Atlanta, GA

April 9, 2026

“We appreciate beautiful things not for their utility only, but also for what they are in themselves; or more plausibly, for how they appear in themselves.”

- Roger Scruton

Brittain Hall is what a college building should be. Its neo-Medieval tower, Gothic cloister, and dormitory wings anchor East Campus at Georgia Tech.

Set back from the street, it’s approached across a classic lawn and a traditional quad. Doric pillars adorn the forecourt. On each, a corbel bust depicts a scientist or artist representing the subjects taught at Tech when Brittain Hall was built.

Several Tech departments collaborated on the construction. The School of Ceramics manufactured tiles that formed the tower floors, the Textile College made the tapestries gracing the President’s Dining Room, and Mechanical Engineering provided wrought iron fixtures in the main hall.

The Architecture department, led by Harold Bush-Brown, designed the building. One of its students created the stained glass for the south window, and carved the sculptures extolling Tech’s advocacy of science.

Bush-Brown was a bridge, from the architectural equivalent of charming Parisian side streets to that of an expressway wiping out an urban waterfront.

Apogee of Architecture

Classical education considered architecture an art. Beauty was not only the objective; it was objective… using symmetry, harmony, proportion, and balance to convey internal essence thru external forms.

Two prominent Atlanta firms were largely responsible for Georgia Tech’s earliest edifices. Bruce and Morgan was known for distinctive towered county courthouses around the region, which likely inspired Tech Tower. Within a few years they produced renditions at Samford Hall at Auburn, Tillman Hall at Clemson, and the Bell Tower at Agnes Scott.

Beside Tech Tower sits the stately Carnegie Building of 1906, designed by Morgan and Dillon to house the school library. Among the more elegant edifices on campus, this Beaux-Arts building was among many monuments to Andrew Carnegie’s desire to fund eponymous libraries.

Featuring dignified ornament, noble inscriptions, and classical accents, Bush-Brown’s Guggenheim Aeronautics Building epitomizes the historicist style and Jacobean aesthetic of the original campus. Unfortunately, it’s about to be replaced by something resembling a glass semi-trailer .

Elegance and refinement predominated at Tech and around Atlanta between the wars. They were mostly inspired by one man.

Francis Smith, who at 23 was younger than many students today, oversaw the nascent years of Tech’s School of Architecture. In retrospect, his tenure inspired the apogee of architecture at Georgia Tech… and coincided with its final flowering around the West.

Smith arrived in Atlanta six years before the guns of August. As it did to much of civilization, the First World War shattered conceptions of beauty, and whether it was worth pursuing. Smith insisted it was. With him, Georgia Tech welcomed the Beaux-Arts curriculum from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied.

Smith fathered the Southern School of Classicism. Professional paternity included student Philip Shutze, who designed (among countless gems across north Georgia) the Swan House and the Temple in Atlanta, the Atlanta Academy of Medicine, the East Lake Golf Clubhouse, and Hirsch Hall at the University of Georgia.

Shutze, whom Henry Hope Reed called “America’s greatest living classical architect”, essentially rebuilt Atlanta during the 1910s and 1920s. Setting a precedent that persisted several decades, Smith and his faculty designed many structures at Georgia Tech.

His legacy includes the original campus architectural plan in the classic style of the Beaux-Arts era. Among his heirlooms was his initial conception… the Whitehead Infirmary erected in 1911.

Smith’s Students produced elaborate renderings worthy of the Grand Prix competition at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Dr. Elizabeth Dowling… who was one of my professors when I studied architecture at Tech… compiled many of these drawings in One Hundred Years of Architectural Education: 1908-2009, co-published with Lisa Thompson.

Architectural Revolutionaries

Bush-Brown retained the tradition… until the Second World War, after which Modern architecture mauled the West. This was when the “International Style” emigrated from Europe. Carrying its baggage were Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and other cultural Jacobins who despised the bourgeois (whatever that was).

At Georgia Tech, Paul Heffernan led the revolution. A Tech graduate who returned after earning a Masters under Gropius at Harvard, Heffernan presided over the Modernist conquest of Tech’s style. After being trained in (and awarded for) Beaux Arts design, Heffernan began littering the campus with Bauhaus eyesores.

Established at Weimar the year the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the Bauhaus School arose from the rubble of the First World War… among the first artistic compounds of the Avant-Garde. Seeing the shambles the war made of Germany, its young architects were essentially ordered to start from scratch.

Millions were dead, the Kaiser had fled, the Czar was toppled, and the Hapsburgs were deposed. Revolution was in the wind. In the midst of upheaval, bourgeois was out… which stripped rebuilding of antebellum beauty.

And why not? To these architectural revolutionaries, the bourgeoisie caused the catastrophe. The last thing the young socialists wanted was to replicate the culture that caused the war.

“The intellectual bourgeois”, Walter Gropius proclaimed, “was unfit to be the bearer of German culture”. He’d tailor a new architecture to clothe the proletariat.

Gropius founded Bauhaus, which infiltrated Tech when the Institute hired several professors who’d been his students. Its International “Style” (if that’s the right word) relied on rigid lines, austere aesthetic, bland color, and extreme emphasis on function over form. What Roger Scruton called “the cult of utility” was taking over.

Gables, pitches, cornices, and eaves were out - discarded as emblems of “crowns” and nobility that had been swept away. Structural elements remained exposed, unblemished by decorative ornament, appealing facades, or attractive features that exalted the spirit.

Like God, the spirit was dead. Bauhaus buried it. Its acolytes emphasized a grinding “equality”, often expressed in harsh angles, sheer facades, and flat tops (hardly “functional” under heavy precipitation). Gropius detested high ceilings and wide halls, which he considered wasteful grandiosity modernity must (literally) suppress.

“Columns” connoted classicism, so were redesigned and rebranded as “pilotis”, or “piles”, which sounds more workmanlike. Grand entrances were non-existent. Instead, nondescript openings offered almost surreptitious access… as if to sneak entrants into a dystopian speakeasy.

Extolling the efficacy of modern materials, exterior walls went unclothed, boasting the naked prowess of concrete, glass, and steel. To the modernist, “beauty” and “truth” lay in unconcealed architecture… industrial assaults on the visual sense. Fittingly, the actual Bauhaus compound resembled a prison.

Ostensibly constructed for the proletariat, Bauhaus buildings seem deliberately designed to repel people. Even its skyscrapers are squat boxes of sheer walls and stale palettes. Yet we’re all supposed to pretend these sensual affronts aren’t hideous.

Modern architects subjugate form to function. Historically, as in soaring cathedrals, cloistered convents, airy universities, or stately banks, form connoted function. But it wasn’t buried by it. Building design reflected the activity inside, so that passers-by knew what it was… and were enticed by beauty to want to go in.

Particularly in the post-war era, everything changed. Beauty wasn’t “useful”, so it became irrelevant, and had to go. Even (or especially) the upper crust went along. Corporate chieftains, political potentates, and society’s dignitaries accepted whatever glass box, corrugated concrete, ribbon-windowed outrages celebrity “starchitects” told them to inhabit.

