“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only…” ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, April 30, 1859
~ A Tale of Two Cities: Synopsis ~
It is the year 1775, and France, as well as England, are awash with social ills. Jerry cruncher delivers an urgent message to Jarvis Lorry vie the Dover mail-coach. In the message, he gets instruction to wait at Dover for Lucie Manette, an orphan whose supposedly dead father is alive in France. They both go to Paris a meet Dr. Manette who is now a mad man who makes shoes. The love between daughter and father recall Manette to sanity.
In 1780, Charles Darnay got accused of treason against the English throne. He was suspected of spying. Stryver, his lawyer pleads his case but not until Sydney carton, a useless drunkard comes to his defense leading to his acquittal. Continue reading
Anyone who has read any of my work knows where I stand on the public school system. That is no secret. I remember, many years ago now, one of my main mentors, Rev. Ennio Cugini, made the comment to me that the public school system was a place to keep students up to date on the latest propaganda produced by the communists. When you look at what is being promoted today in these so-called institutions of learning, things like Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project, it is difficult not to agree with Pastor Cugini’s assessment of public schools. 
As innocent children come into the world, their minds are a clean slate, ready to listen, absorb and learn. They trust and follow those that have been assigned the task of leading them to knowledge. For decades, that same innocent trust has been accepted by the parents to feel confident that the American education system is designed to teach basic academic knowledge to their children, while it’s up to the parents to provide love, family values, and moral integrity. 
A recent study released from the National Centers for Education Statistics revealed that public schools have been experiencing a decrease in enrollment. Almost 4% of students were pulled out of public schools in the 2020-2021 school year. This was especially evident in the younger grades. According to the report, “Preschool enrollment dropped by 22 percent, and enrollment of kindergarteners fell by 9 percent.” 
Thirty-odd years ago, I taught adult basic education two nights a week in a minimum-security prison in Hazelwood, North Carolina.
In 1690, Massachusetts Bay Colony embarked upon a short-lived experiment in unbacked paper money. It did not go well.
I have written about Critical Race Theory before, and I probably will again. It is such a pernicious world view that it deserves all the negative publicity possible. At this point, several state legislatures around the country have bills in their legislatures to ban the teaching of this theory in their public schools and, while I have no use for the public school system, I do applaud these efforts. At least some in these state legislatures recognize what a horrendous insult to real education this leftist drivel really is. 
Vive la différence between British and French culture in two of the greatest playwrights in history. Britain has a rich literary heritage, but Shakespeare, “the Bard,” is widely recognized as the greatest writer in the English language. In France, a number of writers — Voltaire, Hugo, Proust, Flaubert — can compete for that title, but Molière is viewed as the most acclaimed writer of French comedy and satires, even more heralded than later satirists like Voltaire and Anatole France.
According to Tami Forman at 
Researchers at Harvard University just released findings from their new study showing positive outcomes for homeschooled students. Writing in The Wall Street Journal last week, Brendan Case and Ying Chen of the Harvard Human Flourishing Program concluded that public school students “were less forgiving and less apt to volunteer or attend religious services than their home-schooled peers.” 
There is a lot to be frustrated about as 2021 concludes. Some places are back in lockdown over rising coronavirus cases, while others are re-imposing previous restrictions and introducing new ones—including my city.
February 5 marks the birth of the American who had the greatest hand in what became the 4th Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures – James Otis. Unfortunately, “one of the most passionate and effective protectors of American rights” is too-little remembered today.
On March 25, 1965, at the conclusion of the brutally consequential march from Selma to Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a speech titled “Our God Is Marching On!” He spoke to a crowd of twenty-five thousand people on the grounds of the Alabama state capitol, in view of the office window of the segregationist governor George Wallace. The address is not among King’s best-known, but it is among the most revelatory. King argued that, in the decade since the bus boycotts in that city, a new movement had emerged and an older order was starting to fall away. 
