The first line from soul singer Sam Cooke’s 1960 hit, Wonderful World, begins prophetically Don’t know much about history! How is it that Americans seem so ignorant of their own history? And why is it what they presume to know sounds as if it had...
There are a myriad of different kinds of imaginations. The one I am the most familiar with is the Catholic Imagination, especially Andrew Greeley’s wonderful book of the same name. In my past essay, the Womb of My Catholic Imagination I explored...
Two unseemly connected fields have long played a major role in my life outside of my family home. I have been a baseball fan since 1952. I have been writing and even teaching about baseball for just under a half century. I have been active in the...
One of the initial things I learned as a practicing Catholic in the first grade, 71 years ago, was how to genuflect. Dating back to at least, Alexander the Great in fourth Century Persia, the act of taking a knee or sometimes both knees has been a...
The Prisoner is a 1967 British science fiction–allegorical television series about an unidentified British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village, where his captors try...
It is at this time of the year many devout people question the real meaning of this, the most religiously festive of all seasons. Ok, for over 50 years, I confess to having enjoyed putting up the tree, seeing it glimmer with colorful lights and our...
When I was younger, I used to read a column in The Reader’s Digest, called Laughter is the Best Medicine. There is much scientific information to assert that this is a truism. Science tells us that laughter is one of the best tools we have for...
I like to create neologisms and even a truism on occasion. My latest truism is that bad ideas invariably drive out good ideas in a society. I am referring to the idea that people who have fundamental religious, moral and ethical beliefs have been...
