The reason we have an endless stream of interscholastic sports from elementary age on up is that such competition supposedly “builds character.” Perhaps. But many parents and coaches seem far more interested in having a…
Posts published in “Essays”
My grandmother loved language; she loved words and, having been blessed with a classic education that included Latin and Greek as well as French, she spent much of her life reading with a handy etymological…
The most successful saga in postwar popular culture got off to a conscientious start after breakfast on a tropical morning in Jamaica early in 1952. Ian Fleming, forty-three years old and ten weeks away from…
It was right around 2:56pm PST, and the Post Office closes — or, at any rate, bars new entrants — promptly at 3 on Saturdays. There were perhaps 40 folks fidgeting in line; five vacant…
Tip-skimming has surfaced in Boston, and there can’t be a tipper in America who, on hearing the news, doesn’t exclaim, “The greedy bastards!” In a lawsuit filed March 7 in Suffolk Superior Court, five former…
So, why is baseball wonderful? Certainly, not because George Will and George W. pretend to be fans. Not on account of any of the hackneyed reasons (absence of time-clock; actual strategy and thinking involved). Sure,…
Like John Walker Lindh I grew up in posh, left-leaning Marin County and joined an authoritarian cult that methodically killed thousands of my fellow Americans. It was 1973 and after years of exposure to permissive…
Wilderness is something you fight for, so said Bob Marshall, a founder (1935) of the Wilderness Society. How's the fight going? How are we doing? From Wilderness Watch, a recent mailing: “…those of us who've…
With so many conspiracy theories floating around, along with facts and verifiable evidence, to speak of another conspiracy is to tumble into the land of the crazed. Is this the era of postmodern political science…