Two thousand years ago, in Jerusalem, a man called Jesus who performed miracles and claimed to be God, suffered torture and death. Three days after His execution a great stone sealing His tomb was rolled away. His body was gone.

Over the next few days Jesus appeared unto his disciples. One of them, Thomas, from whence our term “doubting Thomas” comes, refused to believe until he put his finger into the nail holes in the Master’s hands. Then his eyes were opened and he recognized the Lord.

As we press on into the 21st century technology is leaving spirituality sputtering in the dust. Many worship at the University of Science not the Alter of God. Reason has replaced faith and evolution is taught in schools as cries of objection arise at any hint of creationism, or “intelligent design.”

But science and reason, before the Wright brothers built their flying machine, “proved” man would never fly.

Albert Einstein said: “I believe in the God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists . . . It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe we dimly perceive and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.”

Einstein also stated, “The entire universe is a gigantic intellect.”

Those comments to me do not seem to reflect the mind of an athiest.

William Paley told a story of a watch and a watchmaker. If a man never having seen a watch finds one and takes it apart and examines the many complex pieces that fit together so perfectly to make it run so precisely, will common sense prompt him to conclude the watch was created, or will he believe it came into existence by chance?

World renowned scientist and theologian, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, has concluded that it is absolutely impossible that life on earth could have happened by chance. (See Schroeder’s books: “Genesis & the Big Bang,” “The Science of God,” and “The Hidden Face of God.”)

Former atheist Mike Adams, now a professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and columnist for Townhall.com, agrees with author Frank Turek that truth is indeed absolute and not, as Princeton University’s ethics department chairman Peter Singer would have us believe, relative, depending on one’s perspective. Adams also echoes Turek’s statement, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.”

Many contemporary scientists agree evolution probably has happened, to a degree. They doubt it’s the whole story, though — more like a parenthetical aside to the incredible and inconceivable miracle of creation.

Some of society’s ideas about evolution are based on the movie, “Inherit the Wind,” about the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee. The movie was based on a collection of essays by the great intellectual debunker, H.L. Mencken, who had his own agenda and was careless in reporting the substance of the trial. (For the truth about the events leading up to the Scopes trial, and the trial itself, see the book by Marvin Olasky and John Perry, “Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial.”)

In spite of the anti-Christian propaganda pouring out of Washington these days, God and the Bible were immensely important in the creation of our Constitution. In his book, “The 5,000 Year Leap: A Miracle that Changed the World,” Dr. W. Cleon Skousen says if we take God and the Bible out of the Constitution, it won’t work.

Powerful forces have undermined the very religion upon which America was founded; they ridicule Christians even as they preach tolerance for every other religion in the world. Still, Christians around the world continue to celebrate Easter and will continue to do so until the end of time.

Death had had its eye on her for a long time.

“I was a very sickly child,” she said.

After Jackie endued a long hospital stay as an infant in Oldham County, her doctor told her mother, “There’s nothing more we can do for her. She’s in God’s hands now. Keep her warm, give her plenty of water, and any soft food you can get down her, and pray.” He said she probably wouldn’t make it through the night.

Around midnight Mrs. Brown, sitting in a chair with Jackie lying on a pillow in her lap, heard a knock. She laid Jackie in her crib and went to the door. On the steps stood an old woman she had never seen before. The woman was rail thin, stooped, wore a black hood, and in one gnarled hand held a jar of brown liquid that looked like creek water.

The old woman said, “If you want your baby to live . . .” She told Mrs. Brown how much and of the medicine and how often to apply it to which body parts, and how often and how much to give her orally. Numb with fear and pain thinking her child was going to die anyway, Mrs. Brown couldn’t see she had anything to lose so she followed instructions.

By daylight the baby had regained enough strength to cry and she was crying not in pain or misery but because she was hungry, for the first time in days.

Mrs. Brown inquired all over town about the strange old woman but no one admitted knowing her. Some said they’d seen her, and believed she was a witch.

A year later Jackie was back in the hospital and again the doctors sent her home not expecting her to live. In the year that had elapsed since Jackie’s last serious illness, Mrs. Brown had not seen or heard from the old woman with the gnarled hands and black hood. But now, once again, she appeared on the doorstep, and again her first words were: “If you want your baby to live . . .”

