Part I of III Part IA: AUTHORITY — Missing Person or Murder Case? The end of the world as we know it bleeds endlessly through my screens and newspapers. The ‘times’ in end times is plural, so fixing one particular day as the finale is tricky and there might yet be a rescue, but some cliffhangers do result in the heroes […]
The Complete Posts
Defending Your Writes: Are How-To Books for Authors Hooey?
Short answer: Depends upon what you consider a ‘How-To-Write’ book Yes, my good and faithful readers,’ ‘writes’ is a word; Obsolete in most places admittedly and only used in northeastern Scotland as of 1974, but it’s a real word signifying ‘A written record or work; a book, a letter, a document, etc.’ Even if it […]
01132026 Quote of the Day
“The authentic and pure values — truth, beauty and goodness — in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object.”Simone Weill
FITZGERALD CHANGED HIS MIND ABOUT SECOND ACTS: we all should
HENRY OLIVER’S BOOK TELLS US HOW WE CAN STAGE A SECOND ACT IN OUR OWN LIVES Eventually, this post will get to a strong recommendation for Henry Oliver’s book, but first we have to clean up some Fitzgeraldiana related to second acts. Like many other besotted English majors of my and other generations, F Scott […]
Testing Assumptions: Meritocracy
My dear friend Zeineb Mahzouz sent me an article that drills into a subject that surfaces again and again in my stew of concerns: meritocracy.
TESTING ASSUMPTIONS: NOT BORN YESTERDAY BY HUGO MERCIER
The subtitle of this book is The Science Of Who We Trust And What We Believe, and its purpose is to disabuse us of ideas about how we decide, who we can have faith in, and what we should accept as real. Mercier, research director at the CNRS, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, is of the […]
Never Can Give Too Many Thanks
ARCHIVIO GBB/Alamy Stock Photo; Getty Images Whether we share his faith or not, the words and actions of Pope Leo gain our attention for their sincerity and strength. While speaking with NBC’s Molly Hunter on Nov. 25, the Chicago native shared what he hopes people remember during the annual holiday: I would encourage all people, […]
Testing Myself
Chasing the Dead Today is Samhain (pronounced “Sow-win) in the old Celtic calendar. The Irish of pre-Christian time — and still these days with New Agers and would be witches and druids — believed that the veil between the living and dead worlds was thinnest at this time. To those who march up dark hills […]
Shame on You, Shame on Me, Shame on Nobody
Part II of The Reconsidering Shame Campaign He that deceives me once, it’s his fault; but if twice, it’s my fault This quote comes from a 1651 book attributed to Anthony Weldon, “The Court and Character of King James”. In this spicy collection of gossip and dissing, the narrator, supposedly Weldon, claimed this saying was […]
Come back, Shame
A Philosophy of Shame by Frederic Gros Matches the Moment — Mostly Growing up in the 1950s, the local NYC area television stations like Channels 9 (WOR) and 11 (WPIX) showed a lot of Westerns. Shane from 1953 proved a favorite for young boys. Bad guys, nice decent father, beautiful mother, gunslinger hero, Shane, hero-worshiping […]