Category: Fleming

Part II The several days we spent at Ulivello vibrate in the memory like an hallucination.  Our friend Navrozov has written a beautiful piece about his visit to Ulivello.  The reality was a bit grittier and decayed than he described it—less the odor of jasmine than of hay and manure—but no less magical.  The food was almost a revelation:  pasta, of course, but followed by farm-raised pork, roasted with apples and served with potatoes deep-fried in olive oil. Ulivello had been a sort of farm, worked by share-croppers, and when the Italian government ended share-cropping, the former croppers stayed on...

The Media have taken to describing Illinois as a “Banana Republic”?  So today’s question is: How is Illinois not a Banana Republic?  I await  your answers. My first answer is: Because Banana Republics have beaches and warm winters… And, Banana Republics have distinctive cuisines and excellent coffee not sold by greedy Communists who think the sky is falling…

Long long ago in another galaxy, I wrote a series of pieces looking at the plain meaning of various passages in the New Testament, not as anyone pretending to be a theologian or Biblical scholar, but as a simple philologist seeking the kind of understanding of a Greek text he might get by studying Demosthenes or Sophocles.  I am going to try and dig them up and refurbish them, if I can find them.  I am afraid I wrote some of them for another website that has by now undoubtedly 86ed them, as they say in commercial  kitchens. I tend...

Bernie Sanders’ anti-Christian hissie fit the other day is overheating the Christian chattiverse.  Sanders unloaded on Russell Vought the load of Christ-hating venom he had accumulated in a liftetime devoted to attacking  all things normal, decent, and well-groomed, describing his faith as “insulting,” “hateful,” and indefensible.” Christians are drawing the obvious conclusion that for Sanders and his ilk—and, remember, their name is Legion—any form of orthodox Christian faith is a cause for exclusion from federal office.  First it will be cabinet posts, then federal judgeships, then college scholarships. Unfortunately, too few Christians seem to understand that Sanders is only making explicit...

IV  It’s 2017, and the Rechstaffens have moved from the crazy Bay Area to the crazier Portland, where Fritz IV (J.J.) is doing well as head of an immigrants’ rights organization and Democratic Party activist.  He had worked hard for Bernie, but, when his candidate lost, he cheerfully rolled up his sleeves to work for the first woman that would be elected President of the Free World, the human race, and the entire universe.   He makes no bones about his loathing of all things Trump, and that is the one subject on which he and his former son, Fritz...