Devastation is devastation, whether brought about by fire or pandemic. The Great Chicago Fire occurred nearly a century and a half ago, but the experience of living through that [...]
He tossed his sin stone By Patrick T. Reardon He tossed his sin stone into Lake Deuteronomy, set fire to his crops and headed for Egypt City. [...]
“Visceral” is one of those no-nonsense words. It goes right to the gut. You can look at art, look at the world, with your intellect. But, if you turn a [...]
Jesus and the people of Judea lived under the heel of the Roman army and of Tiberius, the emperor, which is a fancy name for dictator. The Zealots were the [...]
In its odd way, John Brunner’s 1984 novel The Tides of Time is an adventure story. It’s also a thriller and a mystery that propels the reader along in search [...]
It takes some hubris to rewrite the Christian gospels, but maybe not that much. A lot of people have done it. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John seem [...]
I’m having a difficult time deciding what, dear reader, to tell you first. Let’s put it this way: The streets of Paris, London, Vienna and Berlin in the 1700s and [...]
After By Patrick T. Reardon . After clangor parade, after wailing trombones, teletype drums, clockwork drum majors and majorettes, after cymbal clamor of arena-full horde, pent-up for release, for rebound [...]
Back in the ‘80s, during a holiday get-together, one of the family elders, who was known for sweeping declarations, made a sweeping declaration: “You can’t be a Republican,” she said, [...]
It was nearly 40 years ago that I first read James Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family. Since then, I have experienced a similarly sudden violent death [...]
