-
THANKS MICHELLE
My mom and I didn’t get along with each other. Let me rephrase that. She got along with me fine; I just didn’t get along with her. As I got older and she kept treating me as if I was still 5, I developed a great deal of resentment, long past my teenage years, way…
-
AMERICA THE ALWAYS POLARIZED:
We have always been an argumentative culture and society, even before we became a country. And we’ve been arguing ever since, for better or worse, and with varying degrees of skill. Let’s start with the founding fathers. First of all, only 39 of the 55 there in Philadelphia actually signed the constitution. Twenty five owned…
-
Can ancestorial history explain political and subcultural differences in 2024?
According to several researchers and author David Brooks, there is ample evidence of this phenomenon. Of course we need to discount vast generalizations, but if you look at these notions, maybe, just maybe, you might see a pattern the explains a lot of behavior not caused by personal, emotional, economic, or political issues, but rather…
-
WHY LIFE STORIES MATTER
With stuff compiled from David Brooks’ “How To Know A Person”. I don’t mind sharing with you what I discover. Why keep it to myself? I bet David Brooks won’t mind either. I belong to an organization called Braver Angels whose mission is to get civil engagement back in civic engagement or any engagement at…
-
Meet the iconoclastic and brave Lucy Aharish, first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream, Hebrew-language Israeli television.
From my watching a YouTube Interview with Bari Weiss. When I heard her back story, I thought of mine as a white shadow in the predominantly Black and Puerto Rican sections of the Bx and the only Jewish student in Fordham’s undergrad school of education as far as I know during my 4 years there (at…
-
ISRAEL AND GAZA:
A CONVERSATION WITH CONGRESSMAN JAMAAL BOWMAN AND (MOSTLY) JEWISH CONSTITUENTS “Vanity asks, is it popular? Politics ask, will it work? But conscience and morality ask, is it right?” What a great location for this conversation, I thought, as I arrived at the Calvary Baptist Church in White Plains. I knew the Pastor, who has often…
-
MAKES ME WANT TO HOLLER…THROW UP BOTH MY HANDS
Marvin Gaye’s 1971 Inner City Blues is a sad but true tale of life in urban America. It depicts the bleak economic situation of inner city America and the emotional effects it has on its inhabitants. What’s changed? Not a whole hell of a lot. However the line, repeated in the chorus, “Makes me want…
-
THE 2023 NPE CONFERENCE: You can teach an old dog new tricks.
This past Saturday I had the pleasure and privilege of attending two panel discussions at the 10th Annual Network for Public Education Conference that were of great interest to me…about the shapeshifting ed reformers and effective advocacy. I wasn’t sure I was going to get anything from the conference, being out of the loop for a…
-
WHY GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT IS IMPORTANT:
Government investment is consistent with both a conservative and a liberal economic philosophy, as American leaders dating to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson have recognized. During the laissez-faire years leading up to the Great Depression, the United States invested relatively little money in scientific research, and the country fell behind. Europe dominated the Nobel Prizes…
-
The Diary of a Trip…
Beware the bicycles THE DIARY OF A TRIP Amsterdam! NYC officials. If you want to say Amsterdam is a model for your new traffic congestion pricing and increased bicycle lanes, BEWARE: There are 800,000 people who live in Amsterdam, yet there are @2,000,000 bicycles. There are thousands on the streets at once, almost all ridden…