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…
I’ve been reading Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale Univ. Press, 2013) by Ohio State history professor Geoffrey Parker. Parker has…
Yellowed newspapers and old readers reveal what preceding generations thought important, what shaped our ancestors’ perceptions and ours. At a farm auction in 1958 when I was 12, I found…
Monday evening, US Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) attempted to explain in a debate amongst Republican candidates for President why he’d said Osama bin Laden should have been captured and tried,…
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” That…
Los Angeles: Getty Center Porch at Tea Time 11/2009 Fifteen years ago, few with power in Massachusetts exercised it with more relish and publicity than then Boston University president, John…