Columns

Gentle reader, our holiday hiatus is at an end, and we now resume our weekly Friday communication with you.

As you will recall, our last column of 2015 was one of reminiscences of Christmas parties of years past.

My daughter received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the summer of 2014.

An anthropology student at East Tennessee State University, she was able to go on a three-week archaeological dig at Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Leaving her at Tri-Cities Regional Airport for the first leg of her journey was one of the hardest things I’ve done as a parent.

Have we done everything to keep her safe from pickpockets?

My baby’s flying over an ocean! For a long time!

Gentile reader, there are times when we wonder which of the two “Big Tens” are getting the greater workouts with less understanding. By the “Big Tens” we are, of course, referring to the Ten Commandments set out in the Old Testament, and the Ten Amendents to the U.S. Constitution, commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights.

At a cultural moment when celebrity trumps character in America, it took a humble priest from Argentina to remind us of the better angels of our nature — and of the kind of nation we must aspire to build in the 21st century.

Pope Francis arrived in our public square as a self-described migrant, and for a refreshing week his message of compassion and justice drowned out the divisive, ugly, sometimes hateful rhetoric of this political season.