"The Tragedy at Freyne" by Anthony Gilbert

It’s a two-fer – an English country manor weekend mystery and a locked room mystery. But it’s anything but conventional. 

Alan Ravenswood, who serves as the story’s narrator, is spending a long weekend at Freyne Abbey, the home of his cousin and her husband, Catherine and Simon Chandos. Catherine is as beautiful as Simon is ugly. But Simon is known as a sterling character and a true friend. Also visiting are Simon’s niece Rosemary, her current love interest and a journalist who wants to be her love interest, and the man long rumored to be in love with Catherine and in serious debt to her husband. In the background, and sometimes the foreground, hovers Simon’s secretary, a woman who adds her own barbed comments into what is already an explosive scene.

 

It's a perfect recipe for murder. And that’s what happens. Simon is found dead in his study, stabbed in the hand with an overdose of morphine. The room is locked from the inside; a key is required to open or lock the door, and the only key is in the dead man’s pocket. It’s made to look like suicide, but the killer made a mistake or two, and murder will out.

 

Catherine’s paramour is arrested, although Catherine claims he spent the night with her and stands steadfastly by her man. It’s looking increasingly grim for the man charged with murder.

 

Lucy Beatrice Malleson, aka Anthony Gilbert

But this is a story where appearances are not only deceiving; the deceptions themselves are also deceiving. The mystery must be unraveled layer by layer.

 

The Tragedy at Freyne by British mystery writer Anthony Gilbert (1899-1973) was first published in 1927, and it’s a double-genre story that turns into a suspense thriller, as the protagonists race against time. It was the first mystery published by Lucy Beatrice Malleson under the Anthony Gilbert pen name, and it was be followed by more than 60 other Gilbert novels.

 

Malleson was enormously prolific. She first published poetry, then turned to mysteries. In addition to the Anthony Gilbert stories, she published under the pen names of J, Kilmeny Keith, and Anne Meredith. She also wrote a wealth of short stories and radio plays. Surprisingly, given the quality of her novels like The Tragedy at Freyne, she was never a bestselling writer during her lifetime. In the past few years, interest in her work has revived with the publication of several of her novels by British Library Crime Classics.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Who Cheered You On Throughout Your Writing Journey? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

God Made These Texas Summers – Roy Peterson at Society of Classical Poets.

N.C. Wyeth painting purchased at a thrift shop for $4 could sell for $250,000 at auction – Carlie Porterfield at The Art Newspaper.

 

Les Miserables. The American Civil War, and Violent Revolution – David Dixon at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Age of Shakespeare – Stephen Klugewicz at The Imaginative Conservative.

“The Civil War: The Third Year Told by the People Who Lived It”

The year 1863 was likely the critical one in the Civil War, largely because of two battles. Both were fought about the same time, in July. Gettysburg happened over three days, while Vicksburg had been considerably longer and far more complex, with Grierson’s Raid, the Battles of Jackson and Port Gobson, and the long siege that saw town citizens hiding in caves from the shelling and subsisting on whatever food sources might be available. 

But the year saw far more than only two battles. The Emancipation Proclamation went into full effect; former slaves were forming into Union regiments; the Union instituted a conscription act, which resulted in days of draft riots in New York City; Knoxville was occupied by Union forces; the Confederates experienced a great victory at Chancellorsville; and more.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Les Miserables and the American Civil War and Les Miserables, the American Civil War, and the Future of Republican Government – Sarah Kay Bierle and David Dixon at Emerging Civil War

 

“Seated Lincoln” in Newark, N.J. by Gutzon Borglum, Sculptor of Mt. Rushmore – Patrick Young at The Reconsruction Era.

Poets and Poems: Emma Lazarus and “Selected Poems”

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was a remarkable poet and writer by almost any definition. Born to a wealthy family in New York City, she saw her first poetry collection privately published by her father in 1866 and her first commercially published collection in 1867. She published translations of German poets. She published a second poetry collection a novel, and a play. 

