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It used to be called drawing a line in the sand. You can go this far someone would say, and no farther. Political negotiations for territory produced maps and lines in red to mark borders. This is mine. That is yours. Today, establishing a red line equates to warning other nations or groups not to…
Carolyn and I spent ten days in London. It’s interesting to gather perspectives from someplace else, even if London is familiar. My thoughts: On the day we arrived and met up with our middle son Yosi, who’d completed a three-week tour of Ireland and the UK with the band Hurray for the Riff Raff, two…
Only four years ago, a friend echoed a common sentiment as the stock market plummeted. “We’ll never see the Dow back at fourteen thousand in our lifetimes.” On May 7, the Dow closed at 15,056. Yesterday it closed at 15,233. I’m not touting the stock market, although my portfolio—conservative at this stage in my life—maintains…
Last week, I asked a question: “What if you looked in the mirror and couldn’t see yourself?” An event last Sunday reminded me that that question might be asked in a different way: “What if you walked down the street in broad daylight and everyone looked right through you?” The event I referred to was…
What if you looked in the mirror and couldn’t see yourself? For many Americans and others around the world, that’s reality. But Jason Collins is putting his reflection back where it belongs—in plain sight. Let’s not force others to disappear in the process. Two weeks ago, Brittney Griner, the 6-8 basketball All-American from Baylor, announced…
Last Monday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” broadcast an interesting feature about prejudice. Reporter Shankar Vedantam spoke of a professor discovering that people treat members of their own racial, religious, social or professional communities better than those outside them. This takes a Ph.D.? And what does it really mean? According to Vedantam, a Yale professor suffered…
How fast do news stories change? Last night, I had a draft of this post ready to go. It included comments about the Boston Marathon bombings. This morning, I had to start over. I had written: “You can imagine a number of likely suspects, foreign and domestic, in general terms, but the investigation demands time…
Words can offend. One starts with “C.” But we need to talk more about it because given the nature of the world we live in it’s more relevant than ever. Compromise gets some people riled up. The word suggests a lack of integrity and morality. These folks believe they’re always right and opposing views are…