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From all-white schools in an all-white suburb to the all-white Katharine Gibbs School to a job in an all-white law office on Boston’s State Street. It wasn’t until I changed jobs in my early twenties that I actually had daily interactions with black co-workers, some of whom came to be my friends. I was hired…
Each of us has come by our awareness of black history differently. And thus there are those who see this history as an obvious cause of the current crisis in America. Or “a poor excuse.” My own awareness of black history was a long time coming. I grew up in an all-white suburb of Boston….
Yesterday we watched, mouths agape, as the police apprehended a car thief in our neighbor’s front yard. It was quickly done. No shots were fired. The perpetrator was not roughed up or unnecessarily manhandled in any way. And when it was all over, the only thing I felt was sad. This is how the scene…
A week ago Sunday, April 26th, the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial entitled “The brutality of coronavirus triage.” This piece acknowledges a terrible reality—the incomprehensible dilemma that doctors face when emergency rooms are overwhelmed with more desperately sick people than they can possibly help. “The most harrowing instances have been in the northern Italian…
Why did I think this play was going to be funny? It’s not. Distressing would be more like it. But I’m not complaining. Sometimes it’s better to have painful truths sneak up on you. For if you knew they were going to confront you head on, you might decide to make take strategic turn before…
November 11, 2019. One hundred and one years since the Armistice that made 11 a.m. of the eleventh day of the eleventh month a moment for reflection and remembrance. Inevitably on this day, the veterans who come first to my mind are my mother’s three brothers, who served overseas during World War II. (A fourth…
Ever wonder how things got to be the way they are in the “land of the free home of the brave?” Certainly, the America I’ve experienced as an adult is markedly different from the one I learned about in school. Ideals collide with reality And yet the idealized schoolgirl concept of The United States remains…
Have you ever pondered the United States coastline from the sea? I had occasion to do so last week while out on Catalina Island for a few days with my cousins. Over morning coffee, with news of “The Wall” fresh in our minds, our conversation turned to the obvious conundrum this spectacular view presented: If…
Mass Shootings: Are you mad enough to send an email…or make a phone call? – Part III
In State Houses across the country legislators are making it easier, not more difficult for people to arm themselves with ever-more deadly weaponry. Meanwhile, on the national level member of Congress, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, their pockets lined with bribes in the form of campaign contributions from the National Rifle…
I checked the Gun Violence Archive this morning. So far this year 12,996 people have been killed by gunfire in the United States. 25,080 have been injured (595 of these casualties have been children; 2,517 have been teenagers 12-17 years old). And there have been 316 mass shootings.* That’s up from 312 two days ago…