Author: Ron Steury

  • Fences

    Fences

    During the 1950s Blacks were continuing the “Northern migration” from the Jim Crow oppression in the south to the northern states. Blacks felt that in the North at least some jobs were available to them without the overt segregation of the South. Those jobs were almost entirely of the menial variety with the understanding that…

  • Lion

    Lion

    Have you as a child been lost — even for 5 or 10 minutes? How about being lost when you were 5 years old? How about being lost at 5 years old and being uneducated — not even knowing your address nor the name of your home town? How about becoming lost riding on a…

  • Jackie

    Jackie

    We all have days in our lives that we will remember for as long as we take breath and God grants our mental competence. Many of those are personal… our marriage, the birth of our children, funerals of family members and tragedies that some of us have endured. And most of us have a few…

  • Loving

    Loving

    When I was reared in rural Indiana in the 1950’s, I never saw living (as opposed to pictures) people of color other than on those rare occasions my brothers, sisters, and I piled into our (usually beaten up) car and made the annual (or in a good year, semi-annual) trek into Fort Wayne (50 miles…

  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

    Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

    Many of us have ambivalent feelings about the wars our country fights. Even if we have concerns for the justifications given to our troops to be in harm’s way overseas, we cringe at the potential damages to their physical and mental health, let alone the chance that they may pay the “ultimate price.” When we…

  • Denial

    Denial

    Who among us would ever deny that the Holocaust has occurred? A person might make that statement if they were a white supremacist, or live in Iran, but even then we wouldn’t think they really believe what they are saying. We would be certain that their opinions were the result of biased propaganda. Given that,…

  • The Girl on the Train

    The Girl on the Train

    I suspect most of us have had to deal with someone plagued by the condition (some would say disease) of alcoholism. In American society we are offered an alcoholic drink at almost every social occasion and we are often judged negatively if we do not partake. It is estimated that one of three adults are…

  • The Light Between Oceans

    The Light Between Oceans

    Lighthouses hold a romantic fascination for most of us. Standing on the edge of civilization, broadcasting a beacon of light to those struggling to get back home, showing the way in the fiercest of storms and warning off ships from dangerous reefs. How many of us have heard our ministers use lighthouses as an analogy…

  • One Hundred Thirty-Six Years of Ben-Hur

    One Hundred Thirty-Six Years of Ben-Hur

    Few adults have not come across some version of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The hugely popular book, written by Civil War General Lew Wallace, is said to be the first novel ever read by many of the millions of Americans who bought or borrowed the tome (450 pages or so) in the last…

  • Copperhead

    Copperhead

    For the most part we in the Northern states look upon the Civil War as a tragic but noble and necessary episode to preserve the Union. And most of us rank Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest, if not the greatest of U.S. presidents. But we gloss over how much opposition to the war…