by admin | Jul 18, 2018 | Activism, Books, Crime, Government, History, Journalism, National security, Politics
It is a dramatic and evocative scene. In The Two Towers, the second novel of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Grima Wormtongue, a spy at the service of the evil wizard Saruman, has gained control of the mind of Théoden, the king of Rohan, which is on the...
by admin | Jun 17, 2018 | Activism, Christianity, Civil rights, History, Immigration, Public policy, Racism, Religion
I am angry on Father’s Day. I am deeply disturbed by what I am seeing. I am a Christian who is insulted by the use of the Bible to justify the separation of children from parents who brought them to the U.S. border in search of safety and political asylum. First, it...
by admin | May 29, 2018 | Books, Christianity, Civil rights, Government, History, Racism, Religion
On May 10, my wife and I attended a matinee performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Coming a month after the Easter evening (April 1) NBC broadcast of this ground-breaking rock opera by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, it allowed some...
by admin | Jan 29, 2018 | Geography, History, Personal history, Restaurants, Transportation, Travel, Uncategorized
There is something distinct about boarding a cruise ship. An airplane, after all, no matter how big, is essentially a long, metal tube that flies. You can dress it up for international flights, but when all is said and done, you are simply spending a few hours in the...
by admin | Jan 13, 2018 | Activism, Books, Chicago, Civil rights, Government, History, Immigration, Literature, National security, Racism
Greetings from the U.S. city founded by a Haitian immigrant. Sometime in the 1780s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, reportedly born of a French father and an African slave mother, who had gained some education in France and made his way from New Orleans to the Midwest,...
by admin | Jan 1, 2018 | Art, Geography, History, Humanities, Parks, Personal history, Recreation, Travel
For three months, I have been intermittently aware that, back in August, I shared two phases of a trip to Norway that my wife and I took in July—and that I promised to complete the story with two more. At the same time, I was laying the groundwork for an entirely new...
