Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition–Jacques Barzun William Arthur Ward wrote that the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, the great teacher inspires. Carl Vipperman, my very first history professor at the University of Georgia, died on June 28, 2014, at …Continue Reading »
Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye. W.H. Auden, “At Last the Secret is Out” On a grey Friday, the seventh day of December, 1984, one of my best friends from high school, Chuck Fuller, ended his own …Continue Reading »
Last week I did presentations on history in three middle schools in three different Georgia counties, Gwinnett and Walton in metro Atlanta and Fannin in North Georgia. Two of the programs were for 8th graders and one for 6th graders. I’ve been doing public speaking since I first started this job nearly 16 years ago, …Continue Reading »
The Richard Burton Diaries. Edited by Chris Williams. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. $35.00. 693 pp. “Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I?” So asked Algernon, to Cecily, in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Reading someone else’s letters and diaries can be a great …Continue Reading »
Spencer Tracy: A Biography. By James Curtis. Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, 1,001 pp. $39.95 He’s the kind of actor who makes it look so easy and you think to yourself, I can do that. Go ahead and try it. It’s not easy and you can’t do it. Spencer Tracy is widely considered to be the …Continue Reading »