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Andrew Jackson was a tough customer. At the age of fourteen, while acting as a courier for the American forces in the Revolutionary War, he was captured by the red coats. When a British officer tried to make him polish his boots, Jackson refused, whereupon the officer slashed him repeatedly…
Read moreThere are innovations that, when we first experience them, are so striking, so clearly a terrific idea, that we cannot conceive of their ever fading away. For anyone born before the year 2000, the indoor shopping mall was one of those things. Repositories of consumer culture and social engagement in…
Read moreShe was not a good student. She had tried college and it hadn’t really worked out. She had fallen in with a hard partying crowd, musicians and such. It was a weakness. So she quit school and moved to Los Angeles, thinking she could become a singer there. But that…
Read moreIt was awful, one of the most disgraceful examples of urban blight imaginable. Block after block of gorgeous buildings gone to seed, paint peeling, plaster crumbling, porches sagging, weeds, filth and decay. And there on the porches impoverished retirees clinging to the last vestiges of life, sick, dying, tubes sticking…
Read moreFace it. There are some things you are not permitted to do. For example, you cannot perform surgery without a license. You cannot practice law without one either (but that’s all right, there are more than enough lawyers as it is). And you cannot jump off a diving board at…
Read moreLincoln rebelled at the idea of getting wet. “My blood has become too thin living in Miami,” he declared. But by the time we got to the place on a tranquil channel beside a mangrove swamp in Key West the temperature had climbed to 74 and the sun was shining…
Read morePeople disagree about Jesus. That’s no surprise. Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows, the Son of God, the lamb, Jehovah, the almighty, is a slippery character. By comparison, Harry Potter is easy. The Harry Potter saga consists of seven books and a single, consistent narrative. The Jesus saga, by comparison,…
Read moreLiving in his house, it was hard to comprehend how such a cold, self-absorbed person could create a thing of such beauty. By 1938 he had left a trail of tragedy and destruction behind him. An unapologetic womanizer and adulterer, he had left his first wife and six children and…
Read moreThey have a name for me. They call me a Grinch, a curmudgeon, a Scrooge, and a grouch. The number of words available to describe me, and others like me, says something about how common we are. We are legion. And for good reason. Christmas is an overblown, garish exercise…
Read moreLet’s be honest. I like to eat and drink. And as I travel around the country looking for interesting places to dine and drink, I’m often shocked at how deficient some cities are. Take Little Rock, for example, a pub and grub desert. Or Indianapolis where they just discovered tapas…
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