James Bowman

The life of George Washington was already thoroughly moralized during his lifetime — by which I mean that his life story was turned into what medieval writers called an exemplum, or a story for the moral instruction and edification of his fellow-countryme…

Yet however much we may like The stoic manner in which The classical authors wrote Only the young and the rich Have the nerve or the figure to strike The lacrimae rerum note W.H.

Courage, said Ernest Hemingway, is “grace under pressure” — which is also a good description of the quality that people once most valued in a leader.

“Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy, and it weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.

Crafty old Steven Spielberg.

In 26-year old Curry Barker’s hit movie Obsession, the ironically-named Bear (Michael Johnston) is a young man who works in a music store and is too shy to ask Nikki (Inde Navarrette), his pretty co-worker, to go out with him.

The sub-head of the New York Times review of The Devil Wears Prada 2 reads as follows: “In this sequel, Andy (Anne Hathaway) and Miranda (Meryl Streep) encounter a series of crises that set the stage for a larger existential catastrophe.”

“Paul Ehrlich Was Always Wrong, Never in Doubt” wrote Jason Riley for The Wall Street Journal on the death in March at age 93 of the professor whose best-selling book, The Population Bomb (1968) turned out to be a dud.

At the movies as in fiction I am, like most people, a willing believer in happy endings.

It’s almost enough to make one believe in that much-mentioned but too-often elusive “long arc of history” which, according to Martin Luther King Jr (not to mention Barack Obama), “bends towards justice.”

From: H.M.