Have you ever been in the presence of someone whose apparent brilliance was intellectually intimidating. Their mastery of the vocabulary and factual details about a particular subject may be beyond impressive. Over years of observation, however, I have found that many of these savants have a very narrow range. On some subjects they might be […]
One hundred five years ago, on July 27, 1914, Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia. During the week that followed, all major European powers slid into the maelstrom of a general war. Last summer I described World Wars I and II in a post that I titled “War and Madness”. In this post I provide a […]
From time to time scholars question President Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb in 1945. How easy it is to look backwards and see things so clearly. There are those who maintain that Japan would have surrendered, without invasion and without the atomic bomb, prior to the end of 1945 — and probably […]
In 1978 my brother Branch Fields lost his dear wife Ruth to cancer. They had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary earlier that year. In 1979 Branch came east to visit family and friends in North Carolina, and he also managed to spend a few days with us in Columbia, Maryland. We really enjoyed his […]
Non-Christians are often ill-informed on Christian beliefs and have little understanding or interest in what goes on in a typical Christian congregation. The following paragraphs are written with the hope that they will shed a bit of light on the subject. As I write this post, I must confess my inadequacy. I am no theologian, […]
This is a true story. I have changed the names of the participants in order to spare them from possible embarrassment. After all, I did not ask them for permission to post this account of a rather amusing incident extracted from our family archives. Kevin loved his blanket. In fact, he loved it so much […]
Paths of Glory was a powerful anti-war motion picture made in 1957. It depicts the horrors of trench warfare in World War I, and it illustrates the dehumanizing effects of warfare. The story describes the travails of members of a French battalion on the front line during the third year of the Great War. The […]