Frying Pan to Fire

When Heffernan became architectural chef at Georgia Tech, one of his first recipes was an awful kitchen. The Architecture Building is a Bauhaus abomination. As one who had to study in that place, I wondered if maybe it were built to show students what “style” to avoid.

Heffernan would add other soul-crushing atrocities, including the Hinman Building, Rich Computer Center, Gilbert Library, and Textile Building (mercifully razed a couple decades ago) that anchored his “Academic Village”.

Across from the library, the Skiles Classroom is a modernist hate crime committed by Thomas Bradbury. Bradbury designed many awful edifices around Atlanta, mostly bureaucratic buildings surrounding the State Capitol. But considering the source, his Greek Revival Governor’s Mansion is somewhat respectable.

From the Bauhaus frying pan, Tech fell into the Brutalist fire. Monstrous bunkers like the Chemistry compound and mammoth Physics building were windowless penitentiaries for overstressed students.

This was an age when design was wayward around the West. Not only was Atlanta not immune; one of Tech’s “illustrious” alums did considerable damage to the center of the city.

John Portman’s hulking hotels with enclosed gallerias and towering atriums are people-repellent blights that turn their backs on central cities their existence helped exterminate.

His Peachtree Center in Atlanta and its Embarcadero twin in San Francisco, the Renaissance Center in Detroit and the Bonaventure in Los Angeles, are black holes that suck pedestrians off the sidewalks.

To ensure they stay inside, Portman incorporated Le Corbusier’s “streets in the sky” as hamster chutes connecting his insular enclaves. Often filling entire city blocks, his mammoth buildings feature extended stretches of stark street-side walls.

Portman’s interiors are disorienting and isolating, often featuring circumferential balconies soaring hundreds of feet toward receding ceilings. Glass elevators connect concrete floors, which hover over lobbies laden with retail and restaurants that keep inhabitants from engaging with the city fabric these structures do so much to destroy.

Fortifying the Frontiers

Yet there are signs of revival at Georgia Tech and around Atlanta. An expansive green replaced the demolished Textile building. East of campus, Tech has watered Midtown and facilitated its flowering. Its colleges fertilized businesses, residences, and hotels in an area that was a den of derelicts when I was a student.

Like ancient Rome fortifying its frontiers, Tech has spent recent decades securing these surroundings. Carrying Fifth Street from the main campus, a landscaped bridge is an esplanade to an urban village Georgia Tech has built (and continues to construct).

At the far end, Philip Schutze’s Neo-Georgian Biltmore Hotel… now owned by the Georgia Tech Foundation and renovated since I was in school… is a nod to history and a worthy object to which neighboring buildings can aspire.

Unfortunately, they don’t. Most Midtown edifices replicate the boxy hives of glass, concrete, and steel that make cities sterile and indistinguishable… rectangular silos of corporate offices, academic dens, or luxury apartments stacked thirty stories into the sky.

But unlike many enclaves that tarnish downtowns, these structures redeem themselves by facilitating exchange with the street. For one thing, people live in them. Shops and cafés adorn ground level, facilitating foot traffic to and from surrounding sidewalks.

Midtown Atlanta is bustling, which is a debt it owes Georgia Tech. At a time when the wider culture seems to be seeking dead-ends, Tech’s architecture may have turned a corner. I hope that’s a harbinger.

Ears and Eyes

Humans are instinctively attracted to harmony, symmetry, ornament, and order. Modern architecture upends (and insults) all of that. It detests beauty, and abhors true art. Its practitioners strive to be esoteric, to baffle the bourgeoisie (a word they loved to wield), and to reject the notion that a light touch can do heavy lifting.

Most design since the Second World War wasn’t demanded or desired; it was inflicted and imposed. The whole point was to flaunt “novelty”, perplex the proles, and revolutionize the public realm. Architects (like most modern artists) aimed less to uplift and inspire than to shock, disorient, or disturb.

One needn’t be an “expert” to recognize obvious beauty. Mozart symphonies, Michelangelo sculptures, and Shakespearean sonnets don’t need pretentious symposiums or academic tracts to convince us of their value.

Only ugliness requires dissertations and lectures. Beauty simply seduces ears and eyes, and captures hearts that long to feel.

JD

Atlanta, GA

April 5, 2026

What is Truth?

It can be hard to know.

Not because it doesn’t exist, but because it’s usually too distant, vast, and complicated to comprehend. Or… like an ocean to a fish or a forest to a tree… it’s too close, and all-encompassing. As Chesterton said, it’s easy to be blind to a thing, so long as it’s big enough.

What we think we see is often a consoling mirage, a portrayal we create to validate our assumptions. It’s tempting (and often reasonable) to base unequivocal conclusions on preconceived notions.

And why not? In some sense, that’s what preconceived notions are for: handy guides to keep us from wandering in the desert. But we tend to rend our garments whenever they’re refuted.

We all have biases that beg to be affirmed. Most are harmless, some are helpful, many are dangerous.

To keep from being singed, we sometimes hide our candle under a bushel, to curtail controversial opinions so that we keep receiving our pieces of silver. When suspected of holding unapproved perspectives, it’s easiest to deny three times we ever deviated.

It’s convenient to follow the crowd and go with the flow. To preserve professional status or personal clout, we’d best join the chorus… and choose Barabbas over Christ.

That’s human nature. When given a choice, most of us opt not to carry a cross. I’m no different.

Their Own Reward

I’ve spent most of my life on the prescribed path. College… graduate school… corporate career… leafy suburbs. For most of that time, aside from intimate family and close friends, I’d kept my opinions private.

For two decades, my writing was mostly personal diaries, family stories, and travel journals. Only in recent years did more controversial topics enter these essays, tenuously transported on the ignorance of an ass.

Regarding religion and politics… which converge on Good Friday as on no other day… my opinions are occasionally welcomed with waving palms. But they’re usually met with rhetorical scourging.

That’s fine, and to be expected. These are acrimonious subjects we’re not supposed to discuss, except to repeat approved pronouncements from our appointed priests.

It’s understandable that “respectable” society avoids contentious themes. We don’t want relationships ruined over political disputes that are often irrelevant, and typically beyond our control.

Regardless the intensity of our concern for some distant war, domestic policy, or religious dogma, there’s usually little we can do about it.

But deliberation and discussion can be their own reward. Philosophical topics would be less interesting if they weren’t controversial. And they’re engaging because they matter, whether for the wisdom they instill, the damage they do…

or the hope they provide.

Spreading the Word

On the holiest day of the year, we dispense with Good Friday gloom, and exult in Easter optimism. Let’s wash our hands of rancor, to focus inward on family and upward to God.

From the Resurrection to the Ascension, the followers of Christ were reacquainted with the Redeemer, humbling themselves before the Conqueror of death. Having been confined to the Chosen People for two thousand years, it was time for the Word of God to be transmitted to the world.

When Christ was crucified, the Roman Empire was nascent. Like the US after the Second World War, it was energetic, expansive, and unrivaled. Its money was good, its military strong, its competitors subdued. For another century it continued to expand, till decadence and hubris slowly withered it away.

It’s said that with God there are no coincidences. In the time of Christ, Rome approached its apogee. Maybe He came when he did because His path had been paved.

Literally.

