Ezra's Essays

Category: September 2008

  • A FEW WORDS IN PRAISE OF SANITY

    I hope that my readers will not think less of me when I offer a few words of praise of sanity in the American relationship with those who practice the Muslim faith. During the month of September, pious adherents of that faith are celebrating the month-long holiday of Ramadan. Ramadan requires that the faithful consume…

  • “…THE LAST OF LIFE FOR WHICH THE FIRST WAS MADE”

    -ROBERT BROWNING (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) Those of you who have had the misfortune to hear me address several retirement banquets will know that the title of this essay is a lift from a poem by the English poet, Robert Browning. The first line is “Come grow old along with me /…

  • IT GOES WITH THE TERRITORY

    In July of 1951, I accepted a transfer from St. Louis to Kansas City.  I knew that Kansas City had hot weather in July and other summer months, but St. Louis was no bargain either.  One of my colleagues told me that in Kansas City during the summer, it gets “hotter than the hubs of…

  • INFIDELS, MORMANS, CATHOLICS, JEWS, ET AL: NEED NOT APPLY

    Let us suppose that Mrs. Sanjay Gupta is delivered of sextuplets by a Doctor Gandhi at the world-famous clinic he runs in the city of Peculiar, Missouri. All of the newborns are girls, which beats Mrs. Dionne by at least one baby. As soon as Dr. Gandhi has finished washing the children in the sacred…

  • BASTARDS: A TASTER’S SELECTION OF FOUR DIFFERENT VARIETIES

    When the English language was developed from its Saxon roots, the original meaning of “bastard” had to do with the offspring of unmarried parents. The word bastard is sometimes considered an epithet and should never be hung on the offspring but should be reserved for the unthinking parents who produced that offspring. But in any…