“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” When Tolkien wrote these words, which would become one of the most famous and most memorable opening sentences in all of literature, he could not have known what literary power would be unleashed by his creation of the diminutive hole-dwelling creature, Bilbo Baggins. This year,
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We don’t have royalty in America. All we have is celebrities. And at the top of the celebrity hierarchy is the rock star. So lofty a station do rock stars occupy in the celebrity firmament, that movie stars, presidents, and even real royalty must pay them obeisance. And of course we all know how the
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President Donald Trump is prepared to sign a late-term abortion ban, which the House passed Tuesday evening, if the Senate follows suit. A statement from the White House said the proposed law would promote a “culture of life.” Proponents say the measure, prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, would restrict the procedure at the
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From May through October, we buy our produce at a local farm stand owned by a farmer who is vocally anti-Trump. Recently, I overheard the farmer banter with a customer about Trump. To his surprise the customer was an avid Trump supporter. As I watched their interaction, I admired the farmer’s skill at backing off
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Washington D.C., a city that welcomes close to twenty million tourists each year, may get a new one: A forty-five-foot statue of a naked woman may be coming from San Francisco to spend several months on the National Mall. The artist, Marco Cochrane, described his intentions in creating this work as follows: “These sculptures are
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Statistician Leah Libresco said she used to be for gun control. Then she looked at the data. Writing at the Washington Post, the former newswriter for the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight explained her epiphany. “Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking
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