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Tattoo You, Tattoo Me

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Tuesday, 14 July 2026

Written by Margaret Dickson

Sometime in the last several decades, I realized that I was seeing more and more people with more and more tattoos.

I am not talking about an old tar with a dark blue anchor on his bicep or a crusty guy with a heart emblazoned “Mama” on his chest.  No, indeed.  I am talking vibrant colors in intricate designs covering most of the real estate of an arm or a leg, maybe even on a neck or face. And, not just on curmudgeons, but on young folks, both men and women.

So startled and—yes—fascinated by this new development was I that I began investigating, a process that culminated in an observation visit to the internationally-known Bill Claydon’s Tattoo World on Yadkin Road, which closed last year to the deep regret of tattoo aficionados everywhere. A friend, who incidentally had a rose on her breast as well as something on a wrist and an ankle, and I watched while a young soldier received a highly colorful and curvaceous dragon tattoo wrapping about his calf. The design had been chosen by his 4-year-old son, who was not present for the actual procedure. The tattoo artist said the work would take 6-8 hours, so they took several breaks to sip something and have a snack. I asked the soldier whether getting a tattoo was painful; he acknowledged that it was uncomfortable at best and painful at worst. He said he would “self-medicate” when he got home.

I also wrote several Up and Coming Weekly columns about tattoos, which generated reader responses along the lines of “what’s your problem, lady?” I asked readers to tell me about their tattoos and why they got what they did, and their responses were enlightening. Their tattoos commemorated important markers in their lives—a marriage, a new baby, the loss of a loved one. Most were proud of their tattoos, although some regretted them, especially ones that addressed a relationship that no longer existed. One woman wrote that she loved her tattoo, but that she deliberately put it on her upper thigh where her grandmother was not likely to see it!

Fast forward to 2026, and tattoos are everywhere on all sorts of Americans as well as people in other cultures. The desire to decorate one’s body apparently transcends geographic boundaries. 

Over the decades, we have also learned more about tattoos’ repercussions.

Tattoo regret is a real thing, especially among people who got them on a whim, when they were very young, and when they are in a highly visible place on one’s body. Tattoo removal is also a real thing, though it can be painful and expensive, requiring multiple sessions. Black and blue inks are the easiest to remove, with lighter and brighter colors more difficult and sometimes impossible to get rid of entirely. Some people opt for tattoo cover up to hide a regretted tattoo, perhaps the name or initials of a lost love.

There is also growing concern about tattoo ink being carcinogenic as it travels through the human body, perhaps causing cancers such as melanoma and lymphoma, although there are no direct causal studies.

Tattoos and the desire to decorate one’s body continue to fascinate me.

Do you have a tattoo or more than one?  Do you love them or regret them? Do they speak to a special person or event in your life and do they bring you happy memories?  Would you encourage your loved ones to get inked?

I would love to read your tattoo story and to share it with Up and Coming Weekly readers. Bring ‘em on!

Declaration Defends Two Core Principles

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Tuesday, 07 July 2026

Written by John Hood

As we gathered last week to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we remembered what makes our country exceptional — what makes it, despite evident flaws, so worthy of our loyalty and affection.

American exceptionalism isn’t about our country’s vast expanse and bounty of resources. Nor do we venerate the Founding as if the American people possessed superior virtues or talents.

While England was the most common origin of America’s progenitors, by 1776 there were sizable populations of people with Scottish, Irish, Dutch, French, German, Scandinavian, Spanish, aboriginal, and African ancestry. Indeed, while New England was much less diverse, in the Middle and Southern colonies people with primarily English ancestry comprised only about 40% of the population.

What led to the Revolutionary War — and what sustained the American cause through its duration — was a commitment to traditions and ideas that arose in a specific historical context but had the potential for broad, even universal, application. Two of them, freedom and self-government, were related but distinct principles for which American patriots were willing to combat a world-spanning empire.

“My first wish is for America to be free,” said John Penn, one of North Carolina’s three signers of the Declaration. Like many other North Carolinians of the 1770s, Penn was a native Virginian who had headed south in pursuit of freedom (North Carolina was comparatively lax in enforcing conformity and collecting taxes) as well as greater economic opportunity (land was cheaper). 

