This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 14, 2023. College admissions procedures have, once again, become big news. A recent Supreme Court decision has “outlawed” some “affirmative action” procedures by those who determined who gets in and who doesn’t at certain colleges and universities. I have put some • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 7, 2023. If you search for “the most spoken word in the English language,” as I did recently, you will come up with a variety of interesting results. I had a particular candidate in mind, and I wanted to see if • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 30, 2023. And here I was thinking that some things would be pretty obvious to any reasonably intelligent person: One of the big news stories of the spring was that two Supreme Court justices had accepted money from an individual for • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 23, 2023. We have all heard this message many times before: Exercise, in almost any amount, is good for your body. The research is also increasingly pointing to the fact that exercise is good for your mind. Study after study shows • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 26, 2023. The New York Times recently reviewed a book a few years ago that I have not read but whose title I certainly agree with: Love Your Enemies. The book is by Arthur C. Brooks, who is among other things • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 19, 2023. This newsletter will have something special for its readers during the month of June. First, in each weekly edition, we will present one of the chapters of my latest book, Women With Words: Female Journalists and Writers (Heads and • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 12, 2023. Sometimes you have to simply accept responsibility. That happened to me last week when my website crashed and burned. The technician employed by my hosting service, the guy who took my call, was a terribly nice fellow, but it • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 5, 2023. During my nearly four decades as a college professor, I cannot remember a course that I taught where I did not take attendance—and emphasize to the students how important it is that they “show up.” Students would express a • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, April 21, 2023. Someone pointed out once that the American Constitution guarantees its citizens many legal rights such as the right to a fair trial and protection against undo government intrusion. The reason it does so, it is said, is because the • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, April 14, 2023. There is an essential fact about honeybees that has been obscured by more than a decade of reporting in the news media about them. That fact is this: Honeybees are not dying, and we are nowhere close to losing • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, April 7, 2023. I am fascinated by what I sometimes call the “miracle of growth.” It is something of a cliche to say that a tiny acorn can turn into a giant oak tree, but it is also literally true. A kernel • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 31, 2023. Life begins on Opening Day. The Major League Baseball season began this week. Despite all the innovations, the game remains much the same as it was played 150 years ago. A pitcher who delivers a high heater is liable • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 24, 2023. All of the seasons of the year have their special charms (yes, even winter), but none engenders my personal excitement like spring. The earth is coming back to life. Trees and flowers are beginning to bud and bloom, and • Read More »
Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org THERE was a brief period during which Father Brown enjoyed, or rather did not enjoy, something like fame. He was a nine days’ wonder in the newspapers; he was even a common topic of controversy in the weekly reviews; his exploits were narrated eagerly and inaccurately in any • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 17, 2023. Old time baseball aficionados like me used to be able to brag that, unlike basketball and football, baseball was not governed by any kind of a time clock. The pace of the game could be fast, or it could • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 10, 2023. My efforts at beekeeping in the last few years have been largely unsuccessful (not much honey harvested and hives dying in the fall or winter), so it is time to try a different approach. I have been reading some • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 3, 2023. If you pay attention to these things, you hear a lot these days about “public shaming,” and its subsidiary concept, “body shaming.” These two activities are generally thought to be bad, if not evil. I would agree. Holding people • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 24, 2023. Attempts to silence writers are as eternal, and as futile, as attempts to ban books themselves. In a couple of recent high-profile instances, we have seen author Salman Rushdie physically attacked and Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling become • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 17, 2023. Ever since the Super Bowl ended, nearly a week ago, we have been treated to an endless number of stories about what happened during the last few minutes of the game and how a referee’s questionable call might • Read More »
Charles Fancher, a good friend from my college days at the University of Tennessee in the 1960s, has recently had his first novel, Red Clay, accepted for publication by Blackstone Publishing. Here’s the announcement in Publishers Marketplace: Several years ago, when Charles was starting out with his novel, he sent me some of the • Read More »