Tag: family

If we fail to recognize friendship for what it is, and for the role it plays in the maturation process of children and young adults, we lose out on a world that is diverse in the relationships it values

Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower found solace in their dead son’s favorite color

Walk boldly. Whistle not, but do keep walking. Keep walking right on by it and let the dead bury the dead.

A Cain and Abel Story for Modern Man

Theodore Roosevelt never recovered from the loss of his son in WWI

Surviving the holiday without our loved ones

It’s a new year, and many of us are thinking about self-improvement. This is a wonderful thing to do. We all need a bit of a tune-up now and then. But as we make our resolutions and focus on ourselves, it’s worth considering the parable of my table.

I wish environmentalists would better understand that there are no mustache-twirling billionaires drilling and digging and burning oil just for the hell and the money of it. Like money, petroleum is a very effective way to get the things we all want at the best convenience. And those in the oil industry are simply happy to oblige us and profit by their labors.

Tabletop games put something in our twitchy, swipe-hungry fingers other than a digital device—a hand of cards, a pair of dice, a plastic Zeus. And since others have put down their phones too, we can look out over those cards into a human face, a present human face.

Out-of-sight, out-of-mind is the quintessential modern American problem-solving strategy, and it sure does have a lot going for it, when it comes to dealing with our problem of stuff—that other quintessential modern American problem. Alas, it won’t work in this case, for we really do pull these things off the shelves regularly to look up one thing or another. And it is wonderfully convenient to be able to say “oh, yes, here’s where I read about this topic” to a friend who is over for dinner—and then pull the book I’m thinking about off the shelf, right then and there.