A particular incident seems to have motivated his move. Penn, a lawyer, had been complaining publicly about Parliament taxing the colonies without their consent — that is, without having their own elected representatives in the body. According to family lore, someone reported Penn to the local authorities. He was charged and convicted of making disrespectful remarks about the king. A Virginia judge ordered him to pay a nominal fine of one penny.

Penn refused. Other members of his family had already moved to what is now Vance County, North Carolina. He joined them.

Can you spot both principles in question here? Penn was speaking in favor of self-government, that people living in a community ought to enjoy the civil right to help select those who populate and run its governmental institutions. But his personal freedom to express that view was a natural right, one that the civil authority had violated.

These ideas may have been expressed eloquently in English, but they had far older roots. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, distinguished between two conceptions of liberty: a civic one that was “for all to rule and be ruled in turn” and a personal one, “that a man should live as he likes.”

Both sets of rights were and are important. And, of course, neither has been consistently defended and advanced, including here in America. At the time of the Founding, most Americans couldn’t vote. And colonial governments imposed a range of restrictions on the freedom of Americans, including the moral outrage of slavery.

But to observe that the Americans whose representatives gathered in Philadelphia in 1776 were inconsistent in their commitments to freedom and self-government is not to deny the significance of what transpired that summer. There are worse sins than shortsightedness or even hypocrisy, including having no principles at all. As Martin Luther King would later put it so memorably, the Founders had essentially written a “promissory note,” whether they realized it or not, to future generations. Fulfilling that obligation is an on-going project.

While not foreseeing all the consequences, the signers of the Declaration of Independence knew they were making history. Another North Carolina participant, William Hooper, celebrated “the important share which the colonies must soon have in regulating the political balance” by adopting a “constitution purged of [the] impurities” of English government and informed by “an experience of its defects.”

Our dual experiment in freedom and self-government continues. Human nature prohibits perfection. What makes America special, and worth celebrating, is the audacity of our aspiration.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Pitt Dickey: Fun in the DC gene pool

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Tuesday, 07 July 2026

Written by Pitt Dickey

Have you recently enjoyed childhood memories about happy hours spent in a public swimming pool?   The Reflecting Pool kerfuffle in Washington, DC should stir up old recollections.  Take a swim down Memory Lane.   

When you were young, the Lifeguard would periodically blow his whistle and yell either “Everybody out of the pool” or “Everybody into the pool.”   

The Lifeguard’s authority could not be questioned, or you could be banished to the blistering pavement.  Also – No Running!

The turmoil with DC’s Reflecting Pool brings back memories.  America has been ordered out of the Reflecting Pool as it is now safely behind fencing and armed guards.     

The Reflecting Pool is a mess,    happy green algae festooned with blue sheets of paint  Depending on your political beliefs,  the cause of the uglification of the Reflecting Pool varies:  Blue paint on the bottom of a shallow pool heats the water creating a Petrie Dish of pond scum,  or it is algae planted by Biden,  or a bad paint job done under a no bid contract by a buddy of the President,  or vandals with box cutters,  or using the drained pool as a parade ground for driving a Presidential motorcade across.  

Take your choice.   Reality is in the politics of the beholder.  We don’t need no stinkin’ reality.  We got our political opinion. 

Pools of water have a long history of causing troubles.  Consider our old pal Narcissus from Greek mythology.   He had so much trouble with a pool of water that he turned into a flower and a psychiatric disorder.  Narcissus was a Pretty Boy.  

He was so pretty that everyone, both male and female, fell in love with him.   He lived in a time before mirrors so he didn’t know how pretty he really was.   One day, a lady nymph named Echo saw him and fell in love.  

Echo had previously gotten into trouble with the Goddess Juno for covering up Zeus’ girlfriends.   Juno laid a curse on Echo that prevented her from talking, except for being able to repeat the last few words of what someone said to her.

The love-smitten Echo tried to hug Narcissus, but he was irritated by her constant repeating of his words.  He wasn’t buying what Echo was selling.  

