THE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury It’s just a guess when conversations about fruitcake headed south. But, if negative views of fruitcake began a few generations ago, malignment of the holiday dessert has run full bore since memory runneth not to the contrary. Disdain for fruitcake is stacking up. The many tentacles of naysayers are clutching the throats of folks

  IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury One thing we “geezers and geezerettes” have in common is that the lot of us have said something or done “bone-headed” things that disappointed our mothers. We’ve all participated in pranks that have gone south, causing our mothers to shake their heads in disbelief. Oh, how we’d like to apologize, but our moms–whose work was

THE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury Uncle Mort, a veteran of 108 Christmases, has razor-sharp memories of long stretches of silence at various times of the day. And there were silent nights, too. Nowadays, he makes Herculean efforts to quieten things down on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This includes turning phones to off position, stilling pendulums on grandfather clocks

 THE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury The late James Naismith, an accomplished educator/physician/minister/philosopher, also was an inventor. An 1891 collegian, he took seriously the assignment to “invent” an indoor game to replace “thumb-twiddling” on dreary, cold, snowy days when youngsters ventured outdoors only to fetch firewood. He came up with “basketball,” a game he proposed to be “gentlemanly competition important to

THE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury We spend hours at homecomings, reminiscing about bygone days. There were mutterings of how time flies at Howard Payne University’s annual gathering on October 1. The class of 1971, headed by Darrell Miles, wanted to honor HPU athletes, including basketball stars Russell Berry and Ray Hildebrand. (Paula Berry accompanied her husband Russell.) These were mostly 70-somethings.

THE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury My aged Uncle Mort can take a side road into yesteryear quickern’ most people can start an argument over vaccines. Now, he’s on a mission to learn more about Indian Summer. He’s finding much information about the season in numerous countries of the world. In general, he has concluded that in the U.S., the subject

THE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury My aged Uncle Mort said more than a mouthful the other day about shenanigans dictated in the name of intercollegiate athletics by high rollers in the world of televised sports. “The almighty dollar is even mightier than I thought.” He hit the nail precisely. Big-time sports are far too big. We’ve drifted far away

 IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury Historians who tired of seeking origins that mattered much probably risked losing their licenses oh, 1.4 centuries ago. That’s when they scattered like quail in a hailstorm trying to identify the “inventor” of the hamburger. One of the few points of agreement is that they were introduced during the 1880s, depending on how deeply one