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Interesting People
Sep 6, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. When the news flashed from Benghazi that His Excellency J. Christopher "Chris" Stevens along with three members of his staff had been killed, I wept. For Chris Stevens, fo...
Sep 2, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. It has just gone 7 a.m. here in Cambridge. It is one of those precious summer Sundays when the good people, the indispensable people of the land are engaging in time s...
Aug 24, 2013
By Howard Martell
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. Only one song would do for this of all articles, the iconic anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), "We Shall Overcome."
It was not so much a song as...
Aug 17, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. The folks in Newport, Tennessee, (7,242 residents at the time of the 2000 census) are hoping against hope that the old adage about the only bad ink being no ink is tru...
Aug 11, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. Call me irresponsible... call me capricious... call me shiftless... call me devil-may-care... call me fickle... call me feckless... call me giddy. I don't care what yo...
Jul 29, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. This is an unabashed tribute to a great reporter and trenchant commentator who just happened to be a woman. Other commentators in their obituary notices will focus on t...
Jul 25, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. In the autumn of 1968 I pulled off something no American had ever done before; I was elected to the Student Representative Council for the largest faculty of the Universit...
Jun 27, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. I woke up at 5 a.m. today more than a bit out of focus and disheveled . I looked in the mirror and was sure that with what I saw my perennial title as fairest of the fair w...
May 16, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. On February 7, 1839 one of the greatest of senators, Henry Clay of Kentucky, gave one of his most important of speeches... and in the process he handed his numerous detrac...
May 6, 2013
By Howard Martell
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. Since the beginning of human society and civilization, we homo sapiens have extolled... and rightly so... the achievements of our fellow Earth travelers, not just to honor ...
Apr 17, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. This is what she said. This is what the Iron Lady said on January 31, 1976:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you tonight in my red chiffon evening gown, my face ...
Apr 15, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. If you want to know where someone is going, then look at where they have been. We are all the product of our experiences but rarely do these events alter the course of a g...
Apr 10, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. This article is personal, for although I never actually met Barbara "Basia" Piasecka Johnson, for years we kept tripping over each other in pursuit of some of the world's ...
Apr 1, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. There it was, in his obituary. The smallest of details and yet as every good writer knows, such vignettes are telling, revealing unexpected insights into the subject at ha...
Mar 27, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. Let us open with a fanfare, music that breaths royalty, written by a man who knew precisely how to present princes to their subjects for maximum effect. This man is Sir Wi...
Mar 21, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
A starets called Rasputin, a Yankee classicist, The Holy Mountain above the restless cerulean sea ... God. Joy. Wonder.
Author's program note. I went to Greece, to Mount Athos through a sli...
Mar 7, 2013
By Howard Martell
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's program note. On April 14, 1958 two gigantic nations, antithetical in viewpoint, each intent on destroying and humbling the other, put aside their terrible rancor to listen to a pale yo...
Mar 3, 2013
By Howard Martell
Author's program note. This is the story of how a lifetime's respect and admiration was destroyed in minutes by a man of power and influence who was thoroughly obtuse when it came to the crucial business of human exis...
Feb 24, 2013
By Howard Martell
Author's program note. I woke up lathered in sweat again, the way I had most every frightening night when every "dream" was a nightmare. As is the way with dreams, each disconnected scene was supremely real, s...