Roman roads and the Augustinian peace permitted Word to spread. Never before had the known world been so seamlessly connected. After the Resurrection, Christ’s disciples could multiply adherents by traveling vast distances with (relatively) few internal hindrances or foreign threats.

And they did. From Jerusalem, they scattered far afield.

We know Peter and Paul ultimately went to Rome. Andrew evangelized what’s now the Ukraine, and probably Greece. James went west to Spain. Thomas traveled east, to Parthia and India. Bartholomew may also have gone to India, but almost certainly arrived in Arabia.

A Church established, the message was magnified. After a couple centuries of periodic persecution, it seeped into the crannies and crevices of the declining empire. In the 4th century, Constantine adopted and adapted Christianity to Rome.

Net and Sieve

In large measure, Gibbon ascribed the fall of Rome to the rise of Christianity. Perhaps.

But many factors precipitate an imperial collapse. Sometimes, as Nietzsche said, that which is bound to fall deserves a push. If the Church gave Rome a shove, it also served as a net, and a sieve… retaining seeds of revival as it let degraded soil wash away.

Regeneration was tedious. It began when the Church embedded belief in the sanctity of all human life. This was based on a worldview rooted in reason, that acknowledged an orderly universe created by God, with each person crafted in His image.

Unlike some random creation subject to arbitrary whims, such a rational system was susceptible to observation, experiment, and study. This formed the basis for modern science, of which Church scholars were at the forefront.

Their efforts laid the foundations of Canon Law, from which emerged Western notions of human rights and the rule of law. Five centuries before Adam Smith, Catholic priests developed precepts of free-market economics. To facilitate scientific exploration and philosophic inquiry, the Church invented the university.

Today these achievements are mostly forgotten, attributed elsewhere, or overtly denigrated. The Catholic Church (and Christianity itself) is routinely ridiculed as anachronistic and oppressive. It hasn’t helped that since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has engaged in what seem to be concerted efforts to undermine itself.

Ostensibly “opening its windows” to welcome the world, the Church instead stooped to its level. Sacramental reverence and ecclesiastical credibility have collapsed as earthly concerns superseded the salvation of souls.

But even with the Church in shambles or consigned to catacombs, we’re certain it’ll survive. Christ affirmed the Gates of Hell wouldn’t prevail against it, and that He’d be with us till the end of time, as the Way and the Life.

And the Truth.

Happy Easter.

JD

Atlanta, GA

April 2, 2026

[NB: Previous installments in this series are here, here, and here]

When fear is fomented, the first thing most people do is panic. At least they did it in the right order.

Possibly excepting the Great Depression, the official response to covid was the biggest peacetime cataclysm in American history. It was certainly the largest “Public Health” calamity.

The scale and scope of the damage was unmatched. Like the Depression, covid was a government-induced disaster that permanently upended the world we’d known. No one was unaffected, and implications will reverberate far into the future.

It likely launched the Fourth Turning, the chaotic “winter” phase of historic cycles Strauss and Howe described three decades ago. This is a period of convulsion and upheaval, when war, riots, and economic collapse wipe away institutions that rose from the previous trough. As in earlier exigencies during the 1940s, 1860s, and 1770s, it’s characterized by persistent “emergencies” and perpetual crisis.

Roberta Modugno observed that since the sixteenth century, “exceptions to law and morality during a state of emergency seem to have become the ordinary practice of governments.” From 9/11… to the Financial Crisis… to covid… to the latest idiocy in the Middle East, that’s been the theme of the 21st Century.

This decade it’s been amplified, with the tone set from the moment it opened.

Burst Sewer Main

The Constitution doesn’t permit presidents (or any person or body in the U.S. government) to declare a “state of Emergency” to do whatever they want. “Public health” hacks have no authority to issue edicts regulating where people can go, what they must inject, or whether fabrics must cover their face.

Yet, like wastewater from a burst sewer main, authoritarian “guidelines”, restrictions, mandates, and directives poured forth to combat a bug, and did indelible damage without doing a damn bit of good.

Lives were ruined, yet deaths continued... often from causes misattributed to “covid”. Like the Times Square “Debt Clock”, they were relentlessly reported. Daily counts crawled morbidly beneath solemn anchors on the evening news.

But behind the headlines, the collateral carnage piled up (and continues to mount)…without benefit of televised tallies. At least a year of most people’s lives was ripped away, regardless their viral vulnerability or risk tolerance.

Loneliness spread, depression soared, unemployment flourished, opportunities vanished, careers stalled, and suicides spiked. Cancers went unscreened and heart disease undetected. Loved ones were told to stay apart. Elderly relatives died alone.

How many early deaths resulted, or will be caused in coming years? Who knows? But few will be attributed to covid policy, or receive a moment of silence… except from perpetrators who’d prefer we forget.

And for what? Countless charts documented covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among and within most every state, county, country, and town. Within or across regions, rates rose or fell almost simultaneously or in tandem, regardless the prescribed policy. None of “mitigation measures” seemed to mitigate anything, except the normal pleasures of daily life.

Lockdowns were always counter-productive, cruel, and lethal. They precipitated loneliness, inflation, high anxiety, deep depression, and a proliferation of drugs, shootings, suicides, and unattributed diseases that weren’t detected or diagnosed.

“Mitigation measures” hit societies like a sledgehammer. Relative vulnerability was routinely ignored. The young and the healthy were treated as if they were old and infirm. In a perverse inversion, children were forced to sacrifice for their elders. Schools closed when nursing homes were sealed. It was like giving everyone chemo to protect a few from cancer.

In most states, these top-down, one-size fits all approaches were applied to a virus that was unusually transparent about who it afflicted. But data was irrelevant and science didn’t matter. Healthy people were redefined as “asymptomatic”, implying everyone was ill and all were lethal.

How Science Works

The worst realization of the covid era was how acquiescent the American people were in surrendering their rights. I wouldn’t have thought it could be so easy.

For perceived “safety”, Americans quickly yielded or diluted even what we’d think matters most. Church, school, travel, family gatherings, friendly dinners, irreplaceable moments in a child’s life, and the last ones in an adult’s.

To the extent these activities remained, many were diluted by “distancing”, carved by plexiglass, or relegated to “virtual events”. The sterility of Zoom replaced the vitality of life.

Neighbor turned against neighbor. Families divided. Friendships were lost. As people were trained to treat their fellow men as disease vectors, suspicion rose, trust eroded, and the fabric of society frayed.

Social gatherings, even employment, became contingent on whether we’d consumed an experimental drug. Dissenters were precluded from work, banned from businesses, excluded from school, or prohibited from entering most establishments.

Millions applauded this apartheid, shunning skeptics as anti-science, grandma-killing vermin. After all, “The Science” said so.

But that’s not how science works. As with any diagnosis or scientific evaluation, the role of “expert” is to assess the situation, provide perspective, and offer suggestions.

Yet determining what to do is an individual philosophical decision, not a collective medical one. It’s not the role of “public health” bureaucrats to require remedies for millions of “patients” they’ve never met.

Yet most Americans went along. They wore masks, took their medicine, kept six feet apart, followed floor arrows on grocery store aisles… and tattled on neighbors who defied the farce.

