Free Republic

# CHAPTER TWO ## The Historian The Calder County Historical Museum stood on the west side of the courthouse square in a building that had outlived almost every purpose for which it had been constructed. A brass plate near the entrance claimed the structure dated to 1911, when the county still had enough coal money passing through it to build banks from dressed stone and oak rather than drywall and laminated counters. The bank failed during the Depression, reopened under another name, failed again, and eventually became county property. During the years that followed, the building served as a tax...

# CHAPTER ONE ## Welfare Check Deputy Caleb Mercer had spent enough years wearing a badge to understand that Saturdays had their own personality. Friday nights belonged to drunks, domestic arguments, teenagers who had borrowed more courage than judgment, and grown men who somehow reached forty without learning that nothing good followed the sentence, *Watch this*. Sunday mornings were quieter, particularly during deer season and football season, when half the county was either in church, in the woods, or sitting in front of a television. Saturdays fell somewhere in between. People had time to notice things on Saturdays. They noticed...

# PROLOGUE ## The Last File Thomas Rourke had always liked November in West Virginia. By then the hardwoods had given up most of their color, leaving the mountains stripped down to gray trunks, brown ridgelines and scattered stands of pine that seemed almost unnaturally green against everything around them. The first real snow was usually still a few weeks away, although there had been years when winter arrived early and buried the county before Thanksgiving. On most November nights, however, the temperature simply fell below freezing after dark, woodsmoke settled into the hollows, and the mountains grew quiet in...

In 1938, Tolkien was in negotiations with Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening about creating a German-language edition of The Hobbit; that is, until they asked for proof of Tolkien’s “Aryan descent,” due to Goebbels’ regulations on Jews’ participation n German cultural activities. Tolkien objected, writing to his British publisher Stanley Unwin:I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten & Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries?Personally, I should be inclined to refuse...

When the US Treasury Department sanctioned the transnational organization Masar Badil last week, Washington took a much-needed step toward thwarting terrorist activity and recruitment here in the homeland. **SNIP** SUPER-UW’s rapid development from rhetoric to violence began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which killed UW alumnus Hayim Katsman along with 45 other American citizens. SUPER-UW immediately cheered the killing of civilians and venerated those responsible, later inviting UW students to a an event celebrating the slaughter “as not only a victory for the resistance, but a scientific necessity.” In September 2024, SUPER-UW encouraged followers to learn about “defending the...

A GHOST WRITER is haunting the English language. The linguistic spectre can turn its hand to prose, poetry, journalese and corporate jargon. It is frightfully versatile: you can get it to mimic Shakespeare’s sonnets or a schlocky beach read; Ernest Hemingway’s taut prose or the office-printer manual. It is frightfully fast, churning out thousands of words a minute. (Hemingway rarely produced as many in a day, and required much more booze.) Wordsmiths are spooked. AI writing is everywhere. It is in your inbox and on your LinkedIn feed. It is all over the internet, drafting more than a third of...

It was a long time second-coming. After years of searching, Italian archaeologists have discovered an ancient site that matches a Bible description of where Jesus Christ was buried, per a preliminary study in the Jerusalem archaeological journal Liber Annuus. “We have found evidence of a funerary landscape,” lead archaeologist Francesca Romana Stasolla, of the “La Sapienza” University of Rome, told the Daily Mail as part of an exclusive article. The researchers had been excavating Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a fourth century Roman Church that was built over a holy site where many Christians believe Christ was crucified, buried...

The lineup includes new garlic-bread-crusted shrimp, shrimp linguini Alfredo, garlic shrimp scampi, Parrot Isle coconut shrimp and Walt’s Favorite Shrimp — hand-breaded, butterflied shrimp lightly fried and served with cocktail sauce. Red Lobster closed dozens of locations nationwide in May 2024 before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Fox News previously reported. The company told Fox News Digital it decided to bring back Endless Shrimp because the promotion still matters enormously to its customers, who “never stopped asking for it.” “They continued telling us they missed it, showed up when we brought it back this spring and kept asking for more...

Two longtime Massachusetts fishermen initially thought they were reeling in a shark, but instead they caught a 1,200-pound marlin, believed to be the biggest of its kind ever hauled in on the East Coast. Damon Sacco, a seasoned charter fishing boat captain from the Bay State had been fishing for hours with his client on Wednesday when he caught a glimpse of a giant fin breaking the water’s surface about 100 miles off Cape Cod, MA. At first, Sacco thought it was a massive shark but then he “got a better look at it and thought, dang, that thing’s pointed”...

