In 1973, while  Richard  Nixon was in The White House, I was a few miles away teaching high school students how to become alert readers (ARs). More specifically…

The first time I heard the phrase “Yin and Yang”  or an approximation thereof was in the 1961 song by The Coasters titled Little Egypt (Ying-Yang), which opens…

Some alert readers (ARs) will recall that it has previously been reported in this space that Stanislaw Francizek Musial, aka Stanley Frank Musial, aka Stan The Man…

Some alert readers (ARs) may be interested to learn there was no St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland in 1752; nor anywhere else in the British Isles; nor in any of the British colonies…

ARs of a certain age may remember back when there were two separate holidays in February on the birthdays of U. S. presidents:  Abraham Lincoln’s on the 12^th and George… 

In 1949 George Orwell’s novel 1984 predicted a dystopian society in which government agencies had names that suggested the exact opposite of their actual missions.

Kris Kristofferson’s song “Jesus was a Capricorn” was released in November of 1972 on an album with the same name: Jesus was a Capricorn. He ate organic food.

I recently discovered that the poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was at West Point at the same time in the late 19th century as my grandfather Birch Oliver Mahaffey…

On September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda terrorists highjacked four commercial airliners, three of which were deliberately crashed into two towers of The World Trade Center in...

One of the constants in American politics is the propensity of candidates of all parties to make ridiculous statements promoting themselves and criticizing their opponents.

I’m sure some alert readers (ARs) were among the billions of people worldwide who had never heard of Butler, PA prior to July 13th, when former President Donald Trump...

Alert readers (ARs) of a certain age who are also fans of country music may recall a song recorded in 1971 by Steve Goodman titled, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name."