Beers with a Stoic: Sacraments, sanctuaries and homes away from home
Several iterations of this essay were published at the old NA Confidential.
A few years ago one Sunday we went for a stroll and passed...
Diary: 17 years ago, the New Albany Historic Home Tour and the Schwartzel family
It so happens that today was the New Albany Historic Home Tour, which appears to have debuted in 2006. My opinion about this event...
An entirely unexpected Sagamore of the Wabash in 2025
If you've ever wondered what a "sagamore" is, the state of Indiana stands ready with an explanation.
The term “sagamore” was used by the American...
When I’m 64? Now that I’m 64? Can we go back to Europa yet?
If memory serves, we sang snippets of this song by The Beatles in swing choir during high school. I never really imagined it would...
Diary: Looking for a good biography of Eugene V. Debs? This isn’t it
This being an election year — and accordingly, utterly infuriating on a daily basis for the MAGA stupidity it embodies — I thought it...
Diary: “Beer: Why not for breakfast?” (2009 – 2010)
"Mug Shots"
From 2009 - 2011, I wrote a column for Louisville Eccentric Observer (aka LEO Weekly) called "Mug Shots."
If I recall, it was Cary...
Diary: Atlas Shrugged and how Bob Youngblood taught me to appreciate Charles Dickens
At best, I tend to regard Ayn Rand as a sociopath, and yet I’ve read her ball-boiling pot-buster (and seemingly interminable) novel Atlas Shrugged.
Why...
The centenary of my father’s birth is today (March 7, 1925 – 2025)
For immediate filing among those factoids that never really occur to you, right up until they do, today is the centenary of my father’s...
It’s your friends, neighbors and a few blood relatives doing this, not El Presidente
Language matters in mental health. The words we use shape how we see the world–and ourselves. The words we choose and the meanings we...
A brief recounting of the Balkan getaway in February, 2025
Obsessions can be of lasting duration, as with my history of 47 pilgrimages to the European continent since 1985, or they can be more...
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Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 7: Vienna and the dawning of a Habsburg fixation
Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.
During my stay in Rome, a veteran Australian wanderer taught me a “wedding...
Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser
(I'm including examples of songs I heard while in Europe in 1985. I'd like to say that I recall music of local origin, but...
Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 5: A critical Mass in Rome — and the famous...
Musical introduction, or "the songs I heard playing in 1985 as I traveled around Europe." I had no Walkman or radio of my own,...
