It is entrapment, pure and simple. My local bookstore has beautiful, hard-cover, classic books for sale for under $5 (using my 30% off coupon). Titles like Swiss Family Robinson and Little Women coquettishly peek from the shelf, enticing me to come closer. A quick calculation tells me that my eldest grandson won’t appreciate the Wyss...
Late in the afternoon, April 30, 1945, the corpse of Adolf Hitler, who had just poisoned and shot himself, was burned in the garden behind the Reich Chancellery. The setting sun signaled the start of the joyful Jewish holiday of Lag B’Omer (see Thought Tool Volume IV issue #20). The war had gone badly for...
During the golden age of Hollywood, movie studios ‘owned’ various actors. The studios picked the vehicles for their stars guaranteeing that Mickey Rooney would no sooner be cast as the sophisticated man about town than Mae West would be as a nun. Even the stars’ personal lives were subject to manipulation with contrived romances covering...
This time of year, cartoonist Charles Schultz used to present a recurring theme in his Peanuts© comic strip. Lucy (van Pelt) would offer to hold a football for Charlie Brown, and as he ran towards her for the kick-off she would yank the ball away. Charlie Brown always ended up falling on his back. Year...
When I was a teenager, my parents sent me to study Torah in Israel with my great-uncle, Rabbi Elya Lopian. Watching and listening to a man who was a giant of ancient Jewish wisdom opened my eyes to spiritual reality. Large numbers of young men from around the world flocked to study with him at...
Several of our children have brought joy to my wife by skydiving. For you sane readers who know nothing about this activity, it is the peculiar habit of jumping out of perfectly serviceable aircraft. Of course, once you’ve leaped out into the vast blue void there is no going back. I am sure that as...
In company with past presidents, President Obama has discovered that one can get elected by making glorious promises. Fulfilling them is quite another story. Whether it is classified security concerns that one only finds out about once in office or the reality that a president does not have dictatorial powers, campaigning and governing are completely...
