Thom Nickels

In the heart of Center City Philadelphia there is a small graveyard alongside the church of Saint John the Evangelist. A careful reading of the headstones there will reveal the tomb of the Repplier family. How many Repplier family members are buried in this vault is a mystery because on the stone there are no inscribed names. Even peering through the graveyard's wrought iron fence for a closer look will not reveal the name, Agnes Repplier. In many ways, this graveyard's “invisibility” symbolizes what the famous writer's life was like when she was known as “the quiet lady writer who lives west of the Schuylkill.” While people the world over may have loved her books, the appreciation she received for her work, at least in Philadelphia, was at best lukewarm.

To defund or not to defund. Click here to sign up .] The great years of public broadcasting were the 1970s when Masterpiece Theater

I’d been working the polls as a Republican committee person in my Old Richmond neighborhood for about four hours when a neighbor, a woman, walked up to me after she voted, looked me up and down — especially at my red Trump hat — and said without blinking, “Do you […]

Who's to blame? In that famous childhood classic fairytale, dim-witted Chicken Little is convinced the sky is falling and creates mass hysteria in the farmyard.

While traveling with fellow journalists several years ago in the Middle East, one thing became apparent to me: most of the writers on the trip had food issues.

While having a drink with a friend in a neighborhood bar a few years ago, a distraught-looking woman approached us and started chatting. We engaged in typical barroom banter until she introduced herself as the mother of a guy I had met in the same bar almost two years before. […]

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While touring a number of Roman Catholic churches in Austria some time ago, I was struck by the haphazard clash of styles: magnificent Romanesque-Gothic high altars, richly appointed with frescoes and images, with an oddly shaped table plunked down in front like something dropped from The Planet of the Apes: […]

Will sanity ever be restored? Click here to sign up .] Like many visitors to Paris before the disastrous April 2019 fire at Notre