Wisdom cannot be Googled. As a kid growing up, I did not have Google, but a public library and the World Book. There was a good side to my inability to Google, even if it meant finding a full list of Star Trek The Original Series Episodes was hard. My brother and I were interested in everything (not opera, that came later) and that meant, if we were not careful, we kept binge reading everything while mastering nothing: one week the... Read more
The famous son should not overshadow the great father: there would be no Martin Luther King Junior without the Senior. Sadly, most who try to understand the courage and convictions of Dr. King (Jr.) spend more time on his seminary life, a relatively short period of time, and less time on his lifelong relationship with his father. Don’t make that mistake: much of the best of King (Jr.) came from his parents and Daddy King: An Autobiography is a good place... Read more
I asked for new voices and got some outstanding writers! Today we hear from the erudite James R. Harrington. James R. Harrington earned his M.A. in Ancient History at California State University Fulleron and is a member of the Torrey Honors Institute. James has been a classical educator in a variety of settings over the past thirteen years. He lives in Houston with his wife, Sharon, and their daughter. Harrington began with a series on shields in classical literature and... Read more
If an American Christian thinks the 1950’s were Paradise, he knows nothing about the African-American experience or what was happening in the Academy. Much of American pop culture was in the grip of scientism, American triumphalism, and elitism. This also existed in our elite educational institutions and political parties where the difference between Republicans and Democrat leaders was not as great as appeared to be at the time: Eisenhower and Kennedy were intellectual siblings. There was good in those times, but... Read more
The Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson is the best fantasy series I have read in years. Recall, however, that fantasy as a genre is beset with Lord of the Rings look-a-likes and much that is terrible. This is not to praise Sanderson with faint damns, but to say that while not great literature, this is very good story telling and excellent world building all too rare in the genre. Why? Fans forget the depth of Tolkien came in part from his creating an extensive... Read more
Seventy-five years ago, Cousin Paul was on a landing craft helping liberate Europe from Naziism. He was a long way from Charleston, West Virginia. He never spoke much of that time to me or about his later time (after the Battle of the Bulge) in a German POW camp. Cousin Paul sat up in the craft watching the coast come closer until the bullets got too close for sight seeing. When the boat “landed,” he watched an officer step off... Read more
A curse might be that a male gets what he thinks he wants. If all men are mortal, as the logical syllogism asserts, then another assertion might be that most mortal men do not know what they want. When male desires are turned to women (the other gender), the probability of error is increased. Dorothy Sayers saw part of the problem for these men (God forgive me!) was a desire to make women dependent on men for meaning and happiness. Males make... Read more
The summer book is a good read, an entertaining read, a book that works after going to Disneyland or on the beach. (I never have read a book on the beach, because in my life that meant sandcastles, giant sand tunnels made with shovels and not umbrellas and drinks. Ask Hope, Randy, and Kate. They can confirm. Yet if you are going to beach with umbrellas, then these are the books that endure.) Here are my rules for enduring summer books: They must... Read more
I asked for new voices and got some outstanding writers! Today we hear from the erudite James R. Harrington. James R. Harrington earned his M.A. in Ancient History at California State University Fulleron and is a member of the Torrey Honors Institute. James has been a classical educator in a variety of settings over the past thirteen years. He lives in Houston with his wife, Sharon, and their daughter. Harrington began with a series on shields in classical literature and... Read more
Mary and Martha, prayer and labor, grace and justice: that is the balance we all must achieve. Labor without grace can degenerate to ideology: mother of tyranny. Grace without works transforms amazing grace to platitudes masking cowardice or cooption God save us from academics who talk and do not do. God deliver us from works without grace. When weary, we should turn to good examples of the balance: Christians who knew ora et labora. Prayer without works is dead, prophetic calls to... Read more
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