April 4, 2016 48 years ago today, Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Sometime between then and now, all of the things that he was are gone from general society, with the possible exception of a Black leader in America. Martin was a daring peacemaker. Martin’s “peace” looked like “rabble rousing” at the…

(For Em, who embodies this idea). My wife and I were a bit overwhelmed this morning by all of the news and people’s responses to it.  Terrorism in Belgium, elections in America,  Americans talking to Cubans, Americans talking about Americans talking to Cubans. When it gets like this, I tend to fall back into “what…

“A nation divided against itself can not stand” — Abraham Lincoln Wow. The Republican Party is falling apart. Actually, the insane wing of the Republican Party is falling apart.  They presently have a candidate running who is doing better than they expected, and yet he is their candidate. When is doing better than expected a…

If ever there was a societal response to Black Lives Matter, it came today. Tamir Rice, a young Black boy was killed by a police officer with no discussion because he was waving a possibly real toy gun around in a park and police were called. Today, after legal analysis, the policeman was fund not…

Oh, my God! How long will the wicked prosper in America? It’s Thanksgiving Day and my break from reading the news should have been longer, apparently. It has been a long time since we had ignorance regarding race in this culture. The first Black president elected, then stonewalled. Trayvon Martin. Ferguson and Michael Brown. Baltimore…

November 12, 2015 Dear child of the future: If you’re a student at Geraldine Claytor Magnet Academy in Bridgeport, CT and you had to research who she was, I wanted to tell you about the Gerry I knew. Yesterday, I attended her funeral with my wife and the service was everything I could have expected…

Someone posted on Facebook “Why in the richest country in the world do we have the second highest poverty?” This spurred me to think about politics and candidates and what’s there and what not. I’ll vote for the person who: Wants everyone in America to eat. Wants everyone in America to have a place to…

In my ongoing quest to be rational, I will apologize. I called Mike Huckabee’s opinion “stupid” on my Facebook post yesterday in the case of his saying that his planned policies, should he be elected, would deny an abortion to a 10 year old girl who was raped by her stepfather. As I have friends…

Sorry to borrow/appropriate “keep hope alive” but I am writing today because I feel that it is urgent and important to support Planned Parenthood during this very weird moment in their history. Their work actually does keep hope alive for the people I work with and know. As you may know, there’s a scandal there because…