In Eleanor Farjeon’s The Little Bookroom, there is a fairy tale called “The Giant and the Mite.” It is the story of something so big that it cannot be comprehended—and of something too small to be comprehended. The size of the Giant was the first problem: There was once a Giant who was too big […]
My wife and I recently visited my son and daughter-in-law in Philadelphia. My wife had been to Philadelphia when she was in school, but I had never been there. Among other things, we saw the Liberty Bell and Congress Hall, which served as the seat of government for the first years of our republic. The […]
One of the many benefits of knowing Latin is that it gives you the ability to know what English words mean even when you have never seen them before. But just as important is the ability it gives you to better understand a word you have seen a thousand times. I was walking through the […]
Recently I attended some out-of-town meetings on parochial education. As I left my hotel room to face the long day ahead of me, prepared but a little hesitant to begin the extended and mind-intensive work, I gathered my name tag and folder. I scanned the hotel room one last time to see if I had […]
One of the few books we had in our house when I was young was a set of World Book Encyclopedias. When you looked up something in the encyclopedia you first had to find the volume which housed all the words beginning with the first letter of the word you were searching for. If you […]
In 1929, children’s book author Anne Parrish was visiting Paris. She left her husband at a cafe to visit one of the city’s many bookstores. There she found a copy of Helen Wood’s Jack Frost and Other Stories, a favorite of hers from childhood. She returned to the cafe, sat down, and showed her husband […]
I was talking with a homeschool mother recently and she told me that she had visited Britain. She was particularly impressed with Hadrian’s Wall, which was built during the Roman occupation of the island. Hadrian’s Wall is made of stone and runs some 84 miles, from Wallsend on the River Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway in the […]
Years ago my curly-headed, blue-eyed little boy toddled downstairs one morning in footed pajamas. He watched Daddy fill his briefcase and leave for work. Climbing atop the sofa to wave through the window, he turned to me and said with authority, “Daddy go to work.” He slipped back down the sofa and went about his […]
What does reason have to do with faith? What does the intellectual have to do with the spiritual? What does philosophy have to do with Christianity? These are questions that Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the Church, summed up when he asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question seems to […]
In 79 A.D., the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in eastern Italy covered nearby towns in ash and completely buried many of them. Accounts of the ancient eruption paint a horrific scene: Volcanic pumice rained from the skies and waves of searing hot gas and debris swept over the nearby landscape. Thousands died where they […]