Can we keep letting politicians run our country? Economics is considered a subject of little interest. Whenever the subject comes up, notice the person spoken to. Just before his eyes glaze over, he might mumble something about difficulty balan...
A wary exploration of "A World Without Us" Reviews may soon be the dominant form of writing. Everyone is looking to share something, anything, everything. But few reviews are worth reading all the way through. Mostly, they are read becaus...
Robert Frost and his "Lover's Quarrel With the World" To a poetry lover, it is a mystery why many automatically reject both poetry and poets. What is automatic to this poetry lover is wanting to put a dent in some of those negative feelings. We che...
Where Have All the Flying Saucers Gone? Early man had our intelligence and our imagination, but survival seemed to keep him busy and he had no schools, so most of his knowledge was accumulated observations he made up explanations for. In...
Peace and quiet are nearly inseparable partners Children, at least in the days when I was a member of that group, are rowdy. When they are, a referee known as an adult, one of those large people in another room who have somehow learned to sit s...
Could Argentina's past look like our future? I didn’t like it, but History of Latin America was a required course. The big guy in the next seat didn’t like it either. “Coach fills out our schedules so we don’t flunk nuthin,’” was why he was...
Looking for Tesla: easy to find and hard to describe Anyone who considers professional writing merely ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration doesn’t know about luck Lately, what has appeared seems so self-directed that I find myself...
Psionic generator experiment:What happens next? In my early years of college, I had a friend named Ed. Like many young men, we were at once friends, competitors, and sometimes even adversaries. Guys are like that. Ed and I liked to “bounce idea...
President Benjamin Franklin? Never Happened. Why not? Like the old potato chip commercial for potato chips that bets that you can’t eat just one, I found myself with a craving for one more figure in the early history of our country. Once the fixation...
My African violets started with just a single leaf Unquestionably one of the most popular of all houseplants worldwide, the African violet, when it came to this country, preferred the south, where the mild climate allowed the violet to flourish wit...
Act my age? Perhaps, just as long as it’s fungible As a result of my occasionally outrageous behavior, I have been sternly advised to “act my age.” Apparently there are some who are unaware of the advantages that come with many years. One ...
The tax man rings twice There was a loud outcry in St. Landry Parish in April 1869, when a new Internal Revenue agent began pushing folk for back taxes.
It seems that a good number of the folks who were being pushed had p...