The jar of brown liquid she held out was similar to the one she had held a year ago, if not identical; but this time she insisted on holding and praying for the child.

By morning Jackie was better. Mrs. Brown never saw the old woman again and to this day has no idea who she was or where she came from.

When Jackie was older, her grandfather was hospitalized. One day he told his daughter, Jackie’s mother: “I talked to Mary last night.” Mary was his late wife, Jackie’s grandmother. “She wants me to come home. She says it’s time for me to come home.”

Although he had always been lucid Mrs. Brown believed he’d suddenly gone off the deep end. She reminded him her mother was dead.

“I know that,” he replied. “You think I’m stupid? I tell you I talked to her last night. She wants me to come home.”

Mrs. Brown tried to explain he must have been dreaming but he continued to insist he had talked to his wife and she told him it was time for him to come home.

In the morning he ate his breakfast, set his silverware on a napkin beside his plate, put his chin down on his chest, and died.

Jackie’s aunt experienced a NDE (near-death experience). So, although unusual occurrences were not uncommon in her family, Jackie never expected to die and live to tell about it.

When she was eighteen she had an allergic reaction to some medication. Her mother and younger brother rushed her to the nearest hospital. A nurse gave her a shot to reverse the effect of the other drug but before the needle was out of her arm Jackie began to feel an intense sensation of well being. The nurse looked at her strangely. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Jackie replied falling to the floor.

Although her eyes were closed she saw the look of horror on the nurse and heard her yell for the doctor. The room filled with a brilliant white light. Then, as though she were an invisible observer she was standing at the foot of her bed watching the doctors and nurses work on her body. Though the curtain around her bed was closed she could see her mother sobbing in the corridor; she saw tears roll down her brother’s face.

“No pulse!” cried a nurse. Another shouted, “No blood pressure!” The line on the heart monitor above her bed went flat. She was dead.

A young doctor rushed into the room with two shock pads, leaned over Jackie, and started to tear open her blouse.

“No!” she said.

The doctor jumped back as if he’d seen a ghost. Jackie observed the action from some point near the foot of her bed. The medical team could detect no life signs. No blood pressure, no pulse. The flat line on the heart monitor did not flicker.

Near dark, she opened her eyes, and sat up. The somber expressions on the faces of the hospital staff changed to shock. They had heard of such phenomena, but none had experienced it. Jackie Brown had died. She had been dead. Now she was alive.

Later, when she told them about the white light and described in detail everything that had gone on in the room from the moment she collapsed, they could not deny that something extraordinary had occurred, something for which science as yet has no explanation, and, perhaps, never will.

It was the most fun I’d had in a long time. One of the boys tied a rope way up high in this big oak and made a swing that would take you halfway out into the river.

There was another limb up near the top of the tree (even higher than the one onto which the rope was tied—higher even than the river bridge) to which the boys were climbing and jumping way down into the river.

Not to be outdone by a bunch of kids, I took my turn. It had been a long time since I’d climbed that high up into a tree and I’d never done it wearing a bathing suit and barefoot, but I made it; and if I hadn’t looked down, I’d have been all right. It was a lot farther down to the water than I’d realized looking up from the bank. But what kind of macho, daredevil example would I be setting for my son if I chickened out now?

I jumped.

It was indeed a long way to the water and halfway down I realize jumping had been a mistake and decided to fly back up to the limb. But then I remembered I did not know how to fly and when my feet hit the water my flapping arms were straight out and I went in palms down. It must have felt a little like putting your hands on a hot stove.

Now I was very much afraid of that limb but remembering what they say about getting back on the horse that bucked you off, I climbed back up and jumped again. This time I made sure my hands were at my sides as I slid gracefully feet-first into the water at a slight angle so as to not shoot right straight down; it was a very deep hole but there was a bottom down there somewhere. The third time I leapt from the limb I thought about really showing off and diving; but, magnanimously, I decided not to show the boys up, so again I went in feet-first.

Next day I was still buzzing with the thrill of not being over the hill and having done something I hadn’t been sure I could do but had done well.

Before cranking up my old push mower I snatched off my shirt exposing my rock-hard (well, almost), snow-white upper body. Wanting a suntan to accompany my sudden youthful vitality, I worked in the blazing sun for about three hours with my shirt off.