In the 1880s, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, a period of pogroms against the Jewish population became official policy in Russia (the same pogroms led the parents of poet Charles Reznikoff to emigrate to America). Lazarus, mindful of her own Jewish heritage, turned to poetry and prose to protest the persecutions in Russia as well as the struggles of Jewish emigrants and citizens in the United States, articulating what she saw as the necessity of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Fantastic Modes; Or, Is Magical Realism Just Urban Fantasy? – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Remembering William Stafford, Whose Poetic Region Was All the World – Steve Paul at Literary Hub. 

 

Women Praying – poem by Jason Myers at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

“Belling the Cat” and “The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs” from Aesop’s Fables – Rob Crisell at the Society of Classical Poets.

 

Contemporary American Poets That Every Catholic Should Read (not to mention the rest of us) – an interview with James Matthew Wilson at Five Books for Catholics.

“Murder Under the Bridge” by Roy Lewis

Arnold Landon is planning a two-week vacation from his job at the Department of Museums and Antiquities in Morpeth in Northumberland in northern England. He’s promised to help his friend Jane do research for her historical novel. His director had approved the holiday leave, when he suddenly reneges, loaning Arnold to an archaeological dig be completed before the site is redeveloped. 

Meanwhile, Detective Chief Inspector Culpepper has to tackle a gruesome case. The body of man has been found, the victim shot in the head and then his chest carved open in what seems like some kind of ritual. The pressure is on to find the murderer, but leads are next to none. Culpepper gets some help from a police officer in Sussex, who’s investigating two similar killings and knows of two more in France and Switzerland. The only connection among the victims seems to be that they’re all Englishmen. 

 

And then another body turns up, this one a man who’d been on the archaeological team. And it’s Arnold and Jane who find the body. Culpepper is less than thrilled; he’s encountered Arnold several times before and the man always seems to be instrumental in solving the crimes, much to Culpepper’s chagrin. 

 

Roy Lewis

Murder Under the Bridge is the eighth novel in the Arnold Landon series by Roy Lewis. It’s somewhat different from its predecessors, in that it takes some time before the police investigation and Arnold’s activities begin to converge. But like the earlier stories, it’s well written and full of well-researched historical information – in this case, about the Vikings.

 

Lewis (1933-2019) was the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. Lewis lived in northern England. 

 

Related:

 

Murder in the Tower by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder in the Church by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Barn by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Manor by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Farmhouse by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Stableyard by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the House by Roy Lewis.

 

Error in Judgment by Roy Lewis.

Some Monday Readings

 

American beauty – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Little League, Then and Now – Anthony Esolen at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Myth That Writing is Hard – Dean Wesley Smith.

 

They listen and heed

After Jonah 3 

I got it. I understood

what you wanted me

to do. I prayed

forgiveness, I prayed

obedience, I prayed

acceptance. You heard,

and I learned what it

meant to be vomited

by a fish.

I listened (finally).

I heeded (finally).

I went to the city.

I spoke what you told

me to say.

They listened.

They heeded.

They repented.

You relented.

 

Photograph by Kevin Bosc via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Silence – poem by Kathleen at The Course of Our Seasons.

 

We Were a Peculiar People Once: Reflections of an Old-Time Baptist by David Lyle Jeffrey – reviewed by Casey Spinks at Front Porch Republic. 

 

Should You Head Back to School at a Seminary? – Joshua Nangle at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Religion.

 

Lessons from the Sky – poem by Nathaniel Todd McKee at Society of Classical Poets.

Saturday Good Reads - Aug. 26, 2023

Two years ago this month, we watched a tragedy unfold in Afghanistan. The U.S. began withdrawing its troops, the Afghan army and government began collapsing faster than anyone thought possible, and chaos ensued for days at the airport in Kabul. A new book describes what happened, and how much is owed to the veterans organizations that stepped in to save Afghan allies and their families.  

