Category: Feature

3

Poems: Jessica Powers

Jessica Powers was born less than three hours from our house, in Mauston, Wisconsin, in 1905.  In 1941 she entered a Carmelite convent in Pewaukee, where she received the name Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit.

18

Poetry: Browning at his Best

By

Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind!

6

Clown Country

America zooms – or Zooms – into 2021 the laughingstock of the world. The global Guarantor of Democracy, bombing foreign lands with allegedly faulty elections at the drop of a parasol, continues limping toward a January 5 dual election for U.S. Senators from Georgia, a January 6 possible validation or invalidation of the presidential election by Congress and a January 20 inauguration of somebody who might have won the November 3 election.

5

A Christmas Story of Anterus Smith as told to Ched Rayson, Conclusion

Coming out of his seclusion, Mickey  announced a monster meeting in a field outside of Chequamegon.  He did not have time to build a stage, but there was a nice little stream flowing through the field.  One side of the ground  was flat with room for hundreds of people to stand or spread out picnic blankets, and on the other side, there was a steep bank, which Mickey mounted, to make his pitch, which is why his speech has gone down in history as the “Sermon of the Mountebank.”  

16

Lincoln: A Lying Duplicitous Bigot

This review of David Donald’s Lincoln ( New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 1996)  was commissioned and published by the Spectator (London),  for which I wrote with some frequency, once upon a time before the world ceased pretending to exist.