That night after I showered and looked at myself in the mirror it began to dawn on me I might have been a little rash, or impulsive, in taking in so much sun. Instead of the Hawaiian Tropic savage tan I’d wanted, my back looked like a freshly boiled baby lobster.

The next couple of days I could barely stand a shirt on my shoulders. Just when I didn’t see how it could get any worse I discovered on each side, just above where my bathing suit would have been, a pear-shaped, bright-red rash about the size of a half dollar. During my romp at the swimming hole I contracted poison ivy.

Now my back has finally quit peeling from the sunburn but on either side, right where my pants rub, big red blotches still itch. The gallons of Calamine lotion have helped some, but it’s taking a long time to heal.

There’s an old saying: “If you play, you pay.” I guess the older you get, the truer it becomes.

One crisp Saturday afternoon in March, my pal Mackie and I were hiking home from the Sandbar, a sandy white tongue that licked halfway out into a wide curve in the Peace River. Our pockets bulging with sharks’ teeth, arrowheads, and acorns (ammunition for slingshots), we jumped ditches, hacked and slashed with homemade swords through brush and briars.

Halfway home we sat down under a wild orange tree on the bank of a ditch. The water was clear enough we watched a water moccasin attack a nest of tadpoles.

Suddenly Mackie looked up into a towering old live oak and exclaimed, “Hey! I see a tree house!”

I looked up to where he was pointing and saw only branches, moss, and leaves.

“You’re loosing it,” I said.

But he continued to point.

“Man, just look at those limbs up there, the way they’re shaped, and all of ‘em going up from that fork like they do. There’s a tree house up there, all right. I see it plain as anything. All we have to do is build it!”

As I began to see it too, he got excited.

“Man, I never saw nothin’ like it! We need boards and 2-by-4s and tin and chicken wire and. . . . We’ll get Don and Bob and Ernest and Larry to help us and we’ll build a platform yonder—look!—and a ladder we can hoist up and . . .”

He was so far ahead of me I tuned him out and stared in awe at the simple structure I visualized whose tin roof glimmered in patches of sunlight that filtered down through the green and gray canopy of leaves and moss.

* * *

Although we never lacked company once our tree house began to take shape, Mackie and I did most of the initial work. Progress was slow because we could only work a couple hours after school on weekdays and Saturdays and Sunday afternoons after church; and also because it took us a long time to buy and borrow materials and then lug them, piece by piece, armload after armload, back into the swamp to the building site.

By the time summer vacation rolled around it was looking good. We had a solid foundation and the 12-by-16-foot floor was finished. Halfway down to the ground we built a 5-by-7-foot platform with a foot-high plywood guardrail around it. A wooden ladder that we could hoist up into the tree and hide went from the ground to the platform. Another ladder, which also could be hoisted up and hidden, reached from the platform to the tree house.

A week before school started we drove the last nail. The floor was flat with no gaps big enough to fall through. A waist-high tin wall wound all the way around. The slanted tin roof was six-feet above the floor and didn’t leak too bad unless it rained hard. On either side we built from saplings and chicken wire three bunk beds. A 4-by-6-foot porch protruded beyond the front door. We camouflaged the entire structure with branches and moss and grapevines.

Furnishings at our homes dwindled as the tree house took on more and more of home’s comforts. We had a wobbly little table and some mismatched chairs. Quilts and blankets became mattresses for our sagging chicken wire bunks. A rocking chair perched on the front porch. Pots and pans appeared as well as plates and bowls.

In the ground below we dug a hole for our fire which by dusk on camp-nights would be blazing. When we had a good bed of coals we’d let the flames die down and roast rabbits, squirrels, meadowlarks and blackbirds, all of which went well with the mud potatoes we made by coating potatoes with a half-inch layer of mud and dropping them into the coals. As the potato cooked, the mud hardened like plaster. Then we’d it crack off taking the peeling with it leaving a clean, white, steaming potato. A dip in the ditch to wash off the ash, a slab of butter and shake of salt and nothing ever tasted any better.

About the time roosters began to crow we’d climb back up to the tree house and lie down in our bunks. We’d listen to hoot owls and raccoons and talk about girls and maybe doze for a while.