I didn’t know that, in A Preface to Paradise, C.S. Lewis criticized T.S. Eliot. Privately, he had criticized Eliot’s poetry, and he had previously criticized The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. A luncheon in 1945 midwifed by their mutual friend Charles Williams did little to bridge the chasm between the two. But things changed in the 1950s, and Joel Miller has the story. Miller also has a followup: it was Eliot who published Lewis's A Grief Observed, submitted under a pseudonym. Eliot guessed the writer's identity and agreed to publish the book, but with a different pseudonym.

 

I read recently that cholesterol may not be the awful villain it was once thought. Ditto for fat in foods. And then we were told all kinds of official positions during COVID that turned out to be something less than science based. We’re supposed, to “follow the science,” but what science is that? David Warren at Essays in Idleness reminds us that scientific journal editors themselves have long believed much research is suspect. Matt Taibbi at Racket News describes the “misinformation” that plagued the response to COVID from the very beginning. 

 

More Good Reads

 

American Stuff

 

Talle de Noyer, Florissant – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina. 

 

The Unmarked Memorial at the Mouth of Mobile Bay – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

A six-decade march – James Piereson at New Criterion.

 

Making American History Dramatic Again – Jonathan Den Hartog at Real Clear History.

 

A Hat for a Coat: Revisiting the Famous Parley Between J.E.B. Stuart and John Pope – Kevin Pawlak at Emerging Civil War.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Blurbs – Janet Reid, Literary Agent.

 

Life and Culture

 

Planting Our Flag in the Real World: Parents Take the Postman Pledge – Matt Stewart at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Messi Effect: New Miami stars brings big business to MLS – Dan Hajducky at ESPN. 

 

Has the patriot economy’s moment finally arrived? – Amber Athey at The Spectator.

 

Faith

 

So, What Did Jesus Think about the Old Testament? – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

Days Like Blackberries – Seth Lewis.

 

A hand on my shoulder: Meeting the man who led my Dad to Jesus – Andrew Roycroft at Thinking Pastorally.

 

They Will Never Understand How Much I Love Them – Jacob Crouch.

 

The Death of Church and Pub – Carl Trueman at First Things Magazine.

 

And for our 50^th anniversary: Annie’s Song – John Denver 

 Painting: Man Reading a Newspaper, oil on board by August Friedrich Siegert (1820-1883). 

50 Years of Love

Who gets married in August? A state like Louisiana has three seasons – Summer, July, and August. Who would seriously consider getting married in August, the hottest month of the year? 

We did. And we did more than consider it. We actually were married in August.

 

August, 1973. The Vietnam War was ongoing. Vice President Spiro Agnew had been notified about an investigation involving bribery and kickbacks. The price freeze that had been in effect (trying to stop inflation in 1970 when it was approaching three percent) was ended by President Nixon; the prime lending rate had reached 9.5 percent (and it would go a lot higher). On the 15^th, Nixon gave a nationally televised address on Watergate, addressing the growing scandal for the first time. Willy Mays hit the final home run of his career. William Rogers resigned as Secretary of State, succeeded by Henry Kissinger. Letter bombs were going off at department stores in London and the British embassy in Washington, D.C. Members of the Union of Soviet Writers published a letter in Pravda condemning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and physicist Andrei Sakharov.

 

Top songs of that Summer of 1973: My Love by Paul McCartney and Wings; Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters; Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown by Jim Croce; Touch Me in the Morning by Diana Ross; Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings; Delta Dawn by Helen Reddy; Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree by Tony Orlando and Dawn; and You Are the Sunshine of My Life by Stevie Wonder. 

 

Two young adults – very young adults – were married on the 25^th. The setting was Mildred Crowe Baptist Church, a red brick building on North Market Street in Shreveport. The church has gone through a few permutations since then, but it’s still there, and while it’s no longer Baptist, it’s still a church.

 

The wedding was at 6 p.m. The service and the reception in the church hall had to be done by 7, because a revival service was starting at 7:30. Two fraternity brothers served as my best man and groomsman; my soon-to-be-wife Janet had a cousin for matron of honor and a close friend from college as a bridesmaid. Janet would, in turn, be a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding a few years later, and they have remained good friends for more than half a century now.

