Archive: January, 2012

Private Faith and Public Actions

Posted January 18th, 2012
the Founders' vision of the Nation

Well the Forty-Niners beat the Saints in a heart-stopping final two minutes of the playoffs, and the Patriots beat the Broncos and their verbified quarterback, Tim Tebow. Does this mean that those who pan for gold have an advantage over they who have hearts of gold? That success comes to those who place constitutional values…

Black Beauty goes to World War One

Posted January 12th, 2012
Black Beauty goes to World War One

Apparently a few British critics have made the connection between Anna Sewell’s classic, Black Beauty (1877), and Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse, the basis for Stephen Spielberg’s most recent film, but no American reviewer I have encountered has thought to compare them. Perhaps in this country the relationship is not so obvious but Black Beauty belongs…

Happy Birthday to Me!

Posted January 9th, 2012
At the Met, "...the Genius of ambitious rectitude sleeps the agitated sleep of misfortune and glory...his head extending beyond the periphery of the world..." (or so says sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini (1845)

January 5th is the best day to have a birthday and there seemed to be no shortage of warm wishes from the cosmos. 2012 is, I hope, an auspicious moment to enter, along with the Today Show, a seventh decade. My Dear One devised the perfect plan: leave the car in Wilmington and take the…

One-One-Two Thousand and Twelve

Posted January 4th, 2012
One-One-Two Thousand and Twelve

A mild January day is a gift any time but on New Year’s Day it seems a good omen. Most every January 1 my Dear One and I go walking, partly to allow the miasma of rich meals, welcomes prepared, and emotions charged to dissipate, mostly to regain the sense of us that we feel…