Summer Travel Plans
I should take a trip, I thought to myself, as I perused some interesting destinations in the news.
Read MoreAn Atheist in Church
I’m a nonbeliever who loves to visit churches – all kinds of churches: massive Gothic cathedrals, plain Quaker meetinghouses, Buddhist pagodas. I go, not just to see the architecture but to experience the spirit of a place, as I went on Sunday to Riverside Church, which rises above the Hudson River on Harlem’s Morningside Heights.
Read MoreJ is for Gerrymander (Part 2)
“The simple truth is this: America is the only major democracy in the world that allows politicians to pick their own voters” (David Daley, Ratf**ked).
Read MoreAnd not only in Boston
“I have heard this with Boston hockey fans too, being pretty racist towards PK Subban when he played for the Canadiens,” my son Daniel wrote me reflecting on the racist slurs recently shouted at Baltimore Outfielder Adam Jones at Fenway Park. “Dad, is the city really this notoriously racist?”
Read MoreJ is for Gerrymander (Part 1)
In David Daley’s eyes Chris Jankowski is a genius. Jankowski is both the hero and anti-hero, of Ratf**ked, of Daley’s “story of how Republicans turned looming demographic disaster into legislative majorities so unbreakable, so impregnable, that none of the outcomes are in doubt until after the 2020 census.”
Read More“What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”*
Recently, an old friend, a retired doctor who volunteers at the free clinic in Providence, Rhode Island, described the anger of many of the patients he sees.
Read MorePlay it Again, Uncle Sam
Early in 2001, Alan Greenspan,the 20-year chairman of the Federal Reserve, worried publicly about future federal surpluses so large they would wipe out the national debt, pour billions into the economy, and strangle private markets. So he proposed a tax cut as “a pre-emptive smoothing of the glide path to zero federal debt.”
Read MoreWatching Venezuela
Watching Venezuela disintegrate, I remember a man who many years ago predicted the demise of his country.
Read MoreThe Other War on Coal
Tomorrow my grandson, Jamie Webb, turns two years old. It’s also Earth Day’s 47th birthday and, not coincidentally, the first anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement on global climate change.
Read More"My Name is Emmett Till”
The most controversial work in the biennial show at the Whitney Museum in New York is “Open Casket,” an oil painting by Dana Schutz.
Read MorePeace After Terror
Saturday, I went to the spot where the Swedish terrorist attack took place
Read MoreStreet Art
"If at first you don't succeed - call an airstrike."
Read MoreIn Praise of Cherry Trees
Sakura Park lies just east of Grant’s tomb above the Hudson River on New York’s upper west side
Read MoreOne More Thumb in the Nose
It’s fitting, I guess, that yesterday’s evisceration of Barack Obama’s environmental and climate legacy came during the anniversary week of the Exxon Valdez’s 11-million-gallon crude-oil spill into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.
Read MoreA moment to cheer, not a time to gloat
Donald Trump’s two major initiatives to date have failed spectacularly, and Democrats have yet to cast a vote.
Read MoreAmerican Weekend (RIP)
Chuck Berry and Jimmy Breslin died last weekend.
Read MoreBeauty and the Shopping Piece
In “the transformative power of classical music,” Benjamin Zander describes and plays a two-minute piece by Chopin. He asks his audience to “think of somebody who you adore who’s no longer there [and] bring that person into your mind and at the same time, follow the line all the way from B to E, and you will hear everything that Chopin had to say.”
Read MoreAnimal Kingdom Farm Plantation
“In wildness is the preservation of the world,” Henry David Thoreau
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