I wrote my first Perspectives (“Haiti”) on January 2, 2012. Initially, the blogs were limited to 250 words and were published five (and sometimes six) times a week. Their intent was to present a modest thought, one that connected my personal world to the much larger world beyond, in the hope of stimulating us (you and me) to think a little differently – to consider something from a new perspective.
The reason I mention this at all is that one of the historical consequences of the Newtonian-Einsteinian gravity conspiracy has been to consign to the dustbin of history the equally important – and now lamentably forgotten – counterforce of levity. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but it certainly has been effective – and I see its impact every morning when I find my inbox filled with messages from candidates, PACs, and untold others in the political business, each one angrier, gloomier, at once more desperate and more negative than the last. To say there is no levity here, no humor, and not a hint of whimsy to start my day would be a huge understatement.
It’s interesting to note that in his farewell address Washington warned about the danger of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party,” which he called “a frightful despotism.”
An unprecedented callousness has crept into our public discourse, and in the land of me first, the other no longer seems to matter. Bullies are not to be confronted but emulated. Lies are not to be exposed but repeated until they have become indistinguishable from the truth. And only a sucker says I’m sorry.
I have what may seem kind of a cosmic question: Are we experiencing the contraction of a sense of community, in the broadest meaning of the term, that had been expanding for the last 50 years or more?
Not every resident of Montgomery was thrilled about last week’s opening of the lynching memorial and Legacy Museum. “It’s going to cause an uproar and open old wounds,” one told The Guardian. “It keeps putting the emphasis on discrimination and cruelty,” said another.
In Montgomery we confronted our history – or more accurately, our history confronted us with a rawness from which we have shielded ourselves for centuries.
My daughter, Annie, and I just spent two days in Montgomery at the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which covers a small hilltop above Alabama’s capital city. It is an extraordinarily uplifting name for what is, in fact, a heartrending tribute to the more than 4,000 African American victims of lynching in America.
The environmental depredations of Trump, his Secretary of Interior and EPA Administrator should cause every high school graduate in June 2018 to emulate their predecessors of 1970 and turn out voters for Democrats this November.
Sunday was a big day, at least for me: it was both the 48th Earth Day and my grandson’s third birthday, and I hope Jamie grows up to take good care of both of us.
“I know how much is enough,” a friend of mine once said to me. “It’s just a little more than you have right now.”
It has become increasingly clear that many Americans no longer buy into the American dream.
Yesterday 24/7 Wall Street published a piece on the “Most (and Least) Healthy Countries in the World.” The rankings are based on an index that measures four variables: “life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and incidence of tuberculosis.”
“What makes me so nervous about the changes that are happening with rapid climate change is less where we are going than the rate we are going there.”
Up near the northwest corner of New York’s Central Park, across from the intersection of 106th Street and Central Park West, stands The Strangers’ Gate, one of 20 named entrances to the park, which was designed in 1858 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux
As I wrote last time, the Knight Foundation recently reported the lowest levels of trust in our government since Gallup began tracking the issue sixty years ago. In 1964, for example, 74 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do what is right at least most of the time. Today that figure is less than 25 percent.
This is a dangerous place to be. Donald Trump shows no interest in finding common ground, but seeks only to divide us for his political advantage. My fear is that too many Democrats seem to be following the same path.
“The land was ours before we were the land’s,” Robert Frost, The Gift Outright
It’s a unique combination of art and social activism, which will, I hope, cause you to reflect on the beauty and the fragility of both our endangered birds and our imperiled neighborhoods.
“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” Lucretius
Some call bureaucratic regulations “job killers” that stifle economic growth
Others call them protections that safeguard human health and the environment.
