John Mark Reynolds

I love the Green Bay Packers and when they won the Super Bowl it made me happy.This is a hard admission for a college professor to make, because football is not “cool” in the humanities. Baseball is marginally acceptable and the Olympics more so, but the National Football League?There . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s His party, but you can come if you want to, even if, like a football poseur at a Super Bowl party, you forget the cause of the fun.Christmas is not for Christians, it is for the Lord Christ, and Jesus is merry. He loves all people, so if you are not a Christian: “Welcome to the . . . . Continue Reading »

The holiday classic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as sung by Judy Garland may be the closest thing to refuting words with musical performance ever heard. You don’t have to know anything about Garland’s sad life to hear the pain in her voice.She may promise we will muddle through . . . . Continue Reading »

When I was a kid, there was a game show called Family Feud in which Richard Dawson, or Newkirk from Hogan’s Heroes suffering a sad fate (I am not sure whom), would kiss the contestants and host the happenings. A big part of his job was to announce in ponderous tones: “Survey says . . . . . . Continue Reading »

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is sometimes an almost unbearably bad novel, but it keeps selling. I just finished rereading it trying to find what can be redeemed from it beyond the obvious fact that it opposes the evil of collectivism. I need more because it is easy to find a more concise and . . . . Continue Reading »

The day a man reads his last new Sherlock Holmes mystery is a sad one. The stories decline in quality, but to the very last retain some echo of what made the early tales classics of the detective genre.The best Holmes can be reread, but still a man likes to have something new to read during his free . . . . Continue Reading »

The Book of Proverbs says I should look after my flocks, because if I do my goats will take care of me in an economic time of trouble.Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations? When the grass . . . . Continue Reading »

Pity the person who looks at the night sky and sees only hot glowing balls of gas. If he starts to speak, you are likely to get a great deal of hot air, but little romantic glow. Knowing the composition of a thing is good, but it is at least as good to know what a thing is to mankind.Stars are more . . . . Continue Reading »

Consider the polar bear.Really it is quite impossible not to do so, since environmental evangelism is all about us. That this is so is one of the best things about contemporary culture. As a Tolkien-nerd, I have always favored the Ents over Saruman.Traditionalists and liberals may disagree about how . . . . Continue Reading »

Starting something new is hard, but it is especially hard if what you are doing is unprecedented.A business proves this truth.Founding Federal Express before anyone could imagine overnight deliver had all the problems of any new business with the justifiable skepticism of experts who could not . . . . Continue Reading »