As the World Turned Over: JFK and the ’60s

  We savvy New York City first graders knew something was up. Sister Elaine, the fun nun, looked worried, and her mouth, usually wide in smile, was taut. We sensed a big, sore secret inside that she couldn’t let out, as much as she wanted to tell us. It was well after lunch,...
Read More →

Scarecrow and Tin Man

  After the successful overturn of the national abortion mandate known as Roe v. Wade, the next battle for prolifers is “winning hearts and minds.” The problem is when it comes to hearts and minds someone else got there first.  Or something. The unhinged behavior coming from...
Read More →

Requiem for Two Hypocrisies

  “Never again,” the world long repeated. The immolation of Jewry in the Shoah shall never again darken the name of humanity, we proclaimed . . . for decades. The word “genocide” was coined after the Holocaust to name the attempt to eradicate an entire group of human beings....
Read More →

Handicapping Confidential

  When I was a little boy in Rochester, my Uncle Vin would often relieve my young stressed-out mother and take me with him on the 25-mile drive to pick up Aunt Florrie, his wife, from her job at the Finger Lakes Racetrack. Before I could read, this guy was showing me how to...
Read More →

When the Dirty Magazines Were Kept in the Back of the Store

  Sigmund Freud said there’s “a primary sexual drive that would not be ultimately curbed by law, education or standards of decorum.” Hell, anybody who’s ever had an “eyes across the room” moment knows that! The Beatles sang about it: My heart went Boom when I crossed that...
Read More →

Who Wants to Be a Martyr?

  “I am God’s wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become the pure bread of Christ.” Today, Oct. 17, the Church remembers a first-century bishop who set a standard for Christian courage in the face of death. St. Ignatius of Antioch, friend of St....
Read More →

November Elections: Vital Lessons for Pro-lifers

A MONTH AHEAD OF ELECTIONS …. By the time you read this, November elections will be less than a month away.  A year ahead of presidential elections, 2023 may not attract the attention elections usually do.  But failing to pay attention to them would be a fatal mistake for...
Read More →

Who Will Rescue America?

  As summer ended, news came of several prolifers having been convicted in federal court. Their “crime” was violating the 1994 FACE Act; specifically, what they did was carry out a rescue. Three years ago, the prolifers disrupted the “business” of a notorious Washington, DC...
Read More →

More Like the Machines?

  Based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the classic science fiction movie Blade Runner features robots so life-like they’re indistinguishable from human beings. Machines Like Me, a more recent work by Ian McEwan, confronts the same...
Read More →
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Beyond_My_Ken

Tinker’s Dam

  The expression “not worth a tinker’s dam” means something is completely worthless. A tinker was an itinerant handyman who repaired small household items like utensils and pots and pans. A tinker’s dam was a piece of doughy material used to hold metal in place when...
Read More →