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Two weeks ago, my friend Jane asked me how I kept from screaming when I spoke to that wealthy guy with the expensive BMW who complained about high taxes (“The High Cost of Wealth,” 10-14-11). Other readers have wondered how I stayed under control when I met a family stocking up on fattening foods at…
When you teach, you learn. I spoke a few words at San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian Church two weeks ago. I’d been asked to invite the congregation to a joint study program with my synagogue, Congregation Sherith Israel. I told a story about Rabbi Hillel. Early this week, the lesson came back to me. Some background:…
I was filling up my gas tank when a new, Milano Beige Metallic BMW 760Li sedan pulled up to the pump behind me. This 535-horsepower baby made my 328i look like a kid’s toy. A 760Li starts at $137,300 MSRP. But the driver looked like a regular guy—around fifty, trim with a head of dark…
A woman was stabbed to death half a mile from my home last Monday. Her adult son apparently killed her and wounded his father. Police were called. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the alleged killer held up a knife in each hand and approached them. One officer fired a non-lethal beanbag. The man kept…
America is big on halls of fame. Walls and walks of fame, too. But we’re missing one hall, and it’s more important than all the others combined. Yet we’ll never build it—it would honor too many people and so be way too costly. But these folks should be acknowledged. By way of explanation, I just…
Congress’ “supercommittee”—six Democrats and six Republicans—is now meeting to determine how to help the nation get out of its debt crisis. They’ll recommend budget cuts. That’s a given. But the idea of raising revenue remains a legitimate consideration. As Doug Oberhelman, CEO of Caterpillar, told CBS News early this week, no politician who stands against…
Yesterday—three days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (and with the government on alert to possible terror threats in New York and Washington, D.C.), President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. He asked—17 times—that his proposed $447 billion American Jobs Act be passed “right now.” CBS’s Nora O’Donnell put it succinctly: “The President came…
If Job couldn’t understand God’s ways, how can we? I refer to individuals who claim to speak for God and even speak to Him. God appeared to Job out of the tempest (or whirlwind) but did all the talking until the end when Job capitulated. “Indeed, I spoke without understanding / Of things beyond me,…
Libyan rebels have taken the Tripoli compound of Muammar el-Qaddafi (New York Times spelling). The Libyan poet and writer Khaled Darwish wrote in a Times op-ed piece yesterday, “My son Mohammad waved our new flag of independence in one hand and held a martyr’s picture in the other as he chanted, ‘The blood of martyrs…
I was driving back from Los Angeles and stopped for gas. A man in a yellow t-shirt with an illustration of a rattlesnake and the words, “Don’t Tread on Me,” saw me buying bottled water and commented, “Wish I could still afford that.” He held up two empty plastic thermoses. “Gonna fill up in the…