This is a précis of a talk I did on Sunday, March 13, 2011, at the Christian Science Church in Winnetka IL. One of my high school heroes was my senior year Latin teacher, Fr. Paul Distler, S.J. I’m certain he had memorized Vergil’s Aeneid because, although he always held the book in his hand, …
Friedrich Nietzsche, who neither read nor spoke English, and who never visited the USA, wrote in 1887: “The Americans strive for gold above everything else. Their breathless haste in working is already spreading to Europe. I think of an American as eating lunch, with one eye on his watch and the other eye on the …
A member of my high school class (St. Louis University High School, 1955) keeps us in touch through an email list. About two hundred of us graduated in 1955 and most of us are on the list. The emails received in the early years had “happy news” as their subject, announcements of weddings, the birth …
Little remains in that frail frame To carry on the fight. Yet when he looks at me, His eyes hold firm, Shining in his wan and wrinkled face Both clear and bright. “You’re a good man,” he whispers, weakly grasping my arm. “You’re a good man too”, I reply. But even good men stand without …