Don Wycliff

April 25, 2018

Writing the script of our lives

I recently attended a workshop on trauma and emotional resilience in children for people who work in the child-welfare system. The keynote speaker kept coming back to one theme: Each of us must write the script of his or her own life.

February 21, 2018

My father, a library

We buried my father last month. Buried his ashes, actually, in the same grave in the same little East Texas cemetery where we buried my mother, his wife of 71 years, back in 2013.

December 20, 2017

Truth and consequences

The genius of the tempter in the biblical story of the Fall lay not in spinning a lie for Adam and Eve (“You shall be as gods …”), but in knowing the falsehood they wanted to hear. We have seen a similar genius displayed by many of our politicians from time immemorial — more recently by Donald Trump, first as a candidate and now as the president of the United States, especially as he attempts to sell a tax bill cruelly designed to take from the poor and give to the rich.

August 23, 2017

To move forward, look back

“Don’t look back; something might be gaining on you,” the great pitcher and baseball wit Satchel Paige famously said. Whether he intended to or not, Paige captured in that quip a key facet of the American character: a skepticism about reflection, introspection and self-examination. Americans are, by attitude, an anti-historical lot who have preferred to look ahead — to the next horizon, the next piece of open or cleared territory, the next potential enterprise. Look back and something — an uneasy conscience, an inconvenient memory of an historical wrong — might overtake you.

June 25, 2017

Understanding civics

I recently attended an event where a woman who looked to be about 60 years old stood up and admitted that, until a few months ago, she had known almost nothing about civics: how laws get made; how legislatures are structured and legislators are chosen; how “we, the people” govern ourselves.

April 30, 2017

Paying down the debt

On a Saturday morning not long ago, I was giving a lesson on black history to a group of African-American boys, students in the Freedman Academy, an activity sponsored by my local chapter of the mentoring group 100 Black Men of America.

February 26, 2017

Empathy is the better way

I recently attended the annual fundraising dinner for Christ the King Jesuit College Prep High S...

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