Reviews and Reflections on Life In America
By Wayne Allensworth It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the Apollo 11 lunar module set down in the Sea of Tranquility all those years ago, Americans were fixed on their TV screens, awed, fascinated, and, in some cases, disoriented by the momentous conclusion of the space race. I recall gathering with neighbors around a TV and watching the somewhat grainy broadcast with the sense of adventure...
By Wayne Allensworth Jacob’s Ladder (William Blake) All good things — and the bad ones, too — come to an end. Everything does. But it can’t be any other way. I was thinking along those lines while my wife and I were “taking down” (as opposed to “putting up”) Christmas, that is, the decorations, this year. We like to have a festive house for that wonderful, evocative, and often, poignant...
By Wayne Allensworth Rows of trees that have finally lost their leaves line a wide path that runs between fences around houses and a business park near my home. The long, wide belt of grass is a sort of unofficial nature sanctuary in an area where the suburbs have crept into the countryside. I often walk there and if I don’t avert my line of sight from the path, I can imagine I am far from the...
By Tom Piatak (Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture) The great Gothic cathedrals are, incontestably, the greatest buildings conceived and built by man. Indeed, it scarcely seems credible that they were built by men at all, considering when and how they were built. They began showing up in the 12th century. Their construction required the transport, refinement, and proper placement of...
By Wayne Allensworth Westerns were once upon a time the most popular American film genre. And the great John Ford directed some of the best ones. Our greatest star in the Western film firmament was John Wayne, who was associated as a friend and collaborator with Ford for much of his career. Their names are inseparable in American film history. Movie buffs know the Ford-Wayne films that did so...
By Wayne Allensworth My wife and I were watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time the other night, and something stood out that I hadn’t thought of before. Early in the movie, when old man Potter, the story’s Scrooge character played by Lionel Barrymore, complains that the Building & Loan in which he holds shares has loaned the princely sum of $5,000 to Ernie Bishop, a cab driver...
By Wayne Allensworth LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be...
By Wayne Allensworth The electoral triumph of the Trump-Vance ticket was heartening to many of us. Though your observer remains wary of some of Trump’s cabinet nominees, the president-elect has shown signs of having learned some hard lessons from his last tussle with the Swamp. It’s been amusing — and gratifying — to watch the globo-leftists melt down, but we should not lapse into triumphalism or...
By Wayne Allensworth When the sky opens the rain can come down in curtains of dense water, obscuring your view. The wind picks up and the tree limbs begin their dance. It’s November. I was taking my morning walk, hoping that the dark clouds that were gathering would hold onto the drops of water within them for just a few more minutes. I walked and felt the cool wind pick up. And I noticed that...
By Wayne Allensworth White House permission for Ukraine to use ATACMS missile systems to strike targets in Russia, apart from territories annexed by Moscow, was in the works for some time. President Joe Biden was reluctant to greenlight such strikes, and wished to require certain restrictions on how those missiles could be used. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the use of such...
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