Parts of Speaking Publishing

 Conservative news media, more than mainstream and progressive, is awash with the reveal of Anthony Fauci's "diary" during the "COVID YEARS."  Diary implies a personal book; these were notes kept on a government-owned computer, which is why Rand Paul was able to get them. considering the content he recorded on those machines, I can only ask one question: What was he thinking? Why in the world would you put personal gushes about celebrities paying attention to you on a work computer? Some of the stuff sounds like the ravings of a teenager.  Even I know better than that! Emails also should be as oblique and impersonal as possible. I got embroiled in a lawsuit once. I know that anything on a work computer is fair game for lawyers.  The fact that he kept those records shows he wasn't as smart as we were led to believe, and we can probably extend the lack of smarts to what he did or didn't know about COVID.

For several years I have heard, and used, the quotation, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” For the longest time I thought William Faulkner said it. He said something else about the past. The past is never dead . It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence. And to prove we can easily get quotations and their attributions wrong, I thought that was “In the South, the past is not even past.” No, he wasn’t talking about the South then. He does have a great quote about Mississippi. To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi . That is so true about fiction writing (and other matters), I want to stop there for a minute. It applies to just about anywhere you could write about—Dalton, GA or Southwestern Virginia, Maryland suburbs of D.C. or Los Angeles, CA. But I think Faulkner is getting at the need to see a place different from th...

 t is late July in Northwestern Georgia. The forecast today is for a high of 94 degrees. I have walked my dog already by 9:15, so that he and I can avoid the panting and the perspiration that yesterday sucked us dry of energy. I sit inside with two fans and some indirect air conditioning on me, with no plans to go outside for more than a couple of minutes today. Tomorrow should be better. August is always a little better with the heat here, with shorter days of sunlight and leaves starting to say, "It's enough, we will give up our lives." Yesterday I pulled up my beans. They have yielded, but I did a poor job of creating a frame for them to expand. I may plant another two rows, and plan for a better skeleton of sticks. The okra lives, and the peppers, but tomatoes languished this year and zucchini and cucumbers seemed prefer May and June. Rain would be welcomed. But I remember that it falls on the just and unjust, and that rain does not make the choice of who it falls on ...

Let us descend now into the blind world,” Began the Poet, pallid utterly; “I will be first, and thou shalt second be.” And I, who of his colour was aware, Said:”How shall I come, if thou art afraid, Who’rt wont to be a comfort to my fears?” And he to me:”The anguish of the people Who are below here in my face depicts That pity which for terror thou hast taken. Let us go on, for the long way impels us.” Thus he went in, and thus he made me enter The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. There, as it seemed to me from listening, Were lamentations none, but only sighs, That tremble made the everlasting air. And this arose from sorrow without torment, Which the crowds had, that many were and great Of infants and of women and of men. To me the Master good: “Thou dost not ask What spirits these, which thou beholdest, are? Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther, That they sinned not; and if they merit had, ‘Tis not enough, because they had not baptism Which is the portal of the Fa...

 Islam is evil.  That is not saying every Muslim is evil. It is saying the worldview, system of beliefs, and expected behaviors are evil.  https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/07/iran-shutters-landmark-church/ There are some practices that are more based in the cultures (such as FGM --if you don't know what that is, you can look it up, and child sexual exploitation) but the religion of Islam does not stop those practices and in some ways facilitates them in those cultures. I spent some time in a "secular" Muslim country. There is no religious freedom, although there is freedom to be indifferent to Islam in one's practice. But conversion is persecuted.

 This writer addresses some questions I have dealt with. What is beauty? Where does beauty live? How is it achieved? and should we give all for beauty? https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/01/being-christian-writer-costly-virginia-woolf-christina-rossetti/