It was as if we were trapped a giant Kafka novel, with scenes choreographed by Heironymus Bosch. It seemed like it would go on forever. And it might have, had Vladimir Putin not cured covid by changing the subject.

Balalaika from Borscht

When Russian tanks rolled west, the propaganda did a pirouette. A Wall Street expression has it that if everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking at all. This phenomenon is obvious in recent years, when unanimous brains idled in mindless unison.

Moral indignation shifted from demonizing covid dissidents to renouncing Russia. Ukraine flag emojis replaced syringe images. Several hundred replicas of this foreign flag fluttered in Congress!

Among bystanders who couldn’t distinguish a balalaika from borscht, bursts of blue and yellow became the new face masks, implying that anyone not displaying them must be indifferent or ignorant.

But about multi-faceted conflicts in distant lands between people we’ll never meet, it’s OK to be ambivalent. In fact, it’s probably smart. After all, if incessant meddlers minded their own business, most foreign fiascos wouldn’t arise. Had the US government stayed on its side of the ocean, this one wouldn’t have.

Hunk of Meat

Albeit to a lesser degree than many countries that were completely made up, the Ukraine is an amorphous construct. Even its modern Slavonic name means “on the edge”, what Americans might call a “frontier”.

As with Poland or the Punjab, it’s historically been a hunk of meat buzzed by hungry flies, and regularly contested by rival dogs. Over the centuries, Russians, Ottomans, and Mongols tugged it east, whereas Poles, Austrians, and Americans pulled it west.

On occasion, the hounds drop the slab, show their teeth, and turn on each other. Which is why canines from distant neighborhoods should stay on their leash.

The Ukraine is not merely a breadbasket of Europe. It’s its cradle. It’s the land through which the greatest number of European peoples approached their eventual homeland. It’s also the fertile crib of Mother Russia.

In a mirror image of Cuba sixty years ago, the Russians consider the Ukraine to be within their sphere of influence. For some reason, the Americans insist it’s part of their own.

It’s possible neither are right. But the Americans are certainly wrong. The US has no business being anywhere near the Ukraine.

Poking the Bear

Almost twenty percent of Ukrainians are ethnic Russians, and forty percent are culturally Russian. When the Soviet Union was founded, the heavily Russian Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lugansk were appended to eastern Ukraine. A few decades later, Khrushchev added another one when he gifted Crimea.

At the time, these decisions seemed relatively inconsequential since these were all Soviet territory, and no Soviet leader thought the empire would collapse. But when the USSR dissolved, the Ukraine went free. When it did, the US assured the Russians that NATO would move no further east.

Murray Rothbard said we can’t be sure a government did something until it’s been officially denied. The same can’t be said of government promises. We know those are lies the minute they’re uttered.

Within the decade, Poland, the Czechs, and Hungary had joined NATO. Five years later, Baltic states were accepted. Despite American assurances, an Atlantic alliance that lost its reason to exist had made its way to Russia’s door.

For eight years the US kept pumping illegal weapons to its Ukrainian puppets, who used them to wage war on Russians in the east. The West spent a decade poking the bear. In February of 2022, it finally woke up.

In response, the Biden Administration funneled billions to its satrap, weaponized the dollar, and attacked Germany by destroying the Russian pipeline that supplied its gas.

By sanctioning Russia, stealing its assets, and evicting it from SWIFT, the U.S. government sent a signal that the dollar system wasn’t safe. Countries took notice, backed away from the buck, traded directly, and bought more gold. Too few Americans followed their lead.

“Mostly Peaceful” Violence

While the US government caused its usual carnage overseas, the home-front was rife with rent-a-riots stoking racial grievance. After a deranged criminal overdosed in Minneapolis (and while most Americans were kept home to avoid a virus), dozens of cities simultaneously erupted in “mostly peaceful” violence.

Although a black man died in a northern state, Confederate monuments were toppled across the South. Predictably, the Jacobins soon targeted the founding fathers. A statue of Thomas Jefferson was removed from New York City Hall. By definition, anyplace that doesn’t welcome Thomas Jefferson isn’t America.

While the culture was being erased, its people were being ripped off. Covid spending and war welfare accelerated price increases to rates unseen since the 1970s. Government debt increased six-fold this century. It’s doubled again this decade.

Such Orwellian monstrosities as the “Inflation Reduction Act”, “American Rescue Act”, and “Big Beautiful Bill” were “paid for” by counterfeiting the currency, which slowly impoverishes Americans by siphoning purchasing power.

Hundreds of billions were laundered thru the Ukraine. But that’s chicken feed. During the first year of covid, almost $7T (!) were fabricated to enrich connected corporations and convince the masses to stay cooped-up.

Yet the exterior gates were flung wide open. For decades, U.S. meddling wreaked havoc across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, sending hordes streaming toward the turnstiles that once served as Western borders. The US and Europe were overrun.

In the midst of the “pandemic”, millions of invaders were welcomed in. Many were chaperoned by state-sponsored NGOs that distributed human contraband around the country.

Attempts to oust them are met with outcries. Even requiring citizenship to vote or be included in the census is too much to ask. Since the start of this century, many states are demographically unrecognizable. The chaos and division by which we’re fraught was the inevitable (and perhaps intended) result.

Succored Snake

Mayhem isn’t limited to the US “homeland”. Like the Japanese incursion to Manchuria, the Ukraine war looks like the overture to a tragic opera with many acts. Another opened the next year in the Levant.

There’s a misperception that rancor between Muslim and Jew goes back centuries. But before the 20th century, they got along relatively well. Jews were a small minority in the region, but mostly lived as they pleased.

Antagonism built after construction of the Suez Canal, when European Zionists started infiltrating Palestine. Over decades, Arab property owners were ousted. After the Second World War the state of Israel was established.

For eighty years, fighting continued as Israel kept cleansing. Wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 strengthened Israel’s grasp on Palestinian land. As Russia was provoked to respond in the Ukraine, Palestinians were incited to fight back.

Through years of Intifada and resistance, they did. Having once held all the territory Israel now claims, they were resigned to begging for their own state. The Likud Party resisted, and surreptitiously funded unsavory organizations to discredit potential negotiating partners.

After years propping Hamas, Israel was bit by the snake it succored. The attack of October 7, 2023 was horrific, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Almost 1,200 were killed and 250 held hostage.

The barbarity became a convenient (perhaps too convenient?) excuse to annihilate the Gaza Strip. The obliteration has continued since, with civilians targeted, most buildings demolished, and perhaps a hundred thousand killed. This atrocity has all the earmarks of a genocide. And anyone who objected was automatically “antisemitic”.

The Last Country

Israel sometimes refers to 10/7 as its 9/11. In a way it was. Both tragedies became handy reasons to launch wars Zionists long wanted.

About twenty years ago, General Wesley Clark revealed that after 9/11 the Department of Defense had a plan to “take out” seven countries in five years. On the list were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan… all of which have since been destroyed.

But the seventh country was the one Israel most wanted removed. Five weeks ago, at Israel’s behest, the Trump Administration attacked Iran. This war will one day warrant it’s own retrospective. But it seems safe to say it was lost the moment it was launched, particularly because of the reason it was.

