When you swear off writing as long as I did, readers deserve to know why. My first excuse: I was overwhelmed by too much of 2020, depressed by the bizarre election season and numbed by alarming pandemic developments. So after my last blog on Oct. 8, I switched off my laptop and cleared ...
After my last blog (Forgiveness, Sept. 25), an old friend from my Springs days posted a comment. Bunny Bramson and I have known each other since the mid-1970s when we both worked in New York for Springs. Here’s what she said: Hey Buck. I anticipate reading your words but am now saddened at how ...
On Sept. 13, the 15th Sunday after Pentecost on the church calendar, my sermon at St. John the Evangelist in Newport, RI, was framed around the day’s gospel, Matthew 18: 21-35. Here’s the passage, from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another ...
I wake up most mornings thinking of ways to escape, even if just for a while, the distressing reality of life in America today. Many of you may also be looking for respite, given the daily onrush of alarming news. I cope by immersing myself in activities that bring both peace and a sense of ...
Ecclesiastes 9: 11-18 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. ...
One of the most inane aphorisms tossed around is that one shouldn’t mix politics and religion. It ranks right up there with “everything happens for a reason” on the list of adages that drive me crazy. One organization that emphatically rejects the notion that politics and religion shouldn’t mix is Sojourners, an American Christian ...
A good friend of mine, Mary Berlinghof of Newport, RI, shared an opinion piece from The New York Times with me today. It was written by a Times Contributing Opinion Writer, Margaret Renkl, whose byline caught my eye since she is from Nashville, where my daughter and her family live. Please read it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/opinion/lent-spring.html?referringSource=articleShare ...
My mom visited us here in New Orleans recently and something she said made me stop and think. She said nearly everyone she knows expects Donald Trump will win a second term. I retorted that she did indeed know one person who believes Trump won’t be re-elected — ME! — and reminded her that her ...
My October Fun About a month ago, I had back surgery at Tufts Medical Center. I’d been warned repeatedly that this was “major surgery” and that recovery would be long. But I didn’t really need to be warned because my dear sister Gracie underwent similar surgery in June and I’d watched her recovery. So ...
Last week I began reading Disunion!, a book chronicling events over a 70-year period that set the stage for the Civil War. The book, by University of Virginia history professor Elizabeth Varon, has made me wonder about my own education in the public schools of South Carolina and the private school I attended in Virginia. ...
