When a high-speed train is barrelling down the track, a person who knows the trestle ahead has been washed away has one obligation–to run in the direction of the impending disaster in the hope of assisting survivors.  Those of us who sense our country is nearing a failed state

A strategist for the democratic party, Lisa Smith, sums up her political view of the world. It’s radical that being reasonable is radical and being normal is abnormal. ( ”Radical Reason” by Joe Hagan, Vanity Fair, October 2022, pg.43.)  Profound as well as surprising, the comme

“The rubicon (sic) has been crossed. The fire of revolution has been lit.”  So wrote a representative of the white supremacist group the Proud Boys on Telegram, after the January 6, 2021 insurrection.  (“Capitol Insurrection,…” by Cassie Miller and Hannah Gais, Southern Po

“We are a storytelling species, every bit as much as a tool-using one,” writes the author of The English Professor Who Foresaw Modern Neuroscience.   I agree. As a teacher, I would tell my students, “If you want to see how your mind works, write something.”  Composition exp

People sometimes ask if I’ve thought about publishing a selection of my blogs in book form.  Naturally, I’m flattered, just as I am when they suggest my novels would make great movies. Such notions don’t swell my head. Steven Spielberg, I know, won’t be calling soon. 

In True Believer, Eri Hoffer writes this about cataclysmic times and the wisdom of stepping outside a rising tide. When conditions are not ripe, the potential leader, no matter how gifted, and his holy cause, no matter how potent, remain without a following…  There is a period of w