Category: Access
Wednesday’s Child: Cards on the Table
Young Vasily, who the other day cleared the nine-months plank at seventy-five centimeters, is showing an early interest in the deck. To be sure, it appears that the laminated finish of a playing card, rather than its relative value in chemin de fer or blackjack, is what fascinates him….
Poem by Lawrence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Actually, America has Plenty of Troops
In a previous post, I commented on the U.S. military’s recruiting shortage. A new story from Military.com confirms that, “Army Cuts Force Size amid Unprecedented Battle for Recruits.”
But I got to thinking, which always is dangerous:
Rationalizing Abortion
Most modern schools of philosophy base morality on the principles of reason, and the principal accounts of moral development emphasize growth in moral reasoning rather than moral behavior. To be a human person in this sense would mean that an individual is conscious of his own existence and capable of making rational decisions, including the decision to remain alive.
Fred Zinneman
Few other first features involved so many future luminaries as the documentary-style German silent, People on Sunday (1930). Not the actors, but directors Edgar G. Ulmer and Robert Siodmak and writers Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak, all of whom had long careers in Hollywood.
Wednesday’s Child: Terrorism by the Spoonful
Many tales of modern life, such as the stuff one comes across in middlebrow newspapers, read like brazen inventions. The reader never feels that he is actually inside the freak show, where the Swiss bearded lady, the microcephalic dwarf Zip the Pinhead, and the giantess Anna Swan are vying for his attention.
Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came
My title comes from a saying of 1960s antiwar hippy protesters, as Bill and Hillary Clinton were before they started all their wars.
Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Nice
If a Russian priest can do anything, it’s to find himself a wife. We stayed in Father Vadim’s house for several days, before and after little Vasily’s christening, and I was able to observe firsthand what a force of nature a good popadya, or matushka, or priest’s wife, becomes when pushed to extremes.
An Apology from the Editor
The website has been neglected for over ten days. Initially, the cause was the Summer Seminar, which went beautifully–more on that in a day or two. The past five days, another round of COVID, this one comparatively mild, has taken me out of the picture. Today, I am no longer content to lie on the sofa, coughing and groaning as I listen to a reading of The Day of the Jackal, but I am actually doing proof-reading and and attending to business that is not too taxing to my befuddled brain.
