By Wayne Allensworth October will be over soon. In my part of the world, the weather will noticeably change as November begins. In October, we have Indian Summer days that are very warm, but the temperatures gradually decline. The sun is not as bright, and mornings and evenings are crisp and clear, one’s sight enhanced by the diminished glare, increasing the depth and sharpness of one’s vision...
By Wayne Allensworth These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire…They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory I have my own personal art gallery that I visit and survey every day of my life...
By Wayne Allensworth Militant atheists love to play the scale card in their fervent arguments for meaninglessness, which always exempts their own opinions. Yet if their theories are correct, their opinions are also meaningless. The argument goes like this: Our planet and humanity are tiny specks in a vast universe that renders us terrifyingly insignificant in the vast scheme of infinity. It’s an...
By Wayne Allensworth I loved the original Star Trek series when I was a kid. Sci-fi fascinated me. The show fired my imagination and, I think, in a developed industrial society, the call for exploring a new frontier resonated with the memory of those of us whose ancestors settled an America that was already far behind us. “Exploring new worlds” and the “final frontier” had a poetic ring. America...
By Wayne Allensworth A French TV documentary from the 2000s showed Amazonian rainforest tribesmen reacting to images of the modern world. Their eyes were wide with amazement — and, I think, some sense of sadness, even of foreboding. Their reaction to astronauts on the Moon was one of dismay, much, as I recall, like that of my great grandmother, who viewed the landings as somehow blasphemous. The...
By Wayne Allensworth Our conscious memory is like a mist that covers the summit of a vast, awesome mountain. Brain scientists say that we retain memories of everything that ever happened to us. Under hypnosis, or during a near-death experience, a panorama of one’s life can be drawn out of the mist. And sometimes memories veiled by the unconscious mind can still, they say, affect our conscious...
By Wayne Allensworth William Blake illustration for the Book of Job Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? The Tyger William Blake To the eyes of the man of imagination...
By Wayne Allensworth Rasmussen has been the most reliable pollster since I started paying close attention to polling during President Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign. Unlike most pollsters, Rasmussen is truly independent, not owned by corporate media. In his latest podcast, Rasmussen pollster Mark Mitchell reports that on the question of whether the country is “on the right track or...
By Wayne Allensworth My carpenter father once told me that I was thinking too much. He had taken me to work with him and set out a task for me, and I was moving far too slowly to suit him. I was maybe 12 or so, so it was probably a demolition job. I was pausing, as if I was facing resistance from the wood and sheetrock that opposed me. I was eyeballing the enemy and gauging every blow. Daddy was...
By Wayne Allensworth It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the Apollo 11 lunar module set down in the Sea of Tranquility all those years ago, Americans were fixed on their TV screens, awed, fascinated, and, in some cases, disoriented by the momentous conclusion of the space race. I recall gathering with neighbors around a TV and watching the somewhat grainy broadcast with the sense of adventure...
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