One of the favorite pastimes of my often competitive family growing up was seeing who could get the most “skips” from a stone thrown into the low-tide waters at the beach. This is a game that, as anyone who has played it knows, places a great deal of emphasis on correctly choosing the right rocks.
READ MOREThe great English philosopher and poet G.K. Chesterton said: “A real soldier does not fight because he has something that he hates in front of him. He fights because he has something that he loves behind his back.” War is an analogy that has fallen out of favor in the West. This helps explain why
READ MOREMany Americans owe their knowledge of Japanese samurai to filmmakers. Renowned for their discipline and courage, the samurai were the military nobility from the 12th century until the abolition of their class by Emperor Meiji in the 1870s. The armored, sword-wielding warriors figured prominently in James Clavell’s 1975 best-selling novel, Shōgun, and its adaptation into a blockbuster TV
READ MOREBy extracting some of the expressions buried in the blather employed by politicians and bureaucrats, America’s parents, husbands, and wives can find new and more effective ways to manage conversations with a teen or spouse. These gifts of gab should come as no surprise. After all, given the many failures of the federal government—the crisis
READ MOREI remember the joyful, parental excitement I felt when we sent our oldest child off to kindergarten. I can recall his nervous agitation, not knowing what to expect, but also understanding that he was older now, and a big boy. At our first parent-teacher conference that year I noticed something that I had not thought much
READ MOREThe plot of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is straightforward. The narrator, who strongly resembles Lewis, boards a bus along with some others traveling from Hell to Heaven. Once they’ve arrived at their destination, the quarrelsome passengers disembark, become Ghosts, and find themselves scarcely able to bear the reality of their physical environment—even the unbending
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