Ralph Kinney Bennett March 3, 1941 – December 18, 2024
Articles, essays and columns by Ralph Bennett. Search by any word in an article, or narrow the list by publication, year or topic.
16 articles
That was the day in Philadelphia in 1776 that 12 of the 13 colonies voted to declare their independence from Great Britain, even as General Sir William Howe was landing 10,000 British troops on Staten Island in New York. (New…
It’s like a pair of really big shoes. Every year, I have to walk up and put my feet in them and look silly because I can never fill them.
Funny thing about Christmas… how it just is… how it just persists.
Oh, yes, and “happy holidays!” And, by all means, “season’s greetings.” Or perhaps you would simply like to hunker down and whistle past the whole thing, or ruminate playfully (or seriously) about a “Winter Festival” or “Solstice Celebration” or even…
The automobile’s potential is its greatest secret—an open secret and yet, it often seems, a forgotten one. The big SUV in my garage may occasionally make a 10-mile trip to Walmart or 2-mile run to the volunteer fire station when…
Hard to believe, but it’s been full 40 April Fools days since the introduction of an auto landmark of sorts—the AMC Gremlin.
President Obama’s last minute (and futile) campaign slam at Massachusetts’s new U.S. Senator, Scott Brown—trying to belittle the fact that he drove his GMC pickup truck up and down the state on the way to an upset victory—is another poignant…
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. –Arthur C. Clarke’s “Third Law”
One Saturday, about a month before Christmas 50 years ago, I was with my Uncle George in a department store in Pittsburgh, Pa. The whole family was Christmas shopping here and there, but George and I happened to be walking…
Cong. "Jack" Murtha is a sort of local legend here in Western Pennsylvania.
As usual we'll gather at Conneaut Lake, up in northwestern Pennsylvania, as we have, some of us, for forty years or more.
As the story unfolds of the arrest of 17 suspected Islamic terrorists and the seizure of a huge cache of explosive materials, Canadians, Americans, and free men everywhere can be thankful that the Canadian police and intelligence services had the…
In a desk drawer in my study in Ligonier is a piece of pale yellow paper I have kept for more than 40 years -- a telegram from the Philadelphia Inquirer inviting me to report for a tryout in the…
Whenever the great thinker and founder of the Hudson Institute traveled, he lugged a small library with him. I remember his delight over a special folding bookcase, which he sometimes took with him to set up in his hotel room.
That's what ancient Roman men used to slap on their faces to staunch the bleeding cuts left by barbers who had shaved them with the iron razors of the day. No less an authority than Pliny the Elder has left…
There has been a replacement of Christianity and other freely expressed religions by a secular faith that scourges the expression of faith as blasphemy. Demanding public expression of bowing to the "law" (see Mosaic)