Unca Darrell

JUNE 24, 2020 / Those who can, do. Those who can't . . .

. . . (Unca D among them) read books about it.

Barton Swaim, "The Charm of Novelty: Farnsworth's Classical English Style," The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com), May 22, 2020 (abridged, emphasis added)

Good writing is efficient writing. The ability to say a thing clearly and directly is rather to be chosen than great riches. All the books on English style say so, and they are right. But efficiency, Ward Farnsworth rightly insists, is only the beginning.

APRIL 29, 2020 / Dan Crenshaw's perspective

Alexandra Wolfe reviews Dan Crenshaw's new book:

His book "Fortitude: American Relience in the Era of Outrage" [is] part memoir, part instruction manual about his ability to weather hardships in life and in battle and his advice on how others can do the same. The book is also a critique of what he calls "outrage culture," or what he sees as an alarming tendency . . .

AUGUST 4, 2017 / Everything you need to know about . . .

. . . the French people, from a 1944 Army booklet for American servicemen:

MANY of you are no doubt wondering what kind of people the French are. You will soon see for yourselves. You will find that aside from the fact that they speak another (and very musical) language, they are very much like . . .

March 2, 2017 / The poem our teachers got wrong

TWO ROADS diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Generations of commencement speakers . . . 

SEPTEMBER 21 / Stuff to read

Q. How many wives have you had?

A. I've been married four times.

Q. How does this wife that shot you . . .

SEPTEMBER 18 / Stuff to read

WHAT WE NEED is an authentic Christian philosophy of work. Too many Christians see their work as no more than a painful necessity, since we have to earn our living somehow. By contrast, I think we should imagine . . .

SEPTEMBER 17 / Stuff to read

Through [Genesis's] structured harmonies our hearts are tuned to the music of the heavens, and our minds are lifted to . . .

SEPTEMBER 16 / Stuff to read

ONE OF THE SILLIEST questions I have ever heard, and heard often, is . . .

SEPTEMBER 15 / Stuff to read

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a thing called "geologic time". It was a hell of a ride, as Professor Robert Laughlin of Stanford, summarizes:

Six million years ago the Mediterranean Sea dried up. Ninety million years ago alligators and turtles . . .

JULY 31 / Baurerlein: Why progressives hate . . .

. . . Shakespeare.

Dana Dusbiber's statement in The Washington Post deploring the teaching of Shakespeare in high school English courses evoked universal scorn and . . .