Many people aspire to be great writers, or just writers, period, but have trouble getting started. While nearly all successful writers say the way to be a writer is to write and leave it at that, many believe there is some secret to it – like getting up at 6 […]

Today brought the sad news of the passing of my Aunt Valerie Thomas Hartshorne, the last of my parrents’ generation to depart this earth. I find it difficult indeed to describe what she meant to me, to her family, and to her myriad friends. To me she exemplified love and […]

Jonathan Edwards was a famous 18th century preacher, probably best known for his sermon ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’. But he was also a famous naturalist, who discovered how spiders fly by sending out a length of filament into the wind and then, at the last minute, […]

“It was a New Jersey farmer, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, who invented the modern wagon wheel, of which he had found an exact description in Homer. [Not Homer Simpson. The blind Greek guy.] This was the wheel with a circumference made from a single piece of wood. “American farmers, […]

If you were born when Ike was president, as I was, and you take prescription drugs, you will have learned, or you will soon learn about the ‘doughnut hole’. When it comes to the doughnut hole, I am the opposite of an expert. I know nothing about it or how […]

One of the ways I’m beguiling my time in my golden years is watching old episodes of NYPD Blue. I enjoyed the show when it first aired, like millions of other viewers, and now, many years later, I am deeply impressed by the quality of the writing, the cinematography, the […]

I just finished watching  the six-hour miniseries ‘Lonesome Dove’ and, if it’s possible, I enjoyed it even more than the first time. I loved the book by Larry McMurtry, of course, and this series really does it justice. It’s visually beautiful, more so than anyone thought television could be; the […]

I don’’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ by John Berendt. The tour guides mentioned it when I visited the marvelous City of Savannah on my trip to Georgia several years ago, and I put it […]

I have often recommended George F. Kennan’s book ‘American Diplomacy 1900-1950 for its insights into world history and American attitudes toward the players and combatants, which are fascinating and thought-provoking. I’m reading it yet again, this time for enjoyment. The subject matter is grim enough, of course, two catastrophic bloody […]

In March of 1943, Ensign James Reed was among a group of transient naval officers bound for combat assignments in the Pacific Theater aboard the USS Rochambeau, a French ocean liner converted to troop transport. The officers were quartered three or four to a stateroom and spent their time discussing […]