skip to main | skip to sidebar

In Medias Res

Essays, notes, and fragments--personal, political, and philosophical--from the midst of things

"Provocative, yet flawed."--Stephen Schneck

Saturday, July 04, 2026

On (Not) Losing Our (Civil) Religion

On April 3, 1890, in Lehi, Utah, my maternal great-great-grandmother, Martha Mercer Kirkham, joined with other women to form a local chapter...

Thursday, July 02, 2026

Getting Direct About the Politics Behind Kansas’s August Amendment

Walking around my Wichita neighborhood over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed something about the yard signs encouraging people to “Vot...

Thursday, June 04, 2026

A Follow-Up on Christian Influence in Kansas (Democratic Edition)

[An expansion upon my latest Insight Kansas column, with the help of an image from The Active Age ] Two months ago, I wrote a column (whic...

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

On Warren Farha, Cultural Renewal, and the (Too Few) Bookish Places Where It Happens

Last week Warren Farha—a devout Orthodox Christian, a soft-spoken descendent of Lebanese immigrants and merchants, a lifelong Wichitan, and ...

Sunday, April 05, 2026

From Collective to Individual: Easter Thoughts on Constantine, Carrie Nation, and Changes in Christian Influence in Kansas (and Everywhere Else)

[A meandering and marginally holiday-appropriate extension upon my latest Insight Kansas column .] Decades ago, the Christian theologian Sta...

View web version