 

We were too broke to afford a honeymoon. We had a few days off, and then both of us went to work at the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise. I had been there since graduation in May; Janet joined after we were married. 

 

Less than two months later, the Yom Kippur War erupted in the Mideast, introducing Americans (including us) to gasoline shortages. Inflation took off in the 1970s, reaching 11 and 12 percent and higher for some things. Another embargo happened in 1979, with the Iranian Revolution and the storming of the U.S. embassy.

 

In the intervening years, we’ve experienced economic downturns, recessions, stock market crashes, crazy places to work, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and cultural and social upheaval. We had two sons, and we have the blessing of both living close by. We have three grandsons and a daughter-in-law we adore, and a girlfriend we thrilled about. We have a good place we are thankful to call our church home.

 

We have been blessed these 50 years together. I wouldn’t change a thing, even if I had to power to do it, and I would do it all over again. 

 

Related:

 

I Have Loved You All Along – poem by James Sale at Society of Classical Poets.

“Murder Never Retires” by Faith Martin

Hillary Greene, once a detective inspector with the Thames Valley Police, has retired. Nearing 50, she’d decided to retire and take her houseboat on a cruise through England’s canals. She’s been gone for 18 months, and now she’s returning to police work as a consultant, working in the cold case unit. 

She has a new boss, who isn’t sure he wants the famous Hillary Greene on his team or not. She has new colleagues – a retired officer like herself and two part-time college students. Her office is something of a glorified closet. And the first assignment is a 20-year-old murder case that no one was able to crack.

 

The victim was a housewife in her 30s, hit with a rolling pin in the kitchen. Her husband was a tour bus driver (with a rock-solid alibi) and they had three children, who are now about the age their mother was when she was killed. There was a suspect with a motive – the victim’s sister, unhappy with her younger sister having an affair with her sister’s husband. 

 

Faith Martin

It’s a case with lots of dead ends, people hiding secrets, and no one quite telling the truth. Complicating the investigation is that someone inside the police department is stalking Greene.

 

Murder Never Retires is the 12^th DI Hillary Greene mystery by British writer Faith Martin. It’s a well-written story, with tension building from both developments in the case and the stalker becoming ever-more daring. You know this isn’t going to end well for someone. Or someones.

 

In addition to the DI Hillary Greene novels, Martin (a pen name for Jacquie Walton) has also published the Ryder and Loveday novels as well as the Jenny Sterling mysteries. Under the name Joyce Cato, she has published several non-series detective stories. Both Cato and Martin are also pen names for Walton. (Walton has another pen name as well – Maxine Barry, under which she wrote 14 romance novels.) A native of Oxford, she lives in a village in Oxfordshire.

 

Related:

 

Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at the University by Faith Martin. 

 

Murder of the Bride by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Village by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Family by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at Home by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Meadow by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Mansion by Faith Martin.

 

Murder by Fire by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at Work by Faith Martin.

Some Thursday Readings

 

A Classic California Mystery: The Life and Times of Lange Lewis – Randal Brandt at CrimeReads.

 

The Search for a Vanished Hiker on the PCT – Andrea Lankford at CrimeReads.

"Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers" by Rufus Dawes

Rufus Dawes (1838-1899) was a Union soldier and officer, a businessman, a congressman, n author, and the father of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize and served as Vice President. He was descended from the man who warned of the coming of the British prior to Lexington and Concord. 

He is also considered to have written one of the best, if not the best, memoirs of the Civil War, Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers.  

 

Dawes distinguished himself as a member and officer of the famed Iron Brigade during the Battle of Gettysburg and other Civil War engagements. Comprised of regiments from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan, its numbers and composition kept changing because of casualties. It was one of the most feared of all Union troops; it often stood its ground when other brigades were in full retreat.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Horse Soldiers at Gettysburg: The Cavalryman’s View of the Civil War’s Pivotal Campaign by Daniel Murphy – Book review by Daniel Davis at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Surprised by Faith: My Moroccan Odyssey – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

The Things We Do Before the Things We Do – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Emerging Civil War Hosts Battlefield Tour Fundraiser to Benefit Wreaths Across America – Emerging Civil War. 

