W.D. Ehrhart

by W.D. Ehrhart I’ve just had a new experience.  For the first time since I began writing essays for the New Hampshire Gazette, I finally submitted one so unrelievedly pessimistic that our Alleged Editor rejected it, declining to inflict so bleak and hopeless an argument predicting the all-but-inevitable re-election of Dolt .45 next November with no way to avoid that outcome except through divine intervention. Well, fair enough.  He’s not only the editor, but also the publisher and owner of the Gazette.  He gets to print what he wants and not print what he doesn’t want.  And he’s obligated to consider his readership’s sensibilities.  Who …

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by W.D. Ehrhart This past weekend, my wife and I went down to Margate, New Jersey, for a friend’s birthday party. Driving on the Atlantic City Expressway, we passed a huge billboard that screamed: STOP OFFSHORE WIND. Below that, in somewhat smaller letters, it said: Never Experience the Jersey Shore the Same Way Again. Pictured was an array of wind turbines stretching from one edge of the billboard to the other. Together we marveled at the mentality that wants to preserve the scenic beauty of the seashore until the planet turns into a cosmic cinder and there’s no scenic beauty anywhere on the planet, or …

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by W.D. Ehrhart Where do I begin? Let’s just dive right in: Donald J. Trump claims he is the same as a veteran of military service because he went to a military academy as a schoolboy, though he avoided military service during the American War in Vietnam by obtaining a medical deferment for bone spurs from a podiatrist who was financially beholden to Trump’s father. Apparently, he learned a lot about war at the New York Military Academy because he has subsequently claimed that he knows more about war than career generals and admirals. He has considered awarding himself the Purple Heart Medal while musing …

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by W.D. Ehrhart I find myself fascinated by the current debate over the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College overturning a previous 2003 case and effectively gutting affirmative action in college admissions based on racial criteria. I recently retired from high school teaching, and I watched a lot of kids go through the college admissions ordeal. I had students who scored poorly on SATs and ACTs, but who were excellent students I was never reluctant to write college recommendations for because they were smart, savvy, hard-working, and well-grounded. And I had kids with superlative standardized …

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by W. D. Ehrhart As I write this—July 4th, 2023—our nation is celebrating the 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  English settlers had first arrived along the Atlantic seaboard in 1607, and were soon joined by Dutch, Swedish, French, and more English settlers.  The Spanish had already colonized Florida and what is today New Mexico.  William Penn attracted Welsh and a large number of German settlers.  Early on, others began arriving from Africa in chains. Even the people who were here when the Europeans arrived came from somewhere else, though a lot earlier.  We are indeed, as has so often been said, a nation …

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