A woman in her mid-50s, whom I’d known for two decades, recently dropped me from her Facebook circle.  Once an advocate for women’s rights, she acquired a boyfriend, and not long after, I noted changes in the tenor of her remarks.  Each time she defended MAGA values, I countered

The anthropologist Margaret Mead spent her life studying humans and came up with observations that go unchallenged today. One of them is, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.  But, like the

During my interview with Willy Vlautin, for Just Read It, the writer said he couldn’t understand why working-class people imagined the rich would act in their interests.  It’s a question I’ve also considered in my blogs.  Pecking orders exist in Nature, so it seems natural for

Though averse to ageism, I was moved when I  read that longtime Congresswoman Anne Kuste was retiring to allow someone younger to take her place.  As a tribute to her decision, I have recorded below my relevant brunch conversation with a Millennial.                  

She’s a star within the Evangelical community, but I won’t identify her for reasons that will become clear.  We met decades ago when I was an elected official. Though I am an atheist, I treated members of the religious right with the same courtesy I gave to Mothers Against Drunk

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.