My job precludes any public endorsement for President. There is (and has) been so much good work to do, that I have not had as much time to study the candidates and issues as in the past. After 2016 my days in talk radio ended. I still get asked about the race and occasionally give updates from the perspective of people I know. As the vote comes closer, here is one perspective. I will be publishing other points of view... Read more
Can we make tomorrow, a common day, a beautiful day? Truth will help us, a basic pattern of loveliness can give guidance, and all the particular joys of our lives can enrich the day. In truth, without any compromise of that truth, can come glorious variation, forms of beauty, that make the world interesting. This week is likely to have a routine, but I am reminded to seek ways to give the day a good twist marking interest. This weekend marked a... Read more
The last dance with my daughter, before she was married, was good. I resist some good things. I am glad for the end of childhood and the wonderful love I see between my daughter and her husband. I am most happy to be, by marriage, a potential member of his folks. Hope and I are hoping they will accept us over time! Nothing could be undone now without sin. No man could condemn marriage without arguing with God. What God... Read more
There is something good about school that we must never lose. Take one week in fifth grade, Cobbles Elementary, see what a spread of mental delights these public school teachers provided and realize this glorious intellectual feast lasted for years.* We got a “mystery kit” to work on identifying a mysterious element. We got the first glimpse at one type of scientific method. Off we went to art, where we got make sketches and use simply huge pieces of paper.... Read more
Why care about Socrates? Why care about any person who lived a long time ago? Haven’t times changed? Why linger over any wisdom the old Athenian might have had centuries before Jesus was born? As one commentator said of me: “You are really obsessed about the past and Socrates” This is quite true. I think Socrates life and death matter and still teach us. Why? First, Socrates created a method of learning, the dialectic, that can play a central part... Read more
Purity is beautiful. As the ancients understood purity, a way of living tested over thousands of years, in hundreds of circumstances, purity helped. All God’s children should live in purity culture: joyful, wise, virtuous. After all God is good, full of truth, and beautiful. If we love God, we will love His attributes! A sensible soul seeking God will separate from evil, falsity, and ugliness. We will purify our hearts, so as to see beauty in everything from stars to... Read more
As a little boy, the older folks would sit and pass down to us the oral tradition. They gave us stories, the reasons we were the people we are. The stories were true, though often the details were pared down to the essence. Some facts might be forgotten or jumbled, but the tales were true to the experience of the folks. They told us where we had come from, where we were, and where we might be going. Why had... Read more
We have a box of “My Little Pony” toys that wait for guests. Two of the toys that are there inspired a song “The Pony and Elephant” (to the tune of the Holly and the Ivy) that we sang to the kids. The kids are now adults and not just grownup, but most excellent adults. They are sparkling company and interesting thinkers. They are loving and if they were actually children again we would miss the adults they have become. The... Read more
One hundred and twenty years ago this week, Galveston was wiped clean by the ocean. Atlantis was made real as a great city was broken so badly she never recovered her former glory. As many as ten thousand people were swept away in a hurricane. One acquaintance, over 101 this year, recalls his father and grandfather talking of those times. Before the floods, the secular power was in Galveston, Houston was nothing, but the ocean sea broke Galveston. The boosters and... Read more
Tomorrow a daughter will marry. She chose wisely, reflecting a young life spent reading good books, attending the liturgy, and working hard. She matured, in the words of Jane Eyre ” into an independent woman.” This is just what a parent hopes happens when God grants you first the duty of raising a child and later the blessing of seeing them go. As a parent, you wane, while the child waxes into an adult. There is joy in seeing the extended... Read more
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