It is interesting to reflect on how much the world has changed in the last 175 years. My father was born in 1873, his father in 1841. Both were born at a time when there were no automobiles, no radios, few or no telephones, very limited medical facilities, etc. Railroads were new phenomena when my […]
Irving Berlin, who arrived in America in 1893 as a Jewish immigrant from Czarist Russia, was a prolific songwriter, both composer and lyricist, and he wrote hundreds of songs. Almost every American over the age of fifty is familiar with some of his creations. Think, for instance, of that marvelous musical Annie Get Your Gun […]
I come from a family of prodigious eaters. Our five sons could consume amazing amounts of food. In a previous post about camping I wrote about how the family may have closed down a smorgasbord restaurant in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, their mother was a great cook. My first son, Sandy Jr., may have been the most […]
Journalists and television pundits often appear puzzled by the fact that so many American Evangelical Christians support President Trump and are very hesitant to criticize him. To them it seems inconsistent that these people ally themselves with a thrice married, philandering, rude, and often crude individual who often engages or has engaged in behavior at […]
Have you ever encountered someone who either spoke so softly or incoherently that you had difficulty understanding them? Remember the old Dick Tracy comic strip? There was a character that sometime appeared in the strip that they called “Mumbles”. His trademark was never speaking clearly but always mumbling. This was indicated when he spoke by […]
One never knows what awaits around the corner. Charles Dickens titled one of his novels Great Expectations. Do you have great expectations? What are your prospects? That reminds me of a brief story by Jack London in his book Burning Daylight. London told of a wedding in western North Carolina where a fight broke out […]
Computers are wonderful things, and it is difficult to overstate the impact that they have had on our lives and our society. I give you one small instance. In 1952 I was busily writing a thesis as required to receive a master’s degree at my university. I laboriously wrote my paper in longhand, after which […]