Allegiance to “allies” is the flawed rationale that produced the First World War, the most consequential cataclysm in human history. Let’s hope that when this latest fiasco is finished, it still will be.

JD

Atlanta, GA

March 28, 2026

Nobody knows how to make a pencil. But many probably think they could.

Just wrap wood around some lead, add a rubber eraser, a touch of metal, and a coat of lacquer…and voila!…you’re ready to take a standardized test or tackle The New York Times crossword puzzle.

But building a pencil is impossible for any one person to do. Even (or especially) the most ardent busybody has no idea how to make this superficially simplest of things.

Amazing Matrix

Creating a single pencil requires a complex lattice of financing, digging, drilling, growing, picking, pulling, packaging, shipping, trucking, buying, selling, and marketing among millions of people across every continent. Almost none of those engaged in these activities will ever meet one another or know each other’s names, and few are even aware of the thing they’re unwittingly helping to create.

This amazing matrix of seemingly uncoordinated activity was brilliantly described in the 1958 “autobiography” I, Pencil: My Family Tree, as Told to Leonard E. Read.

I first read this insightful essay in 1990, not long after I’d moved to San Francisco. The parable changed my life. It provided a valuable glimpse into how the world works, which is what economics (when done correctly) is supposed to do.

The origins of the commonplace pencil are extraordinarily complex, with components that are remarkably diverse. Were it applying to an Ivy League college, administrators could find ample grounds to admit or exclude it based on a wide array of assorted ancestry.

One of its fathers, as we all might guess, is a tree. But by what other parents was it conceived? What collection of saws, trucks, rope, and rubber were needed to commence the courtship, and plant the seed? And what mineral or material antecedents were conscripted and combined to create these essential ingredients?

As “the Pencil” put it, think of all the mining and metallurgy that went into making steel for the saws, how much growing and weaving was needed to make the rope, and what level of agricultural output was required to feed men in the logging camps when each day ended, and to wake them with coffee when the next one began.

Even the simple eraser is a marvel. It requires rapeseed oil from Indonesia, that it be reacted with sulfur chloride, and then combined with several vulcanizing and accelerating agents from around the world. Pumice from Italy enters the mix. Rubber is added for binding purposes, and cadmium sulfide provides the color.

No single manager, politician, or department secretary has any idea how to coordinate this complicated process for creating this one small part of a humble pencil.

But their presumptions go well beyond a mere eraser. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone to hear their pretensions and not laugh.

Iron must be mined and smelted to build the ships that carry the requisite commodities. Oil needs to be drilled, extracted, and refined to fuel the vessels and trucks that haul those raw materials to far-away ports, or to take the pencil’s ancestral logs to distant mills.

And who builds and runs the millworks? What processes, materials, and manpower are brought to bear to construct any one of these indispensable facilities?

Then there’s the “lead”, which includes graphite mined in Sri Lanka, and that is placed in paper sacks and steel ships guided by harbor pilots and sophisticated navigation systems that are themselves the product of half a billion inputs from every corner of the world (and a few outside of it).

To bring these ingredients together so they can be formed into a pencil and brought to market, trucks and trains made of infinite inputs from countless countries must ride roads and rail that themselves derived from an inordinate web of engineering, financing, manpower, mining, and materials to eventually connect distant countries, great oceans, and domestic cities, towns, and villages where a vast array of intricate interactions combine to create a plain pencil.

The Least of Our Problems

You get the idea. A properly functioning economy and the supply chains that enable it are undeniable marvels. Yet they are incomprehensibly elaborate, and resist central control, political planning, and military misadventure.

It wouldn’t take much sand in the gears to shackle the whole shebang. How much of a Sahara could be caused by corking Hormuz? Dust storms are already swirling, impeding intricate systems on which markets rely.

From Asia to Australia, fuel and food are running low, and rationing has begun. Europe receives about a third of its jet fuel and a fifth of its diesel from the Persian Gulf. How long before trucks sit and planes stay parked? In America, moving vehicles are also paying more:

Manufacturing may also idle. Helium is byproduct of natural gas processing, and is essential for cooling silicon to make chips. If a pencil is complicated, how complex is anything containing semiconductors? We may find out.

Qatar accounted for a third of global helium production. This was erased when the strait was shuttered, specialized containers were stranded, and the Ras Laffan gas complex was disabled by Iranian retaliation for US attacks. This supply can take years to replenish.

Up to half the urea, ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate, and sulfur for fertilizer come from the Middle East. North American farmers are running short, and are reluctant to plant. If they don’t soon, they won’t at all.

As too few asked in 1914, “how long can this continue, and how far could it spread?” The US is sending more Marines to the Middle East, and asking soldiers to get affairs in order.

Russia will ban gasoline exports as of April. What happens if aquatic arteries at Malacca, Panama, Denmark, Bab el-Mandeb, or Suez are suddenly sealed? When routes and resources are strangled, transit stops, the world chokes… and people starve.

Under the circumstances, ignorance of how pencils are made seems like the least of our problems. But indifference to it is how they’re caused.

JD

Atlanta, GA

March 23, 2026

This afternoon, while forlorn passengers spent hours herding thru the Atlanta airport, languishing outside, cattle-chuting around baggage claim, and corralled toward a “security” oasis on a distant horizon, legislators in Georgia were distracted by something inconceivably stupid.

There’s no mess politicians can’t make worse, espe…

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Atlanta, GA

March 22, 2026

In early March 2020, despite a wave of restrictions around the world, Americans kept living as if nothing would change. By the middle of the month, everything did.

Similar cognitive dissonance seems to be happening now. The Iran War is among the most calamitous blunders the U.S. government has ever made, launched by the same pres…

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Atlanta, GA

March 19, 2026

A couple years ago, my son joined the Air National Guard. I tried to dissuade him, but he wants to be a commercial airline pilot and was convinced the military was the best way to achieve his goal.

My concerns were obvious. Every military parent shares them, especially with the U.S. government making countless enemies…

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Atlanta, GA

March 14, 2026

For the first time since Donald Trump declared a “state of emergency” six years ago, this weekend began with Friday the 13th and ends on the Ides of March. What could go wrong?

Yesterday afternoon, markets closed for the week. As my grandfather used to say when leaving four hours early to catch a flight at an airport twenty minut…

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Atlanta, GA

March 8, 2026

We didn’t used to need governments to tell us the time. For millennia the sun did it for us, enabling our ancestors to get thru the day.

Medieval clocks added some precision. But their main “improvement” (if we want to call it that) on the ancient sundial was they enabled us to tell time at night.

Not that many people cared. In those days, most of them were wise (and tired) enough to use darkness as a signal to sleep.

It wasn’t till the 19th century, when time-pieces proliferated, that businesses, households, and personal pockets began acquiring clocks… and becoming slaves to them.

Around the world, each town kept its own time, based off the moment the sun was directly overhead. Brooklyn ran ahead of Manhattan. It was slightly earlier in Ostia than in Rome. Oakland ate breakfast a few minutes before San Francisco ordered coffee.

Zones of Time

It wasn’t till human locomotion outpaced Apollo’s chariot that the patchwork of times became a problem. That happened when the trains arrived.

But it was tough to keep them running on time. For anyone to know when that meant, the railroads needed a schedule.

