Monthly Archives: April 2021

Who Do You Trust?

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“It’s all a big lie.”  That’s how Wall Street icon Bernie Madoff broke the news on December 10, 2008, to his two sons that his world-renowned investment fund was actually a gigantic Ponzi scheme – the biggest financial fraud in American history. Tens of thousands of investors had entrusted Madoff with their treasure, many of them betting their life savings that… Read more »

Jumping the Shark

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It seemed like such a great idea. The creators of Happy Days, America’s top-rated TV show, decided to launch their fifth season by sending the fictional Cunningham family and their closest friends to Hollywood.  What adventures might ensue? Arthur Fonzarelli (“the Fonz”), played by Henry Winkler, had originally been merely an eccentric background character.  But after a few years he… Read more »

Show Me

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The origins of state nicknames are a bit of a mystery. As social historian Bill Bryson points out in Made in America: “No one can say for sure why Iowans are called Hawkeyes, why North Carolinians are Tarheels, why Kansans are Jayhawkers (there is no such bird), or why Indianans are Hoosiers.” From time to time Arkansas has been called… Read more »

The Final Freedom

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Viktor Frankl yearned to make a contribution to humanity. As a respected young psychiatrist in Vienna before World War II, he had meticulously prepared the manuscript for a book that he dared to believe might help change the world.  Since he and his wife were not yet parents, he called it “my mental child.”  Then the Nazis came to power. … Read more »

Early Warnings

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On two occasions more than 40 years ago, the whole world almost had a very bad day. At mid-morning on November 9, 1979, watch officers at the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, were shocked to see their early warning screens glowing with the unmistakable images of 1,400 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles streaking toward the United… Read more »

Epitaphs

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Tombstone epitaphs fall into several categories. There are the silly ones that don’t really exist: Perry Mason:  The defense restsHumpty Dumpty:  “I was pushed!”Elvis Presley:  A hunk, a hunk of rotting bonesThe Pillsbury Dough Boy:  “I will rise again” There are epitaphs that people have been assured are real, but are just urban legends: W.C. Fields:  “On the whole, I’d… Read more »

Paying the Price

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Irish author and artist Christy Brown was born in 1932 in Dublin, one of 22 children (13 of whom survived) belonging to a bricklayer and his wife. Christy was not like his siblings.  His body was ravaged by cerebral palsy.  As a child he could not speak.  He exercised little control over his muscles.  Most observers concluded there was nothing… Read more »

From Winter to Spring

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You might say that I married into Daffodil Mania.  My wife’s mother, Phyllis, was joyfully fanatical about those perennial bulbs – whether white, yellow, orange, or pastels – that are currently blooming in many parts of America. She once served a term as president of the National Daffodil Society and routinely jetted to various cities to judge flower shows.  Gardeners… Read more »

Choose to Be Caleb

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In the book of Numbers, chapter 13, Moses and the people of Israel stand at the threshold of the Promised Land. Behind them lies slavery in Egypt.  Ahead lies the land “flowing with milk and honey,” the place God had promised to Abraham. The Lord says to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am… Read more »

Risen Indeed

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During the middle of the twentieth century, Josef Stalin relentlessly tightened his ideological grip on the Soviet Union. Stalin subscribed to the view that religious thought and freedom were obstacles to the birth of the “new man” promised by Marxism – obstacles that could be ground to powder by government intervention.  Churches were closed.  Outspoken priests were arrested.  Worshipers were… Read more »