Latest by Scott P. Richert in Chronicles

• Column

  July 14, 2019

  The Word Remains

  The last time I visited John Lukacs at Pickering Close, his home just outside of Phoenixville, Penn., he greeted me in Hungarian. My knowledge of that language is confined to goulash and paprikash and the proper pronunciation of Budapest, so I was a bit unsettled as we made our way to his library, and John offered me a chair, still in Hungarian.

  Read More

• Column

  May 4, 2019

  Sufficient to the Day

  I take a lot of pictures. I am old enough to have spent thousands of dollars on film and photo developing over three decades, from my late single digits up until about the age of 35.

  Read More

• Column

  April 7, 2019

  Returning to Earth

  What lies at the root of the abstractionism that I discussed last month, which afflicts the modern world like a mania, especially here in the United States? Walker Percy dubbed the phenomenon angelism, by which he did not mean that those who exhibit it have evolved to a state of moral purity but that we have individually and collectively cut ourselves loose mentally from the ties that bind us to the world and the people around us.

  Read More

• Column

  March 7, 2019

  Life Is Not a Fantasy

  The reality of place has weighed heavily on me from a very young age. My knowledge of self has always been inseparable from the place in which I live.

  Read More

• Column

  February 10, 2019

  Picture This

  Last year, just before his 21st birthday, my son Jacob learned of a condition called aphantasia. In its strictest form, aphantasia is the inability to create mental images.

  Read More