In the morning we’d build our fire back up and fry bacon and eggs in a big cast iron skillet. We were young, innocent, sure we’d live forever, and as happy as we would ever be.

* * *

But time marched on.

One weekend when I was home from college I walked back into the woods to see what was left of the old tree house. A new generation of kids had claimed it. The ladders and platform were gone and the structure sagged some, but it was lovely. A little boy peeped over the rusty tin siding and I waved and hollered, “Nice tree house!”

Not long ago I went back there again. The woods are less dense now. The ditch is dry. Our fire hole is flat land covered with grass and leaves. The huge old oak looks moss-eaten and ill; and the tree house is gone.

As I turned to leave a sudden gust pulled my eyes up to the top of the tree. A broken board, hanging loosely, waved in the wind, as if saying goodbye. Then the wind died and the board vanished behind its mossy veil. I swallowed hard but it took a long time for the lump in my throat to go away.

We’d already checked in our suitcases and I wondered again if I had anything in my little carry-on bag I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t think of a thing.

Suddenly Kyle ducked under a roped-off area to put a little less distance between him and the end of the line at the metal detector.

“Hey!”

A very officious lady in a uniform with a shiny badge eyed us suspiciously.

Kyle reddened. “I was just . . . I mean, I, uh—”

“Just come on,” she said. “Follow through here like you’re supposed to.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’re you doing?” I hissed. “Watch your step in here. These people don’t play.”

I’d heard that since the latest terror incidents in London, airport security and precaution had escalated. Police officers had stopped and inspected every third car on the road leading into the airport. We’d slipped through that and I didn’t want trouble now.

The officious-looking lady who’d yelled at us asked to see our tickets and picture IDs. As Kyle opened his wallet, his mouth fell open. He moaned.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“I left my picture ID in my other wallet.”

“What! What’s wrong with you? Where is it?”

“In my suitcase.”

The lady looked at him.

“How old are you, son?”

“Fifteen.”

She looked us up and down, examined our tickets, and looked into our eyes. I guess we didn’t look too suspicious.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Have a nice flight.”

I thanked her profusely and we crept onward.

Several more uniforms and badges hovered around the check point and the metal detector. People were taking off shoes and belts, emptying their pockets.

When I reached into my pocket, I froze. My pocketknife! I’d forgotten to put it in my suitcase. Visions of armed security personnel descending upon me sent a dart of irrational fear through me and I looked around for an avenue of escape. All I could see was a tall garbage can, a few feet away, its yawning mouth wide open.

I slipped my knife out of my pocket, coughed into my hand, and dropped it into the trash.

Kyle saw me and grinned.

“Dad, that pocketknife looked like it was stuck to your fingers. You didn’t want to let it go, did you?”

“I’ve had that knife for years,” I said.

We made it safely through the metal detectors. It was a long flight though as I mourned not only the loss of my pocketknife but also the loss of innocence and sense of security that went up in smoke on 9/11.

According to Levine abstinence is as old-fashioned as the horse-and-buggy and totally unrealistic in today’s enlightened society. Pleasure of any kind is not to be denied to anyone, including children.

Never before has sex been as explicitly exploited in every aspect of the media as it is today. It’s in movies, music, and prime-time TV—and mostly presented as raunchy, loveless, and often violent.

Columnist John Leo says in a Zogby International poll of college seniors, seventy-three percent of the students said when their teachers taught about ethical issues the usual message was that uniform standards of right and wrong do not exist. What is right and wrong depends on differences in individual values and cultural diversity.

Leo cites a college professor who reported that ten to twenty percent of his students could not bring themselves to criticize the Nazi extermination of Jews. Most students admitted they personally did not approve of the treatment of the Jews but would not say that the Nazis were wrong since “no culture can be judged from the outside and no individual can challenge the moral worldview of another.”

Leo says college students are rarely taught this directly but they absorb it as part of the multicultural, tolerant, diversified, nonjudgmental campus culture.

Are we moving into an near surrealistic society where there is no right or wrong, anything goes, and no one judges or condemns anyone for anything including rape, torture, and mass murder?

Just when you think things can’t get any weirder, out trots Peter Singer.

