Liar’s Path, notes on truth, working truths, and deception
Patrice’s Uncle Kurt & The Holocaust
On 16-17 October, The United States Holocaust Museum sponsored Patrice's 89-year-old Uncle Kurt Maier, Emeritus Librarian, Library of Congress (German collection), lectures at Chicago's Harold Washington Library. Kurt, a Holocaust survivor with a wicked sense of...
Honor Flight 2 September 2019
On Labor Day week-end, 2019 I joined 200+ veterans and guardians on the local Honor Flight To Washington, D.C. I went grudgingly... Marcia, my daughter, had long ago signed me up. Patrice, my wife, more or less gently, pressured. Christopher, my son, agreed to come....
Semur-en-Auxios, France
Observation tower and portion of medieval Semur-en-Auxios defensive wall. Patrice and I are moving this November (2019) to Semur-en-Auxios., near Dijon, in Burgundy, France. Why? Because we can. We are retired, squared away, and I speak French. And, as opposed to...
The Impossible Presidency
Professor and historian Jeremi Suri's The Impossible Presidency shines. Neither ornate nor prosaic, his words are well-chosen, his metaphors apt, the construction of the argument convincing (to me, at least). A previous work, Kissinger, rests on my desks regularly...
Louts, Predators and Daughters
I am a hard case for the homilists of Holy Wisdom, the Benedictine Monastery, Madison, Wisconsin, where I attend mass. I tend to zone out. However, the first reading during last week's mass, Numbers 27:1-11. caught my attention. Here, before Moses, the daughters of...
First Impressions and bad judgement
I work on my next novel “Resurrection” every day. My first objective is to tell a good story. My second it to get the spelling, punctuation and grammar right. Somewhere along the way, I would hope to illuminate how good-intentioned (at least in their own minds) men...