I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgot...
After all, Christmastide is the time of year for warming brandies, for assertive burgundies and meaty Medoc wines, and for gladsome whiskies. And an Islay malt: well, this is the octave of St Andrew,...
Regarding 'Jabez's Prayer', I will say at once that I am a very poor Christian, and indeed a bad man. My besetting sins are many, and the least of them are the fleshlier ones: the really deadly ones a...
Justice can readily do her job blindfolded; she cannot function gagged and deafened, least of all when the means of gagging and deafening her are not remarked.
For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, law...
Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense...
In answer to 'But violence hasn't solved anything!'The hell it hasn't. The application of violence - of killing and a willingness to be killed - on a massive scale is responsible for a lot of solution...