Dr. Singer sits in the catbird seat of the Ethics Department at Princeton University. Radio talk-show host Glenn Beck assures his national audience that ten to twelve pages of any of Singer’s several books is enough to make any sane person’s head explode, but that Singer has outdone himself by claiming it is fine for people to have sex with animals as long as the sex is consensual.

Singer’s “speciesism” denies the sanctity of human life. He argues, as if atheism were an obvious fact accepted by all, that since there is no divine sanction human life is worth no more than any form of animal life.

He contends that what makes one a “person” is reasoning, remembering, and recognizing others. Therefore fetuses, newborns, and Alzheimer victims are not persons but dogs and dolphins are. So since a newborn, like a three-month-old fetus, is not rational or self-conscious, infanticide, like abortion is not morally wrong.

Beck says he suspects he has somehow been hurled into a parallel universe; no such bizarre goings-on could possibly be happening in our own sane world.

It must have been in Beck’s upside-down, topsy-turvy, parallel universe that a colorful tabloid at a supermarket checkout featured a grinning three-hundred-pound Rosie O’Donnell, her chubby arm draped around the slender shoulder of her blonde girlfriend, declaiming to the world, “We’re pregnant!”

Go figure. Or call Judith Levine or Peter Singer.

But as I began reading “The Sociopath Next Door” I realized it had little in common with “The Stranger Beside Me” other than the similarity of the title. “The Stranger Beside Me” follows Bundy’s bloody footsteps across the country and traces law enforcement’s hunt for one of history’s most notorious serial killers. “The Sociopath Next Door,” on the other hand, deals with what a sociopath is, what makes him tick, and how his antisocial personality disorder affects others.

The dictionary says, among other things, of the term sociopath: “A sociopath is a person with an antisocial personality disorder (‘psychopath’ was once widely used but now has been superseded by ‘sociopath’.)”

So sociopath and psychopath are interchangeable, only now sociopath is more commonly used. But dictionary definitions defining sociopath are inadequate. It takes Dr. Stout 218 pages.

Basically, a sociopath is a person who has no conscience. Dr. Stout says, “What distinguishes sociopaths from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions, a conscience.” These individuals with the empty holes in their souls can “without the slightest blip of guilt or remorse do anything at all.”

One out of every 25 people, or 4 percent, of our society, is sociopathic. Anorexic eating disorders is estimated at 3.43 percent and deemed nearly epidemic. Schizophrenia occurs in only about 1 percent of us. Colon cancer, considered “alarmingly high,” strikes about 40 per 100,000.

So the fact is, “There are more sociopaths among us than people who suffer from anorexia, four times as many sociopaths as schizophrenics, and 100 times as many sociopaths as people diagnosed with a known scourge such as colon cancer.”

Not all sociopaths are homicidal maniacs, but all have wants and desires just like everyone else. Think of your own wants and desires and imagine being able to go after them using any means at your disposal: manipulating, lying, cheating, stealing, even killing—without an inkling of guilt or remorse.

Dr. Stout says she has learned that the damage caused by the sociopaths is deep and lasting, often tragically lethal and startlingly common. “Working with hundreds of survivors, I have become convinced that dealing openly and directly with the facts about sociopathy is a matter of urgency for us all.”

Because sociopaths can lie and cheat and do anything at all without guilt, fear, shame, or any interference from the human conscience that throws up red flags for most of us, they are usually very charming and convincing people. Says Robert Hare, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia: “Everyone, including the experts, can be taken in, manipulated, conned, and left bewildered by them. A good sociopath can play a concerto on anyone’s heartstrings. Your best defense is to understand the nature of these human predators.”

Because of the empty holes in their souls, the lack of a conscience, sociopaths are ice-people; to them other human beings can be no more than props on a stage to be used and manipulated for their own self-centered ends.

Dr. Stout says it is her hope that, “. . . this book will play some part in limiting the sociopaths’ destructive impact on our lives. As individuals, people of conscience can learn to recognize ‘the sociopath next door’ and with that knowledge work to defeat his entirely self-interested aims. At the very least, they can protect themselves and their loved ones from his shameless maneuverings.”

If you know 1,000 people, odds are 40 of them are sociopaths. Thus my earlier assertion that “The Sociopath Next Door” is one of a handful of books I’ve come across that I believe would behoove every adult to read.

