Previously unpublished. Approximately 516 words.
It is a useful exercise to try to complete the sentence, “I believe…,” by adding a few personal convictions born in solitude and a blank environment.
What do I think I have come to believe, I wonder? Continue reading I Believe: Ideas From a Dark Room
Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on November 11, 2011. Approximately 910 words.
What can be said on Veterans Day 2011 that has not been said repeatedly over our years of remembering war and that final peace? Above all, we will recognize that the death of a loved one in war’s conflict, perhaps a continent away, is central and remains a catastrophe. Continue reading Veterans Day is a Time for Love of One’s Country
Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on October 10, 2014. Approximately 2633 words.
Even though knowing I would eventually be aging, I paid little attention and made few preparations. “It’s just another annoyance,” said I. That was true as I hit 70. Still true at 80. I did notice 85 but did little. Oh, visits to a cardiologist reminded one that time was passing, and so were the trips to the hospital blood people to get my cholesterol numbers. That pacemaker couldn’t be ignored.
The decline and passing of one extremely close to me, a few years back, was a trumpet call that my own aging was something of a signal. Sure enough: with my dear wife declining in a nursing home I decided with ice on every path to my doors it was time to be “institutionalized.” It wasn’t long—a few short months–before I began to get educated on all kinds of subjects new to me. Continue reading Living Old Age Institutionalized (It Could Easily Be Worse)
Published and archived on History News Network (hnn.com) on September 3, 2007. Approximately 6704 words.
This is a particularly personal essay about American race relations as I witnessed them during my very long lifetime. In a challenging book, the president of Spelman College in Atlanta says the time has come to talk about race. I would like that; however, nearly final drafts of this article have had hard sledding from a handful of carefully chosen editors. Apparently I can talk about race, as Beverly Daniel Tatum urges in Can We talk about Race? (Beacon Press, 2007), but it may be that few are much interested these days in reading about race. Continue reading How Race Relations Touched Me During a Lifetime