Go here: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/how-highbrows-killed-culture/ A friend of mine sent me this article when it was still only in hard copy, and now it’s shown up on Arts and Letters Daily. It’s a truly WONDERFUL article.  And if he writes a book on the same topic, I’ll be first in line.

So I was thinking, yesterday, that I know what I like, and it comes down to one thing:  I like historical periods that are on the edge of change.  I am less fond of historical periods that have tipped over into the Next Thing. This is interesting, in a way, because in academia I chose…

Yesterday was Sunday, and I had the first really bang-up Sunday I’ve had for a long time.  I had Pachibel, and this book I’m reading, and I cooked something I never had before for dinner–it was almost perfect.  Perfect would be doing all that while looking out at the Pacific on Maui, but most of…

So, it’s Saturday, and I have transportation-related things to do, which means that I ought to be in a very bad mood.  As it is, I got up this morning early, and instead of just jumping into stuff I put on my very favorite Mendelssohn CD and read that book I was talking about a…

I actually have a lot of things to do today, and no real time. But I wanted to comment on Michael Fisher’s comment about abortion. Because it’s not just abortion that is showing signs of a coming crack-down. It’s pregnancy itself. Consider:  when my parents’ generation had children, women routinely had a cocktail before dinner…

For reasons mostly boring and mundane, Wednesdays are now the sanest days of my weeks. I think I got that grammatically correct. At any rate, Wednesdays are the days when I don’t have to run out and be somewhere and I don’t have to hurry up and do something, and today I took advantage of that…

I was going to start writing today by bringing up my other Really Important item on the wish list, the one that goes like this: 2) I want us to establish, firmly and for the final time, that the nature of this country is democratic–that is, that all adult citizens are presumed to be capable…

So, it’s Monday morning, and I have a lot to do.  I am also faced with a recalcitrant web site that I need desperately that’s had a “server problem” since yesterday. So I’m here, and I’m almost transitioned out of writing mode. But let me go back to one of the themes from the last…

The title to this post was suggested by my younger son.  And, you know, whatever. But let met get first to Cathy’s comment, where she says that society in the past was just as brutal. The first is to note that what I was commenting on was not brutality in real life but brutality in…

So. The book is done. It went off on Thursday, in fact, and I’ve been trying to do the transition thing ever since, with only limited success. I seem to have been unclear the last time.  When I say I need a “transition book,” I don’t mean that I need a book to help me…