I was raised in an age of comparative innocence. I remember going into the Barber Shop near downtown Topeka, Kansas, as a nine- or ten-year old boy, still wet behind the ears as they say, and encountering my first Negro. (The things one remembers! And only because I happened to call for a haircut appointment [...]

Since mankind (I refuse to say humankind) has always sliced the inexorable passage of time into four-season packages, and since package #2011 is drawing to a merciful end, and since I now find myself at our Lake of the Ozarks hideaway with time to ponder, please humor me by reading a few public ponderings. When [...]

Are classical music lovers a dying breed? I have no idea of course, but I do know that all over the country all-classical FM radio stations are changing their broadcasting format from classical to contemporary rock or (even worse) talk-talk-talk. I understand that many cities now have no classical music stations. KFUO-FM in St. Louis, [...]

That is the title of a book I am reading by Frederick Kempe. It triggered memories of my inexplicable recall to Army active duty in the fall of 1961. I knew I was part of a largely symbolic recall of reservists because of the Berlin Crisis, but that’s where my knowledge stopped. I had little [...]

Larry opines in a recent email (and if the link doesn’t work, blame Larry): Aw, you just have to hear this: Der Bingle The song was an early effort by Irving Berlin. What appealed to me was the relaxed and cordial back-and-forth conversation between Crosby and Jolson, between verses. This song takes me back to [...]

Imagine a cane pole with a young boy on one end and a yard or so of line tied to the other, the line leading to a grasshopper impaled on a fishhook. A wandering creek lined with trees yielding mottled shade under a hot Kansas sun completes the scene. Can’t imagine that? Well, I can. [...]

[18] Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. [19] Everyone also to whom God has given wealth [...]

[13] There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, [14] and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. [15] As he came from his mother’s womb he [...]

[9] Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. [10] For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! [11] Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how [...]

[4:1] Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. [2] And I thought the dead who are already dead [...]