Author Archives: Philip E Jenks

The debauchery arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward boys. At least in our dreams. Even Jimmy Carter said he lusted in his heart, but the only surprise there is that Fox News never found out with … Continue reading →

It has been fifty years since President Lyndon Johnson figured out a safe way to fire Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara. According to Fredrik Logevall’s recent article in the New York Times, McNamara woke up on November 29, 1967 … Continue reading →

October 20, 2018 – Fifty-six years ago today, President John F. Kennedy announced he had a cold. He certainly looked the part. He went so far as to be photographed wearing a hat and overcoat, and he twisted his features … Continue reading →

#MeToo. The response of thousands of women to Harvey Weinstein’s serial abuse of females should come as no surprise to us guys. Harvey and his evil ilk are everywhere, and if we have not been him we quietly rolled our … Continue reading →

October 19, 2017 – John Woolman, the itinerate Quaker mystic who spread his peaceful witness throughout Colonial New Jersey in the mid 18th century, was born 295 years ago today. Woolman became one of my heroes when I was a … Continue reading →

The memory had been lost for fifty years in the dim recesses of my hippocampus. This morning a little dab of shaving foam dislodged it. There it was, dangling defiantly from the plastic red spigot of my foamy shaving cream … Continue reading →

ME TV (Memorable Entertainment Television) is one of several networks catering to Boomers by broadcasting reruns of 1950s and 1960s era TV programs we loved. Sometimes I think it would be kinder if they left some shows to our fading … Continue reading →

Dick Gregory was a lean, mean running machine in 1974 when he came to the first annual Communication Center at Green Lake, Wis. The Center was a week-long seminar in interfaith communication planned by the American Baptist Division of Communication, … Continue reading →

Thanks to daughter Lauren Jenks for uncovering this long-lost response from Eleanor Roosevelt, pasted 55 years ago in a book to keep it safe. The topic was an interview I conducted with her through the mail. The elaborate adolescent signature to the … Continue reading →

Even before Ancestry.com, my family was steeped in genealogical lore. Grandpa Addison Jenks and his sister, Aunt Ava, spent their lives searching courthouse records for birth certificates, wills, and deeds that bore the Jenks name. Addison liked to do family … Continue reading →