Jim confided that he hadn’t loved Rhonda when they married, not like he’d loved Sue, his first wife; but he was lonely and not getting any younger, he said, and he liked her, so he thought, why not? They were married on a Saturday night by a justice of the peace in a house they rented in Bradenton near the Manatee River. A few close friends attended the ceremony.

I asked, “How was it, Jim, getting married without being in love.”

We were sitting on a bench on the courthouse lawn in Bradenton. I’d been best man at his wedding, and he’d had asked me to come with him to the final divorce hearing. He was pale and he looked sick. He was sick. He hadn’t smoked in years and now his hands shook as he took a pack out of his shirt pocket and lit one up. He took a deep drag and blew hard into the wind. He looked at me with a strange look on his face.

“Listen,” he said, “when I got married the first time I was in love. I loved Sue the moment I laid eyes on her. Before we tied the knot she was on my mind twenty-four seven. I was with her every possible moment and when I wasn’t I was thinking about the next time I would be. She felt the same way—said she did, anyway.

“But it wasn’t long before we couldn’t stand the sight of each other. We couldn’t stand to touch each other without a couple drinks. After we split up I did a lot of thinking and I decided love-at-fist-sight Hollywood shit isn’t love at all. It’s an illusion, or lust, or a lie. I knew I could never trust it again and I thought maybe liking was more important than loving and maybe liking could turn to loving, a different kind of love than I had with Sue, and a better one.”

“Did it?”

“You know it did. About a year after we were married we were spending the weekend with friends on Holmes Beach and Rhonda and I went for a walk on the beach. The sun was setting and we were holding hands walking barefoot in the sand and suddenly I realized how close she and I had become and how much she meant to me and how much I loved her. Maybe I loved her too much. Can you do that, Nick, love someone too much?”

I said I didn’t know.

The night of the Thanksgiving party, six years after Jim’s epiphany on the beach, he and Rhonda walked out onto the front porch where some guys were picking guitars and singing. They listened for a while, he said, and then walked across the dirt road to the lake and out onto a short pier. Waist high railings ran along each side of the pier and a rope was tied across the end. The night was clear and cool with plenty of moonlight.

Jim shook his head and looked at a homeless man asleep on a bench. He lit another cigarette.

“She was staring at the water,” he said, “and I was looking at the moonlight in her hair. I realized then that everything bad that ever happened to me, all the hell I’d gone through, had been worth the pain because it was dues for the gift of Rhonda loving me. I guess it sounds corny, but I told her that, and I told her how much I loved her and needed her.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. I knew the story. I’d heard it. Jim shook his head again as if he were having difficulty believing what he was saying.

Rhonda had not responded to his profession of love and the depth of his devotion. She hadn’t replied or turned her head to look at him. She continued to stare at the water and after what seemed to Jim several minutes of stone silence she turned and walked past him and, without looking back, disappeared into the house.

Jim stood still as a statue feeling as if a sledge hammer had crushed his chest. After what could have been five minutes or five hours, he trudged back inside the house and tried to join the party, but for him in an instant the world had changed and nothing in his life would ever be the same.

There is something special to be said about a book that can take us back to our childhood and bring back so many memories  so vividly it seems as if the events were happening again. As I was reading I could smell the scent of the zulfur in the Zolfo Springs swimming pool, see the snakes along the trails in the Peace River Swamp, touch the hideouts we made in the woods.

But not only does Chip write of days gone by, he also gives the reader insight into the human condition and glimpses into the future of what our world could come to unless there are some changes.

“Literary Escapades” is a book to be read and reread. It is a book so beautifully written that it allows the reader to reach out and touch the tea colored water as it runs thru the pages.

Katy Olliff Ishee – author of “Pieces of My Heart” and “Gemini’s Galaxy.”

“Literary Escapades” is a collection of newspaper columns from the whimsical to the ironic, laced through with a biting wit and filled with nostalgia and enlightenment that may make you take a moment to think and smile.

