I attended an open, on-stage conversation with Paul Simon at Skidmore College a couple of nights ago. The nine hundred, or so, packed into Zankel Hall, were there for various reasons; he’s a bona fide celebrity, a musical legend, (I’d say genius), he’s nutty-professor whimsical, and he was more than…
For clarity, I’m reining in my bi-polar penchant for only seeing the black or the white, (mostly black, by the way), of this bold movement to express and expose distasteful, dangerous, too often illegal behavior. I am not a mere bystander, having been cajoled, harassed and physically and emotionally manipulated…
(An open letter to Trump supporters) To Whom It May Concern: Your choice to remain loyal to one of the most heinous human beings in history is fodder for the psychological annals of other historical cultish figures like Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh. If you haven’t checked, ask…
com·pas·sion (kəm-păsh′ən) n. Deep awareness of the suffering of another accompanied by the wish to relieve it. It’s a word derived from Old English, with some French tweaking, that’s been around since the fifteenth century, but there is anthropological evidence that it has been part of the human condition for far longer. There is probably no genetic test for its existence or…
There is very little to be proud of when you observe the behavior of the United States of America. Our fledgling country, (compared to most nations on the planet), was founded on humane principals borrowed from the ‘best’ ideas of other nations’ long-suffering experiments in government. That foundation, as rhetorically…