Taking a look at our nation's First Ladies The other night I was browsing “The Extraordinary Book of Information.” It claimed to be “Amazing Trivia About Anything & Everything.” I found out that polar bears really aren’t white and that ...
A Small Glimpse at a Long Ago War The Civil War, also called the War Between the States, is like some terrible fire that may or may not have been completely extinguished.
Who we are and where we live determine what we see and know....
A Brief Introduction to Africa When I hear a word several times the same day, I want to write about it. I wrote about cowboys and cobalt. Now it’s Africa.
Four times I have written about men with Africa in their lives. The first...
Just How Dumb Do They Think We Are? Last week, we received a picture postcard. On the back was a jumbo jet making its final approach from an evening sky, the landscape below dark and mysterious.
Beneath the plane, bright red letters...
Concerning America, the Wild West and Cowboys Recently, my column was about Gene Autry and how this singing cowboy was my boyhood hero. Sharing this long-ago memory was great fun.
In truth, America’s frontier past was mostly a Hollywood creati...
Cobalt: Its beauty is only part of its story Supposing you were in a strange city. Suddenly, walking straight towards you is an old friend you thought you had lost track of. Coincidences happen.
Later in the day, another long-lost friend. ...
Days Are Good, Bad, Blah or Glass I started to write about glass. But what matters about glass is how it makes me feel, and has for as long as I can remember. So I’m writing about “glass” feelings.
It began when I was a little kid...
Remembering Gene Autry, a remarkable American Figure A memory came back to life as I listened to a recording of a boyhood hero. I had found a song recorded by Gene Autry, called “20/20 Vision, and Walking Around Blind.”
Autry’s voice was unmistakabl...
About numerals, dust boards, scrolls and fingermath By the phone on a yellow sticky note was a phone number in my own handwriting. The shape of my numbers brought back when my third grade teacher and I got crosswise over the “correct” way to write A...
Failure is often a door to insight One of the oldest cliches is “Actions have consequences,” but we should take the time to do more than acknowledge that and move on.
Every venture ends in success or failure, and the larger the vent...
Two Pairs, Fred and Ginger, Frank and Ernest My morning has turned into pairs, two of which I hope you will find interesting.
My mornings start with puzzles the newspaper brings me, a pair of mental gymnastics I refuse to recognize as an addi...
What did Shakespeare really write? Since you are reading this, it is clear that the world did not end last week. That’s good. Now there is one thing less to worry about.
If we got involved in every dire warning, there wouldn’t be ti...
