Blog: Not My First Rodeo

TEACHING AS THE MAIN ATTRACTION AT THE TRUE GRITRODEO Howard Roberts Lamar was my adviser in graduate school. Without the true grit he brought to bear on that role, I truly do not know what would have become of me. As this opening statement indicates, with this episode of “Not...

EMPATHY RECLAIMS ITS POWER AND COMES TO OUR RESCUE As God is my witness , I believe that the United States is in peril. Since this is the first time in my life that I have asked a deity to lend me His credibility, I wanted to make sure that...

TIME TRAVEL AT THE BOSTON RADIO RODEO Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom The bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne, “No Man Is an Island” Exactly forty years ago this summer, a very famous advocate...

RODEO’S INSTITUTIONAL KIN—THE SHEEPDOG TRIALS “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our...

The Book of Matthew Stays in the Saddle at the White House Rodeo Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Matthew 5: 5-6 THE WORLD’S ONLY RODEO WITHOUT VARIATION When people watch...

In a different world, the adjective “tragicomic” would have withered from disuse and irrelevance. Some of the time, we would be laughing, and some of the time, we would be weeping, and we would never get confused about whether we should be laughing or weeping. But in the world we...

The professional kinship between historians and rodeo clowns has long gone unnoticed, a situation that has to change. When rodeo clowns see that a rider is in big trouble, tangled in his gear while the animal beneath him is bucking and twisting up a storm, the clowns do not hold...