Studying history has become a different game Exploring American history was like a game, but no longer. It is becoming dark and fearful. Imagine walking in the woods at twilight. Home seems far away. Long shadows make the path less certain. S...
Exploring YouTube is great fun, but bring salt The world has not always been complicated. I grew up with a single radio that broadcast one AM station during daylight hours. The phone hung on the wall in the dining room with a crank to wake the ...
Hearing chess and learning good sportsmanship Chess began in northwest India back in the fifth century, and not as a game. Instead, it was military training equipment, designed to teach young men how to conduct war. Chess was called “chaturang...
From the shoulders of a giant, the view is breathtaking Back in the 1600s, the scientist and inventor Sir Isaac Newton modestly said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” He meant this figurative acrobatic to mean he w...
Who was Ernest Hemingway? What he did wasn't all he was Sometimes subjects too interesting to ignore present themselves. Most are historical figures, interesting not for what they did as much as who they were and what they left behind for others to cop...
Some surprising facts emerge from a brief study of Charles Dickens Did you know that this is the year of Charles Dickens? It is for some. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the English author whom we might not know much about ex...
Nicknames: Characterizing someone with a single word Who are you, behind that social mask you’re wearing? It’s hard to know, especially if you have a nickname, some gluey thing someone else smacked that on you, that doesn’t describe you well at all...
A brief encounter with an old college yearbook After fifty-one years, I became re-acquainted with the college student I had been in 1961. But let me start at the beginning.
In 1861, Kansas became a state. In 1865, Lincoln College started in Top...
Plastic...PLASTIC?? I don't think so An exquisite spring morning began, and I watched as the sun rose, shepherding a docile flock of clouds drifting in from the Gulf. Then a breeze picked up, a plastic grocery bag wafted over the fenc...
Exploring the Iberian Peninsula: Why does it matter? If you are a geography buff, or have been traveling to Europe, you will have discovered as President Reagan did after visiting South America: There are a lot of countries there, different sizes and...
Albino coffee: one of the luxuries of maturity Where do family jokes come from? These are the ones told repeatedly around the dinner table, to the amusement of family members and the consternation of guests.
Our family, as I was growing up, had...
Henry David Thoreau was his own distant drummer Henry David Thoreau is dead. He has been dead a long time. After you die, you are usually forgotten. Thoreau pronounced his last name to rhyme with “thorough.” He only lived 44 years, from July 12,...
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