Happy Thanksgiving. As this is the most American of holidays, it is fitting that its meaning should evolve and take on different significance for each passing generation. Where settlers once gave thanks for the sustaining gifts of the harvest, Americans in later years paused to celebrate freedom from want in this much-blessed land and later […]

As time goes by, I find I have a greater and greater appreciation for the uses of subtlety. I’m not the only one and I’ve had some powerful teachers along the way. The first was Mohandas Gandhi, who held that unjust laws must be disobeyed. In return for breaking those laws, the British governors of […]

Tomorrow is Halloween, which has become a fairly harmless holiday, unless you’re one of those people who think Halloween is an unholy alliance between Satan worshippers and Hallmark cards. After all witches, goblins and the occasional headless horseman are nothing to get upset over compared to say, the conniption fits Wall Street has been through […]

I’m speaking this week from Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood in Washington, DC where life is often not as pleasant as the name implies. Mount Pleasant is home to a number of immigrants from Central America who are clinging to the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder in the nation’s capital. Families try to keep the […]