Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org Six people sat around a small table, seeming almost as incongruous and accidental as if they had been shipwrecked separately on the same small desert island. At least the sea surrounded them; for in one sense their island was enclosed in another island, a large and flying island • Read More »
Archives: journalism
G.K. Chesterton: The Incredulity of Father Brown: The Miracle of the Moon Crescent
May 27, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org MOON CRESCENT was meant in a sense to be as romantic as its name; and the things that happened there were romantic enough in their way. At least it had been an expression of that genuine element of sentiment— historic and almost heroic—which manages to remain side by • Read More »
G.K. Chesterton: The Incredulity of Father Brown: The Oracle of the Dog
May 27, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org YES,’ said Father Brown, ‘I always like a dog, so long as he isn’t spelt backwards.’ Those who are quick in talking are not always quick in listening. Sometimes even their brilliancy produces a sort of stupidity. Father Brown’s friend and companion was a young man with a • Read More »
G.K. Chesterton: The Incredulity of Father Brown: The Arrow of Heaven
May 27, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org IT is to be feared that about a hundred detective stories have begun with the discovery that an American millionaire has been murdered; an event which is, for some reason, treated as a sort of calamity. This story, I am happy to say, has to begin with a • Read More »
The Great Defender, a population explosion, and a newspaper article that turned into a famous poem:newsletter, May 5, 2023
May 5, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: baseball, beekeeping, fiction, history, journalism, newsletter, writers, writing.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 »
G.K. Chesterton: The Incredulity of Father Brown: The Doom of the Darnaways
April 8, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org Two landscape-painters stood looking at one landscape, which was also a seascape, and both were curiously impressed by it, though their impressions were not exactly the same. To one of them, who was a rising artist from London, it was new as well as strange. To the other, • Read More »
The extraordinary life of Josephine Baker (part 1)
March 20, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Anyone lucky enough to have been in Paris in the 1930s and to have witnessed a performance by Josephine Baker, the African-American expatriate, would inevitably describe the experience in the same terms. It was mesmerizing. Baker had the ability to create a world on stage into which she could draw an audience, and to make • Read More »
G.K. Chesterton: The Incredulity of Father Brown: The Resurrection of Father Brown
March 20, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, journalism.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 »
Good news and bad news about libraries in Great Britain
March 18, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.There is good news about libraries from Great Britain. There is also some bad news. And the good news is that during the last year or so when statistics are available, the in person use of libraries in that nation has risen by a whopping 68 percent. The time measured for this statistic was mostly • Read More »
Christopher Marlowe’s deal with the devil
March 12, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.A deal with the devil. It is one of the oldest stories—if not the oldest—in our culture. The concept of “the devil and his due” is deeply embedded in our language and in our thinking. When Christopher Marlowe wrote his play, Dr. Faustus, sometime in the 1590s, he brought to modern life this ancient story • Read More »
Have we no shame left?
March 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.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 up to public ridicule is, on the whole, not a productive activity in my view. Running • Read More »
New rules for the 2023 baseball season (part 1)
March 5, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Now that the 2023 Super Bowl is dead and buried and the so-called March Madness irritation will end by the end of the month, it is time to turn our minds to the truly important considerations of the coming baseball season. Major League Baseball is imposing several important rule changes this season, and it will • Read More »
Charles Henry Turner, a ground-breaking zoologist
March 4, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Decades before the world had ever heard of the great entomologist and writer E.O. Wilson, Charles Henry Turner was taking a close look at the behavior of insects, particularly ants and bees. Turner’s observations and discoveries about the social instincts and behavior of insects would set the stage for much of the scientific exploration • Read More »
Prince Harry’s Spare: record-setting sales for someone not really interested in books
February 26, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.When Prince Harry’s ghost-written autobiography Spare was released in January, it set sales records of 3.2 million copies sold in the first week. Pretty good for a guy who isn’t all that interested in books and who isn’t sure about who William Faulkner is. Most of the credit for the book’s overall readability is given • Read More »
Get up and move—just a little
February 25, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.Sitting. It’s one of the most common—and least researched—of all human activities. One thing that we’re pretty sure of is that sitting too much is not good for you. Yet, that’s what many of us do. We sit at our jobs, and when we come home, we sit to conduct whatever helps us relax, such • Read More »
Women With Words: nearing publication
February 19, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.A good part of last week was spent getting my latest book, Women With Words: Female Journalists and Writers, Heads and Tales Volume 2, ready for publication on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other platforms. This is the second compilation of articles and caricatures, many of which originally appeared in this newsletter. (Valuable hint: • Read More »
Burt Bacharach, RIP
February 18, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.The reach and influence of Burt Bacharach’s music in the last half of the 20th century was immeasurable and unmatched. Bacharach wrote songs that you could easily hear and listen to. They were songs that expressed feelings that you had felt. They were often open to literary and musical interpretation, and the number of • Read More »
The emerging picture that alcohol is bad for you
February 5, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.A slow, underground movement – well, maybe not underground, but slightly below the surface – is emerging, and many of the articles I have read lately that come to the conclusion that alcohol does you and me good. First, there was the “dry January“ month that is now passed. People were urged to lay off • Read More »
John Stonehouse: He was a fraudster, but was he a spy?
January 28, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.If you have never heard of John Stonehouse, it is probably because of Lord Lucan. The British peer, Lucan, disappeared on November 7, 1974, after the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, and the attempted murder of his wife, Veronica. Lucan was never seen again by any officials, even after extensive international searches. Many • Read More »
The disappearance of an MP, keys to college success, how we got the First Amendment, and more:newsletter, January 27, 2023
January 27, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, journalism, newsletter, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 27, 2023. My tour of news sites that attempt to avoid the “bad news bias” continues with a site that is not exactly “good news” but is filled with good information—and probably the kind of information that you can apply directly • Read More »