Thomas Crockett

So, here we go again, round and round and round. Stupidity breeds violence. Violence breeds violence. And here's the real shame of it. By looting and setting fires, destroying businesses and wreaking chaos, the protesters are destroying what's most important--the reaso...

I have a dream that a ruler with orange hair wakes up in the year 1649. He hears a knock on his palace door. He opens it and sees standing on the threshold Oliver Cromwell. He's there to read off a long list of the orange-haired man's indiscretions. It takes a while. (...

How grim can it become in America by the end of the year? Let me count the ways. I'm not even talking about the pandemic. I'm leaving the virus out of this grimness since its prolonged existence and threat are uncertainties. Even if it miraculously disappears it won't...

I can't believe I'm the only one thinking this--what I'm about to propose that is. Worse than the pandemic--far worse--is the political mess in which we live. We lack a brilliant mind. We lack leadership. We lack unity. (When was the last time you felt like you lived i...

More than once, I've been asked, "Why do you write?" I've usually answered with a trite response, so trite that, fortunately, I can't remember what I said. Today, while hiking in the Belmont hills, I asked myself the same question, and as I walked I spoke to myself and...

The Twentieth century British writer and theologian C.S. Lewis once wrote, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point." I think of his quote often and never more than while I was writing Thorns in a Realm of Roses and Th...

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, so it stands to reason that I would have an obsession with all things having to do with England, especially its literature and history, right? After all, there's an obvious correlation between growing up in an uneducated, mostly Italian...

Thankfully, it's over.

Or is it?

Will Donald Trump and his legion of followers (I can't bring myself to write "supporters" for a supporter implies one who is intelligent, as opposed to one who follows--as do sheep) "go gentle into that good night"? Or will they "rage, ra...

He never heard the word "No" as a baby or a boy. He groped his first woman when he was just a toddler. He made his first racist comment when he was in preschool, and he first dreamed of cheating the I.R.S. before entering grade school. He is the worst man-child in the...

Though it may be unprecedented in American history that Donald Trump is considering giving his family members national security clearance while they run his business, it is not unprecedented historically. Now that Donald Trump is president-elect, are we about to witnes...