Almost all the pragmatic agricultural wisdom that my grandparents taught me has long ago been superseded by technology. I don’t anymore calibrate, as I once did when farming in the 1980s, the trajectory of an incoming late summer storm by watching the patterns of nesting birds, or the shifting directions and feel of the wind,
On November 29, 2019, a man now called the London Bridge terrorist slaughtered British student Jack Merritt. While the killer has been named for a famous London landmark; his victim has been all but forgotten. The killer’s family was quick to condemn the London Bridge terrorist’s actions. The family of his victim—not so much. David
I often file things that I read in my growing collection of 100-year-old magazines—in bound volumes, six months apiece, 1,000 large pages in small font—under the category, “Different World.” Such is an article from The Century Magazine, January 1900, called “Fellow-Feeling as a Political Factor.” Its author knew a lot about political warfare, having long
During the Christmas-Hanukkah overlap of 2019, the annual festive season for both Christians and Jews was marred by violent reminders that in a hatred-infested world, our fears as well as our joys may intersect. A church shooting in Texas and a machete attack in New York bloodied our respective sacred celebrations. In a variety of
As America enters a new decade, a political realignment is happening. The Left, traditionally the party of the working class, now represents urban, liberal elites more interested in the latest permissive fashions than they are in what they see as the parochial concerns of their less affluent countrymen. In reaction, conservatism has aligned to an
What could possibly explain the transparent nonsense that is the attempt to impeach and remove President Donald Trump? The farrago of exaggerations and outright lies that the leadership of the Democrats in the House of Representatives are currently peddling makes little sense. Impeachment was a remedy crafted by the Founders to remove a corrupt official
The American Left relies upon two moral imperatives to attract supporters and demonize their opponents: saving the planet and fighting racism. In both cases, however, the Left’s chosen policy solutions stand in opposition to well-established facts. Moreover, these facts that doom leftist policies to failure are not subtle. They don’t require convoluted explanations. Anyone with
The lights of Hanukkah and Christmas reveal themselves in both the ratio of a spiral and the golden ratio of the curves of a candle. The lights shine from the gold of a candelabra and the glory of a chosen people. The lights shine unto all people, guiding a path to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The
Greta Thunberg, the world’s most polarizing young activist, has found herself in stormy seas lately. In some ways, Thunberg seems undeniably impressive—having successfully channeled the most crippling features of her autism spectrum disorder to speak with authority on the climate crisis. After being named Time's “Person of the Year,” Greta seemed at her zenith as the
William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is a play as complex as it is dark. Nonetheless it is a comedy as well as a dazzling drama—full of both horror and humor, with a happy ending. Attempting to condense its subtleties does no justice to the lessons its audience learns as they experience the range of emotions