Some Tuesday Readings

Tweetspeak Poetry is on vacation this week, so I have no post today.

Some Tuesday Readings 

John Uodike’s “In the Beauty of the Lilies”: The Children – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Seasons Cusp – poem by Kathleen at The Course of Our Seasons.

 

The Resignation – poem by Thomas Chatterton at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Two Poems from Mexico – Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

Photograph by Chen Mizrach via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks” by Susan Croce Kelly

For my two introductory reporting courses in journalism school, I had the teacher said to be the toughest of the faculty. And he was. His classes tended to weed out anyone who wasn’t fully committed (which the school administrators were less than pleased with). A typo, a grammatical error, a factual error – all earned an automatic F on the assignment. He often did calisthenics during timed in-class assignments and even sang opera on occasion – to teach us to avoid distractions and to focus.  

Yes, he was a piece of work. And yes, he taught us speed, accuracy, focus and a deeply reverential attitude toward what we were studying.

 

I think of him often when I read the newspaper today. He wouldn’t recognize what’s happened to journalism. Neither do I, when any given news story provides opinion with a thin veneer of news. That would have earned an automatic F.

 

The kind of journalism I do recognize is that of Lucile Morris Upton (1898-1992). She didn’t attend journalism school, although she wanted to. She started out as a teacher, and it was seemingly only by happenstance that she found herself writing for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado, and Springfield, Mo. She wrote at a time when most reporters and editors didn’t have journalism degrees. She understood the place of a newspaper in the community. And little if anything would stand in the way of her from getting the story.

 

Susan Croce Kelly

Upton’s story is wonderfully told by writer Susan Croce Kelly in Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton. The biography a part of the Ozark Series published by the University of Arkansas Press. (Technically, the Ozark region includes a large chunk of southern Missouri – St. Louis is considered the foothills; northern Arkansas; a small part of southeastern Oklahoma; and even a sliver of Kansas.)

 

Upton is best-known for her work in Missouri, based in Springfield, but she cut her journalistic teeth in New Mexico and Colorado. She was even offered a foreign correspondent position in London, but she eventually turned it down. Her career wasn’t a straight-line trajectory. She taught school, she wrote for newspapers, she taught again and reported again, she retired after getting married but returned to do columns for writers on leave and during World War II. She covered some of the most significant stories in 20^th century Missouri and even national history.

 

And she did more than report. She championed the Ozark region, helping to develop it as a tourism destination. She wrote an acclaimed book on the Baldknobbers, a group of vigilantes who operated after the Civil War and became a law unto themselves. She helped Greene County, Missouri, turn the Nathan Boone home into a landmark (he’s the son of Daniel). And she was instrumental in having Wilson’s Creek, the site of the second major battle of the Civil War, incorporated into the National Park Service.

 

She was close to her two brothers and their children. She married in her late 30s; her husband J.B. Upton died in 1947 following a heart attack; they’d been married only nine years. She pressed on and continued to work in the newspaper business for decades after.

 

Susan Croce Kelly, the author, is herself a former reporter for the Springfield News and Leader and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. She previously published Route 66: The Highway and Its People and is the managing editor of Ozarks Watch at Missouri State University’s Ozarks Studies Institute. 

 

The woman was a presence, and Kelly is perhaps the ideal writer to tell her story. Not only does the author have her own extensive Ozarks and journalism background, she also is a relative of Upton’s. She interviewed numerous people throughout the region, and she provides a well-done context for the events of Upton’s life.

 

By the end of Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks, the reader has a finely drawn portrait of a woman dedicated to a newspaper career, a champion of her region, and a solid sense of the practice of journalism through much of the 20^thcentury.

Some Monday Readings

 

Back to the New Jeffersonianism: A Review of Tyranny Inc. – Hamilton Craig at Front Porch Republic.

 

Corrosive Curation: Against the politicization of museums – Lara Brown at The Critic Magazine.

