I drove down to Bensalem this evening to attend a basketball game between Holy Ghost Prep and a small, local public school. Basketball has become a more aggressive sport since I was in high school 60+ years ago. The son of close friends attends HGP and is on the basketball team, though he didn't get to play this evening. He called to thank me for ( Read more... )

The failures that have plagued this country for at least 65 years now continue to build catastrophe onto catastrophe. What are some of those failures? The failure of U.S. education to prepare our citizens to think analytically, logically, and unemotionally and to evaluate political candidates in an intelligent and reasonable way. The failure of the ( Read more... )

While I was in my usual altered state while washing dishes this morning, I started thinking about some of the artists in their 30's and 40's whose works I've looked at during the past month. There are similarities in their paintings. They all look like art-class efforts by third-grade students, that is to say 8- or 9-year-old kids. Before you ( Read more... )

On Weekend Edition Saturday this morning, Scott Simon interviewed Nik Wallenda, the current top man (no pun intended) of the venerable troupe of aerialists, The Flying Wallendas. NW said he has been walking the wire for 30 years, since he was two years old. He is currently negotiating with the powers that be in the U.S. and Canada for permission to ( Read more... )

This morning, tying my shoes brought to mind my primary school teachers and how good they were. Because my mother did two things when I was five years old, one scene is still vivid in my mind: she bulldozed my first school into having me begin first grade almost four months before my sixth birthday, when I was even more immature than the average ( Read more... )