As some alert readers (ARs) know, I’ve served on the board of The St. Louis Public Library longer than I’ve been in the beer business. When The Schlafly Tap Room opened in 1991, I had already been on the library board nearly seven years, having been first appointed by Mayor Vincent Schoemehl in December of 1984. At the time John...

Like lots of alert readers (ARs) I’m preparing to send a check to the Internal Revenue Service on or before April 18th. And, perhaps like some ARs, I often wonder what happens to the trillions of dollars we collectively send to the federal government every year. We have been told, for example, that none of the $1.2 trillion that was...

Like me, most alert readers (ARs) have probably heard of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that some college students are using to write papers. Before any ARs even ask the question, I want to say for the record that every word in every column I’ve ever written has been my own. I’ve never used ChatGPT for anything and have...

It’s hard to believe that it was just a year ago that the horrors in Ukraine began to unfold.  As may be the case with many alert readers (ARs), my initial shock and disbelief have gradually  turned to numbness.  It’s almost as if I’ve become inured to the barbarism that now seems sickeningly mundane.  I can’t help but be reminded...

In early 2022 the eyes of the sports world were on the Winter Olympics in China. At the end of the year they had turned to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Both of these events were quadrennial spectacles featuring the best athletes in the world in their respective sports. In addition to TV audiences consisting of billions of viewers...

On November 13, 1789 Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes.”  Two and one third centuries later this statement is as true as when it was first written.

One of the perks of office that King Charles III is now able to enjoy is celebrating his birthday twice a year. As some alert readers (ARs) may recall, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who was born on April 21, 1926, traditionally celebrated her official state birthday on the second Saturday in June, when the weather was better. Considering that...

One of the byproducts of the COVID pandemic has been a phenomenon known as The Great Resignation. For a variety of reasons tens of millions of workers have left their jobs and declined to seek other employment. In my humble opinion the greatest resignation of all was that of Britain’s Prince Harry. As some alert readers (ARs) will recall, Harry...

Some alert readers (ARs) may recall that I have on two previous occasions written in this space about the Golden Lane of supporters of women’s suffrage who lined Locust Street during the 1916 Democratic Convention in St. Louis. What I did not realize when I wrote either of these columns was that something else of historic importance happened on Locust...