TagAmericana

The Trophy (An Essay on Ritual and Understanding)

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By Wayne Allensworth The trophy hangs in my office nowadays. When I was a boy at home, for a time it faced my bed. The black centered eyes gazed at me at night, the head looking wise somehow. The thick neck. The “points” of its wide antlers. The ears seemingly on alert. It had hung in our kitchen when I was very young, just over the kitchen table. The kitchen was small, as was the...

Texas Memories on Independence Day

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by Wayne Allensworth March and April are special months for true Texans. March 2 is Texas Independence Day. March 6 is Alamo Day. And April 21 marks Sam Houston’s victory over Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. Being a Texan has always been the bedrock of my identity. I’m an American because I’m a Texan. And my boyhood memories are full of Texas Independence Day commemorations...

Ordinary People (Past and Present) 

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By Wayne Allensworth I was looking through my late father’s personal effects recently and ran across a letter. It wasn’t just any letter, but one he had kept from among his late brother Harold’s belongings. A gunner on a B-24, he died on D-Day in World War II. It was from a young lady named Virginia in his hometown of Houston, Texas. Harold went through training in San Antonio and was...

Today’s Generation Gap Is Not The Fault Of The Young

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By Wayne Allensworth You baby boomers out there will remember the “generation gap” of the 1960’s-70’s, that invisible psychological barrier between many, but far from all, parents and grandparents and what was called “the younger generation.” We had what was known at the time as “a failure to communicate.” Whether it was race, religion, Vietnam, the role of the state, religion, or, most of all...

Along with Youth (A Retrospective)

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By Wayne Allensworth Piles of old magazines, Drawers of boy’s letters And the line of love They must have ended somewhere. Yesterday’s Tribune is gone Along with youth — Ernest Hemingway Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, wrote Wordsworth. But to be young was very heaven. Part of what the poet penned as an “autobiographical poem,” those lines would linger in his heart and mind...

Sing a Poem, Recite a Song

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By Wayne Allensworth For nearly 40 years, your humble observer’s life has been connected in one way or another with Russia, or, better still, the Russian world, that broad cultural expanse that extends across much of Eurasia. And from the beginning of that journey, what drew me in as much as anything about Russia and the Russians were that country’s impressive cultural achievements. A tragic...

Gratitude

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By Wayne Allensworth The old gentleman had told me that he was very grateful. Grateful to God for all the blessings he had experienced in his long and eventful life. Grateful for the friends he had made, and grateful for his family. I had sat across from him and watched his eyes soften and then twinkle a bit. He was pale and declining, but for a moment he almost seemed hale and if not hearty, at...

The Battle for Christmas

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By Wayne Allensworth The ghosts of Christmases past are still very much with us. I’m quite thankful they are, for those “ghosts” remind us of a time that was less sterile and less fragmented. So, it’s no surprise that the proponents of “progress” have made war on those ghosts and on that particular holiday.  Tom Piatak has done great service in his efforts to note and counter what...

An Ornament for Christmas

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By Wayne Allensworth I had to be careful. The ornaments were wrapped, each one in tissue paper and some of them were very old. I had dropped a couple of them and they shattered. As brittle as dried leaves. Their skins had grown thin as they had grown old. Christmas ornaments collected by my mother over time. So many Santa Claus ornaments, old St. Nick in his jolliest attire, thick beard and...

American Meltdown II: The “Strange Devices” of the New America

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By Wayne Allensworth On Veteran’s Day, Tom Piatak reminded us of some veterans who will never be thanked for their service, men who, after heroically performing their duty on the U.S.S. Liberty, have been all but forgotten. None of the hawkish GOP presidential candidates, much less any Democrats, will ever ask for a moment of silence for the men lost, and none have or ever will demand that their...

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