Nolan’s Odyssey is a massive boon to those who care about literature and the written word. Book versions of Homer’s epic poem have been selling like hotcakes in the wake of the film’s release. Just days after the film premiered, translations of the story had reached Nos. 4, 8, and 49 on Amazon’s bestsellers list, with a translation of the Iliad at No. 61. Nolan’s film “boosted sales” of the book enough to net a sales increase of 76% “across all editions,” including both text and audio versions of the tale, as Spotify revealed that listens to the audiobook on...

Colorado state officials on Thursday morning released the results of spring 2023 K-12 achievement tests and the results are mixed -- suggesting that where students were developmentally when their learning was disrupted by the COVID pandemic may play a role in how well they're succeeding academically today. In the English Language Arts portion of the Colorado Measures of Academic Success for example, higher percentages of students in grades 5, 6 and 7 met or exceeded expectations than in 2022, but grades 3 and 4 saw drops or nominal gains. The CMAS tests students in grades 3-8, finding that across the...

Likely prompted by the runaway success of a certain classically oriented movie in theaters this summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned the oldest preserved fragment of The Odyssey to one of its galleries, where it can be seen and appreciated after a long time out of view. The relic is now on display in Gallery 162 in the museum’s section devoted to Greek and Roman Art. In a round-up of Odyssey-related collection treasures on its website, the Met describes the relic as the first early Ptolemaic fragment of the text ever discovered and notes: “Dating from around 285–250...

A provocative new book by journalist and former political aide Gil Durán argues that a tightly networked circle of Silicon Valley billionaires and venture capitalists have spent three decades methodically constructing an ideological and political apparatus aimed at replacing democratic governance with corporate rule. The book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, published by Simon & Schuster, is scheduled for release on August 18, 2026 — and its claims are already igniting debate across the political spectrum. Key Facts ►Gil Durán’s book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, is published...

Here’s an interesting question: how many white American men born after 1984 have had a literary piece published in The New Yorker? The answer is zero. How did we get here, and who let this happen? Every literary generation used to produce its Roth, Updike, Bellow, Wolfe, McCarthy, or Franzen. Today’s literary establishment shows no interest in producing young men of comparable prominence—especially if they’re straight and white. This is not a new or underdiagnosed problem; in fact, it appears to be a point of pride for the new generation of literary critics and publishers alike. Penguin Random House has...

An Arabic bookshop in London has been accused of anti-Semitism after it was found selling copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and displaying them "front and centre" of the store. The newly opened shop, Aafaq Bookstore on Edgware Road, had multiple copies of the extremist text on a display table this week, just a five-minute walk away from the West London Synagogue. Featuring a photograph of the Nazi Party leader saluting on its cover, the edition was translated into Arabic and appeared to be published by Aafaq. In addition to owning the London bookshop, the firm is a publishing and...

Those of us in the majority of Americans who have been deprived of an excellent education have never had more opportunities to remediate ourselves.Many Americans have assumed that if you want a serious education in history, philosophy, or literature, you must go to college, preferably a highly rated one. The Harvards, Yales, and Princetons of the world have theoretically been where the classics were taught, great ideas debated, and intellectual life was supposed to flourish.That assumption is beginning to change, and not just because of headlines like “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” The “academy” no longer has...

Nearly one-quarter of U.S. adults—21%—are illiterate, and 130 million people can’t read a simple story to their children or sound out more than a few basic words. The problem isn’t confined to high school dropouts, those with disabilities, and non-¬English speakers. It affects university students, working professionals, and those who grew up speaking English at home. It goes beyond the inability to enjoy books, skim websites, and write emails. Medication instructions, ingredient labels, and posted warnings can conceal deadly risks from nonreaders.The problem starts in elementary school, where a battle over how to teach reading continues to rage and fewer...

The full, updated American History and Civics Curriculum, which includes lesson planning prompts, assignments, and assessments Primary sources, images, and maps to support instruction Interactive, searchable flip books that make the material easy to navigate and share An online course that gives practical strategies for teaching American History with excellence

Homer’s epic poem, “Odyssey,” is in the news lately, primarily because Christopher Nolan has produced a three-hour, and I can use the word impressionistic, retelling of the “Odyssey.” And a lot of people have criticized it; a lot of people like it. I’m gonna talk about the film later in one of our episodes, because I have now seen the new film, and Jack Fowler and Sami Wink and I have talked variously about it. But I wanted to today just talk about the “Odyssey” as a work of literature and history. A lot of people, I think, have the...

From politics to 'a very exciting event' As March Madness heats up we are more than likely going to encounter a peculiar word that is much beloved by sports writers and political pundits alike: barn burner. barn burner The 'Barnburners' were one of two competing factions in the New York State Democratic Party in the middle of the 19th century. The name was “in allusion to the story of an old Dutchman who relieved himself of rats by burning his barns which they infested.” In the modern parlance a barn burner is defined as "a very exciting game, event, etc."...