-
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…
-
UPON BEING UPPITY
Those of you who are familiar with the nuances of American southern speech patterns will instantly recognize the term “uppity.” It is used most often as an adjective with the nouns that follow being “colored folks,” “blacks,” or, even worse, the vulgar term that rhymes with bigger. My uneducated guess is that when the term…
-
STUFF THAT IS HARD TO MAKE UP
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States testified last week, on July 17, that difficult times in terms of the American economy would be with us for a long time to come. In his play Richard III, William Shakespeare had a line that referred to the “winter of our discontent.” If…
-
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…
-
AND THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST
Dearly Beloved: The sermon today comes to us from the King James version of the Bible and has to do with two writers who appear in that version. The first is Matthew, Chapter 20, Verse 16. That verse says, “So the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” The second writer is…
-
SALLY RAND, SOPHISTRY, AND “VALUES VOTERS”
To make my point about sophistry and “values voters,” I am obliged to tell you about a woman who was born in my home state of Missouri, who assumed the name of Sally Rand. We will get to Sally shortly. When the year 1933 came to the United States, we were then entering our fourth…
-
DUTY: A SECULAR SERMON
I suspect that most Americans would contend that all sermons must be sectarian or religious in nature. To offer an essay with the title holding that it is a secular sermon might strike those church-goers as an oxymoron. To those of us who treasure secular thoughts, sermons come as easily as to those who hold…
-
“WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO CLASS?”
The title of this essay is lifted from the lyrics of a duet sung by Chita Rivera (Thelma) and Mary McCarty (Matron Mamma) in the original 1975 Broadway production of Kandor and Ebb’s musical, “Chicago.” (See attached lyrics.) It ran on Broadway for 936 performances. After an absence of perhaps twenty years, it was revived…
-
SABBATH CONCEPTIONS
I am well aware that there are those in the medical profession who will tell you that your old essayist has no expertise on the subject of conception. There was a time many years ago when I was involved in that process as a part of an experiment by the medicos at Washington University in…
-
ON POINTLESSNESS
As I have marched and slunk through this long life of mine, it has been my privilege to witness all kinds of efforts that have a point. At the same time, there have been numerous examples that escape enumeration where pointlessness seems to prevail. Let me give you an example or two. On one occasion,…