I’m still engrossed in my around-the-world challenge. For the United States, I went with Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, a book about the Osage Nation. Like so many Americans, I don’t know nearly enough about our indigenous nations. This is both a Native American story and… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Political Discourse
On Irish Immigration and Slavery
Periodically, social media blows up with stories about how the Irish were slaves, too. There’s some truth to that story; the English sent many Irish people to the American colonies as convict labor. In other cases, people were conscripted because of debt, and some people just wanted to try something new and agreed to work… [Read More]
Thoughts on Privilege
My grandmother on my mother’s side was from a large and prominent family in the small town of Punxsutawney, PA. One of her uncles was a Catholic priest, a monsignor. He was the founding president of Gannon University, a small Catholic college in Erie, PA. Other members of her family owned a farm and different… [Read More]
Winnetka (with apologies to Langston Hughes)
What happens to a Suburban Lifestyle Dream deferred? Does it dry up, like a martini with no vermouth? Or fester like a sore— And then say something uncouth? Does it stink like alewives in spring? Or crust and sugar over— like a Pinterest thing? Maybe it just… [Read More]
Nuns taught me to write cursive. I taught myself to type so that I could be understood.
I’m sure handwriting advocates dream of a mythical past in which biological females in plaid jumpers and biological males in white shirts and neckties sit with perfect posture and correct paper slant, quietly writing “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” over and over. My guess is that their vision does not include… [Read More]
