If you wish to keep thinking systems cannot be unjust, do not read Dickens. If you must continue assuming decent people cannot be ground down by poverty and become overwhelmed by vice, stream the musical and do not read Oliver Twist. Wait! Do not, under any circumstances, watch the musical before reading Oliver Twist. This is not due to spoilers, Dickens can handle those and still keep our attention, but due to how badly the musical gets the book. The book is... Read more
Sleep sometimes hides from me and I find words soothing. They distract me from my cares and allow me to unwind. Many nights the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle have given me rest, but now I have a new favorite: The Pickwick Papers. This use is not an attempt to insult the book, but to praise it. The Pickwick Papers will stand close attention, I am sure any number of doctorates have been earned by it, but it does a... Read more
Margaret Thatcher makes pygmies of many of our present leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. She was brilliant, but not from the normal elites. She was the right leader at the right time, working twice as hard to break through the Old Boys networks, to help defeat the Evil Empire. Even my generation glosses over how marvelous the smashing of the Soviet Union was in the 1980’s. Thatcher, Reagan, and Blessed John Paul applied external pressure of just the... Read more
Some do theater, Grant won battles. George McClellan could write about courage, but could not take the risks needed to win. McClellan was magnificent on his best day, petulant on his worst. Grant was calm and carried on every day and so won. The general on the other side died, but Grant calmly sat under fire, because his men need the visual lesson. When troops needed to be rallied, he led them into battle. In another war, he did a... Read more
In Praise of David Suchet David Suchet is the greatest actor I have ever seen act in person. I saw him play the father in the tragic A Long Days Journey Into Night. His leading lady was indisposed and her understudy inadequate, but he elevated her, nursed her along, and frequently made us forget her mediocrity. He did not do this by dominating scenes by hamming, but by delivering the play. He became subtle, large, and brilliant, but in service... Read more
Today I will pray, still online, with my parish and the prayers will be familiar. Our Orthodox Church will use language that helped create modern English drawn (with doctrinal modifications) from the Book of Common Prayer. Sometimes, say on Titanic Day, I need the right words to express feelings and an older version of the Book of Common Prayer (1820) has the right prayers for those lost at sea. I found this fine old prayer book in Wales for almost nothing,... Read more
What should we do: to end potential war between India and China? to secure justice for African-Americans in the United States? to feed the poor and house the homeless? to save lives in this global pandemic? to save babies from the scourge of abortion on demand? to save Hong Kong from the Communist government of China? Most of us do not know what to do about these issues and countless others filling our news feeds, yet by November citizens of... Read more
World War I continues to haunt the world as the mistakes of the “peace” treaty in regions like Central Europe and the Balkans continue to plague us. Should the “peace” treaty have refused the Austrians the Hapsburg monarch (the saintly Karl) they almost surely wanted? What would have happened if Austria had produced a stable center-right government in Vienna? What of colonialism and the havoc weird borders drawn by the Great Powers and the great evils done (look up the... Read more
Yesterday, a person started ranting about a particular failure and how people needed to “get better.” He did not propose any big changes, just that we (as individuals) do better. That could be true, but it might be stupid. Why? Some problems are systematic. Imagine an organization that kept failing in exactly the same way. The organization forms a committee, as organizations often do, and identify particular employees as the cause of the problem. These employees get help, but as the organization... Read more
Marie Antoinette. A great many people have an opinion two hundred and fifty years later. She almost surely did not suggest that starving peasants without bread should eat cake. She did not buy a hugely expensive necklace and try to cover this up. She was, especially by the end of her life, an extraordinarily pious Catholic. Was she frivolous? A good Queen? In league with her relatives in Austria? The noble lady lauded by Burke? Or the fast-living almost-modern portrayed... Read more
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