• Democracy in America

    “In the days immediately following the slaughter of so many young people, articulate student voices are reminding America that the right to life supersedes the right to kill. De Tocqueville said, ‘The greatness…

  • Didn’t You Know . . .

    “And so, I hear the news, knowing what ultimately befalls swaggering megalomaniacs and their minions and, turning off the chaos, set about living my life as I choose to live it.”—Helen Noakes Waking…

  • Broken Places

    “I’ll venture to say that the attack on America by its current leaders is breaking open the carefully tended falsehoods which our nation has so fondly nurtured. And while our country has had…

  • Ludwig, Two Gustavs & Me

    “How wonderful that our editor suggested this theme for our first columns of 2018. How timely! For, as I write, the Legion of Honor, a museum in San Francisco, has a segment of…

  • Gifts

    “Alas, we are a nation of gorgers! Which leads me to ask, what is the void so many Americans are desperate to fill? Given our proclivity to repeatedly overfeed ourselves, and to ‘shop…

  • Giving Thanks

    “November, with its Thanksgiving Day, always reminds me of my roots and of my family’s efforts to embrace America’s culture. Our Thanksgiving table was evidence of the exuberance with which an American tradition…

  • Smile & Smile & Be a Villain . . .

    “Today, hearing of yet another outrageous tweet from The Behemoth, these words of the playwright of playwrights, William Shakespeare, came to mind: ‘They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds…

  • Costas

    “But for today, these few words about a remarkable man who, despite enduring immense loss, despite having been a prisoner of war in a Japanese concentration camp, held fast to his wonder at…

  • On Becoming American

    “This is a country made up of people like me, immigrants and refugees, who fled here because they believed in the promise of The Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Who upon reading…