Stormfields

No Safe Spaces: My Ancestors Arrive in Kansas, 1876

VictoriaKanasaVolgaGermanStatueAn actual description of my great, great, great grandparents arriving in Hays, Kansas:

“Their presence is unmistakable; for where they are there is also something else, – a smell so pungent and potent as to make a strong man weak.”–Hays City SENTINEL, August 16, 1876.

The surrounding community despised them. My ancestors did not scream “privilege” or demand a “safe space.”

They worked like mad, and I am here because they did.

Christopher Dawson’s Dark Mirror

dawson from actonAnother favorite Christian Humanist article–“The Dark Mirror” by Christopher Dawson. Note especially the “postscript” on intuition and imagination.  This is certainly Dawson’s most explicit examination of such.

cd dark mirror

David Gergen on Ronald Reagan’s Character

Portrait

Our 40th President

Working for him, I saw he was no dullard, as his critics claimed.  From his eight years as governor and his many other years of writing and speaking out, he had thought his way through most domestic issues and knew how to make a complex governmental structure work in his favor.  In the first year of his presidency, I also saw him dive into the details of the federal revenue code and become an authority as he negotiated with Congress.  When he wanted to focus, he had keen powers of concentration and could digest large bodies of information.  He was also one of the most disciplined men I have seen in the presidency (much more so than Clinton, for example), sot that he worked straight through the day, reading papers and checking off meetings on his list.  At day’s end, headed off for a workout and would plow through more papers in the evening in the upstairs residence.  He made the presidency look easy in part by keeping a strict regimen.  He also had a retentive mind.  After years of memorizing scripts in Hollywood, he would recall verbatim a lot of what he had read.  He recited Robert Service poems as well as he did jokes. [David Gergen, Eyewitness to Power, 197]

Audio Lecture: Founding of American Republic 1

founding

Patriots at work.

 

If you’re interested in the American republic and the founding period, this is my first lecture of the spring 2016 semester.

If you’re so inclined. . .  enjoy!