This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,290) on Friday, October 15, 2021. If you grew up in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s and paid attention to the news (here, guilty on all counts), you would have heard the name of Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi woman who upset • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,272) on Friday, October 8, 2021. Audiobooks—are they really “books”? If you listen to an audiobook, does that count as reading one? Those questions came to mind as I read an email this week from a good friend and newsletter reader. She was responding to • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,290) on Friday, October 1, 2021. A recent survey by Pew Research tells us that “Roughly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form. . • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,290) on Friday, September 24, 2021. Are we eating ourselves toward extinction? Possibly, according to Dan Saladino, who has given a lot of thought to this question and has written a book about it. (Here is a short article in The Guardian in which he • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,282) on Friday, September 17, 2021. Around 40 percent of Americans are officially classified as obese, and obesity is linked to all sorts of health problems including heart disease and susceptibility to many other ailments. And obesity, we have been told, comes from consuming too • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,290) on Friday, September 10, 2021. The bandsaw box is something known to most woodworkers. You take a block of wood usually about the size of your hand with the fingers spread out (give or take) and a few inches deep. Then, through a series • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,290) on Friday, September 3, 2021. During the past few weeks, I have devoted my considerable intellectual resources to solving one of the nation’s most intractable problems. I am, of course, talking about the nicknames given to sports teams. A solution to this vexing dilemma • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,290) on Friday, August 27, 2021. One of the great mysteries of our lives—one that in some sense I hope we do not “solve” is the effect that music has on our intellect, our emotions, and our general well-being. No one that I know of • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,293) on Friday, August 20, 2021. A friend of mine who is, unfortunately, no longer with us used to express a personal theory concerning public personages. They were, he contended, cosmic clowns. Cosmic clowns, he would explain, are people that the Almighty placed on earth • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,294) on Friday, August 13, 2021. In the three or so days during and before this section has been written, the New York Times has published the following sentences: – Mr. Trumka’s approach did not appear to be resolving an existential crisis for the U.S. • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, August 6, 2021. Writers are often asked where they get their ideas on what to write about. Fiction writers probably field this question more than non-fiction writers, but the question seems to be universally on the minds of readers. Many writers like • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,301) on Friday, July 30, 2021. July could rightly be called Independence Month. Not only do Americans and the French celebrate their nations’ birthdays during this time, but the Irish, too, have reason to celebrate ―although few of them do. It was on July 21, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,302) on Friday, July 23, 2021. Americans, possibly because they are exhausted from their own July the Fourth celebrations, pay relatively little attention to Bastille Day, July 14. They should give it more recognition than they do if for no other reason than to honor • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,303) on Friday, July 16, 2021. This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, July 16, 2021. More and more, the sentiment showing in mainstream news outlets is that online learning during our year of Covid was a bust • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, July 9, 2021. Within the small number of television shows that I watch (many of them from Great Britain, Australia, or New Zealand), I have become increasingly annoyed and disturbed by a prejudice that seems to have gone undetected by the rest • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, July 2, 2021. Americans celebrate themselves this weekend, as they should. America has no shortage of problems, faults, and flaws. It also has no shortage of critics, many of whom are Americans themselves. So it should be. But one thing that Americans prove • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, June 25, 2021. The fact the college scholarship athletes are woefully compensated based on the revenue they generate is obvious and indisputable. I spent the vast majority of my teaching career at big-time state universities whose athletic programs overshadowed almost everything else • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, June 18, 2021. The latest controversy to hit Major League Baseball revolves around the “sticky stuff” many pitchers apply to a baseball before they throw it. Applying any foreign substance to a baseball is against the rules. The controversy has been sparked • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, June 11, 2021. Periodically, a few people, and a few members of the news media — and then a few government officials and agencies — will stir themselves up over an identified flying objects, UFOs. As I write this, we are awaiting • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, June 4, 2021. In addition to all of the delights of a late but beautiful spring here in East Tennessee, we are being treated to one of Mother Nature’s rare rock concerts. It happens less often than a Bruce Springsteen show but • Read More »