If you feel like your values and your very nature are under assault — they are. Two things happened on the same day last week that provide ample evidence that values and life‐ways we cleave to here at Running Iron Report are under concerted and deliberate attack. The American Psychological Association has released new guidelines for […]
An Ace in the Hole
Over the years I have paid particular attention to my family history. Not because my family is in any way unique from anyone else’s, only that from a very young age I have been imbued with an abiding appreciation for the experiences of my ancestors. I’ve wanted to know them, or at least about them, and so maybe learn something about myself as I’ve traveled through this life. And it is the Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri branches of my family — Norwegians, Germans, and Dutch — who all wound up farther west at one point or another, that I have learned the most about
The Immediacy Of History
I’ve spent most all my days trying to touch the past. It’s a compulsion, a hunger for a connection. I have been accused by some folk who lack understanding of “living in the past,” but that misses the mark by a country mile. It’s never been about that at all — it’s always about making the past present. When that connection […]
SPQR — The Senate and People of Rome
This year has been a particularly good one for those of us who are interested in old Rome, as new discoveries of letters, and even boxing gloves, at Hadrian’s Wall – a strange wall, indeed, for a host of reasons – and in fresh diggings at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Oplontis, all destroyed by Vesuvius back in ’79 – have given us valuable new information about Roman life, culture, and reach, and indeed have overturned some apple carts.
Long Black Train — Sex, Death & Revolution
What can be scarier and stronger than the feeling of impending death? — Larisa Reisner, Trotsky (2017) * I hung around St. Petersburg When I saw it was time for a change Killed the Tsar and his ministers Anastasia screamed in vain… Pleased to meet you Hope you guess my name But what’s puzzling you Is the […]
Time To Shake These Doomsayer Blues
It’s the same old story Tell me where will it end I got the same old blues, same old blues again — J.J. Cale * I’m gonna lay down these Doomsayer Blues. The fourth National Climate Assessment under the U.S. Global Change Research program was released on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend — the traditional […]
A Proclamation Of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving has long been an American tradition, famously dating back to the Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth Colony. The observance was celebrated at different times and in different places, and the tradition was strongest in New England. It wasn’t until the Civil War that it was established as a fixed national holiday. In the darkest depths […]
Guns, Germs & Gravy On Everything
It would be hard to overstate how much I love Thanksgiving. An autumn family feast day with underpinnings of historical remembrance seems purpose‐built to trip my trigger — and it always does. It is even more important to me now that it means trekking across the Cascades to retrieve daughter Ceili from university. The drive is […]
November 11, 1918‐November 11, 2018
Washington, Monday, Nov. 11, 2:48 A.M.–The armistice between Germany, on the one hand, and the allied Governments and the United States, on the other, has been signed. The State Department announced at 2:45 o’clock this morning that Germany had signed. The department’s announcement simply said: “The armistice has been signed.” The world war will end this […]
An End To War, An End To Peace
Take some time this Sunday, November 11, to reflect upon a moment that occurred exactly 100 years ago. It made the world we live in. In November 1918, at the 11th hour* of the 11th day of the 11th month, an Armistice went into effect between the Allied powers of France, Great Britain and the United States […]
‘Blueprint For Armageddon’
We are fast approaching the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I — known then as The Great War. It was the most cataclysmic conflict in human history up to that time, and it is almost inconceivable that it would be superseded in a mere 30 years by an even more horrific one. Americans […]
Beware The Outrage Trolls
“A tongue can accuse and carry bad news The seeds of distrust it will sow But unless you’ve made no mistakes in your life Be careful of stones that you throw… — Hank Williams, “Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw” * This is how this rolls: Somebody, somewhere, with an ax to grind digs […]
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