 

Inside the Model of St. Paul’s – Spitalfields Life. 

 

Who is Kaleo Manuel? Maui Water Official Faces Scrutiny Over Fire Response – Giulia Carbonaro at Newsweek. 

In the belly of the fish

After Jonah 1:17 – 2:10 

By my own will,

my own mistakes,

I found myself

in the belly of a fish.

 

The smell, the stench,

the acids staining my skin,

I brought upon myself

in the belly of the fish.

 

In the depths of despair,

in the clutch of fear,

I did only what I knew

in the belly of the fish.

 

I appealed to mercy,

I appealed to memory,

I appealed in worship,

in the belly of the fish.

 

My plea was heard,

my prayer was accepted,

and I was catapulted from

the belly of the fish.

 

Photograph by Todd Cravens via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

At Thirteen: A Poem Inspired Across Generations – Lucia Haase at Society of Classical Poets.

 

A Liturgy for When the House Feels Too Full of Children – Millie Sweeney at Story Warren.

Saturday Good Reads - Aug. 19, 2023

There are times when I read what passes for intelligent discourse in this country – be it academic, political, news media, literary, what-have-you – and can only scratch my head. This seems to be a particular issue with our so-called elites. I was reminded this week that it’s not the first time in American history when the people at the top of American society seemingly lost their minds, It happened 100 years ago, when American (and Canadian) elites embraced eugenics. It wasn’t only Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, and it wasn’t only Nazi Germany.  

Writer Michael Katz has just published a new translation of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. And he notes there is a particular challenge in translating this author (Katz previously published a translation of Crime and Punishment). Dostoevsky likes his characters to mumble.

 

Between 2010 and 2019, one of every seven crime novels was authored or co-authored by one writer – James Patterson. He talks with Rick Pullen at CrimeReads about the experience of publishing his first book – with 31 rejections before Little, Brown and Company bought it.

 

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was Greenpeace and “Save the Whales”! Today, it’s climate change and “Too Bad about the Whales.” The research is coming in on wind turbines off New England’s shores and the impact on whales – and the story isn’t a good one. But don’t talk about it on Facebook, or you might get censored.

 

Can you name a song that rocketed to the top of the charts almost as soon it was released? Two weeks ago, no one had heard of Oliver Anthony. Then came “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which in nine days has had more than 21 million views on YouTube. Rob Smith at The Gospel Coalition explains what happened – and why. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

Learning to Listen: On writing a biography of St. Augustine – Peter Brown at The Lamp.

 

Why is YA no longer booming? – Janet Reid, Literary Agent.

 

CS Lewis on Reading Dead Guys – Nathan Eshelman at Gentle Reformation. 

 

Writers Who Make You Furiously Jealous Are Your Best Mentors – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach. 

 

New Generative AI Tool Simulates the Worst Imaginable Speechwriter, Working for the Jerkiest Imaginable Client (in This Case, Me) – David Murray at Writing Boots.

 

Ukraine

 

Why Ukraine’s counteroffensive hasn’t failed – Philip O’Brien at The Spectator.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Cultured Hedonist: An Essay – Joseph Salemi at Society of Classical Poets.

 

A Tale of Two Houses – David Davis at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience – John Horgan, The Science Writer.

 

Why Bill Watterson Vanished – Nic Rowan at The American Spectator.

 

News Media

 

The Assange case is about much more than Assange himself – Ricky at Council Estate Media.

 

When journalists self-censor – Phil Craig at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poetry

 

After the Ballet – Christian Wiman at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Dog days – poem by Kathleen at The Course of Our Seasons.

 

Faith

 

What We Know about the People behind the Dead Sea Scrolls – Anthony Ferguson at Text and Canon Institute.

 

American Stuff

 

A Bluegrass Sojourn to Lexington Cemetery – Derek Maxfield at Emerging Civil War.

 

You’ve Already Won – Shane & Shane

 

Painting: A Decadent Girl, oil on canvas (1899) by Ramon Casas (1866-1932).