David Owen

2 months ago | newyorker.com | David Owen

Back in 2021, I wrote an essay about the great musicians who, surprisingly, had performed at my high school, in Kansas City, in the nineteen-sixties: the Crystals, the Drifters, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Ike & Tina Turner. There were so many of them that I assumed high-school dances with big-name talent must have been common in that era, but that turned out not to be the case. Tina Turner and Booker T.

Nov 15, 2024 | endeavourhillshallamdoveton.starcommunity.com.au | David Owen |Jin Hui

by Pastor David Owen, president of Dandenong Ministers’ Fellowship (DMF) What exactly is Hope? The Bible asks us ‘why do we hope for what we already have?’ and it talks about ‘the hope that lies ahead’. It may be concluded then, that the true essence of hope lies in the future and ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for’, the evidence of things ‘not seen. The substance is what we do NOW because we fully expect something in the future.

Nov 3, 2024 | newyorker.com | David Owen

The Manhattan organization with the coolest name, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York, also has the coolest motto, which it shares with the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths: “By hammer and hand all arts do stand.” The society was founded, in 1785, by twenty-two local craftsmen, whose trades included tanning, silversmithing, ship-joining, stonecutting, coach-making, and chandlery.

Jul 26, 2024 | newyorker.com | David Owen

Summers in Kansas City in the nineteen-thirties were so hot that my mother’s father moved his bed into the porch, which opened off the living room and was screened on three sides. My grandmother spent many hours there, too, mostly reading in a big wicker chair between a card table and a floor lamp. The house I grew up in also had a screened porch, which my parents added when I was eleven.

May 17, 2024 | newyorker.com | David Owen

A friend of mine knew a wealthy man who had decided to live forever. That made him hard to be around, my friend told me, in an e-mail, because he was “always dropping to the floor to do ab crunches or running out for bottles of water or falling asleep or outgassing Chinese herbs.” Immortality is attractive to rich people because simple arithmetic shows that if they live a normal lifespan they won’t have time to spend enough of their money.