Just how is is that we got to this world, where yesterday’s crazy-talk became today’s most serious ideas? Just imagine sitting down with Mayberry’s Aunt Bee and explaining same-sex marriage or transgenderism. What comes next? She sniffs your breath for whiskey fumes? Yet here we are. Carl R. Trueman maps out the road to our craziness in his book, The Rise and Triumph of [...]
I'm currently reading Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. It's fiction, and yet it's not. No writer can set down a word without the business of life passing before his eyes, stirring up thoughts, emotions, memories, conundrums. It's a book for our time. I would rather it were not so, but I would also rather eat my fill of Thin Mints. The passage quoted below [...]
The Book of Mormon continues to slice a deep divide between the people who treasure it and the people who can’t believe any smart human would fall for such a persistent hoax. Add in church members who learned the book’s stories as children, but later stumbled across challenges to its claims. Tad Callister addresses the doubters in his book, The Case for the Book [...]
You may congratulate us. After nearly 40 years of marriage, we’re finally getting ourselves bedroom furniture that matches. And the shopping experience didn’t ruin the marriage. The mister and I might have finally learned how to make the big decisions. (His style is research, research and more research. Mine is close my eyes, turn around twice and point.) I could point anywhere in the [...]
I took on one of literature’s heavyweights: The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Why did I do it? Well, I’m a Jordan Peterson fan. And I’m a book list fan. And it's on Peterson’s list, meaning it contains great pearls of human wisdom. My copy promised that the translators achieved “the musical whole of Dostoyevsky’s original” and, if that doesn’t sound promising, I don’t know [...]
We interrupt our normal fun of reading books and cooking delicious food, to talk of serious matters, matters which, if not addressed, will make it harder to enjoy our fun. Let’s begin. Please go ahead and ask me how I feel about vaccine passports. Or maybe you know me well enough by now to guess that my answer is, “No! No way! Bad idea! [...]
Full disclosure: empty-nest parent here. I know I’m not up-to-date on the latest parenting how-tos. This schooling by Zoom has completely passed me by. I have no idea what SPF they’re recommending in kids’ sunscreen this year. And if I had to buy some baby food, I might walk right down the aisle, not recognizing that all those plastic packs and squeeze tubes ARE [...]
Raspberry Chicken Sandwich 1 cup chili sauce 3/4 cup raspberry preserves 2 TB red wine vinegar 1 TB Dijon mustard 6 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, 5 oz. ea. 2 TB oil 1/2 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper 6 sandwich buns 6 slices Muenster cheese Flatten chicken breasts to 1/4-in. thickness. Place in a large resealable plastic bag. Add oil, salt and pepper. [...]
Who’s up for a solo trip to an exotic city or two? Stephanie Rosenbloom celebrates the ticket-for-one idea in her book, Alone Time, in which she visits four cities in four seasons. No husband. No girlfriends. No tour bus. It’s all to “savor” the experience, which Rosenbloom claims, can be done better without the distraction of companions. So we, the readers follow along, as [...]
Would you do it? Would you “nick a cheque" made out to somebody else, if you saw a way to do the deed undetected? If you were short on cash? If you had a grudge against the payee? Natalie, the thirty-something protagonist of Deborah Moggach’s novel, Final Demand, decides that she will do it. Toughs in her neighborhood just bashed out her car window. [...]
