In 2023, I became concerned about a variety of issues, including the censorship of free speech and the free press. This led me to start at Substack blog that I call The Curious Watchdog. My target audience includes my fellow journalists, journalism students, and bipartisan readers—many of whom likely do not closely follow independent media…. Read more »
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‘A Deplorable and an Elitist Walk Into a Bar
In 2023, I became concerned about a variety of issues, including the censorship of free speech and the free press. This led me to start a Substack blog that I call The Curious Watchdog. My target audience includes my fellow journalists, journalism students, and bipartisan readers—many of whom likely do not closely follow independent media…. Read more »
A Change Of Schedule
I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that’s the job of art.—Andre Dubus III This is the thirty-second in a series of monthly posts on my blog and, while I’ll continue blogging, the schedule for the posts may not be as regular in… Read more »
Life Lessons From Fritz
If I never have a cent/I’ll be rich as Rockefeller/With gold dust at my feet/On the sunny side of the street.—Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh In late May 2021, I entered a large room to the sound of Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” and other Big Band hits. As I took a seat, I looked around and saw… Read more »
In The Company Of Saints, Part II
This holy founder of our American houses will be the blessing of your house, and you will have the consolation of welcoming her to care for her and soften her last moments, which I fear are near, for this mother has suffered so much.—Reverend Mother Madeleine Sophie Barat While Mother Regis, born Eulalie Hamilton, was… Read more »
Tools Of Education
For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his… Read more »
In The Company Of Saints, Part I
Sister Regis did not think she could get through the day without dying, so great was her joy. She repeated this so often that I began to be afraid it would happen.—Rose Philippine Duchesne, RSCJ The years of westward expansion fascinate me. I think of them as starting in 1803 when the young United States… Read more »
Free To Move About
The disease has survived in memory more than in any literature… The writers of the 1920s had little to say about it… Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald said next to nothing of it.—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History Early during the Covid 19 pandemic, I decided on my parameters for… Read more »
Joy of Blogging Part III
You’re always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing it’s always meant to be something. So, to me there’s no practicing; there’s only editing and publishing or not publishing.—Steve Martin Writing can be a solitary experience and certainly when… Read more »
Ancient Epics
Odysseus, the great teller of tales, launched out on his own story…. “Come let me tell you about the voyage fraught with hardship Zeus inflected on me homeward bound from Troy.”—The Odyssey, Book Nine When I wrote my November 2019 post, I looked at storytelling from various angles, most of which could have independently filled… Read more »