The Associated Press has decided to capitalize Black.  They are finally acknowledging that “the lowercase black is a color, not a person.” But the change is not only practical, it’s political, based on “the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language.” I made my own decision sometime back to capitalize Black for the strictly practical... Read More

What I want for Trump is much simpler than impeachment: I want to see his approval rating fall to the low twenties, then to the teens. The low teens. I want to see him repudiated by America, and especially by the nearly half of voting Americans who thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he would be a suitable president. Is that too much to ask? I know there’s an intransigent... Read More

It was confirmed yesterday: we live in one of those neighborhoods where neighbors—grown, adult neighbors—get into fistfights. Perhaps it was a once-in-a-decade event, but it has somewhat darkened my view of the neighborhood. Particularly after Bellevue. Peaceful Bellevue. There, people didn’t attack one another in the street. A fight was the neighbor looking the other way when you said hi.... Read More

“The last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees lived six million years ago.” I like that statement, and I believe it. Don’t we all believe things we like, things we want to believe? I like the idea that I’m closely related to chimpanzees. It reinforces my worldview, my makeshift model of the world where I live. That worldview is constructed one found object at a time with no... Read More

I recently came across Dorothy Thompson’s 1941 Harper’s piece, “Who Goes Nazi?” In it she describes a party game in which you look around the room and decide who at the party would embrace Nazism in America. Thompson had been a correspondent in Germany during the 1920s and 30s before being expelled by the Nazis, so she was in a good position to make the call. In the article she plays out... Read More

I came across this while researching the War in the Pacific: “Some journalists were visiting a Japanese school. During a chat with one class of youngsters, a journalist asked about the war between Japan and the U.S. One student asked, ‘The United States and Japan were in a war?’ Yes, the journalist replied, to which the student asked, ‘Who won?’” There are many ways to interpret... Read More