Journal | The Port Rail

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Arguing, or Not, Around the Wardroom Or, Keeping the Conversation Civil

May 14, 2014

As young officers on a ship, we learned certain unwritten rules and codes. All institutions have them, all the way from the highest officials in government to the guys digging in deep coal seams in Walker County, Alabama. These usually have to do with maintaining common courtesies and regulating our work and play spaces in […]

Walking in T-Town

November 22, 2013

I saw a few weeks ago where the Ironman Triathlon was held once again somewhere in Hawaii. I don’t remember the details, but I think they swim hundreds of miles, then bicycle thousands of miles, and then I remember hearing one breathless television commentator once say, “now, all that’s left is the Marathon.” The first […]

Kennedy, Camelot, and Touch Football

November 15, 2013

Today[to be published Sunday Nov. 24, 2013]—fifty years ago to the day, Sunday—the body of President John F. Kennedy was being prepared for his funeral tomorrow, Monday November 25, 1963. I think I can speak for most Americans who are old enough to remember that we were all in shock from the events of the […]

What’s Important, and What’s Not

October 28, 2013

For many years I traveled quite a bit in my job as an historian of Latin America. I flew mostly on a north-south axis into Latin America, but occasionally across the Atlantic to Spain and Europe as well. I wrote about some subjects set in colonial Latin America, and so some archives and sources I […]

The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated

May 7, 2013

This was of course Mark Twain’s famous quip upon hearing of his obituary in The New York Journal. It might serve well to describe the American manufacturing sector, long the driving force of the U. S. economy, and until very recently, thought to have died or shrunk into a relic of its old self. It […]

Guns

March 11, 2013

By now you have read and heard more about guns than you probably ever wanted to know. Maybe you haven’t, especially if you love and use guns for hunting, shooting for sport, or are in the military and guns are part of your life, and are of great assistance in preserving and extending your life, […]

Nice Shoes: Or, Tuesday Nights in Jail

December 12, 2012

One evening I was coming out of a cell block at the Tuscaloosa County Jail after an hour of ministering to a group of prisoners. The Holy Spirit certainly moved that night since I preached a hot and fast sermon, and my listeners—I thought—were as wrapped up and transformed by the message as I was […]

Awash in Nostalgia, or, Oh, For the Good Old Days

December 11, 2012

Not too long ago I received an email from an old friend of my youth. We have kept loosely in touch since we both grew up in Peru, the children of American chemists working for W. R. Grace & Co. in the sugar and paper industries of that country. Both his dad and mine were […]

Looking for Egan

October 29, 2012

Looking for Egan By Lawrence A. Clayton (Duke, 1964) Jim Egan in Full Dress Marine Uniform[1] Jim Egan (ND, 1964) was one of my best friends in high school in New Jersey, back in the 1950s. It seems like a long time ago, but not so long ago that I can’t remember Egan and I […]

The RV Adventure: An American Dream

August 7, 2012

The ads are almost too good to be true. Take your RV into America, the woods and forests, mountains and beaches, and travel through this magnificent country of ours, all the while staying in your own home on wheels! On the other hand, as my wife reminded me, the movie lampoons of the RV adventure […]