Dear Ms. Dowd; I have just finished reading your sad and unfunny column from yesterday’s NY Times. While I don’t normally read yesterday’s news, my time has been so taken up with another issue that I was (quite unusually) glad to happen upon your writing, even a day late. You would, of course, have no reason to know that the other issue which has so taken up my attention as to leave me unavailable to read your pearls in a... Read more
It’s a genuinely painful, but also rather good experience, to watch someone taking their leisurely leave of this world. I might not have written those words a few days ago, but things are happening, and changing. As my brother S makes what appears to be a final lap around the days and seasons of his own life, some beautiful mystery is being played out before our eyes. I think we might be witnessing grace.We have been watching S make his... Read more
Please allow me to thank those of you who left kind comments, prayers and poems concerning my brother. I am always immensely humbled by examples of huge generosity of spirit by strangers, for other strangers. When I think back on 9/11, I remember the people helping each other, pulling each other along, one person dousing another’s face with bottled water to cleanse the eyes of ash and more, people driving hours from regions upstate to leave sandwiches and lemonade for... Read more
Things will be rather silent for a little while…let the world be hushed…my brother, my beloved brother, is near his end, all 41 years and 68 lbs of him are reaching their culmination. On this day of rain and wind, all overcast and bleak, we will very likely see one more light go out, and things will seem a bit darker. This event has been long, so very long, in coming – you’d think our hearts would be more than... Read more
There really isn’t much to say. NRO’s The Corner linked to this government pdf file on Fallujah. You can’t look away. Read more
It’s been a long, long holiday weekend, and I hope it was good for everyone. We’ve had moments of hilarity and moments of great sadness, and I’ll write on that later this week…all in all, what it comes down to is this: loving families are blessings, a free nation is a blessing…blessings abound where you are open to find them. I can’t write at this hour, but since the Thanksgiving weekend usually kicks “It’s A Wonderful Life” into high rotation,... Read more
I have never responded to a comment made in a thread with a whole new posting, but one visitor to this site, Joseph Marshall (with whom I share a common love of farce and Ella Fitzgerald) posted that he really couldn’t understand why some Democrats and former Democrats are pleading for a healthy, sane Democrat party. Since I respect Marshall as a fellow Wodehousian, I’ve decided to respond here, and bring his comments to the fore. Sez Joe: The only... Read more
Hitchens, avowed atheist and virulent anti-Catholic would undoubtedly not appreciate the sentiment, but again I say, God bless him! As we watch the collective (and increasingly worrisome) breakdown of the Democrats, and we notice that not a SINGLE Democrat in a leadership position is telling these people to knock it off and “move on”, Hitchens brings his own rigorous logic to the whole issue and calls Bush a champion of Secularism. And he’s right. For all that American Christians of... Read more
I am so glad to see this article by Doug MacEachern in The Arizona Republic. He notes, quite rightly, that the last great Democrats (from back when the Democrat Party was a serious party, almost choking with greatness) would never behave like the small, bigoted and peculiar people we’ve see seething, whining, threatening run away or do something violent over the past few weeks.Considering JFK believed in low taxes, smaller government and a strong defense, I wonder if he would... Read more
A friend has just announced the birth of a granddaughter and emailed pictures – isn’t the internet a wonder – of the precious newborn, Isabella, so that we might share in their joy. In the picture this babe is only minutes old and already snuggling up to Mama, and Mama is gazing at her with such naked love it is almost too much to see. How miraculous! So this is how God keeps us going! It’s not the babies, per... Read more
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