As many of you have noticed, the last couple of days have seen some slow blogging.  This is partly because the term paper grading season is upon us and I have been spending my spare time blighting the hopes and lives of America’s most promising youth.But also I’m preparing for a two-week trip to Israel.  […]

The latest sickening bout of stock market turbulence underlines the point I made on this blog last December; the next stage of the global economic crisis is centered in Greece.That’s an unpleasant reality for our European friends who have spent much of the last decade chattering about American decline and the coming crisis of the […]

The normal routines of life ground to a halt yesterday for the Mead clan; my father’s older brother got married yesterday to the woman he loves.The wedding was held at the Washington National Cathedral; the bride has worked as a volunteer there for many years and knew exactly how to arrange the most glorious setting […]

Last week I started the daunting project of developing a lifetime reading list with some ancient historians.  This week it’s time for ancient epics: the four great narrative poems of classical civilization that have echoed down the ages. My list includes the three ‘standard’ epics: the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid.  It also includes […]

Documents captured from radicals and terrorists in Pakistan warn darkly about a new axis of evil in the world: a ‘Zionist Hindu Crusader‘ alliance bringing Israel, India, and the United States together in a war on Islam.  They are wrong about the last part; all three countries want peaceful relations with Islamic countries based on […]

“I used to be Snow White,” Mae West famously said, “but I drifted.”Power has been drifting toward Washington and the federal government in the American political system; it needs to start drifting back home to the states and to local communities or our democratic system will become increasingly strained. The latest poll from Pew is […]

Aaron David Miller is one of the world’s leading authorities on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.  He’s been at the heart of American negotiations on the issue for many years; few people can match his detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of the negotiating process or of the personalities and the agendas of the leading actors […]

I’ve written in some of my past posts about the problems faced by mainline churches, concentrating especially on the denomination to which I belong: the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.  Torn by bitter internal strife, its membership is shrinking and aging, many of its most important institutions are nearing financial disaster, and it […]

Since I spend more time reading than just about anything else (although lately blogging and grading papers seem to be giving books a run for the money) it’s hard to step back and think about which books really matter.  Perhaps if I could answer that question more clearly I would spend less time with books; […]

Some months ago, I wrote about Milton’s Areopagitica: “Where there is much desire to learn,” wrote Milton, “there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”  For Milton—and I think he was right—the Truth wasn’t something we inherited and had to coddle; […]