The Never-Ending Interest in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club

My piece last year on Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago has been a hit on this site.  There's a great deal of interest in the subject, either by his supporters (who think he's a SJW hero for the club) or his detractors (who are trying to find out some dirt about the place.)  Neither of these …

Banning Sobriety in Palm Beach

Well, not quite... It’s unlikely residents will see sober homes popping up in their Palm Beach neighborhoods any time soon. Earlier this month, the Town Council declared “zoning in progress,” a measure that essentially halts permits for alcohol and drug-free living environments in town while officials consider how best to regulate them. Council members also …

The Man Who Facilitated My Exit from the Episcopal Church

While searching out the web, I ran across an interesting article in the Lodi (CA) News-Sentinel dated 25 May 1995.  The issue at hand was harvesting the organs of anencephalic babies (not fetuses) for their organ parts, by killing the baby first. Fr. William A. Sassman, his photo in the 1973 Tartan (St. Andrew's yearbook.) …

Free Speech and the Mikado

This past weekend my wife and I got to see Lee University's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.  It was a strange production; it was one of those things where the audience sat on the stage and the performers did their thing in the seats.  The program regaled us with the usual politically correct …

Bernie Sanders and the Test Pattern T-Shirt

Shepard Fairey, who designed the Obama "Hope" logo back in 2008 (which has spawned many parodies) is "feeling the Bern" and backing Bernie Sanders, not only in word but in deed, with his tee-shirt design: I dunno, this reminds me of the old test patterns TV stations used to use at the start of the …

A Letter from the Rector

I was looking through some papers and found a letter from an Episcopal rector with this: I did enjoy your letter and it just makes me that much more distressed that you left the Episcopal Church. Somehow, with your mind and keen feelings, we should have been able to hang on to you. We sorely …

Home is Where the Heart Is, But the Wallet Cannot Go

Christmas is the time of year when we think of "home". Home for many Americans generates warm fuzzy feelings of a place where things were simpler and life was, somehow, better. It brings memories of places we've left, assuming we've left them behind at all.  And it's a place where, for all the saccharine sentiment, …

Perusing My Parents' Bookshelf

Boomers have always had a love-hate relationship with the generation before them, transitioning from "don't trust anyone over thirty" to calling them "the Greatest Generation."  Most of those who brought us into the world are gone now, and the ones who are left are "full of years" to use the Bible's expression. Part of the …

It's Time for Cleveland to Lose "Tall Betsy"

We're coming upon Halloween, that time of year when things get scary.  (I'll throw in the fact that Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses and started the Reformation on Halloween, something that Bossuet could appreciate.)  In any case "ghost stories" make their way to the surface.  In Cleveland, TN, that means "Tall Betsy," a story …

Bullying is About Social Hierarchy

The things we find out when we investigate... “Humans tend to try to establish a rank hierarchy,” Jennifer Wong, a criminology professor who led the study, told the Post. “When you’re in high school, it’s a very limited arena in which you can establish your rank, and climbing the social ladder to be on top …

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