Violence at political rallies? Creating apparent threats? Very old stuff. I happened to read the other night descriptions of some rallies when the violence was real. In one, a Republican…
Two black slate headstones (pictured below) in the Jaffrey, NH, Old Burying Ground look from a distance just like others from the turn of the 19th century. But below the conventional…
Last week, fire gutted the Century Inn in Scenery Hill, Washington County, Pennsylvania. Built between 1788 and 1794, it was still serving great country cooking three years ago when I…
Publisher’s Note: The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut observed a ‘day of awareness’ of the Anglican Church’s complicity in and profit from the African slave trade. This homily by my friend…
‘America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy….’[1] So said Warren Harding in his successful campaign for president in 1920. But how different was Harding’s ‘normalcy’…
One word can have such distinct meanings that I never connect them. Consider the words ‘conversion’ and ‘redemption’, important in the vocabularies of Christians and the bond market. And then…
‘If God had meant us to vote,’ said the much missed folk singer and labor activist U. Utah Phillips, ‘He’d have given us candidates.’ On this, the pointedly funny…
Attentive walkers in Cambridge’s Mt. Auburn Cemetery will find surprises every few feet. Yesterday, we found the unremarkable monument in the accompanying picture. The epitaph it bears, however,…
Born on the 4th of July, 1872, Calvin Coolidge served as President from 1923 until 1929. He was a New Englander of stern integrity. His political skills, though,…