Though it occurred many years ago, I’ll never forget the day when, as a teacher, I walked into the woman’s lounge at school and found a rape victim, a young student, collapsed on a couch, her taffy colored hair cascading over a blue, velvet cushion.  With her pupils thrown far ba

Let me assure doubters that mud at the bottom of a pond is as dark and deep as any to be found in a lake.  By mud, I’m talking about power games as they are played from rural Alabama or New York. Near the end of my final term as a county commissioner in a midsize city, I became pri

There’s a university professor in Canada who is teaching an introductory journalism course, unique because it focuses on Donald Trump’s ability to keep the media and everyone else off-balance.  (“From Tocqueville to Trump,” by Joel Stein, Vanity Fair, Feb. 2019, pgs. 36-37.)�

I don’t care what you think of me.  I like money.  I’m not talking about quantity. I’m talking about money as a form of payment. The financial industry is coaxing consumers to move to a cashless society.  All I have to do is allow someone to stick a computer chip at the end o

Not long ago, a company where I’d done business for many years rejected the password to my account. Frustrated, I sent  an email, asking if there was trouble on the site. There was none.  They confirmed my password by return message.   Frankly, I was stunned.  I wasn’t aware t

I opened my ACLUmagazine, recently, to read a young woman’s statement:  “I realized that I didn’t want to work within the system anymore.  I wanted to help reform it.” (Activists in Conservative Country,” by Tim Murphy, ACLUmagazine, Winter 2019, pg. .) I understood her wo

Trump has always been a president untroubled by his contradictions. When the stock market is up, he takes his bow center stage.  When it’s down, he blames Jerome Powell, his appointment as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board.  Conventional wisdom discounts either position.  “…

A friend I hadn’t seen for almost a year dropped by for tea the other day.  As the leaves steeped in the pot, she folded her hands in front of her.  “I’ve decided to get a dog.”  The quizzical look in her eyes made the statement seem more like a question.  “Should I?”�

With the Democrats in control of the U. S. House, President Donald Trump seems to be reviving his base with fiery rhetoric.  We all know who members of that base are — Woebegone innocents of earlier days, a time when, if corn prices flourished, so did the nation. As a kid, my f

Wherever there are humans, there is a pecking order.  In the field of research, the dividing line lies between science and social science.  Hard science works with data that can be measured and the results verified by others.  Social sciences can sometimes seem a little more like j