation of the United States Supreme Court. Two of his three selections, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, will join Clarence...
School Books
During 2022, Florida Governor Ron Desantis has signed into law measures to evaluate which books should and should not be available within individual public school classrooms and libraries. Some of the books facing a great deal of scrutiny clearly...
Oh Brother!
I have reason to believe that someone in my family tree attended a play at the Grand Opera House in Peoria, Illinois on Tuesday May 3, 1887. The evidence for this suspicion rests with a relic that has made...
David McCullough
The first line of The Johnstown Flood: the Incredible Story behind One of the Most Devastating Disasters America Has Ever Known (1968) reads: “Again that morning there had been a bright frost in the hollow below the dam, and...
Muir v. Pinchot
It has been said that journalism is the first rough draft of history. While this lends a bit of credibility to those whose job is to gather and report the news, it also suggests that what shows up as...
Henrietta Lacks
Good history illuminates the past, informs the present, and inspires reflection. Case in point: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) by Rebecca Skloot. In 1988, high school science student Rebecca Skloot learned that Henrietta Lacks, a poor African...
Honoring the Fourteenth
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence,...
Recent Comments