Brent Harold / Journal

I’ve been reading about the 24 year-old NFL player, veteran of just one season, deciding to get out while the getting’s good. It was a very good first year and the young man has what looks like a great career ahead of him. But he’s been paying attention to the concussion story that’s emerged in […]

The opening of the US toward Cuba seems a good moment to evaluate Castro’s 1959 revolution. The impression I get from the media and comments by even liberal friends is that it is widely considered a failure. Those of a liberal bent give Castro credit for getting rid of the dictator and the dominance of […]

One of the most striking things about this small city of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is that there are no traffic lights or stop signs in the whole city. How can that be? By what we know and how we live traffic-wise in el norte, such a thing is impossible. Traffic lights and signs […]

Everybody knows that opiates such as heroin are evil, life-ruining drugs, while anti-depressants such as Prozac are good drugs, gateway only to mental health and reasonable happiness for many millions. An article in the professional journal “Psychotherapy Networker” ( Mary Sykes Wylie, “Falling in Love Again,” July/aug 2014) provides an illuminating historical perspective, pointing out […]

In a world with so many big and possibly insoluble problems (cancer, climate, income inequality, religion), this seems a little thing. But it has the advantage of seeming doable, and probably has a connection to the big things. I hereby nominate junk mail reform for my short list of no-brainer improvements in the quality of […]

From all the emphasis on the Charlie Hebdo massacre as an attack on free speech, what’s getting lost is the reality of this as a battle in the contemporary war of secular culture vs. religion. From my admittedly incomplete perusal of online news sources, the magazine has it in for Christianity as well as Islam. […]

The most compelling argument for closing Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant for those off us nearby and downwind is that it should never have been built there in the first place with “no escape from the Cape” (and none imaginable). Although the worst case scenario is unlikely, the consequences are so devastating and terminal, it seems […]

As the supporters of Elenita Muniz suggest, there is racism beyond that overt racism of which Muniz’s outraged critics protest themselves innocent. As part of the discussion of other forms of racism, I offer the following from my racial past. In high school in the 1950s, my English teacher told a story on herself: She’s […]

Want to know what’s weird? My 27 year-old son calls, wants to know if I’ve been watching the Orion test launch. He’s been up since seven to watch with his four year-old son. “Dad, you’ve got to see this. This Orion mission will be to our generation what Apollo was to yours.” TV coverage has […]

Forget about “The dingo ate your baby.” Black Friday is eating your Thanksgiving turkey. Thanksgiving has always had an unhealthy (and lord knows unsustainable) emphasis on consumption. But there has always been, along with the gobbling, a shot at some creative ritual, an element of mindfulness, rising to the occasion with heartfelt toasts. Sure, the […]