July 23, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      In the 1939 political comedy/drama, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the naive but principled Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) is supposed to be a do-no-harm bumpkin replacement for a deceased… Continue reading

July 16, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com I talk too much, can be overly gregarious, especially when there is a seemingly captive audience. That’s rude, isn’t it? Yet most of us do not listen, at least not fully,… Continue reading

July 9, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com A recent painting, “Abstract on a Red Wall,” came about because what I had on the canvas was not working — there was nothing there that told a story or suggested… Continue reading

July 2, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      Of all that was so sorrowfully missing from the presidency on the line-of-duty deaths of five newspapermen and women in Maryland last week, the saddest was a moment of… Continue reading

  June 25, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com;ahgunther@yahoo.com      In my childhood village of Spring Valley,  not far from New York City but at the time country enough to be “upstate,” there was a protective rhythm.   … Continue reading

June 18, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      This imperfect experiment called America, conceived in great, precipice-style argument by the Framers, not fully realized as to intent and potential, nevertheless has endured. Winston Churchill, the half-American: “Democracy… Continue reading

June 11, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com        There is, in depression, a numbness, the nerve endings dulled by a sinisterly administered anesthetic. There is a cloud about you, as if you are in a… Continue reading

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com BETHESDA, Md. — Sometimes you have to leave home to go home again. That was the case on my last day, four days later, in this ever-expanding D.C. suburb. Government must water even the… Continue reading

May 28, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com There’s an analogy between “English” muffins and the present government of the United States, once known as “of, by and for the people’ and now an oligarchy. In Englishman Samuel Bath… Continue reading

May 20, 2018 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com One snowy evening a long time ago, with the temperature not so low that a walker would freeze and not so high that there would be rainy ice, and with the… Continue reading