It’s autumn, and drab autumn at that. A summer-long drought means dull colors and rain from a couple nearly-spent hurricanes is bringing down the limbs with the leaves. The schools are in full swing and Congress is heading back to Capitol Hill, also thinking about education. Everyone in government wants to spend more on education, […]

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time in West Virginia. The people I met there were wonderfully unpretentious. A local story then making the rounds ended with the line: “Honest officer, I was just helping that sheep over the fence.” I relate that story less for its barnyard humor than its […]

The college students return this weekend, high school football teams have been practicing for two weeks. Mornings are cool in New England and summer is nearly over. The school year begins next week or the week after, depending on where you live, and school officials have been busy hatching plans to improve local education systems. […]

If you can hear me then the world did not come to an end yesterday when the last solar eclipse of the millennium threw a moonshadow across Europe, supposedly conjoining prophecies by Nostradamus and Malachy of Armagh in an event some said would bring the death of the pope or the Mir space station crashing […]