While having a drink with a friend in a neighborhood bar a few years ago, a distraught-looking woman approached us and started chatting. We engaged in typical barroom banter until she introduced herself as the mother of a guy I had met in the same bar almost two years before. […]
Guy Ciarrocchi: Why Americans are called to give thanks
Unity of purpose. Humility before God. Gratitude for what we have been given. Giving thanks. We are called to give thanks for our great, blessed, albeit imperfect nation. I join Washington, Lincoln, and others in giving my thanks to God. No, this isn’t a history lesson. Nor is my purpose […]
Thom Nickels: UFOs — fact or fiction?
What is a UFO? In the New York Times bestseller, UFOs by Leslie Kean, many government officials and pilots go on the record with reports of sightings, but say that the sightings are not necessarily alien spaceships. While most sightings — nearly 95 percent — are explainable, Kean believes enough […]
Thom Nickels: Who is an artist?
Philadelphia’s varied art scene runs the gamut from professional to dilettante.
By Thom Nickels
Seth Higgins: Brat Beware – What Harris and the Democrats don’t get about the album of the summer
In under two months, Americans witnessed President Biden’s pitiful debate performance, the near assassination of former President Trump, Biden’s withdrawal from the race, the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the selection of both major parties’ vice-presidential candidates, and Vice President Harris’ lock on her party’s nomination for president. This maelstrom […]
Thom Nickels: A Puritan’s Nightmare in Paradise
For years now I have heard stories about Key West. Key West, after all, is the land of Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway, in fact, called Key West “the St. Tropez of the Poor.” I finally made it to Key West and saw for myself the mythic party land […]
Thom Nickels: The AIDS epidemic in Philadelphia, forty years later
Looking back on the pandemic that decimated the gay community.
By Thom Nickels
The Force Awakens in Philly with the FanExpo’s Symphony of Quirks
Professional cosplay, 100 swords, and an abnormally high volume of accordion players.
By Liv DeMarco
Christine Flowers: The duplicity of the Bryn Mawr Film Institute
Art should not have to bow to political bullying — from the right or the left.
By Christine Flowers
Stu Wesbury: Disappearing fathers – a destructive American reality
It’s not “judgmental” to push for something we know is beneficial to children and families: fathers’ involvement in their lives.
By Stu Wesbury