IN THE COLLEGES where I learned and taught, students were required to write papers and reports to demonstrate their understanding of topics or concepts. The emphasis was always to support a premise or an argument using credible sources: facts and authorities, proven theories or accepted logic, studies, and experiments. The soundness of a paper or report relied upon the foundation of existing knowledge–of Truth.  Almost all we  can point to as human progress is a result of the process of establishing what is True and then building on it. The structure of human advancement is a citadel atop a mountain of Truth. Certainly the leaps in sciences could not have occurred if we had designed our cars and boats and planes  based on how we

[Author’s Note: Mom went to her rest on Dec. 14th 2022 at 90 years of age. I composed a tribute to her shortly after that; here’s the link: https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/paean-for-a-country-girl-or-faith-family-community-learning-and-little-baseball/ This piece, Mercy, is a reader favorite as well as one of my own. A couple of days ago, I returned to cemetery, planted and watered some flowers….and remembered to pray.] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IN MY MOTHER’S kitchen, and taped to the door of a cabinet where cups and plates are kept, is a laminated Catholic Diocese card. The card is divided into two distinct sections. The top part is titled The Corporal Works of Mercy. The “works” are ministrations to be made and observations to be kept in caring for –to name some of them–the poor, the

[Author’s Note: this year marks my 29th “anniversary.”] Until I saw the date, February 2, it hadn’t occurred to me that it was my “birthday” again. This birthday–which is more of an anniversary–marks for me the first day of uninterrupted sobriety 29 years ago. It hadn’t seemed like a very important day at the time; in fact, if anyone had asked then, I would have said it was the worst day of my life.  I was bloated and quaking. My eyes were yellow like a cat’s–from jaundice. And my store of courage was so low I had to be led around like a child. There’s no question that on that day, my second life began. It would help to note here that I am not

  LITERATURE AND SOCIETY dance a duet and take turns leading.  It isn’t always apparent that changes in Art are a response to changes in society and culture  or whether the order is reversed. Yet the very “ominous” poem, The Second Coming by Yeats was written just after WWI, the “war to end all wars” (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/twilight-in-the-land-of-more/). And Orwell’s dystopian 1984 (published 1949) was a response to totalitarianism before, during, and after WWII (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/orwells-1984-is-the-book-of-our-time-a-canticle-for-eric-blair/ ). In the Roaring Twenties, the male and privileged romanticism of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were the rage. By the end of the Depression, the mantle of social authority was transferred to the destitute masses in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath or the more haunted existences of the Deep South revealed in

When John LeCarre died, I assumed I’d read his last book.  A friend texted me that a new LeCarre book was coming out. I investigated and ordered it immediately. The title was Silverview. I wasn’t through the first two chapters before I sensed a younger, more daring author. The author had died at 90 years of age.  He had begun the Silverview manuscript over a decade ago but paused time and time again, in search of a missing element. His son–also a writer– fulfilled a promise and saw the project through. It’s a shorter novel, but has the watermark of his best work: two ideals compete for devotion, be they patriotism and love, the individual and the institution, or conscience and expedience. It’s typically a somber

    “THEY WERE GARGANTUAN creatures. The earth was helpless before them as they devoured at their leisure whatever in their path might satisfy their appetites for another day.” Of course, this quote might be from a curator leading a fifth grade class through the Natural Science Exhibit on dinosaurs. But it could also be a future curator—from an orbiting city— lecturing about the now extinct giant corporations – many of them with sales figures that dwarfed the economic output of whole countries. “These “machines” as we now think of them, were so focused on meeting their insatiable quotas for growth, they altered the proximate ecosphere and even economically colonized the inhabitants. Of course, after exhausting the resources of the surface they scoured the ocean

    THE PRESENT has the unique quality of being so imposing–so suddenly familiar–that despite more surreal or otherworldly events that history will deem “tumultuous” or “cataclysmic,” people never quite view themselves as living in a time of great change. Of all the happenings in the US that have broken the rules of logic, sanity,  or even common sense in recent years–and they are legion–one stands out to me. But first, I am going to list things that, twenty years ago, I would have sworn could never happen in the US during my lifetime: The US electoral system elected a “reality” TV show star who had filed for bankruptcy a number of times, had no political experience, and claimed to never read books. He also

  I BEGAN READING THE SPY NOVELS of the late John LeCarre’ thirty years ago (see https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/the-author-who-came-in-from-the-cold-on-john-le-carre/). I have reread most of them many times. The experiences–the places of being he draws you into–become a destination each time you open one of his books: an exotic canyon, a rare geological formation, or a hiking trail that weaves into and out of vistas and panoramas and naturescapes. And each time there’s something new you missed the last time. One drawback to reading his more “believable” espionage novels is that having been a spy, he dramatizes the plots of high intrigue that do occur, but are covered up in the interest of national security. Too much spy novel reading can leave you spotting conspiracies in even the

[Below: Soviet Poster, 1931 Public Domain.  In fact, “2+2 = 5.” is also a slogan from “1984”]     THE REPUBLICANS and their messaging partners seem to want to sabotage Biden’s Covid-19 success and don’t much mind that it shortens the life expectancy of their own voters, weakens the economy, kills innocent bystanders, and incubates new, deadlier strains of the virus. As with their Clueless Leader, they don’t seem to think or plan, but rather derive their actions from a collective Oppositional Defiant Disorder–opposing and defying order itself and most of the tenets of a functioning democratic society. But it’s gone too far with the deliberate and deadly lies. This country needs to enact some anti-propaganda legislation. Just as the right to bear arms does

A very long time ago, my brothers and I slept three beds across in the same room downstairs. Several times each week our father made popcorn, drank soda, and read his magazines in the kitchen at the top of the stairs.  It was a ritual of his, and my mother apparently gave him that space; he worked long days and Saturdays, too. Some nights, after we were supposed to have been asleep, we heard the sound as he shook the iron skillet across the stovetop. This while the smell of fresh-popped corn wafted down.  Occasionally one of us would creep upstairs and ask for a bowl–but we would not be asking for a bowl of just any popcorn. The kernels came from the farmers in