Echo, broken-hearted after being spurned by her Pretty Boy, developed an eating disorder.  She wasted away until her body was gone.    All that was left was her voice doing echoes for eternity.  Another spurned Narcissus lover was a man named Ameinias.  Like Echo, he was hot to trot with Narcissus, who refused to have anything to do with him. 

Ameinias even wrote a poem for Narcissus that Andy Griffith once quoted: “Sure as the vine twines round the stump/ You are my darling sugar lump.”  It didn’t work.   Ameinias did not cotton to rejection.  He asked Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, to put a spell on Narcissus.  Her spell caused Narcissus to never be able to be loved by a person he loved. 

As luck would have it, one hot day Narcissus worked up a powerful thirst.  He found a pond in the forest and stopped to take a drink.   When he looked into the water he saw his reflection for the very first time.   

He immediately fell in love with his reflection thinking it was the Prettiest Boy he had ever seen.  Every time he tried to touch his own reflection, the ripples in the water caused the reflection to disappear. This narcissism mutated into the annoying ad for eye drops announcing: “I can’t take my eyes off my eyes,” and Frankie Valli’s song: “I’m just too good to be true. Can’t take my eyes off of me.”

Narcissus couldn’t leave the side of the pond because he was so in love with his own reflection.  

He neither ate nor slept for staring at his own reflection.   This ultimately led to his demise.   He shrank down until he became a flower called a Narcissus lily or daffodil (which you can buy at most garden centers).

 Psychiatrists stole Narcissus’s name for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is used for a patient diagnosed as “arrogant, self-centered, demanding who often has high self-esteem and may believe they are superior or special compared to other people.  

They seem to need excessive praise and admiration, and they may react poorly to perceived criticism.”

Gentle Reader, you decide if our current Fearless Leader in DC might have some things in common with Narcissus in connection with the Reflecting Pool and possibly other issues.   

As the mutant turtles in the Reflecting Pool say: “It’s later than you think.” 

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)

Know It. Live It.

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Tuesday, 30 June 2026

Written by Dan DeBruler

There's a reason the next generation isn't buying what we're selling.

It's not that the truth has lost its power. It's that too many of us have lost our grip on it — or more honestly, we've decided our judgment is better than the guidance we've been given. The problem isn't what we know. It's what we're willing to do with what we know.

America is celebrating 250 years of independence this year. I love this country, and I love what it was built on — the freedom to worship, to build, to chart a course toward something better. But here's something worth sitting with: what at first looked like rebellion in those early colonists became a full-scale exodus toward self-determination. The freedom to make their own rules. Decide their own future. Trust themselves more than anyone else.

Sound familiar? Because that same spirit — the one that says I know a better way — is alive and well today. And it's not just in the culture. It's in the church. It's in our homes. Maybe it's in the mirror.

We have more access to biblical truth than any generation that has ever lived. Bibles on every device, sermons on demand, podcasts for every theological question you could think to ask. And yet James didn't say blessed is the one who hears the most. He said, "Do not merely listen to the word... Do what it says." (James 1:22, NIV) That's the gap. That's where we're losing ground — not in the information age, but in the application of it.

Here's the honest part: application is hard. It's easier to attend another study than to forgive the person sitting across the dinner table from you. It's easier to know the right thing than to do it, especially when doing it costs you something. Most of us aren't wrestling with Greek verbs or systematic theology. We're wrestling with our temper. Our pride. Our silence when we should speak.

And the next generation is watching. What looked at first like youthful rebellion has become something more sobering — a full-scale exodus from the very idea of absolute truth. We can point fingers at social media, politics, the culture, the therapy industry. But maybe the most honest place to start is closer to home. In the mirror.

Because here's what Scripture doesn't leave us room to debate: "Whoever says 'I know him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (1 John 2:4, NIV) That's not my editorial opinion. That's the Word.

The value of knowing the truth isn't just personal. It's generational. Every time we choose to actually live what we say we believe — when we forgive when it's hard, when we speak truth when it's costly, when we love our neighbor in the specific and inconvenient details of real life — we're doing something far greater than just being obedient. We're giving the next generation something to hold onto.

The measure of our faith isn't what we know or even what we declare. It's what we're willing to do with it.

That's not just good theology. It's the whole thing.