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The Gresham Goodwill off Burnside has a sign in its parking lot that says you

Salute

When England battled France in the 1400s for control of the French throne, the French had a grisly way of celebrating their victories. The English were renowned for their archers, both their numbers and their abilities. To denigrate this, after the French won a battle, they would cut off English archers’ fingers, and a few […]

Review–Don’t Shake Your Miracle

Ben Rosenfeld brought many talents with him when he emigrated from Russia to the United States as a boy. One of those was a talent for academics. Ben was once accepted into a PhD program, but he had the good sense to give up the unstable career of academia for the solid financial underpinning of […]

A Barrel of Jesus

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Farmstyle Immunizations

At various times, we’ve observed my mom cutting raw chicken with her bare hands, drying said hands on a dishtowel, putting the dishtowel back, and continuing on with her day–no soap involved. Despite this questionably unsanitary culinary preparation practice, my parents are rarely sick. This laissez-faire approach to health had me wondering: with what other […]

Stupid Musical Interlude

The book I’ve been listening to–Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwell, about Henry V and his fight to claim his right, in his opinion, to the throne of France–plays a stupid musical interlude after every chapter. This interlude lasts for 15-30 seconds, only at the tail end of which does the narrator start up again. The book […]

Appellant Class of Snarky Zen

Chatting with Verizon reps is like talking to someone with a traumatic brain injury and short-term memory loss. You can have credits; you cannot have credits; you can have credits; you cannot have credits. The promotions honoring/denying gauntlet feels like riding a wheel spinning at a velocity high enough to separate bone from muscle, the […]

As for Me and My Horse

My father-in-law, Tim, created a piece of string art years ago that hangs on a wall in my wife’s old room. In addition to the geometric shapes created from stretched strings secured by crafting nails, the piece presents a secondary use for said crafting nails: a Biblical saying (Joshua 24:15), formed from bunching the crafting […]