To enable coordination among local patchworks of minutes, competing lines agreed on zones of time… based loosely on the position of the sun. Most government officials were beholden to the industry, and went along.

But train time was a lie, which was patently obvious to any idiot under the sun. Despite being told it was noon, the average person knew his shadow was too long. Something wasn’t right. Yet there was no hole to which he could retreat.

“Progress” had arrived. Rather than establish a “universal time” (like GMT) from which to set schedules while leaving local time to catch natural rays, government-backed railroad monopolies inflicted the top-down time zones we endure today.

These were agreed upon in 1889, and given force of federal law in 1918. As a result, the time we tell by ignoring nature remains… like flickering shadows on Plato’s cave… a pale reflection of unrelenting reality, further distorted by biannual changing of erroneous clocks.

“Sunshine Protection”

Last night, as happens each year, our hour was taken. As is their wont, a lot of legislators don’t want to give it back.

Even when government tries to do the right thing, it does it the wrong way. A few years ago, the Senate voted to repeal the biannual ritual of adjusting clocks. But it did so by keeping the wrong time.

Standard Time – denoted as such because it more closely follows our natural rhythms and the solar cycle – would’ve disappeared. Or, more accurately… as with the local hours from an earlier age… it’d still be there. We’d simply have ignored it, and suffered the consequences.

Fortunately, a few years ago the “Sunshine Protection Act” withered in Congress, proving that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But, like a Spring allergy, it keeps coming back.

The notion that an act of Congress can “protect sunshine” is as ludicrous as the concept that passing laws can control the weather, that pulling inches from a foot can make us taller, or that putting more ounces in a pound can reduce our weight.

The “Sunshine Protection Act” is like most legislation. The only thing dumber than the name is the stupidity of the idea. The biannual time change needs to go. But the solar clock needs to stay.

Our sense of reality is already too warped, and time is among the least of the distortions. But it’s a potent symptom of endemic delusion.

At this moment, where I write, the official time is almost two hours ahead of where the sun actually sits. Atlanta lies at the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone, so our local clock always outpaces the stubborn sun.

But “Daylight Savings” compounds the problem. This morning, as if to assert it isn’t wrong enough, our government placed an additional hour between ourselves and the sun.

(If you want to know how wrong time is where you are, you can check this link).

Indulging Fantasies

This isn’t the first effort to enforce this farce. Congress imposed perennial “Daylight Savings” in 1974, but abandoned the two-year experiment even before it was set to expire. As children stood at dark bus stops and circadian rhythms became confused, people realized they hated the unnatural attempt to monkey with time.

If this latest effort passes, Arizona and Hawaii will be the only states where the clocks are (somewhat) correct. All others will permanently pretend to be part of the time zone immediately to their east (some, like the New England states, probably should be).

But this isn’t surprising. We live in a world that’s filled with phoniness to indulge our fantasies. Don’t like how light it is at 6p? Just pretend it’s 7p! If nothing else, Happy Hour will start that much sooner.

Solar Schoolmarm

Yet each day, like every coin, has two sides. We think we’d enjoy the sun setting after dinner. But will we like it rising a couple hours before lunch? Will we want to begin each day in the middle of nature’s night? Is it healthy to do so? Do we even care?

And do we really want the sun, like a humorless hall monitor, watching over us so deep into the day? A setting sun is a signal. Time to retreat home from a hectic day…perhaps to open a window in the summer, or light a fire in the winter. We lift our feet, pour some wine, and loosen our limbs. We relax, and let our hair down.

These natural inclinations are less instinctive with a solar schoolmarm standing over us. She has her place. But it’s in the morning, to roust us awake and get us going. We don’t need an intrusive day hanging around at night, when we gather at the table or round the hearth, to talk about it behind its back.

From ancient sundials to atomic clocks, devices to track time are intended to tell the truth. But as night follows day, many of us prefer the lie.

Envisioning an extra hour of evening light, they cheer the deception. It’s easier to see the light than to envision the dark. But no matter how much they finagle their clocks, they’ll get both… and more of each than they think they’d prefer.

In a couple weeks, on the Vernal Equinox, they’ll come in equal measure. Around the world, the solar scale will stand in balance. But the more we try to tip it toward us, the greater the chance we fall off.

JD

PS - For those interested as much in place as in time, perspectives on many of them can be found in my new book that’s now available by clicking the image below:

Atlanta, GA

March 4, 2026

Looks like another momentous March.

Six years ago this month, the President of the United States declared an “emergency”, and told Americans they should stay home for “fifteen days to slow the spread”.

This was a temporary sacrifice for the “common good”. After all, “we were all in this together”. But when that quarantine …

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Atlanta, GA

March 1, 2026

It’s tempting to comment quickly when major news breaks. But doing so is almost always a mistake. Especially these days, when algorithms feed us distorted “content” they want us to see.

We know truth is the first casualty in the fog of war. So it’s best to let time lift the mist to reveal the lies. But having waited a day to abso…

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Atlanta, GA

February 23, 2026

For the second consecutive night, I can’t sleep.

For decades I’ve railed against military misadventures and “intelligence” operations that’ve cost trillions and killed millions. Never mind those who were maimed, orphaned, mentally damaged, or forced from ancestral homes by American bombs.

Were US citizens made safer by any of t…

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Atlanta, GA

February 18, 2026

Atlanta is carved from a forest. Trees are thick throughout the city and on its outskirts. That’s where we are, on the rolling slopes of the Appalachian Piedmont.

Around us, deer roam, foxes frolic, and soaring hawks eye unsuspecting prey. A fence confines our property, to keep critters out and our dog in.

It doesn’t always wor…

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Atlanta, GA

February 16, 2026

[NB: The following is excerpted from the Introduction to my new release, Unconventional Wisdom: The Best and Worst U.S. Presidents, now available here.]

Years ago, tired of conventional wisdom and political propaganda, I wrote some sketches of prominent presidents to whom almost everyone pays reflexive homage.

As I did, I realized that the universal admiration (or revulsion) many of these men receive says more about our modern sensibilities than it does of the constitutional merits of any president’s performance.

Most of the men we’re supposed to consider “great” regularly engaged in outright atrocities and undertook actions that in the private sphere would be condemned as criminal. But because these acts were committed from behind a presidential seal, the repulsive policies made “statesmen” of the executives who authorized them.

Likewise, the presidents Court historians least respect are those who held back, respected limits, and deferred to state or legislative authority. Our modern Plutarchs view these men as weaklings who shrank from the moment. Accordingly, they occupy the bottom rungs of the presidential rankings.

Alter-Ego

Everyone likes to compile and argue about lists: Who are the best pitchers of all time? The greatest quarterbacks? Our favorite cities? Best composers? Greatest basketball player? Top movies? Best rock albums? Best winemakers? Favorite books?

These are the debates we love to have, at the bar, over dinner… or in silly essays. In this volume we consult our inner-Schlesinger, and catalog the most worthy and repulsive U.S. presidents. But our inner-Schlesinger is an alter-ego of those Establishment historians… père et fils… who popularized presidential rankings in the 20th century.

