Cynicism has moved from being the preferred stance of angst-ridden teenagers to the default setting in society at large. How did we get so fragile?…
On the face of it, it was like something out of a short story by Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut. Or, as when the Jersey Lily visited the West Texas town of Langtry, home of her her biggest fan, Judge Roy Bean (“Law West of the Pecos.”) Last week, to cap…
He was a major force in British literature, influencing T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. But today most people might recall Robert Browning mainly as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “handsome and dashing young” husband and subject of her poem, “How Do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”…
Although in the middle of the last century, many observers seemed convinced that religion was fast fading from the scene, few social scientists hold that view today. Instead of religion becoming less important, we listen to the furious sounds coming from the clashing of intense religious convictions. According to the…
In case you missed it, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, turned 333 this February. Although the ancients believed three to be the perfect number and thus, three threes might be extremely portentous, you don’t have to be an ancient numerologist to marvel at a book that has been in continuous…
Without a doubt, the Plaza Hotel in Cuahtemoc, Mexico, has everything you need: on the main drag, a cathedral around the corner, cheap rooms (less than $18 US a night), good lumpy beds, central heat, and hot water. Ok, so you can hear the people next door as distinctly as…
Along the Borderlands
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Rural America ain’t what it used to be. For example, sociologists from the University of Missouri have uncovered two interesting findings about living in the country: (1) that over the past 30 years people have been moving from urban areas to rural communities (“the Turnaround”) and (2) over the past…
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