But not the kind in the old Ellery Queen novels. A friend of mine sent me a list of ten modern writers he thinks will still be being read a hundred years from now.  I couldn’t come up with twelve, but I did come up with some.  But in coming up with them, it occurred…

So, it is Sunday, and I’m doing my usual Sunday morning thing.  Gustav Leonhardt is playing the harpsichord with The Well-Tempered Clavier on the CD player behind me, and I’ve just spent the entire first disc reading more of Paul Johnson’s Modern Times. I’ve just reached the point of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, but what…

In a couple of minutes, I have to go into the other room and correct my first set of papers of the term.  I have friends who say I shouldn’t assign the things this early.  I have friends who say I shouldn’t assign the damned things this early, but here we are. At any rate:…

I suppose the real news is that fall is definitely coming.  This is the second day in a row I’ve woken up to find myself cold enough to want the heat on.  I haven’t actually put the heat on, mind you.  I’ve got some deep seated ideological resistance to putting the heat on before October. And…

It is the first Sunday of the term, and therefore the first Sunday I’ve had in a long time that fits the pattern of my Official Day Off.  It’s also the first day in five without the depredations of Extreme Weather, including violent thunder and wind storms and ongoing tornado warnings.  Today is just pleasant…

So, it really is the start of the term, and at the end of the first week, I’m completely exhausted.  I’m exhausted even though I slept in this morning as much as I ever sleep in if I’m not sick.  I think I made it all the way to six o’clock before. And maybe it…

Or sort of.  Well, it has in fact started, and this time, for me, with one bollocks after another.  I have no idea if I’ve spelled that word right. I have been reading–a book called The Fortunes of Permanence, by Roger Kimball.  It’s a strange sort of thing.  Kimball is one of the people who…

I wonder why everybody has so much trouble with this. I don’t agree with Cheryl.  I don’t think it is impossible to separate the moral and the legal when it comes to making law. In fact, not only is it not impossible, it is desperately necessary.  The law exists to keep the peace.  That’s all…

A month or so ago, I wrote a post that outlined my position on the legality of abortion. Note–I said the LEGALITY. The moral issue is entirely different. I am ONLY talking about whether or not a government has a right to compel a woman to continue a pregnancy against her will. This is important, because…

I have a very odd relationship to television.  I spent a lot of my life without it.  From the time I left home to live at school until I married Bill, I never owned one, and only lived with a roommate who owned one for about six months.  And over the course of the years…