Unlike those hagiographers, we are wary of righteous rulers, and contemptuous of those who have all the answers to every problem… most of which they themselves imagined or caused. We want leaders who appreciate their own ignorance and respect their own doubts. We value humility over grandiosity, fidelity above certainty.

We shouldn’t honor presidents per se. Having a holiday for them seems un-American. The annual commemoration had an honorable origin. But, like fine wine at a frat party, it was defiled, diluted, and debased till it finally went bad. It has been perverted from a worthy occasion honoring a great man into a long weekend commemorating an assortment of awful ones.

Subterranean Speakeasy

The third Monday in February is still officially designated Washington’s Birthday, but is known colloquially as “Presidents Day”, as if being president was Washington’s most notable accomplishment.

The best thing he did as president was to stop being president. Voluntarily giving up power after a second term set an admirable precedent, and echoed his earlier act of relinquishing his commission and retiring his sword.

When he did so, King George couldn’t believe it. “If this is true”, said the mad monarch, “then he is truly the greatest man who ever lived.”

Washington was a great man. But was he a great president? Relative to the host of charlatans, hacks, and crooks that infest our own era, he was Solon and Solomon rolled into one. Still…like a subterranean Speakeasy…that’s a low bar.

Our criteria will be loftier, yet simple. We will judge presidents by how well they upheld their oath of office, how much wealth they left untouched, and how few people they managed to kill. That alone should whittle from the list most of the deadwood that’s piled up since Calvin Coolidge.

Let’s start with this disclaimer: I don’t think there should be a president. I am more a fan of the Articles of Confederation than of the US Constitution.

I realize that under the Articles there were eight presidents “under Congress assembled”. But none of them ever presumed to launch a war or meddle in the affairs of individual citizens. We don’t know who they were. Most alive at the time didn’t either. That’s as it should be.

But even under the Constitution, we’d probably be fine if only that moribund document were followed. Alas, it hasn’t been for over a century and a half.

Rouge’s Gallery

Yet that doesn’t let the Constitution off the hook. As Lysander Spooner said, the Constitution either permits what has happened or has been powerless to stop it. Either way, it is unfit to exist.

But it does exist…on paper at least. And it includes a president. Since the Constitution was adopted, there have been forty-five of them (not forty-seven: Grover Cleveland wasn’t two different guys; neither is Donald Trump).

It’s hard to come up with ten good presidents, and difficult to limit ourselves to ten bad ones. Since the branches hang heavy with foul fruit, let’s first relieve the tree of its rotten apples.

A good heuristic when evaluating presidents is that the ones Academia, the Literati, and establishment historians consider “great”…those who are universally admired by both sides of our narrow political spectrum …are almost invariably scoundrels. As Lord Acton said, “great men are almost always bad men.”

Which brings us, in chronological order, to our rouge’s gallery…with a brief explanation of why each reprobate made the roster.

Without further ado, let’s begin the lists, which can be found (with in-depth overviews of each entry on both rosters) in this book (or click image below):

JD

February 14, 2026

Atlanta, GA

This week I read the most frightening article I’ve seen in a while.

We’re in February 2026. But the author fears it’s February 2020, when most people became aware of a weird virus halfway around the world.

Before then, people who paid attention knew a strange germ was wafting around Wuhan. By February e…

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Atlanta, GA

February 12, 2026

Years ago when you were a child, you wrote me a note. In it you described your hero, and explained why he was me.

That letter hangs in a frame by my desk. I see it often, but don’t notice it enough. This morning, I re-read it. It elicited a tear, and this response.

From the day you were born you’ve made me proud. You were an ad…

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[NB: A few months ago, I completed a Preparation anchor course at the Shelter Institute. One of the readings I assigned myself was De Architectura by Vitruvius. I last read it a few decades ago, at the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech. This is my assessment after absorbing it again.]

Atlanta, GA

February 9, 2026

“We should build beautiful buildings …

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Athens, GA

February 2, 2026

Last week, one of our son’s friends had an auto accident. He suffered severe injuries, including clots and swelling around the brain.

His condition was critical. For two days, his loving family, devoted friends, and an expanding circle of unacquainted well-wishers prayed for a miracle.

It didn’t arrive.

George Whittenburg died Friday. Today we’re here to honor his life.

Upon hearing the awful news their child was hurt, his parents rushed to Athens from their home in Austin. They wanted to help George fight for survival, yet must be consoled that they were able to say goodbye to their son.

No parent can imagine having to do so, or to maintain dignity while others share in their grief. That’s why we’re here, to help support those who loved George… especially his family, and particularly our son.

We never knew George Whittenburg. But David did. They were classmates and fraternity brothers at the University of Georgia.

Like anyone who knew George (and many who didn’t), our son has been anguished since the accident occurred, praying that God would preserve his friend’s life.

We don’t know why relief didn’t come. But everyone here was grateful for the blessings George brought. Even those of us he’d never met.

Solemn and Dignified

The air was crisp and cool, with patches of snow covering parcels of ground the winter sun missed. Attesting the affection this young man evoked, cars covered lots around the church. Mourners came early and filled every pew.

The balcony was packed, and the narthex accommodated anyone willing to stand. George’s pledge class (which includes our son) and their sister sorority occupied half the main sanctuary. Other classmates spread across the aisle, joining scores of loved ones, alums, well-wishers, and the university president and his team to say goodbye.

George’s mother, father, and sisters took the first pew, the one parents hope they never occupy. Occasionally, familiar faces would greet them with sincere sympathy, say a few heartfelt words, and offer hugs before finding their seat.

This was a service no family wants to see. That of the deceased sat under the pulpit, solemn and dignified in their unimaginable grief. The parents comforted each other and George’s sisters, while all of them clung to whatever composure they could.

Reflections

Mixing humor with grief, classmates offered poignant reflections of their beloved friend. The pastor reinforced the power of God and the lure of Christ. Each emphasized George’s abiding faith, and love of the Lord.

He was an active member of Cru, the interdenominational campus ministry at the University of Georgia. The underlying (or, rather, the overt) theme of each speaker’s eulogy was how seriously George took his faith. That’s how he would’ve wanted it.

He didn’t merely announce his faith, and never flaunted it. He lived it. That meant wrestling and questioning it till it couldn’t be doubted… by him or anyone else.

George was open, honest, reliable, and vulnerable. And he wasn’t ashamed of any of these qualities, which meant he also was genuine.

His burning desire was to spread belief to as many people as possible. His struggle seemed to be how to do that, and to wonder whether he could.

This afternoon in that church, it was obvious he did. As often happens with God’s will, it wasn’t revealed the way George expected… or how anyone in the room wanted.

“Whatever the Cost”

The final speaker was the Director of the Cru Ministry at UGA. His memorial was emotional, candid, and eloquent, with affection flooding thru choked-back tears.

As he finished, he revealed a confession: the last one George ever gave. As the speaker put it, “George was known for his honesty. He’d hate it if I didn’t do this.”

It occurred during a conversation the day of the accident, very shortly before it happened. That morning, George had apparently been struggling, wondering how he’d fulfill the role he knew God gave him.

After praying, George confessed to his friend that God appeared to him, and promised “the Lord would use him whatever the cost… so other people could know God.”

