“What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”*
Recently, an old friend, a retired doctor who volunteers at the free clinic in Providence, Rhode Island, described the anger of many of the patients he sees.
Read MorePlay it Again, Uncle Sam
Early in 2001, Alan Greenspan,the 20-year chairman of the Federal Reserve, worried publicly about future federal surpluses so large they would wipe out the national debt, pour billions into the economy, and strangle private markets. So he proposed a tax cut as “a pre-emptive smoothing of the glide path to zero federal debt.”
Read MoreWatching Venezuela
Watching Venezuela disintegrate, I remember a man who many years ago predicted the demise of his country.
Read MoreThe Other War on Coal
Tomorrow my grandson, Jamie Webb, turns two years old. It’s also Earth Day’s 47th birthday and, not coincidentally, the first anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement on global climate change.
Read More"My Name is Emmett Till”
The most controversial work in the biennial show at the Whitney Museum in New York is “Open Casket,” an oil painting by Dana Schutz.
Read MorePeace After Terror
Saturday, I went to the spot where the Swedish terrorist attack took place
Read MoreStreet Art
"If at first you don't succeed - call an airstrike."
Read MoreIn Praise of Cherry Trees
Sakura Park lies just east of Grant’s tomb above the Hudson River on New York’s upper west side
Read MoreOne More Thumb in the Nose
It’s fitting, I guess, that yesterday’s evisceration of Barack Obama’s environmental and climate legacy came during the anniversary week of the Exxon Valdez’s 11-million-gallon crude-oil spill into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.
Read MoreA moment to cheer, not a time to gloat
Donald Trump’s two major initiatives to date have failed spectacularly, and Democrats have yet to cast a vote.
Read MoreAmerican Weekend (RIP)
Chuck Berry and Jimmy Breslin died last weekend.
Read MoreBeauty and the Shopping Piece
In “the transformative power of classical music,” Benjamin Zander describes and plays a two-minute piece by Chopin. He asks his audience to “think of somebody who you adore who’s no longer there [and] bring that person into your mind and at the same time, follow the line all the way from B to E, and you will hear everything that Chopin had to say.”
Read MoreAnimal Kingdom Farm Plantation
“In wildness is the preservation of the world,” Henry David Thoreau
Read MoreBorn in the Country
“The United States was born in the country and moved to the city.” Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform
Read MoreOf Migrants, Immigrants and Refugees
With the deportation machinery kicking into gear, I came across this passage from The Grapes of Wrath
Read MoreThe Enemies of the People
“I think the press has to fit in somewhere in the mission statement”
Read MoreWe Have Crossed the Line
"I am the son of an immigrant and the husband of an immigrant. I live in a county where half of the residents were born in a foreign country and three-quarters of us were born someplace else – here not by chance but by choice, striving to lead better, healthier, more successful American lives"
Read MoreBuilding an American Myth
How do you make a mission statement for a country?
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