I suspect that our ancestors were better prepared for Christmas than we tend to be. Unless you’re the sort of person who breathlessly anticipates the holy day, like we all did when we were kids, it has...
I'm not much of a long-range planner when it comes to the giving of gifts at Christmas time, I'm a last minute giver. But at least I try to be a thoughtful one.
My recommendations in past...
Pixar certainly has a winning formula. The movie studio seems to have found that little spot behind the collective ear that we like to have scratched. Its first 2015 release, Inside Out, follows the same inimitable story-telling recipe...
On election night, when the returns come in, folks around the country generally look upon the results from New England with a mixture of horror and puzzlement. Even though I have lived in New England most of my...
Until you can tell Junior, “I’m not your friend, I’m your father,” you’ll always be a lightweight. Now, some guys like to keep it that way; they like to keep it light. It keeps them from having to...
The Introduction to, The Young Man’s Guide to Building a House
There were giants in the land in those days, but fewer people than there used to be. Now the giants were the typical sort—lumbering and hungry....
Chapter 4 in The Young Man's Guide to Building a House
"And the two shall become one flesh." You don't hear that much anymore, and when you do it is written off as...
Imaginative conservatives flee from the mass mind, so you should expect their Christmas gifts to come from parts unknown. They haven't run just to be different—heaven forbid. Being obsessed with being unprecedented is itself a symptom of...
Chapter Three in The Young Man's Guide to Building a House
The words love and economy rarely find their ways into the same sentence. Economics has been called the dismal science but people write songs about love....
Chapter Two in The Young Man's Guide to Building a House
A house, you can see with your eyes, comes with walls and a roof. The house I will teach you to...
Religion for Atheists: A Nonbeliever’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton.
When I learned that Alain de Botton had written a book with the title, Religion for Atheists:...
I am very hopeful about our long-term prospects, it is the near-term ones I'm worried about. What's the near-term?—the next few hundred years, give or take a century.
Since the near-term is when my children and...
