Saturday Good Reads – June 27, 2026

If there is one national flag recognized the world over today, it’s the flag of the United States. At one time, it was Britain’s Union Jack. Guy Iynn at History tells the story of these two flags and where they came from. Stewart McLaurin at USA Today writes the American flag helped the country evolve and unite. 

For the past few weeks, you can’t open any social media platform without seeing Europeans visiting for the World Cup and discovering the America they never knew existed. The reports became so widespread that even the mainstream media began to notice. But these visitors also did something else – they reminded us of the great country Americans themselves forgot existed.

 

Following Keir Starmer’s resignation Monday, Britain will now have its seventh prime minister in a decade. That decade of instability started officially when Britain voted to leave the European Union in the vote known as Brexit. Douglas Murray argues in The Free Press that Britain’s leaders forgot how to lead. Arthur Reynolds at The Critic Magazine says the Civil Service was the ruin of Starmer. And writer Fred de Frossard looks at the decade and explains why Brexit was right. 

 

It had grown and lasted for at least 800 years. Some said it was even older, 1,000 or even 1,500 years. But it is no more. The Major Oak has died. And some see the death as symbolizing far more than an old, dead tree.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Forgotten Scot Behind the Declaration of Independence – Samuel Gregg at The Coolidge Review.

 

The Essential Paintings of Our Nation – Judith Dobrzynski at The Wall Street Journal (unlocked).

 

The Tobacco Raid of 1779 – Marc Drolet at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Founding Fathers had a real revolution to overcome before they could win the war – J.H. Cook at Fox News.

 

New York’s Underdogs Prepare to Fight – Jonathan Horn t The Free Press.

 

Scots in the Revolution & the British Southern Pivot – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

When the Colonists Fasted for Independence – Sarah Gleim at History.

 

Faith

 

Loaves, Fish, and Un-Self-Conscious Little Boys – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

 

Kingdom of Trees – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Writing and Literature

 

“O Abany”: Novelist William Kennedy on His Great Cycle of the City – Library of America (video).

 

Luxury Muzhik – Adam Thirlwell at London Review of Books reviews Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev by Maxim Gorky.

 

50 Years of Creative Destruction in the Book World – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Winged Words: Reading & Discussing Great Books – Peter Kalkavage at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry

 

“Life and Love: A Song,” poem by John Wilmor, Earl of Rochester – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“An Essay on Man,” poem by Alexander Pope (excerpt) – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thank You Jesus for the Blood – Charity Gayle

 Painting: The Morning Chapter, oil on canvas by Charles Spencelayh (1865-1958).

Watch it, rich man!

After James 4:10-5:6 

A fundamental question:

what do you do with

your wealth? What do

you do with all the Lord

has blessed you with?

Riches for the sake

of riches is chasing

after the wind. You

blink your eyes, and

your riches have rotted,

your clothes become rags,

your stocks have crashed,

your banks have closed,

your comfortable life

of indulgence have ended.

You’ve condemned and

defrauded the righteous

person. It is time for you

to weep and howl for

the miseries coming

upon you.

 

Photograph by Jingming Pan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Treasures of TANAKH Hebrew: Hineni,” poem by Brian Volck – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

A Lot of Christian Tech Criticism is Missing Three Important Things – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Icthus – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” hymn by Reginald Heber – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

A pair of sonnets for St. John the Baptist – Malcolm Guite.

 

A Puddle of Pure Joy – Seth Lewis.

Poets and Poems: David Livewell and “Pass and Stow”

It was the title that attracted me to David Livewell’s new poetry collection, Pass and Stow: Poems. It sounded like something related to transportation or hauling freight. It turned out to be people’s last names. 

As Livewell explains, John Pass and John Stow worked in the foundry in Philadelphia that recast the Liberty Bell in 1753. The foundry was in the same neighborhood where Livewell grew up in the 1970s. In his words, the two men “serve as reminders about the city’s layered past and what outward and inward repair can achieve.”

 

In the collection, Livewell applies the idea of layered past and repair to tell a story through poetry. And he is a grand storyteller. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

10 Things Poets & Writers Can Do in the Small Moments – TS Poetry at The Write to Poetry.

 

“The Fairies,” poem by William Allingham – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“A tailor-bird’s song of triumph,” from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Redcar Collector,” a short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free to download today at Amazon.com. 

Some Wednesday Readings - June 24, 2026

Great Americans: ‘We’re Going to Take Back the Airplane’ – Colleen Shogan at The Free Press. 

There Are More than Five POVs – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Murder in disguise – Carl Trueman at World Magazine.

 

“The Moonlight,” poem by Yvor Winters – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Move Over, Mario Puzo – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Charlie Jones, Photographer – Spitalfields Life.

 

A.R. Ammons and arts patronage – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The Hardest Part of Fatherhood – Chris Martin at FYI.

 

Writers and Their Houses – Jay Parini.

 

Photograph: poet and writer A.R. Ammons (1926-2001). 

Sara Barkat Takes Us into “Otherside”

Until the late 1970s, my reading of science fiction was limited to the stories and novels of Ray Bradbury, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. I didn’t have any inherent bias against science fiction; it was more my reading interests were in other directions. 

For some reason, I picked up a paperback edition of Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg. Then I went to the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov (published in the 1950s, it may explain American politics of the last decade). Then the novels of Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. And Arthur C. Clarke, whose Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood’s Endremain among my favorite books. But as much as I loved the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, even then I knew how much it was changing science fiction. Fantasy was taking over. 

 

Years passed. Reading interests changed. And then the old memories stirred when I read The Shivering Ground by Sara Barkat. The wonderful graphic version she did of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space, was another reminder, even though it’s usually called a horror story. And now she has a new novel, Otherside, which is about as close as you can get to mainstream science fiction as you can.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

For the Road to Santiago – poem by David Whyte.

 

The Wordless Rose: Ruchard Wilbur’s ‘Advice to a Prophet’ – Alexander Fayne.

 

Veshicular – poem by Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

Poetry in Prose – Where Love is Born – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Lives upon Lives – poem by Baruch November at Evey Day Poems.

 

“Requiem,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Some Monday Readings - June 22, 2026

If the First Apocalypse Doesn’t Get You, the Second One Will – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on the novels of R.C. Sherriff. 

On the third day: On the religious illiteracy of college students – The New Criterion.

 

Robert Besley, the Clarendon Typeface, and the Longbow – A London Inheritance.

 

McDonald’s is bringing back fried apple pie for America’s 250^th birthday – Colleen Cabili at Quartz.

 

The Surprising Ways Fatherhood Changes Men – Sarah Campisi Hallier at The Epoch Times.

 

Solstice Stories – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

When Writers Don’t Respond – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

Photograph: The writer R.C. Sherriff (1896-1975).

Watch your plans!

After James 4:10-5:6 

We believe we’re

in control; we act

as if we control

our lives and

everything that

happens. Watch 

your plans! You

don’t know what

tomorrow brings.

You are a mist,

present for a short

time, and then

you vanish. Make 

your plans in

the Lord’s will,

if God allows it.

He may allow it,

and he may not.

Embrace humility;

embrace direction

from the one,

the only one, truly

in control.

 

Photograph by Alvaro Reyes via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Is My Pain God’s Punishment? – Vaneetha Rendall Risner at Desiring God.

 

What We Learned from Dad – the team at Story Warren.

 

A Prayer for Father’s Day – Yuri Bezmenov at How to Subvert Subversion.