The free exercise of religion is the rock upon which America was built.  But it was the free exercise of ambition which did the building. Ambition took tiny Burt Perrine — he stood 5’7”— from Indiana to Idaho in 1881.  A small man with big ideas, Burt invested his money in milk cows, selling fresh […]

History in blackface slaps the present moment awake. What? The governor put that picture on his yearbook page? In 1984? The wave of outrage, the demand for his resignation — from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s own party, the Democrats — can’t be dismissed with a shrug and an apology. His career may be over, thanks not simply […]

I flew to El Paso, Texas to see for myself what was going on at the border at the height of the partial government shutdown standoff between Pelosi/Schumer and President Donald Trump.  I wanted to interview those on the ground who really knew; thus bypassing entirely the Republican presses that said we were in a […]

Every June, my brother-in-law Dave, who lives near the river, is in a fishing contest sponsored by a local bar. Dave and his partner, Tim, compete against other teams to see who can catch the most flathead catfish in 15 days. This, I quickly learned, is the WWE of fishing. No mercy is shown. The […]

I have long loved the Commonwealth of Virginia, and everything else being equal might have chosen to live there. The sheer beauty of the state’s pastoral and mountainous landscapes soothed a New Jersey boy’s heart. Walking across the University of Virginia campus along the white-pillared porticoes on The Lawn afforded me a glimpse of an […]

American mythology posits a narrative for our foundation which rests upon an ideology of values and self-evident truths which separate the United States from the rest of the world. When I teach this I try to sell the “all are created equal” as hard as I can. Including “the pursuit of happiness” with life and […]

In the middle of the first presidential impeachment trial, of Andrew Johnson in 1868, Walt Whitman wandered over to Capitol Hill to witness the proceedings. “Our American politics,” the poet told a friend, “are in an unusually effervescent condition.” A century and a half later — and 127 years after Whitman’s death — our American […]