Stumble of the Week
An occasional regular Friday feature.
Read MoreBlogging in a time of horror
The aim of these blogs is to present short essays that will give you an idea to consider, if only fleetingly, much like Robert Frost’s belief that a poem could be “a momentary stay against confusion.” So perhaps they’re not equipped to deal with a tragedy of the proportions of Sunday’s massacre in Las Vegas, which to date has killed 59 people and wounded over 520 more. Yet to write about something else seems a kind of a desecration, as does engaging in the same mind-numbing dance in which accusations of “politicizing” the shootings stifle any debate at all.
Read MoreSleeping with the Olympic bomber (Part 2)
You run into some odd people on the Appalachian Trail (when, that is, you run into anyone at all). My daughter Gayley and I once shared a shelter with two women who were through hiking from Georgia, and we occasionally met someone heading in other direction, but for the most part we had the trail to ourselves.
Read More“I was one small stone."
Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens died last week at her home near the Loire River in France. She was 98. During World War II, she served as an interpreter for a French business association during the German occupation – and also as an amateur spy whose charm, flawless German, and incredible courage enabled her to gather and pass along information on the development of the V-1 and V-2 rockets that saved thousands of English lives.
Read More“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
The 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, issued every four years by the American Society of Civil Engineers is out, and the U.S. gets a D+.
Read MoreA short discourse on the permanence of statues, the wisdom of despots, and the importance of the humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.
Read MoreHe cannot heal us
As entire groups of his former supporters abandon him in waves – business leaders who have pushed for both economic and environmental deregulation, military commanders, a growing number of Republicans in Congress – Donald Trump hunkers down and lashes out. He shows no interest in bringing us together, in healing our wounds. He seems a man, a president, wholly without empathy, and without that he is no good to us now, for he cannot, he will not, heal us.
Read MoreIt’s (Long Past) Time to Take it Down
Like many who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, I grew up admiring Robert E. Lee. In an era when our history books stressed a consensus view of America’s past, Lee was seen as a noble figure: a respected leader, a skillful tactician, and an honorable man. President Lincoln offered him a major command in the Union Army, over which he agonized before resigning his commission and taking command of the forces of his beloved Virginia. In doing so, he chose to wage war against his country, a war that would claim more lives than all our future wars combined.
Lee’s whitewashed legacy reinforced the image of the Lost Cause– an antebellum South now Gone With the Wind, yet still struggling nobly to preserve its agrarian way of life. It’s an image that haunts us still. As the courtly symbol of that idyllic South, Lee has allowed us to gloss over its brutality.
Taking down his statue will not, as critics claim, erase history. On the contrary, it will enrich it by acknowledging historical truths we need to confront: four million slaves and over 4,000 lynchings, a century of Jim Crow and racism still strong enough to elect a president who will not condemn it. Robert E. Lee was a complex man, but there is nothing complicated about the symbol he has become. How can we fulfill Lincoln’s promise “to bind up the nation’s wounds” if we insist on venerating icons that rub salt in them?
Return to Trump Country, Part 3
Bob Hollick and Larry Maggi are Democrats, one a local officeholder, the other, a current county commissioner, is the biggest vote getter in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Both enthusiastically voted for Donald Trump in November, and they’re frustrated the constant sniping and bickering that has become its aftermath.
Read MoreA Return to Trump Country, Part 1
Although it’s a traditionally Democratic region, with a strong labor history and an 8.5% edge in Democratic voter registration, this is Trump country. Donald Trump crushed Hillary Clinton by 25 points in the county, and he remains hugely popular here.
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