“Mommy he’s not white.”

It was a simple enough statement, spoken innocently by the nine year old daughter of a good friend — a woman of Haitian descent — that I had met for the first time as I joined them for a fun excursion of bowling and video games at a local bowling alley. We played a game on the lanes and I encouraged and coached her daughter on how to best guide the bowling ball to knock down the pins, but her words stuck with me, just as they continue to stick with me today upon writing this…

So I was asked to write an introduction about myself but for the life of me I can’t figure out why. What can I say about myself? I’m a poor kid from Appalachia, descended from coal miners and railroad workers, with unfulfilled dreams of making it as a writer.

Writing has been the only thing I am half-way good at. I’ve been writing since I was about seven or eight years old, typing up stupid little stories on my mom’s typewriter (yes, I’m old enough to remember typewriters, blessed instruments that they were) and despite people telling me that they…

In light of the national furor that has ignited over the past several months, and that has been smoldering in the consciousness of the American psyche for innumerable years, it seems prudent to have a short examination of the often parroted suggestion that has been doled out after seemingly every police shooting: namely that the officer should have “shot them in the leg.”

It seems that many people have watched too many action movies.

They believe, erroneously, that when a police officer has to resort to firing their weapon at a perpetrator they should aim for the person’s legs —…

At the conclusion of his recent vanquishing of UFC stalwart Justin Gaethje just this past Saturday,October the 24th, 2020 at UFC 254, Khabib “the Eagle” Nurmagomedov made an unexpected announcement: he would be retiring from the UFC and from mixed martial arts competition.

At only 32 years of age, Khabib is still very much in his athletic prime. Indeed, he certainly looked it after a hard fought match against the heavy handed Gaethje. …

No one can really say why chess came to be known informally as the game of kings. The name conjures up a more genteel time, of halcyon days of romance between lords and ladies, complete with chivalry, noblesse obliges, and court intrigue. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that monarchs and other royalty would often play the game during their leisure time — something that those less fortunate and not born in gilded cradles rarely got to enjoy.

It was a form of active recreation, something that when done could sharpen the mind, indirectly, for the more…

For those caught off guard with the title above, and are wondering just what, exactly, the umbilicus is, I ask you to do the following — discretely. Lift up your shirt or blouse, just a little, and gaze at that small depression, or protuberance, on your stomach below — be it an innie or an outie, respectively. Behold the belly button, the navel, and yes, the umbilicus — that’s what anatomists refer to it as.

Lest we devolve into navel gazing — itself an odd meditation practice with its roots going back to the ancient Greeks who referred to it…

In my last article on “How to Look at Art” we paid attention to the overall composition of a painting, examining it from top to bottom, with an emphasis on the figure in the foreground, as well as an eye to the events and scenes unfolding in the background. Today we will look at that most basic of all artistic expressions: the line.

This may seem simple enough, that artists draw and use lines, and that when ordered and put together they depict a figure, landscape, object etc. However, many teachers of art appreciation postulate that there are technically five…