During the next two days, as George’s condition became more dire, a prayer vigil formed. Attendees who’d never prayed turned to God.

In front of hundreds of people, they trusted Him, “with their confusion, their questions and their ache.” The eulogist relayed how during the vigil he “listened for hours to people who for the first time felt God touch them, heard God’s voice, and had a vision or an image of God. Just like George. His prayer was answered.”

Center and Circumference

It’s said that God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. We can’t comprehend his ways or know his plan.

God strikes the match of life, and decides when to extinguish its earthly flame. But sometimes, when He does, as the wisps rise to their final release, a radiant light remains with us.

That ray was in the church, illuminating the faces of everyone listening. We never had the pleasure of knowing the young man we came to mourn, but after this service we felt like we did, and wish we had.

It was obvious that everyone, even those of us he’d never met, was a better person because he’d lived. Even in death, George Whittenburg helped others improve.

It’s easy to take for granted the blessings we’re bestowed. But when they’re gone, and especially if they disappear suddenly, we wish we’d taken better advantage of the gifts we were given.

As the service ended and the crowd dispersed, we waited for our son. After he and his friends commiserated, David made his way to us.

When he did, I extended my arms, and told him I loved him. His mother did too. Then she embraced him, and gave him the tightest hug he’d ever received.

And the longest.

JD

Atlanta, GA

February 1, 2026

Certain scenes stay with you forever. And many of those last only a few seconds. Tonight sent us several.

We joined an “organ walk” for an eighteen year-old girl who’d died earlier in the day. I didn’t know what to expect.

Also known as an “Honor Walk”, these processions of gratitude have increased in frequency, and are held by hospitals when requested or approved by an organ donor’s family.

Available staff join friends and relatives to honor the benefactor as she’s wheeled from her room, down the corridor, onto an elevator, and out of the hospital.

The parents of the deceased invited us a few hours before the proceedings began, and just after they’d relayed their horrible news.

Lengthening Line

We picked up a friend and drove to the hospital. I dropped the ladies at the front entrance, and found a place to park. Then I wound my way toward the ward. It took a while.

As with most large medical facilities, this one was a labyrinth of halls, passageways, aisles, and cloisters that always return you to the place you started.

As I tried to find where I needed to be, I passed a queue of about twenty people approaching a small desk. A few minutes later, I wound up at the same spot. But now the line was twice as long.

Many in it were high school or college age girls. Remembering who we were honoring, I realized this was probably the line I needed to join.

By the time I reached the front, I realized I was right. When I looked back, the line had tripled in length, extending around a bend a hundred yards back.

But I still hadn’t found my wife. After I checked in, she texted for me to come to the sixth floor.

After another ten minute hike, I found the elevator. I emerged to hundreds of people lining either side of a winding hall that had no end. Fortunately, I found my wife not far from the doors.

Somber, Reflective, and Heartbroken

As the crowd thickened, nurses suggested some of us go downstairs. Dozens of us piled onto employee lifts, and rode down one level. Down another corridor we went, thru throngs of bereaved on either side.

It was astonishing. At least 400 people were crowded into long hallways on those two floors. I felt like we were seeking spots in a parade. If only we were.

This audience was somber, reflective, and heartbroken. Which makes sense. A wonderful family had lost a darling daughter. Her parents are among the finest people anyone could meet, which is why fire codes were tested by the number of mourners who’d gathered to console them.

As throngs started to stand two-deep along constricted corridors, more of us would need to be moved. Nurses guided us to the Main Level, where we again took our place along the wall.

With those around us we shook hands and shared hugs. In whispered tones, we made small talk while we waited. Most was of the usual variety. We asked about kids, talked about the weather, and lamented the dreadful reason we were all here.

And we marveled at the crowd, and what its size said about the family who’d suffered this unspeakable loss.

Sense of Awe

Suddenly, the elevator bell was our signal to be silent. When the doors opened, a gurney came out. On it was an angel who’d gone to God.

Escorting her was her adoring family. They kept moving, but with poise, purpose, and heads held high.

Thru intermittent sobbing several hours after their daughter’s death, the parents thanked us for being there as they pushed their child down the hall. A sister and two brothers distinguished themselves by their poignant dignity.

Within minutes, the gurney reached exterior doors that slid open… and allowed the bereaved to leave. In their wake, tissues came out, and none of the multitude said a word.

Among attendees, eyes swelled, tears flowed, and embraces were exchanged. Sniffles and sobs were the only sound. Groups of teenage girls huddled together to weep in sympathy as they sought to make sense of what they’d seen.

But over the hall hung a sense of awe.

How special must a family be to attract such sympathy? What elicited this solace was obviously awful. Yet hundreds of people don’t descend on a hospital with several hours notice if the people they’re consoling haven’t made significant impact on a large number of lives.

Most would simply send a card. But this group wanted to be here. And if you knew the afflicted, you’d know why.

As the crowd dispersed, it witnessed another reason they came. The departed angel’s father returned to the hospital, and hugged everyone he could.

With unfathomable grief came incomprehensible gratitude. Through this girl God acted, and gave her father the strength to be an inspiration.

JD

Atlanta, GA

January 29, 2026

I’m not above sulking, whining, or feeling sorry for myself. Few of us are. If the power goes out, a flight is delayed, or the wi-fi doesn’t work, it’s like marauders invaded our village and burned our crops.

But we’re occasionally reminded how blessed we are…. and how quickly that can change. Our younger son sent a reminder last night, when he told us one of his classmates was in a horrible car accident.

He sustained a couple skull fractures, severed an ear, and lost a few teeth. As would be expected, much of his body is in rough shape.

Most ominously, he has a clot in the veins that drain fluid from his brain. This causes dangerous swelling that must be relieved. The pressure has put him in critical condition.

As my son put it, “he needs a miracle.”

This afternoon I went to church to pray for one. I was there almost an hour. The sanctuary was silent, filled with the consoling peace only quiet can provide. I said the rosary, and asked for the obvious.

When I rose to leave, I noticed Adoration underway in an adjacent chapel. Three others were in the room. I knelt as close as I could to the consecrated Host, and implored Christ.

We don’t know God’s will. Even if we did we probably wouldn’t understand. We usually don’t, especially if we don’t like whatever we think it is.

We ask for His help, and hope He gives us what we want. He doesn’t always do so. But I’ve always suspected He supplies what we need.

Often His response is tough for us to hear. Yet in our ignorance, we try to accept the answer with the serenity and humility only faith can provide.

That sounds good. And it’s easy for someone like me to say. I’ve not had to watch my son clinging to life. In the pew I thanked God we’ve not been in that position.

I then petitioned the miracle that would relieve a family of the pain they’re enduring. I don’t know if it’ll arrive.

God answers every prayer. But sometimes the answer is “no”. When it is, we don’t like it. That’s understandable.

But God’s calendar doesn’t always conform to ours. Sometimes we must change our plans to attend His schedule. As we were reminded last night, the invitation to meet Him could arrive at any moment.

As I prayed today and plead now, for my son’s friend and his agonized family, I hope that moment is decades away.

May God bless this young man as he fights for his life, and support his loved ones as they endure this trauma.

All other prayers are appreciated.

JD