Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Feb 27 2021
Mask Slippages Dept.
There are days when the cleavages become all too clear…when the battle lines are too bold and bright for anyone to dispute that there’s a war on. Today is such a day: La Mesa, California Trustee Charda Bell-Fontenot told fellow board members that in-person school learning is “a very white supremacist ideology.” She …
Feb 26 2021
The Truth Crisis
Today’s miseries are founded on a single central problem. It’s not a new problem, even for the United States. We’ve seen it in many contexts and guises, here and elsewhere. It’s the problem we must solve if we’re to restore any semblance of normality to American public discourse. I once ranted about it …
Feb 24 2021
When A Right Is Made A Permission
I’m regaining a little dexterity in my hand, even though I still have a splinted finger, so let’s see how this goes… I’ve ranted before about the insidiousness of licensure. In effect, it reduces a right to a permission that can be denied at the government’s whim. It’s usually introduced under the rationale …
Feb 22 2021
It May Be A While Before I Write Anything More…
…because earlier today, one of my dogs – Precious, the Pit Bull mix – mangled my right hand. I have a cast on one finger and two others swollen from a “crush” injury. I’ll give you the whole story when I can type again. I’m sure Linda, the Colonel, Margaret, Historian, Dystopic, and …
Feb 22 2021
I’d Thought There Were No Surprises Left
As usual, I was wrong: Disney has decided that “The Muppet Show” — featuring Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy — contains “offensive content” and can now be seen only on an adult account. When viewers open the streaming service, which made five series available last Friday, viewers are greeted …
Feb 21 2021
Thank You…
…to all those responsible for this: Over the past 26 hours – i.e., since midnight February 20, Pacific time ¬– Amazon customers have downloaded just under 2900 free copies of Antiquities. That’s as of 5:00 AM EST today. A little visibility at last!
Feb 20 2021
Need Something To Read…
…but haven’t got any spare cash? It’s a sad problem, one I’ve suffered in the past. Back then, I did a lot of rereading, which was made possible by my habit of never, ever parting with a book. But today there’s a superior alternative. The Baen Free Library is exactly that: books Baen …
Feb 20 2021
Like Yesterday
[My dear friend F. James Dagg has sent along a short story of his early years. It possesses the sort of surprise punch that characterizes his short fiction. Enjoy. — FWP] Like Yesterday… I was almost thirteen, and a contradiction. Short, still childlike at a glance, no one took me to be nearly …
Feb 20 2021
Attention: Free Fiction!
For today, Saturday, February 20 through Monday, February 22, my latest novel, Antiquities, is free of charge at Amazon: Gail was a has-been singer from a forgotten band, surviving by performing for small crowds in coffee houses and bars, near to giving up on everything. Evan was a venture capitalist, widowed by …
Feb 19 2021
A New / Old Emission
My collection of religiously-themed stories, previously available only from Smashwords, is now available from Amazon: A baker’s dozen journeys in faith, replete with miracles, mysteries, and gentle explorations of God at work in the lives of men. Only $2.99 as a Kindle eBook. (The paperback isn’t quite ready yet.)
Feb 19 2021
Doubts
One of the most illuminating things ever to emerge from the mind of a pope was this from Pope Benedict XVI: faith is inseparable from doubt. He who holds to a faith of any sort will be plagued by doubts now and then. That insight applies to more than just religious faiths. …
Feb 18 2021
Protection Rackets: The Latest Trend
You’ve heard about the black racialists demanding “reparations,” haven’t you? Translated from the Thuggese, that amounts to “Pay us and maybe we’ll stop trashing your cities.” They might as well walk into your store, look around appraisingly, and murmur “Nice place you’ve got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.” …
Feb 18 2021
Tragedies
Once again I’m up too early in the morning for…well…for anything, really. And I find myself bemused by the state we’ve lurched into, and unable to suggest anything but prayer. I’m not knocking prayer. Prayer is highly beneficial. However, it has an indifferent track record at correcting the ills that beset us, when …
Feb 17 2021
A Critical Lexical Shift
Yesterday’s column by Mike Gonzalez illuminates yet another tactical stroke against American conceptions of equality: the substitution of the word equity, a quite different concept. The core of the thing: Equality is the standard of our old Constitution, the one framed in 1787 and amended since then, most memorably in the Bill of …
Feb 16 2021
Fossil Fuels And The Tyrants Among Us
Aspiring tyrants’ hostility to the fossil fuels has a long history. It goes back to the early Twentieth Century at least, and has never lapsed since then. Mind you, it’s a political hostility rather than a principled one. The point is power over others. You can tell by this: the rationale for opposing …
Feb 15 2021
The Fearful And What They Fear
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity They seem more afraid of life than death. – James F. Byrnes There was no security in this world and only damn fools and mice thought there could be. – Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road These past two days, I’ve encountered several …
Feb 14 2021
The Genes Will Tell
I’ve gotten quite a giggle these past few months over the entrance into women’s sports events of biological men who claim to be women. A curious thing happens when that’s permitted: the winner of the event is always a biological man. As my Roman ancestors might have said, mirabile dictu! (Or as a contemporary …
Feb 14 2021
Read This To The Very End
Then reflect on the profound wisdom it contains: The Importance Of Fellowship You’re welcome. “I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for …
Feb 14 2021
The Acquittal
“They say ‘It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.’ I say ‘It’s not who you know; it’s what you’ve got on ‘em.’” – Lawrence Block It was a foregone conclusion that every Senate Democrat would vote to convict President Trump of inciting the January 6 disturbance at the Capitol so inaccurately …
Feb 13 2021
By The Numbers
If it cannot be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. – Robert A. Heinlein I only recently became aware of this Prager U video: It’s an excellent, facts-and-figures based refutation of the “renewable energy” con the enviro-Nazis have been promoting. And therefore, the Left has put a lot …
Fran’s Recent Novels
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