Rose

* * * * *

There are any number of good things that can be said about the book of columns by teacher/writer Chip Ballard, the question is where to begin. One critic said about John D. MacDonald’s books that historians should read them because they describe Florida. The same historians should also pick up Mr. Ballard’s book. This is the essence of rural Florida, especially Hardee County, which is Mr. Ballard’s residence. He tells of all the marvels, the wonders, the oddities of the place and it makes interesting reading.

But it is not just the past that Mr. Ballard writes about. He writes about life and humanity in general. Unlike most pundits, he did not spend his career behind a desk. He was a teacher and I believe spent many years handling the class where all the questionable kids were sent. It was their last stop before expulsion. Mr. Ballard has seen and experienced a lot and many of those experiences are beautifully recreated in this book.

He takes shots at the “anything goes” philosophy of Peter Singer of Princeton, lacerates our justice system that lets criminals roam free and offers other insights into our culture. Lest anyone think he is a callous conservative, his “Old Man by the Side of the Road” story will resonate with readers for a long time. It will remind them of another old man in a short story by Hemingway. (Alas, I forget the title.) Hemingway’s old man is caught in the Spanish Civil War. The story is only two or three pages but the last line lingers forever with the reader. So will Ballard’s old man.

The writer is a moral man in an increasingly immoral society, and a man of integrity in a world of deceit and lies. In a time of spin and counterspin, and where a fool like Singer chairs an Ethics Department, Ballard’s language (and thoughts) are simple, direct, blunt. And, thus, refreshing.

Besides you have to love a book where one essay is titled, “Hank Williams, Hemingway and the Grim Reaper.” Ballard can also be funny, as he is when he writes the column telling the time when there were rumors of his death. It is hilarious.

A very, very good book.

George L. Duncan – author of A Red Wine Silence, Hoofbeats of the Devil, A Dark Orange Farewell, and Galaxy Gems.

* * * * *

Chip Ballard writes with heart and compassion about a part of Florida that is too often overlooked, the interior of the state. His writing is comfortable and approachable, but he’s never afraid to see the dark edges around all that bright, Florida sunlight. He’s earned a place among the best of those Florida writers who understand their state and its joys and sorrows, its promise and its perilous future.

Rick Wilber - author of The Cold Road, My Father’s Game, Media Writing, Future Media, and the bestselling mystery, Rum Point.

Dr. Rick Wilber

School of Mass Communications

University of South Florida

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I read Chip Ballard’s previous books, “Peace River” and “The Snapshot & Other Stories: Tales from Flowing Wells,” and found them well-crafted, intriguing, and hard to put down. But I admit I was a bit wary of a collection of newspaper columns. How could it hold together and deliver a unified wallop the way the author’s novel and short stories do? After the first five pages, however, my doubt was erased and replaced with enthusiasm and delight. Upon finishing the book, I found myself smiling and thinking about the 65 columns and stories I’d just read, each of which I intend to read again. Although many are set in Ballard’s own Hardee County, in the rugged Florida interior, each has universal appeal and will resonate with the reader a long time. The book as a whole is historical, insightful, educational, and, above all, entertaining. Each item in this collection exudes the charm, wit, and humor that hurtle Ballard’s other books top shelf reads. “Literary Escapades” is suitable for children as well as adults, and I recommend it highly to all. Let us hope there is a “Literary Escapades – Vol. 2” in the making.

Jake Williams

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Powerful, forgotten  feelings  came over me as I read “Literary Escapades.”  It took me back to the days of innocence, where we could run thru the woods, and along the banks of the Peace River. Folks in Hardee County in those days could even leave their houses unlocked and not worry about burgulars. Yet as I grew up, I saw the world change, and that way of life disappear, and seem as if it had been make believe to start with.

There is something special to be said about a book that can take us back to our childhood and bring back so many memories  so vividly it seems as if the events were happening again. As I was reading I could smell the scent of the zulfur in the Zolfo Springs swimming pool, see the snakes along the trails in the Peace River Swamp, touch the hideouts we made in the woods.

But not only does Chip write of days gone by, he also gives the reader insight into the human condition and glimpses into the future of what our world could come to unless there are some changes.

“Literary Escapades” is a book to be read and reread. It is a book so beautifully written that it allows the reader to reach out and touch the tea colored water as it runs thru the pages.

Katy Olliff Ishee – author of “Pieces of My Heart” and “Gemini’s Galaxy.”