A fascinating new documentary, "Secrets of Blackmoor" tells the story of the inventors of "Dungeons & Dragons," the role-playing phenomenon that transformed gaming into something organic, non-mechanical, and deeply imaginative. When the fantasy-role playing game Dungeons & Dragons first appeared in 1974 as a full product, it listed two authors: Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. [...]
Editor's Note: In the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bruce Springsteen, who had watched the smoking devastation of lower Manhattan from a point across the river in New Jersey, and who had lost friends as the World Trade Center towers crumbled, was in Rumson, when a passing driver yelled at him: [...]
Yet another mass murder in the United States. Seven were massacred in the latest rampage in West Texas. It comes with the same, almost scripted reactions from all sides: punish my enemies, leave my supporters alone. Hearts aren’t changed. […]
I was a casual fan of his, but had always enjoyed his music. It seemed different from most other Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) that I had heard. It was somehow more real than the standard imitation-rock bands that were and are popular. It was often acoustic and had elements of Irish music, including the [...]
Now we might have computers that transmit their ball-and-strike calls via an iPhone to an earpiece worn by the home-plate human umpire. With the flip of a switch, one of the richest traditions in a tradition-rich sport—arguing, disputing, and hooting at the umpire, as well as adjusting to his finely calibrated (or maddeningly arbitrary) [...]
As I looked around that room in Washington, filled with so many powerful people, I realized that one day in Mother Teresa’s life brought more good to the face of the earth than all our efforts combined for a lifetime. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Barbara [...]
The humanly full life is concretely local and intellectually wide, to be lived in a face-to-face community whose members can talk to each other about anything, where nothing of human interest is interdicted; where no one owns a specialty so that others have to venture opinions with the disclaimer, “Of course, that’s not my [...]
Culture is what the heart is oriented to. What the heart is oriented to is what it loves. And what one loves will become the cornerstone of culture. And the heart, love, is a major theme in “Beowulf.” “There was song, and the voices of men gathered together before the leader of the host [...]
Early in the morning factory whistle blows Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light It's the working, the working, just the working life Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in [...]
In almost every way, social media seems most like some crazy, corrupt thing lurking in Plato’s Cave. But nothing in the free world forces us to be cruel, nasty, hateful, or bigoted to our fellows. We are instead called to proclaim truth, goodness, and beauty. There are days, there are days, and, then, there [...]
T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker” relies more explicitly on personal references than his earlier work. It is as if the mask has fallen. The poet is humbler and more vulnerable. The poem expands his meditation into a wider consideration of time and eternity, destiny and desire. In the introduction to this five part series I [...]
Many in our society consider religion merely an instrument of power, and they believe that the “correction” of inherited beliefs and practices can be forced upon the unwilling. But there’s an enormous difference between people who choose the real common good and people forced to submit to a state ideology. When I went into [...]
Like the abstract painters, poets abandoned form and gave themselves over to free verse. Since the close of the 20th century, however, the tide of postmodernism has turned somewhat in art and poetry. A shift back toward tradition and form is taking place. To call World War I a catastrophe for the West is akin to [...]
In 1989, the double-slit experiment revolutionized understanding of matter: The universe is not deterministic as promulgated by the worldview of Newtonian physics. Surprisingly, the meaning of quantum physics, a most arcane subject, remote from human experience, in light of these discoveries, raises the most profound question a person can ask—“Who am I?” In January [...]