Charles Frenzel

Okay, I’ve had enough billy goat to last me a lifetime. This one is a curly-haired, horned beast with a playful disposition that belongs somewhere on a farm and not in a back yard. Lately the goat has decided that our land looks much more attractive than his and has found a way through or […]

As a lifelong follower of Doctor Who, I  mourn the passing of Elisabeth Sladen, the Doctor’s pluckiest, most worthy companion of all time. Not that I haven’t liked other companions, but there was something about the character of Sarah Jane that Elisabeth Sladen created that was like a primal force that overcame all opposition through […]

Callie’s character has grown a lot since she witnessed her best friend killed and her mother die in an explosion aboard a boat. She’s arrived in Ridgeville, Texas, to start her college career.  She’s barely finished her second month of classes when she gets involved in a drug bust and is thrown out of her […]

Some pundits continue to sound off on how indifferent the latest crop of college students are to community concerns. I beg to differ. Pundits  love to spout this popular notion which is designed mainly to disguise the lack of leadership among some of their own generation. Thirty-five women of the Alpha Zeta chapter of Chi […]

The sign over the door might have said, or ought to have said, Treatment; I think it actually said Rm107. In any case, it was the entrance to the rooms where cancer patients are treated. The sorts of things that passed through my mind as I followed my wife into the sanctum weren’t really about […]

Last night, at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, I listened to Justice Stephen Breyer discuss his ideas on American Democracy and the Rule of Law. He’s a very good speaker with some very illuminating  ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of American Democracy. Among other things, he discussed Hamilton’s reasoning concerning having a Supreme […]

I inadvertently delved even deeper into the murky depths of social networking when I mentioned my wife’s problems with cancer. I received all the usual automated messages asking for donations or membership that appear after mentioning any major disease. Using a word like  measles, cancer, typhoid, or polio usually brings a brief flurry of messages […]

If I had ever doubted that bad news travels faster than good news, then I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when my wife’s operation reported the presence of a malignant cancer. At first it seemed as if she might get off lightly. There was no evidence that any of the cancer cells […]