Dedication
An old friend of mine has written a book, a very good and deeply learned book, about America. The book is about those truths and the blessings that flow from them, that extend across and bind together...
14 Jul 20206min
Pony Express to GPS
In 1861, the young Mark Twain set out on a great American adventure, a stagecoach ride from St. Joe, Missouri to Carson City in Nevada Territory. Today, he would ride in an SUV guided by a factory-ins...
7 Jul 20207min
Independence Forever!
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams celebrate their last Fourth of July.
30 Jun 20206min
An Ace You Can Keep
Most of us understand the language of poker, even if we've never played. We know what a "poker face" is, what it means to be "all in" or to "have an ace up your sleeve." Since Kenny Rogers's 1978 hit ...
23 Jun 20206min
American Names
A poem comes to a poet, and he sends it orphaned out into the world, to take its chances. It never knows who or what it might inspire or how it might become part of the world it has stepped into. Step...
16 Jun 20208min
The Club
The Literary Club of Cincinnati was founded on October 29, 1849 and is—as far as I know—the oldest continuously operating Literary Club in America. Members come from all professions and persuasions; w...
9 Jun 20209min
How Sleep the Brave
Back in that spring and summer of 1775, when he was just seven years old and the War for Independence swirled around him and his family, John Quincy Adams remembered, "[my mother] taught me to repeat ...
2 Jun 20206min
Hallowed Ground
It's true that memory rests lightly on Los Angeles. But turn east from Sepulveda Boulevard just north of Wilshire onto Constitution Avenue, and you immediately recede from the goings and comings of th...
25 Mai 20207min
