Passionate teachers can light a flame in their students that will burn long into the future. Few of them, however, can claim to have helped shape the destiny and moral character of a nation. Beginning in 1835, in conjunction with the Cincinnati publishing firm Truman and Smith, professor William Holmes McGuffey (1800–1873) wrote four readers…
Popcorn and Inspiration: ‘On Golden Pond’
PG | 1 h 49 min | Drama, Comedy | 1981 Ernest Thompson always had New Hampshire in his blood. He poured that, and a lot else, into writing the stage play of a lifetime, “Golden Pond.” He then wrote the screenplay for the movie. He was 28 when he wrote his play, and his…
Book Review: ‘The Lionkeeper of Algiers: How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War’
There are hidden gems among the treasures of history, and when historians and writers stumble across them, it is a true gift when they share them with the rest of us. Des Ekin, historian and journalist, has found such a gem in James Leander Cathcart among the treasures of American history. In his new book,…
Opera Review: ‘Carmen’: The Lyric Opera House’s Searing and Passionate Production
CHICAGO—“Carmen” has a tragic ending as did the opera’s composer Georges Bizet (1838–1875). In his lifetime, he considered himself a failure, for when his last opera, “Carmen,” was mounted in Paris in 1875, it received poor support from the public. After all, Parisians were not pleased at the sight of gypsy characters and women smoking…
Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Free Speech, and Modern Censorship
In 2020, a group of time-honored American novels including Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” were banned from Burbank, California, schools over parents’ complaints of racism and racial slurs in the books. Back in 1951, Ray Bradbury predicted this type of…
The Cherished Inheritance of the Adams Family Lineage: Education
If you ask what education means to people, most will think “school.” If they are jaded, “debt.” But for the first great American family, it was much more than this. In his autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams,” the author describes growing up within a celebrated lineage that, by his lifetime, had become a cultural…
Seneca: How to Endure Suffering Well
Many people today feel powerless. Facing events beyond their control, from wars to environmental problems, they regress into themselves, adopting a philosophy of self-satisfaction as a way of sidestepping despair. Often tied to this is a belief that quantum physics rules the universe: If nothing is out there other than particles and quarks, why not…
Rewind, Review, and Re-Rate: ‘The Current War: Director’s Cut’: The Battle for Control of the World’s Power Grid
PG-13 | 1h 47min | Drama, Biography, History | 25 October 2019 (USA) In most cases, when a feature film release is delayed for more than two years, it’s for one of three reasons. It’s either a stinker that no one wants and the studio wishes to get it off the books, it was made by a studio that ran out of…
A Knight’s Tale: Ronald Lauder’s Arms and Amour
Long before the “Night at the Museum” movie franchise, The Metropolitan Museum of Art made a dynamic Hollywoodesque “knight at the museum” film entitled “A Visit to the Armor Galleries.” It was released in 1924 as part of a program to make their spectacular arms and armor collection come alive for the public’s education. Enchanting…
‘The Hound of Heaven’ by Francis Thompson, Poet of Grace
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. So begins “The Hound of Heaven.” The narrator of this poem…
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