Author: Thomas Purcell

Thank you, North Korea. Your alleged cyber attack on Sony has, I hope, awakened the American people. America is not doing so well, you see. Sure, we are No. 1 in self-esteem – we are No. 1 at being indignant about a variety of perceived slights – but we’re not much good at understanding the […]

“You’ve worked for us for 10 years, Johnson, but I’m not sure how to grade you during this year’s performance review.” “What are you talking about, boss? I doubled sales over the year before.” “Impressive, Johnson. But how often do you go to the gym?” “The gym?” “Yeah – work out, pump iron, run on […]

The snow started coming down hard a few hours after we’d arrived. It was Christmas Eve 1976. We were 20 miles from home, visiting my mother’s sister at her home in the country. Earlier that evening, my mother, father, grandmother and sisters had piled into the station wagon to begin our trek. I was 14 […]

The number of Americans who choose to live alone continues to grow. So finds a recent Current Population Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to The Washington Post, the survey found that “the proportion of Americans who live alone has grown steadily since the 1920s, increasing from roughly 5 percent then to 27 percent […]

A giant Manhattan penthouse and a summer home in the Hamptons. That was all. There was nothing Sabrina could do but plop onto her designer couch and cry. Christmas was a week away, but Sabrina didn’t have enough money to buy the one gift her husband, Beckett, had dreamed of: hair transplants. Beckett, meanwhile, had […]

Bonjour, America! Have you heard the good news? Under President Obama, the U.S. ranking for personal freedom has slipped below that of France! According to The Washington Examiner, the Legatum Institute just released its sixth edition of its Prosperity Index. It measures entrepreneurship, opportunity, education and social capital – aspects of prosperity that typical gross […]

It’s bound to happen at Thanksgiving tables across America: A progressive liberal Democrat discovers he’s sitting next to a conservative Republican. There’s no need for mashed potatoes to fly. Harry Stein, an author, columnist and contributing editor to the political magazine City Journal, offers advice on how to navigate the situation. Stein, an erstwhile ’60’s […]

I’ve done my fair share of stupid things over my life. When I was 5, my father told me to stop jumping around the bathtub, but I ignored him. I slipped and hit my head on a ceramic soap dish, which busted into a dozen pieces. I should have been hurt, but my hard, dense […]

Hurricane Isabel struck Washington, D.C., hard that night. It was Sept. 18, 2003. I lived in Alexandria, Va., at the time. I rode out the storm reading a book and enjoying a glass of wine. At the Arlington National Cemetery, just a few miles from where I sat, the sentinels who stand guard at the […]

Get this: Millennials hate voice mail and don’t often bother to listen to their messages. So reports NPR’s “All Things Considered” in its “The New Boom” series. As it goes, millennials prefer to receive their information via text or Facebook messages. If they receive a voice message on their phone, they likely won’t bother to […]

My mother was 13 years old, the oldest child in her family, the day the health department nailed the quarantine notice on her front door. It was late in the summer of 1951. My mother’s younger sister, Cecelia, was just beginning the eighth grade when she came home from school with a high temperature, feeling […]

Not until it got dark! That was the trick-or-treating rule my mother set down every year. She didn’t want me to embarrass her by interrupting families still having dinner. I hated the rule. Tommy Gillen and I had big plans to hit as many houses as possible before we had to come home. It was […]

If more Americans were self-employed independent contractors, the country would soar. Maybe I better explain. In addition to writing this weekly column, I provide professional copywriting services to a variety of organizations. If they like my work, they give me more and I prosper. If they don’t like my work, I go broke. Thus, the […]

“Dad, why does America celebrate Columbus Day?” “Well, Billy, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe to America and founded the very first European settlement in the New World. His arrival marks the beginning of America as we know it.” “But didn’t he discover America by accident, dad?” “Columbus believed the Earth was a sphere. […]

