Month: March 2017

  • A REPRISE ON DIGNITY AND TEARS

    Those of us who write essays recognize that when an essay demands to be written, it will be done. You may remember a recent essay called, “A Matter of Dignity.” In that essay, it recounted the story about how Matthew Pepe, my old friend who installs driveways and sidewalks, saw the problem of my taking…

  • A MATTER OF DIGNITY

    Those of us who have lost our sight frequently wrestle with the thought of our potential uselessness. It has always been so. In the Irish folksong, “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye,” an Irish soldier who served with the British Army returns from a battle in Ceylon minus two limbs. The song’s lyrics say, “You haven’t…

  • THANKSGIVING, 2006

    In my longer than expected life, I have never looked forward to the year end celebrations. The long American Depression kept Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations from being joyous occasions. In our family, at best, they were subdued. In effect, I enjoyed the holidays knowing that they would soon be behind me. When Thanksgiving arrived this…

  • EHRHARDT’S DAUGHTER

    For several days now, I have been thinking about one of my classmates at the Clayton, Missouri public school system. She was the only daughter of the couple who presided over the small restaurant immediately west of the Clayton High School. She dressed plainly, wore no makeup that could be discerned and had little to…

  • BLOODY NOOSE-I-NANCE

    EEC dictation 11-17-05 1st DRAFT The subject of this essay today is blindness. No circumlocutions, no euphemisms, just plain blindness. The blindness, of course, has to do with your old essay writer. As time went on during the recent series of eye operations, it became apparent that aphasia began to make giant strides toward erasing…

  • OH, GOOD JESUS

    As a general rule, Gentiles who profess a religious faith tend to claim that they are Christians of one sort or another. While Christianity requests that it adherents subscribe to various rules, a good many rules are ignored or are deliberately violated. A case in point is the Catholic teaching that use of birth control…

  • WHAT WAS THAT GUY’S NAME?

    In a previous essay, I commented on the effects of aphasia, which is a stroke-induced ailment. As I mentioned in that essay, aphasia is a brain-related injury as opposed to a heart-related injury. People who have strokes often call for the cardiologist but in fact what they need is a neurologist. One of the characteristics…

  • THE EFFECTS OF APHASIA

    There are those in academia who claim that knowledge of Latin gives a student a major leg up when it comes to understanding other foreign tongues. I am a great dissenter from that viewpoint. Latin is of no value in deciphering some of the world’s major languages, such as English or German, or any of…

  • A COLLOQUY WITH TOM FRIEDMAN

    Under ordinary circumstances, your old essayist attempts to keep his correspondence separate from the essays that are produced here. In this case, however, Tom Friedman, the New York Times star op-ed writer wrote a piece that should not be condensed or treated in the Reader’s Digest fashion. Friedman’s piece was so wrong and so provocative,…

  • POKING FINGERS IN EYES

    The reports from London about the bombings on trains and the bus are saddening and they are sickening. As an old World War II soldier, it was my privilege to serve with elements of the British Eighth Army in North Africa, Sicily and on the Adriatic Coast of Italy where there were often many casualties.…