Note: The photo above isn’t actually a photo of me. But this is a dude who clearly knows a quality sweater when he sees one, and feels about it the way I feel about mine…or will feel, when it exists. …
Category: Uncategorized
No, Casey Neistat, don’t ‘do more’
“Don’t just do something, stand there!” This amusing inversion of every exasperated parent’s command to a child staring dazedly at ____ [a heap of still-unfolded laundry, a half-erected tent about to collapse, a bleeding sibling] has been variously attributed to …
The incomparable glory of traveling in trains
Earlier this year, the great British columnist Peter Hitchens wrote a lovely essay for First Things titled “Why I Love Trains.” He mused that the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered reflections on his commute between Oxford and London. …
How the Sexual Revolution has left young people empty and longing for genuine love
And all around us in our society we see the price that people pay for their addictions: a sense that no pleasure is forbidden, but all pleasure is stale. –Sir Roger Scruton *** A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with …
Why you should write poetry (even if it sucks)
G.K. Chesterton once wrote of his friend Bernard Shaw, the playwright, that he was possibly “the only man on earth who has never written any poetry.” This quip strikes us, living in an age where scarcely anyone reads poetry, let …
‘The careless people’: The dark, real-life inspiration behind ‘The Great Gatsby’
Last week my wife and I headed up to Lake Huron for a few days, and I finally had the chance to sit down and read a few books cover to cover. I’d been intending to revisit The Great Gatsby, …
‘The Imitation of Christ’ on fake news and social media
The Imitation of Christ is, by some accounts, the second most popular book in history, next to the Bible. This slim volume, written by Thomas à Kempis, an obscure medieval monk, is packed with timeless wisdom. My own favourite version …
How to be a lousy dad: a true story
Ten thousand times a day we are presented with choices for what to do. And nine times out of ten, we choose wrongly. This is hardly surprising, for, as Aristotle once sagely said, there are an infinite number of ways …
Don’t let the secondhand bookstores die
I was perched on top of a stepladder scanning the top shelf of a tall bookcase when I hit the jackpot: an old leather-bound edition of Gladstone’s memoirs. Heading north on a road trip, my friend and I had stopped …
Distraction – a sonnet
Editor’s Note: In keeping with the theme of this week’s essay – found here – we’re publishing this sonnet that I wrote a number of years ago. Oddly, the form I followed is a combination of the Petrarchan …