Boy, are the folks at the syndicated game show “Jeopardy” in trouble after introducing a new category: “What Do Women Want.” In one prompt, Alex Trebek gave contestants these clues: “Some help around the house; would it kill you to get out the Bissell bagless canister one of these every once in a while?” Answer: […]

Are religious people as equally prone to immoral acts as nonreligious people? The answer is yes according to a new study, “Morality in Everday Life,” which I read about in the Daily Mail. Daniel Wisneski and Wilhelm Hofmann, the study’s lead authors, recruited 1,252 adults between ages 18 and 68 using Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter and […]

Get this: Home-cooked family meals are tyrannical. So suggests Slate blogger Amanda Marcotte. Marcotte says that a study by North Carolina State University sociologists Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott and Joslyn Brenton finds that “the stress that cooking puts on people, particularly women, may not be worth the trade-off.” Why isn’t it worth the trade-off? Well, […]

Dec. 7, 1941: An aide enters the Oval Office with grim news for President Barack Obama. “Mr. President, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor! We have sustained severe damage to our naval and military forces. More than 2,400 Americans are dead.” “Ah, phooey. I had a tee time set for this afternoon.” “Sir, the world […]

They’re going to have to get used to it. I speak of the school students who are complaining about the taste of their government-funded school grub. As part of the 2010 National School Lunch Program, you see, school districts that want federal funding to feed their kids must follow stringent nutritional guidelines designed to curb […]

Even on the hottest nights of the summer, my father knew how to make our house ice cold. 

We lived in a modest two-story home typical of the ’60s and ’70s – red brick on the bottom, white aluminum siding on the top. There were four bedrooms upstairs and a master bedroom downstairs (my parent’s room, […]

Did you ever have a week in which you had an impossible amount of work to complete, yet somehow got it done? Likewise, did you ever have a week in which you knew your workload would be light, so you made grand plans to complete a personal project – and ended up loafing and getting very […]

Get this: Low expectations are the key to happiness.: That was one of the findings of a happiness study recently conducted by researchers at University College London.: Researchers used a magnetic resonance imaging machine to monitor brain activity as they guided subjects through a series of activities, such as gambling, and asked them how happy they were […]

Ah, summer. What a great time for boys to read “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”: First released in the U.K. in 2006 and the U.S. in 2007, the book is filled with useful information on how to make knots in a rope, build a go-kart or treehouse, create a working bow and arrow, and engineer a […]

I long for the sounds of summer I knew as a kid.

In the ’60s and ’70s, you see, most of our neighbors kept their windows open day and night, allowing the outside sounds to come in and the inside sounds to go out. 

I woke every morning to the birds chirping outside my window screen, […]

“I say it’s high time we update the wording of the presidential oath of office, which is specified in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.”: “Update it?”:  “That’s right. Our current president isn’t following it much anyhow, so why don’t you recite it from the top so we can get to work?”: “I do solemnly […]

Boy, our political debate is getting crasser by the moment.: And so it is that the National Organization for Women has put the Little Sisters of the Poor, an international congregation of Roman Catholic nuns who have devoted their lives to caring for the elderly poor, on its “Dirty 100” list.:  NOW is upset that the […]

Ah, summer is here. We all know what that means: The rights crowd will demand that our politicians pass new federal laws to make paid vacation mandatory.: It is true that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time.:  It’s also true, according to the Organization […]

“I’m confused. I thought July 4 was the day our country declared independence from King George III of Great Britain.”: “Actually, according to ConstitutionFacts.com, that’s not so. The Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776.”:  “Then why do we celebrate our independence on the Fourth every year? Is that when we started […]

Ring, ring.: “Hello, this is Tom.”: “Hello, Tom, this is the federal government. We are going to audit your taxes and want to see all of your records for 2011.”:  “Sorry, federal government, but my computer crashed in 2011. All of my emails, electronic receipts and financial records were lost.”: “We’re not buying that, Tom. Anybody with half […]