They have become ubiquitous: communities of the living that can be entered only by passing a guard house or punching some numbers into an electronic pad. They are brazenly distinct from the rest of the world where communities grow organically and one can pass freely into a neighborhood or onto a street without challenge. Punching in … Read more
After the 2016 elections, many tried to explain what happened. Some theories are not convincing since they seem to hide a darker reality of which we dare not speak. Others appear a bit too simplified to explain what we experience in daily life. To start the process of understanding our crisis, we need a clear … Read more
Vainly do men of our time seek remedies for the cultural maladies affecting us. Each exertion of the political elite or the bien pensant only seem to deepen their woes. Faced with such existential crisis modern men seek corrupting escapes or the violence of bankrupt political extremism. Indeed, these things assume the kind of devotion … Read more
Downtown, early morning, all alone. Ten stories up, staring across the Hudson River, at nothing. Tears filled my eyes. ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ Looking across the East River from the taxi cab window, I was rapt by the twilight skyline of Manhattan. The sight of the bejeweled city stirred memories of Gershwin melodies, gangster stories, and scenes from … Read more
The Sutherland Springs shooter, who took the lives of 26 men, women, and children in a small Texas church, was, like scores of others before him, one of the living dead. Dylan Klebold, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Stephen Paddock, and Devin Patrick Kelley represent what the apostle Paul warned would characterize the latter days: people … Read more
There is within our present society a profound and pervasive sensitivity that something is amiss, a deep and desperate yearning for things higher than our modern materialistic society has within its power to offer. Burrowed in the innermost secret place of every man and woman there is a sense, an inherent knowledge, that much of … Read more
Six years ago my bandmates and I sat stranded in a broken down van on the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel. Though we were nearly 2,500 miles away from our home in Northern Nevada, we naturally assumed that this was just another small bump we would have to endure on our way to rock … Read more
It’s interesting to reflect sometimes on how humanity might remember the United States of America, centuries or millennia hence. Sometimes I think it will be remembered as a light to the nations, the proverbial City on a Hill. At other times, it seems to me that it will be remembered as a cautionary tale, proving … Read more
A friend shared a story with me about shopping for a birthday present for his wife. He wasn’t sure what to buy for her. She dropped some subtle hints a few weeks before her birthday that failed to bring much clarity. Then she dropped some not so subtle hints and he ended up getting her … Read more